...and I am one of them.
I'm about 3,700 miles from Wall-street, 2,000 miles from Cairo, and I am occupying my blog right now.
Which means, I AM the 00.00000142857143%
Or if we accept that about 108 billion people have ever lived on earth, I am (actually) the 00.000000000925925926 %
I'm about 3,700 miles from Wall-street, 2,000 miles from Cairo, and I am occupying my blog right now.
But since cyberspace seems to be infinite, I guess that this blog is also infinitely insignificant... and therefore doesn't really exist as a space that can be occupied at all.
...but no need to bother ourselves with these silly and wildly inaccurate figures now.
The point that I intend to make, both ridiculous and quite profound when you think about it, is that nothing I'm about to say really matters.
BUT, I feel compelled to talk about recent events that have taken place at my home university, UC Davis, that have made international headlines. Basically, police attempted to brake up a UCD protest by using pepper spray.
It's shocking to me, because protests at UCD, from my experience, are rarely something to get all excited and bust-out your pepper spray over. Now I hear that thousands are protesting, which I do believe is unprecedented on our campus..
I feel a lot of pressure to takes sides and have an opinion... but I don't know, this is real life, not hollywood.
What I mean is, there isn't always a villain and a victim and a hero in every story in life. No, in fact, that's the problem! Real life is—not—a—STORY! At all. Time just goes by; things just happen. I'd argue reality doesn't have a linear beginning, middle, and end.
We so often, if not always, tend to constrict our lives into narratives. I guess we can't see the universe from all angles. We look at events from one point of view, like we're watching a movie or reading a book.
But the officers involved in pepper-spraying those protesters didn't go into the campus police force so that they could brutalize students. They aren't evil villains—they have families and lives and (used to...) have jobs.
I don't know how it happened; I don't know why it happened. I don't, by any means, condone it.
Just because the media, by nature, has to squeeze complex and incomprehensible social phenomena into 60 second, easily understandable short stories doesn't mean that life really is like that. Events don't always have a set inciting incident, rising action, climax, and conclusion. There isn't an antagonist or protagonist, and ALL of the characters are dynamic, not static. For any one "event" there isn't just one plot, but an infinite number of plots—an INFINITE number of factors—all intersecting in a moment. It's complicated, people. I guess that's why I don't have a real opinion.
Or maybe I'm just a weanie.
I don't know. If I'm being contacted by students from UCD saying basically "Dude! Guess what you're missing out on!!" about the protests on campus, it's a pretty good indicator to me of what is really going on. And I don't think it's what those involved would like to think is going on. I won't say anymore about that though. (Yikes.)
But anyway, I hope I'm not saying something really controversial here. I wasn't there, so it's possible that I'm way off... but as I always say, it's my blog.
(And we already proved that nothing I say matters anyway)
But even if I do upset a few people, I'll only have, what, the .0000000714285714% against me? So I guess i'm not too worried about it.
The point that I intend to make, both ridiculous and quite profound when you think about it, is that nothing I'm about to say really matters.
BUT, I feel compelled to talk about recent events that have taken place at my home university, UC Davis, that have made international headlines. Basically, police attempted to brake up a UCD protest by using pepper spray.
It's shocking to me, because protests at UCD, from my experience, are rarely something to get all excited and bust-out your pepper spray over. Now I hear that thousands are protesting, which I do believe is unprecedented on our campus..
I feel a lot of pressure to takes sides and have an opinion... but I don't know, this is real life, not hollywood.
What I mean is, there isn't always a villain and a victim and a hero in every story in life. No, in fact, that's the problem! Real life is—not—a—STORY! At all. Time just goes by; things just happen. I'd argue reality doesn't have a linear beginning, middle, and end.
We so often, if not always, tend to constrict our lives into narratives. I guess we can't see the universe from all angles. We look at events from one point of view, like we're watching a movie or reading a book.
But the officers involved in pepper-spraying those protesters didn't go into the campus police force so that they could brutalize students. They aren't evil villains—they have families and lives and (used to...) have jobs.
I don't know how it happened; I don't know why it happened. I don't, by any means, condone it.
Just because the media, by nature, has to squeeze complex and incomprehensible social phenomena into 60 second, easily understandable short stories doesn't mean that life really is like that. Events don't always have a set inciting incident, rising action, climax, and conclusion. There isn't an antagonist or protagonist, and ALL of the characters are dynamic, not static. For any one "event" there isn't just one plot, but an infinite number of plots—an INFINITE number of factors—all intersecting in a moment. It's complicated, people. I guess that's why I don't have a real opinion.
Or maybe I'm just a weanie.
I don't know. If I'm being contacted by students from UCD saying basically "Dude! Guess what you're missing out on!!" about the protests on campus, it's a pretty good indicator to me of what is really going on. And I don't think it's what those involved would like to think is going on. I won't say anymore about that though. (Yikes.)
But anyway, I hope I'm not saying something really controversial here. I wasn't there, so it's possible that I'm way off... but as I always say, it's my blog.
(And we already proved that nothing I say matters anyway)
But even if I do upset a few people, I'll only have, what, the .0000000714285714% against me? So I guess i'm not too worried about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment