Light in Reverence

This documentary was pretty interesting. It featured the Native Americans and miners. These Native Americans had sacred land, where they have hieroglyphics, worship, and such. But the miners are trying to make money and by that they harvest mineral goods from the sacred land. People actually seemed biased towards the Native Americans. There was one part where the Native Americans protested to the miners that there was some historical hieroglyphics in the area. The miners told them that he would avoid them if he saw and yet his attitude and comments told us that he never looked out for them. He didn't even care about it.

Journal #3

During last class meeting, the class had a little fieldtrip to the backyard of wherever my class was at. It's sort of silly but I have already memorize where my class location is at so the useless information of what the location's name is have been moved to the back of my head. But our assignment was to write what we see, smell, feel, and just becoming more aware of our environment. This is what I wrote down:

I smell the earth, though I see many bird doodoo. I also see a lot of
leafs that reminds me of the taro's leaf. These trees must have been
here for over hundreds of years to grow this big and expand that far.
I just stepped on some kind of brown berry and it must have been here
for awhile. Orange gush came out from it but it doesn't look like
there are seeds in it. I wonder how these trees get so much nutrient
when the base is covered with so much dead brown leaves. I also hear a
bird that I do not recognize. Looking at it, it must be foreign
because I have never seen their kind before until recently this
summer. It has long skinny legs, looks like an athletic dove with
about 1" in length of their beak with dark black beady eyes. There's
more of them now. During the summer, I had seen only two but now it's
six.

How does this relate to Descartes' philosophy and Plato? I'll need to
think about this.

Descartes and Plato had similar philosophy. Plato came into scene during the 4th century. I'm not sure if I really understand what was going on in Descartes' mind but the chart that Professor Sharon Rowe drew out for Plato helped me a lot. It reminded me of a Christian Philosopher and professor at Hawaii Pacific University where he explained this world as a dark cave and there was a small light that came in from a small hole, probably at the roof of the cave. And that there was a person standing right in the diameter of the hole where his shadow was being projected into the cave, and those in the cave saw his shadow and perceived it to be something. Basically outside of the cave was the invisible world of idea, knowledge and understanding, while inside of the cave was the visible world of senses.

How does this relate to whatever I saw? Plato says that I'm in the visible world right now and Descartes basically said whatever I saw, the birds, trees, everything is just a robot. I believe my Pastor once said that animals have no souls and so that pretty much makes them robots. But we are different, we have souls and we find that because we have our own will. Our own will to do whatever he like. So I'm approaching it from a biblical stand point of view. Jesus did not die for us to be moral. The Bible (which was originally written in Greek) said that Jesus died to save us and by doing that His blood covers our sin. In Proverbs, King Solomon wrote that love covers a multitude of sins. Jesus said that there's no greater love than a he who lays down his life for a friend. Blood to the Jews was a symbol of life. Jesus laid down his life, in love, and paid that price when it covered our sins. Plato wrote about how there was one true, good, beautiful, something. I believe that Jesus came to restore that time when Adam and Eve first broke their relationship with God. We see that when they sinned, instead of repenting and coming back to God they tried to destory each other by blaming one another which started like this decay. Throughout Genesis, we see that men's live started getting shorter. From 900 to 800 to 600 to 300 to whatever. I guess Plato realized something along the lines and Descartes believe that "I think, therefore I am." Right?

Journal #2

Actually last week we had started reading the animal book. We learned a little bit about the Kolea bird and the reason why we see it only around Summer/Fall season is because of it's migration. These species came from the North, where Alaska is. Can you just imagine how many miles they had to fly from Alaska to reach Hawaii? Talk about having more fuel than an airplane. From Hawaii to California is over 5,000 miles and it even travels probably around or over 600 mph! I can't imagine how long and breath-taking the journey it took for these courageous and strong birds it took to migrate here.

But we also talked about Descartes. There's one saying that he is highly famous for, "I think, therefore I am." We read a little pamphlet to find out who he is and he used to be a normal brainwash low class guy. I learned from History 152 that pheasants were not educated in any way and could have been just like many of us, whom are influenced greatly by the media (propaganda). Many of those who weren't just another zero would stand up for what they believe in. I know there was a zealous man in Europe whom stood up for what he believed in and that was the freedom of rights. He would always get in trouble though and beaten up.

And lastly we watched the story of stuff. There was a lot of stuff going on there. Consumerism. I think her name might have been Annie Leonard but what she was saying is that there was this cycle and it wasn't working because we are lacking the resources, but we are getting more of the resources to produce things such as ipods, phone, cars, television, computers, and etc. Especially in America where we buy so many things and by one month we just toss them aside. Many of the things we buy have been paid for because it cost money to make and ship it. But that wasn't the point. The point is that we need to start recycling or else the earth will run out of resources!