Do i believe? Sort of.

I believe in Determinism. To make it clear why, i will first state why i don't believe in the other ones. I think the notion of fate and destiny has been made up solely to comfort people who feel unsure about the future. This belief is shaped by me being an atheist. I do not think there are higher forces at work up there so there is no logical way that someone would be determining my destiny for me and there is absolutely no reason or evidence to believe that i have a pre-defined destiny to do anything at all.
Secondly, complete free will is also farce for the most part. While will power may be a force to be reckoned with, all choices made by any individual are ultimately influenced by their DNA and environment. Everyone's going to play the cards they were dealt, so for example if you were a poor black man in the 1930's, your choices would obviously be limited by discrimination, and thus your DNA. Environmental influences affect us every day, down to something as trivial as peer pressure or obstacles that will encourage us to take the easy road. While these influences can be overcome by will power, at the end of the day everyone, including super amazing crazy robot people, will from time to time succumb to these pressures.
So basically, no one is making my decisions for me, but my decisions are always affected by the world around me. I think to some extent, your decisions absolutely should be influenced by the environment. While i believe in shooting for the stars, nothing is limitless and boundless in the real world, and we all need a reality check every once in awhile. I think for most people the struggle in life is finding the balance between complete free will and these influences. This is why i believe in Determinism.

battle royal

I think the narrator's speech was one of the most ironic parts of the story. After they had put him through hell, humiliated, and exploited him, he still wanted to deliver the speech he had come to do, despite doing it in front of an audience who obviously didnt care. The author paints a vivid picture of him swallowing blood and trying to please the people who had just humiliated him, all the time swelling with pride. This depicts the social status of black people of the time. That someone would have to go through all that just to get a scholarship to college is crazy. The price of going college was his own dignity, and i think the point this adds to the story is that segregation and discrimination had pushed african americans so far down in american society that people like the narrator had no other choice but to do something like this.

this i believe.. [revised]

I believe in walking. People walk every day and it is probably one of the most mundane activities known to man, but sometimes it is exactly what I need to relax and think. As an incredibly lazy person, I never got my license, so now I’m just waiting until I turn 17 so I can skip driver’s ed and then do it.

Anyway, that’s not the point, the point is since I cant drive anywhere, I’ve learned to embrace my walking. I walk everywhere: to school, friends’ houses that are 30 minutes away, the skate park, Kroger and so on. I use this time to think about everything that’s going through my head and listen to my Ipod. During my twenty minute walks to school every morning I think about everything that’s going on in my life. Much of the time I am forced to worry about all that homework I didn’t do last night, and how im going to get it done in first period. Sometimes I find myself walking to the beat of the music, which is a totally irrelevant fact but cool nonetheless. It’s a part of walking for me.

I think walking is totally underestimated, people can moan about having to walk to places, but when i go somewhere and forget about how far my destination is, and just look at the things around me, it can actually be interesting. Sometimes when I hang out with my friends and there is absolutely nothing to do, we just walk around. We walk to the square or we walk to Winnona park or we walk to someone’s house or sometimes we just walk around completely aimlessly and end up making a huge circles around Decatur for no reason at all. Granted, sometimes these walks are boring, but you see people and see things that are going on, and find stuff to do. I especially like walking at night. The darkness makes everything that much more interesting and mysterious, and the fact that its not 100 million degrees is also nice. And anyway, I save a whole lot of money on gas, so I guess that’s a benefit. And Its probably healthy too. I believe in walking! yay.

man with wings

I think the man really was an angel and the point of the story is that humanity is so stubborn and greedy that they failed to recognize what laid before them. Why i think the man was an angel is quite straight-forward, he had big wings and i cant think of anything else that that symbolizes. Instead of helping the poor old man, he was held in a chicken coop and poked at and exploited for money. Even when news of a downed angel reached the vatican, they did not care. Granted, they might have thought it was a hoax, but it is ironic that people who put so much faith into religion exploit and make fun of its most symbolic figures. This leads me to believe that, if they failed to recognize the importance of an angel descended to earth, that even if there was a god figure out there, we would not know about it. We know only of the man-made religious stories told to us by preachers, and of which we have no guarantee that it is correct.

cathedral

The irony of the story is that the narrator was not happy about having robert come over but ended up having an unforgettable experience. The narrator was a bit afraid of the notion of blindness, because he had never encountered it before, so it was understandable that he did not understand it, but he went as far as to even slightly despise it. However, when he got to know robert, they shared quite an experience togethor. Like when they drew the cathedral togethor. The irony was that he was that robert was the blind one but he was the one talking the narrator through it, as if he was scared.