As for Caleb Gallenmore...
He talks about the nature of human freedom in his graduation speech, or at least that's what I thought his main point was. How freedom is cultivated, or taught to be denied, and what the nature of true freedom is, outside of society's limitations on ourselves.
I know it's only an example (albeit a powerful one) of freedom and how it isn't just a personal concept, but his comment on illegal immigrants and their children living here today made me think about their current situations in our society. To begin with, they go through such hardships in their native country that they decide to uproot their lives to see if they can have a future in an alien one, but are then denied the right to freedom anyway. Once they get here they're classifed as "not us," and so don't receive the same rights we call basic. Why can't all kids have the opportunity to go to good schools? Or eat everyday? Why can't we share at least with the people who work so hard for the chance at a piece of what we have? Instead we impinge upon their freedom because they impinged upon ours. We're pretty vindictive...
(I had two friends deported just last year from my highschool! Why can't they learn, why do they have to go to their homes to work and perpetuate the system! Something has to change. We just have to figure out what...)
Another point I got from this speech was that freedom is a public concept. It doesn't just belong to us, it's given to us, which seems to go against the definition, since by being given it can logically be taken away. He talks about Descartes feelings on what is real--our thoughts--and comes to the conclusion that it is our minds that truly make us free. It's the possiblity of reaching something more than we're taught to reach for that gives us true freedom. He says that if we're not bound by the constraints of our society we achieve a freedom that can't be given or taken away, more or less.... Kind of like "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"? I dunno if the rest of you guys had to read that, but we did. In it the main character is in a gulag, and every facet of his day to day life is controlled by powers he can't affect. In our analysis of the book most of my class agreed that a moment of trancendence of the system for Ivan (though he's rarely refered to as such. Russian names. Confusing...) was when he didn't do what was expected of him, didn't just try to survive in the camp, but gave some of his precious food away to a religious man (whom Ivan couldn't understand) who wasn't expecting anything for his good deeds.
In short, Caleb seems to say that freedom is a tricky thing, and not just an individual one. It's all based on how you see it, though.
Ah, has anyone ever found the phrase "I'm giving you all my worldly goods." to be a very strange one? It always refers to money... Is this because of our capitalistic system...?
As for Neil Postman...
His speech says that there are two types of people in the world--those that create and those that destroy. He also says that those that create are interested more in knowledge and learning that anyone else, and that those who destroy only want for their own happiness, not for the good of man kind. (Is that bad grammar? Or is it just one of those oddities of speech?) I think that just for the situation of a young person leaving their place of "higher learning" and going out into the "real world" this is a good metaphor--will you use your knowledge for good or evil? Straighforward, all that good concise stuff. Okay, okay, but what if they're are more than two types of people in the world? What about the ones who try to help other people? They may not be furthering their learning, or furthering their own happiness, just trying to make the lives of others a bit easier, a bit more pleasant, especially if said lives are horrible to begin with! And then there are the more normal, dime-a-dozen kinds of people that are Athenians and Visigoths at the same time. I mean, they want to further their society and learn so as to make the world a better place, but, dude, they want to feed themselves and live comfortably and not have to walk to whatever money-making field they choose to go into. It's hard to be one or the other only.
Oh! Remember, everybody, when we were on the Machiavellia section of forms of government and he talked about being generous? I don't know if you guys are familiar with manga, or more specifically Fruits Basket. And first off it's not a comic like many tend to think of them, only for children and such. Actually in Japan most adults read manga, as well, just with differne themes, and plenty still read the adolescent-geared manga because of the issues it brings up... Darn, off subject again. So in Fruits Basket there's this story called "The most foolish traveler", or something, where this guy winds up giving everything he owns away, always asking those he bequeathes his posessions to to "be happy". Well, he winds up giving his body parts away to hungry oni in the forest, until he is only a head. Then an oni comes and asks him for his eyes, and the traveler says it's allright. After the oni has finished eating he says to the man "Thank you very much. For your kindness I leave you this gift." and he drops a slip of paper that says "fool" on it. But the man can't see it, and so he cries tears of joy (even without his eyes--it's a story) and says "Thank you, thank you! No one has ever given me a present before, I'm so happy!" And then he dies. And the question is: is the traveler really so foolish? Momiji, the teller of the tale, says that he thinks the traveler knew what he was doing, and that he had the right idea. He says that we can't focus on hardhips and sadness in our life, but continue with it and try to be happy. Uhm... you can find this on the internet, or at the link I posted above. It's a good story... the link has some screen shots from the anime, so it makes more sense than just the words. -_-
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