The Myth of Gifted People

When I was growing up, I excelled in school. I still do now in my final year of college. It is undeniable that my success in school is partially due to the fact that I am diligent at putting substance into my assignments and responsible with completing assignments on time. But, most of the time, I do not have to work too hard to get good grades and if I did I knew that I did not need to do so. Many different people in my life- parents, sisters, friends, bosses, acquaintances, etc.- have remarked that I was smart or gifted. But I always just shrugged off the compliments because I am uncomfortable with receiving compliments, I was trying to be modest and I never really believed in “being gifted.”

A month ago, a close friend of mine and I were eating dinner and watching TV. She randomly asked me during a commercial break if I thought I was gifted. I gave the question some thought and then confidently replied, “Yes.” I, then, asked her the same question. She said, “No.” I asked her why she thought that. She said, “Because I don’t do well in school.” I replied with a mild look of surprise, “Well, doing well in school has nothing to do with being gifted.” She said, “But you get such high grades. I don’t know how to do that.” I replied, “That’s because I was trained to get high grades. I know what teachers want.” We ended the conversation with her saying, “That’s true.” I didn’t give the conversation any immediate analysis and continued watching TV.

110 PRIDE Statements

When I was a Resident Advisor (RA) for a residence hall on campus two years ago, I initiated a campus-wide PRIDE Statements event during LGBTQA Month in April. My fellow RAs and I collected and came up ourselves with 110 statements of revelation, affirmation, introspection and statistics about issues that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning people face in their daily lives. The statements were written on paper flags and the flags were staked across the campus ground for a whole day. The event also included a speech made by the Director of the university’s LGBTQA Services at the campus amphitheater and a PROUD t-shirt giveaway. The event was so successful- slightly controversial and eye-raising but highly educational and affirming- that it was done again the next year.

Here are the 110 statements that we staked to the ground:

1. Your best friend could be gay.
2. There is nothing gay about pink.
3. “Gay” is not a synonym for “stupid.”
4. “Faggot” was a 19^th century British slang term for fuelwood used to make fires.
5. Holding hands in public should be open to all couples.

Wholeness, Personality and Theory of Change

In all “civilized” cultures, especially in Western society, there is an unnecessary schism between logic and emotion, between empiricism and intuition, and between science and spirituality.

              This separ     ation has no power in my being!

                                  My logic is emotionally informed and my emotions are logical.

                                              My empiricism defines my observation of the seeable and my intuition defines my perception of the unseeable…the mystery…the sacred interconnection.

                                                              My spirituality is based on science and my scientific ventures are driven by my spiritual mission to find the whole.

Service: Junk Food of the Government

I love reading inflammatory, polemic pieces of writing because they often use ego-breaking, humorous and clever words to state the obvious that has become not so obvious. One of the obvious facts of life that the recent articles I have read expound on is that the U.S. government feeds us a lot of junk food. By junk food, I mean things that make us feel good but are really bad to our personal and community health in the long run. The piece of writing that I am specifically going to discuss is Ivan Illich’s “To Hell with Good Intentions.” You can read his article at this link.

I agree with Illich. In fact, I have been feeling the same animosity against international service for quite some time. On a theoretical level, I do not believe in international, domestic or any other kind of service because that would only imply that the community being serviced has little to no privilege or power with which it would normally be able to take care of itself. The power and privilege have been taken away from these communities by the dominant group. It is perverse and inefficient for the dominant group to do community service when it could easily eliminate inequality by equitably redistributing resources, money, and political power. But, of course, the dominant group does not want this. For example, American and European governments and corporations are keeping many African nations under increasing debt while, at the same time, young, affluent people are joining organizations to help alleviate hunger and poverty in these same countries. This is simply and intentionally schizophrenic. Moreover, service organizations ultimately keep these poor countries indebted to affluent countries in one more way.

Equity and Justice in Sustainable Development

Sustainable development includes not only environmental protection but also social justice, economic equity, and fair distribution of wealth and burden. In order to create ecologically sustainable societies, it is very important that mainstream environmentalists begin to incorporate social issues into discussions, for their current distinction between what is nature and must be protected and what is human and must be eliminated will only create a polarized society that will benefit neither the environmentalists themselves or the lay people. Environmentalists specifically have to consider issues of job security, social justice, and the distribution of wealth when discussing environmental policy.

Having work and job security is what most people worry about before environmental protection. All people have to work to provide for themselves and often their families. It is not to the environmentalists’ advantage that they devalue the significance of work in society and emphasize solely the protection of nature over the needs of people. Ramachandra Guha argues that the obsession with unspoiled, “natural” wilderness is a uniquely American phenomenon because it is oftentimes the middle to upper class, White environmentalists who do not worry about not having a job that emphasize the need to protect the wilderness for its beauty. The wilderness has become one more amenity, one more aesthetic enjoyment for the well-off to consume in American consumer society.