Half Fruit, Half Vegetable

Today was an exceptional day in my book, a great example of the whole "you never know who you'll run into" thing. I got to leave school early, and watch a movie in one of the two classes I actually attended. The reason for my early departure from Academia was to go to an interview at the Gamestop in the Northwoods shopping district. It turned out great, but only after I went to the wrong location 10 minutes before my interview, barely making it on time to the actual location. Silly me. After the interview I was a little hungry so I decided to grab a bite at Sun Harvest. If you care to know, I ordered a chicken pita, but they were out of chicken so the lady preparing my food used turkey. While I was eating, a lady, who I might add looked very healthy for her age (I assumed mid 50's), sat next to me and asked for a half-fruit half-vegetable slush. Intrigued by the vegetable portion of her order, and being a relatively social guy, I asked her if it was something she ordered often. She said yes and we began to discuss the various taste pros and cons of order full vegetable or full fruit slush es. After some idle banter, I asked her what she did for a living. Lo and behold when I heard her response: A psychologist! Of all the people I could run into on a Friday at a random health store, I run into someone who has made a life-long dedication to the same field I was considering for myself! I told her about my goals of majoring in English and minoring in Psychology, and she said that I was making an excellent choice to major in English. I know that by reading this, you probably don't find the whole situation that interesting and probably fail to see the significance, but hearing somebody who has made an obviously fulfilling living doing what you are considering going into during college and telling you that you are on the right track really boosts your esteem and gives you that little spark to keep on truckin'. So yeah, I guess you never really do know who you'll run into.

Interesting question raised by a great book

I finished reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley for my AP English 4 class, and on our first day back from vacation we were asked to respond to this question:

"Does society exist primarily to benefit people as a whole, or does it exist for the improvement of the individual?"

(I'll use 'society' and 'the government' interchangeably throughout my response, because the government is what makes the rules for a society)

Looking at this from an economic perspective, the primary purpose of society is to benefit people as a whole. Society gives everyone equal opportunities to excel and be personally successful (e.g. bank loans, grants, scholarships, etc...). Some people choose to take advantage of these opportunities while others don't; which usually correlates with their levels of success and happiness. Society can only go so far to appeal to everyone because scarcity limits them to only being able to provide necessities for their people, and one of the key assumptions in economics states that people have three basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing. Everything else is considered a want and it's assumed that people have unlimited wants. However, another key assumption in economics is that everyone is rationally self-interested, meaning that everyone's actions can be seen as steps to fulfilling their ultimate goals or interests, whether it be spiritual satisfaction or monetary gain. Now that I've gone into a little of the reasoning for both sides, I wanted to say that I chose the 'society for society' angle because the question asked "does society exist primarily to...". That single word changes everything. Society can only continue to exist if the individuals who are apart of it have it's best interests at heart, not their own. Society can give individuals opportunities to better their own life, but its primary purpose is to maintain the equilibrium of the economy -- making sure the plumbing keeps flowing. When we allow our self-interest to become irrational on too wide a scale, then we will inevitably kill what society stands for: helping everyone.

Society helps everyone by not allowing everyone to help themselves.

Hello!11!!1one!

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts that covers how I see the world or just anything in particular that may fascinate/irk me on a given day. Now, this first post is merely to get my foot in the door of the blogging world. With that being said, I don't plan on making any humorous or insightful statements, as well as raising any deep, thought-provoking questions, YET. I believe the rest of the profile gives you some basic information about me and what I'm all about, so I won't bother repeating it here.

One of, if not the only goal I hope to accomplish with this blog is not to gain readers, but to learn a little bit more about myself and my world, as well as meet some new and interesting people.

Don't be afraid to talk to me or throw a hypothetical or two out there for me to comment on.