Thoreau vs. Machiavelli

Henry David Thoreau and Niccolo Machiavelli are often presented as completely polarized philosophical figures. Thoreau is often thought of as selfless and ideological, or an angel crusading for justice, and Machiavelli is often thought of as entirely self-serving and uncaring for the feelings of or the plight of others, or a ruthless politician that only seeks to harm you in order to further his own goals. However, these thinkers are more similar than many people seem to think. True, Thoreau emphasizes self-sacrifice while Machiavelli emphasizes doing whatever one can to further one's goals, but the basis of their thinking is the same: behaving in a way that is beneficial to oneself.

Thoreau, in his essay "Civil Disobedience," (which has often been characterized as an anti-slavery essay), focuses surprisingly little on the goal of abolishing slavery as an institution. Rather, he focuses the majority of his energy on helping his audience understand why living in and contributing to the United States and therefore being complicit in the practice of slavery makes a person dishonorable. He characterizes prison as a place where "the State places those who are not with her but against her," and therefore "the only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor." In this instance and throughout the text, Thoreau says that an individual's priority should not be to abolish slavery, but to "wash one's hand of it"--that is, to renounce any and all affiliations with it, not with the purpose of ending it, but to protect one's honor. Although this idea is noble in theory and many of us and our society could benefit from us adopting it as a principle, it is nevertheless a fundamentally selfish idea. Machiavelli's selfishness, on the other hand, is far less difficult to observe. The underlying theme of his text "The Prince," is, to put it simply, do whatever is the most expedient to the advancement of your goals. The key to this that is often overlooked is that the most expedient course of action is not always the most detrimental to one's constituents--whether it is harmful or helpful to the Prince's people doesn't matter to Machiavelli, so long as it protects the prince's power and therefore is beneficial to himself.

The main difference between Machiavelli and Thoreau, therefore, is what the end goal of their self-service is. Thoreau's end goal is moral success and a clean conscience--being a good person in the eyes of oneself and in the eyes of his God. Whether or not slavery is actually abolished is of secondary importance to the fact that he has washed his hands of it, is no longer complicit in it, and therefore has achieved his idea of morality and remains an honorable person. In contrast, Machiavelli's goal is to maintain power. It doesn't matter whether the people are happy or miserable, affluent or impoverished, war-torn or living in peace--so long as the prince has maintained his position of power through whatever the most expedient means are, then in Machiavelli's eyes, he has achieved his goals. The differences between Machiavelli and Thoreau, therefore, are not as extreme as they may seem.

Social Change Project Rough Draft

            Many people seem to think that we have reached a point, at least in some places, in which queer people enjoy the same level of societal acceptance and inclusion as straight people. I will be frank in stating that this is most certainly not the case. This assumption—namely, that just because queer people are no longer being openly hated by the majority of mainstream society means that they enjoy the same social and political comfort that straight people do—seems to follow a common trend in American society of failing to see current problematic trends because they pale in comparison with what they used to be. This is manifested in a number of ways: we commonly think that just because there are no longer “whites only” signs in restaurants and on water fountains we no longer have systematic oppression of people of color (African American people, in particular), that just because there are no longer advertisements that feature women lying at a man’s feet with the tagline “Keep Her Where She Belongs” misogyny is no longer existent, and that just because Laverne Cox is a widely known and loved celebrity transphobia is no longer a systematic and highly worrying problem. In this manner, while systematic oppression in America has certainly become milder over the past century, it is still there and still extremely potent in many people’s lives.

            Although there are many problems in addition to the continued marginalization of queer people and the problems that I listed above, I believe that the issue of continuing to marginalize queer people has one of the simplest solutions of all of them. The problem with it is that it is difficult to see, for both those who are queer and those who are not. This seemingly invisible problem that remarkably few people seem to talk about is the fact that queer people are consistently locked out of mainstream society, continually isolated from what everyone thinks of as “normal.” Queer people might no longer be the targets of many hate crimes, but they are still decidedly excluded from many aspects of modern society. This is an enormous aspect of the continued marginalization of queer people.

            An example of a significant aspect of society that continues to lock queer people out of its inclusion in it is mainstream television. Although many queer people celebrate the victory of their inclusion in television shows, they fail to recognize that the majority of these characters exist only as the brunt of jokes; that is, they are there only to be stereotypically “gay” and for everyone to have a good laugh at before returning to the actual plot of the show. Even worse than this is when there are no actual queer people featured in the show, but rather there are jokes about a character being queer that are only perpetuated for a couple of minutes before the writer of the show oh-so-eagerly rushes to assure us that the character is straight, like a normal person, just like you and me, right? Wrong. Beyond the screen, there are millions of queer people that briefly—and perhaps misguidedly—that get their hopes up that maybe, just maybe, a character on their favorite television show will be like them for once, only to have those hopes quickly dashed by systematic heteronormativity.

            Another problem that contributes to the issue is one that is arguably more significant. In most public school systems, sex education does not include anything relevant to queer people outside of simply telling students that such people exist. My own high school health class—that took place in the heart of Blue Liberal America—did not include any education about queer sexuality or gender identity outside of telling the students in my class not to be hateful of such people and bully them, because they’re “just like you and me.” Are queer people really “just like you and me?” The answer is no. Queer people will never be the same as everybody else in the world until everybody else starts treating them like they are. And right now, the majority of high school health classes are utterly failing to do so. Queer people throughout my high school and probably throughout almost all high schools in the country are allowed to listen to a teacher explain heterosexuality and ignore everything else, sitting in the back of the classroom and feeling like there is something wrong with them, no matter how many times the teachers tell the other kids not to bully them or how many “safe space” stickers are attached to their doors. High school is a key time in the development of many people’s lives, and attending a sex education class in which your sexuality is completely excluded is not a good way to begin one’s journey into adulthood. Altering the content of high school health classes is absolutely essential to the continued integration of queer people into society, and the end of their exclusion and being treated as obviously “other.”

You Are Creating Everything that You Hate About Us

One of the main rationalizations that is usually given for locking queer people out of mainstream American life and insisting on continuing to view them as fundamentally different or unusual is that queer sexuality is inappropriate for every day life. The idea is that, while movies, television shows, books, and other forms of media that show heavily implied heterosexual sex scenes can still be considered somewhat "appropriate" while media that portrays a queer couple or person--not sex between them, just a couple or a person--automatically makes that movie, television show, book, or other form of media "inappropriate," especially for children. This is because many heterosexual adults don't want their children to be influenced by the reality of being queer. They often feel this way because they have negative assumptions about the queer community ingrained into them: gays have no morals, they are inherently promiscuous, they have no family values--the list goes on and on. This is why many heterosexual adults, even if they may claim to be supportive of equal rights for gays, continue to be the perpetrators of oppression of the queer community.

And the most ironic part? These heterosexual adults are forcing queer people to conform to these stereotypes simply by continuing to assume that they exist and insisting on continuing to exclude queer people from society.

By locking queer people out of society because they are afraid of its influence and afraid of these stereotypes, the heterosexual community continues to treat queer people like outcasts. And if you're treated like an outcast, then you are inherently inclined to behave like an outcast. Many gay people behave promiscuously and make dangerous or reckless decisions simply because they have no other way of fitting into society. Time and again, examples have proven that the most common reaction to being negatively stereotyped as a group is to embrace that negative stereotype. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm just saying that, factually, that is what usually occurs and what is currently occurring in the queer community. Heterosexual adults say that queer people have no family values, and yet they continue to try to lock us out out of the institution of marriage. Nothing says "settling down and committing to hard work and family values" like marriage. If gay people were allowed to participate in this institution, it would encourage them to not exhibit the negative attributes that have come to be associated with them. If you treat us like we are supposed to be rule-following, moral, responsible people, then we will, in general, do so. Legalizing gay marriage will not by any means bring an end to all sexual promiscuity in the queer community, but heterosexual marriage has not brought an end to all sexual promiscuity in the heterosexual community, either.

Legalizing marriage may solve issues within the adult queer community, but it will not solve issues among adolescents who are too young to be married. Still, adolescent queer people face the same exclusion from the mainstream, heteronormative society, and they are likewise encouraged to behave like the social outcasts that they are. The best way to rectify this would be to include comprehensive health education in American high schools. Many queer people are educated on sex that does not affect them, and therefore, they feel excluded or see themselves as not part of what is "normal." Therefore, they are encouraged to behave recklessly like the social outcasts that they are treated as. Including comprehensive sexual education in high school health classes would have the same effect on the adolescent queer community that legalizing gay marriage would have on the adult queer community.

In conclusion, if you want us to behave like members of society, then started treating us like ones.

Why Macklemore's Approval Isn't Enough

A few years ago, I remember that Macklemore released a song called "Same Love." To this day, I have never listened to that piece of music, at least not of my own accord. Supposedly, this song was a landmark in the queer rights movement. To think, that a movement composed of millions of people from all across the world of many different sexual orientations and genders and with many opinions that they have been literally screaming at the world for the past 50+ years would need the voice of a heterosexual cisgender man to legitimize their thoughts, feelings, and the meanings of their lives. As unlikely as it seems, this was apparently true. The debut of this song triggered a surge of positive feelings towards queer people, seemingly marking an enormous social victory for the queer community. 

As a queer person, as odd as it sounds, I don't like that this phenomenon occurred. Many people are confused by this; they say, "Shouldn't you be happy that people are becoming more accepting of you?" The answer is no. To help you understand, please imagine that you are straight, as you probably are. Now, here's the difficult part: please imagine that everyone else in the world is queer. It is completely normal for two people of the same sex or gender to be together. There is a significant portion of the population that is transgender. There are also lots of people that are identified as non-binary (neither male nor female), regardless of sex. You are often seen as odd because you identify as the gender associated with the sex that you were designated at birth, and because your sexual orientation causes you to be attracted to people of the opposite sex. When you are with your friends, you are continually excluded from conversations about their queer relationships. In media such as books, television, and movies, an extremely high percentage of the people and relationships portrayed are queer, with only a few side characters rarely being identified as straight. Even then, they exist only as the brunt of jokes: they say stereotypically "straight" things, everyone has a good laugh, and then they move on with the real point of the show. You and other straight people feel marginalized because of this, to say the least, and you seek to draw attention to the idea of being straight and try to make it normal in society through social activism. From queers, you are met with quiet, mostly uncaring approval at best and outright hatred and disgust at worst. 

Now, imagine, that after years and years of trying to rectify this situation and being constantly marginalized, excluded, and degraded, that a queer rapper named Macklemore writes a song about being straight. Millions of queer people across the world are touched, and acceptance grows. But you are still marginalized and isolated and alone, because you still have no voice, because Macklemore is speaking over you and you still cannot be heard. Meanwhile, he makes millions of dollars off of stealing your voice and saying what you have been trying to say for years. 

The queer community doesn't need Macklemore to speak for us. What we need is to be listened to. What we need is actual, legitimate representation in the media and in other places. One of these places, and the place that I feel is the most important, is in the Health classes that take place in public schools. In Health classes, at least in my experience (and I am growing up in the heart of Blue Liberal America, in a state that has legalized gay marriage) are significantly lacking in teaching about diverse sexualities. At least in the Health 1 class that I took at Brien McMahon High School in my freshman year, we discussed heterosexual sex extensively, but the only time that we discussed homosexual sex--or any variety of queerness--was to promote the acceptance of queer people into society. And that's wonderful. I think that the school should continue to have that as a part of its curriculum. However, that's not enough. The school may have rules and regulations to protect queer students from harassment, but that doesn't fix the core of the issue: that we are still seen as fundamentally 'other,' permanently excluded from the heteronormative society of America no matter how much legislation is passed in favor of us and in our protection. 

The first step to take to rectify this, at least in terms of public schools, is comprehensive sexual education. Students need to be educated about all the different kinds of sexualities (heterosexuality, homsexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, asexuality, etc) as well as all the different genders (cisgender, transgender, and variants upon being non-binary). This is an important step in getting the heterosexual population of Brien McMahon High School and other Norwalk public schools to accept queer people--and not just superficially. Queer students can no longer be marginalized. They can no longer sit silently in Health class, thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong with them regardless of all of the rules that the school has laid out in the name of their protection. They don't deserve a special day in Health to tell people not to discriminate against them, they need for the system to act as if they don't deserve to be discriminated against. The only way to do this is to include them in the curriculum, as if they were just like everybody else. Because they are. We are. Queer people are just like anybody else, and all that we want is for the rest of the world to listen to us and understand who we are. 

The Egyptian Revolutions - Seminar Preparation

Within the past three years, Egypt has undergone two revolutions. Although one of them is sometimes considered to be a coup d'etat because the government was technically ousted by the military, the people of Egypt and most other people consider it to be a revolution of the people because the military was implementing the people's desires. 

The first revolution began on Tuesday, January 25, 2011. People gathered on the streets of numerous cities in Egypt to protest because they were suffering from poverty and rampant unemployment and felt that this was happening to them because of the perceived corruption of the autocratic leader, President Hosni Murabak. Murabak made several attempts to quell the people's anger without relinquishing his power, including promising government reforms, saying that he would finish his term but not run for re-election, and stating that he would give his power to his vice-President before the end of his term before he finally resigned as president and left Cairo on February 11, 2011. His government took some actions during this time that angered many Egyptian people and the West, including shutting down the Internet in Egypt between January 27 and February 2 and detaining foreign journalists in the country.

The second revolution began in protest of Mohammad Morsi, the first officially elected president after the 2011 revolution, for several reasons. One of them was that women, minorities (including religious minorities like Christians), and intellectuals felt oppressed by the new constitution, which allowed for freedom of speech and expression so long as they conformed to Sharia (a term meaning "legislation" but which in context means Islamic law),  and another was the fact that Morsi had unilaterally granted himself more power. These protests began in December and gained traction and frequency between February and March. On July 3, the military removed Morsi from office after issuing an ultimatum. 

The biggest challenge that Egypt currently faces is the growing animosity between Islamists and the military. Many Islamists are angry at the military because they supported Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, and because when the military took over they replaced the parliament at the time (which was almost completely composed of Islamists) with non-Islamists. This issue has been demonstrating itself in the form of protests and attacks on government officials. 

The United States should be involved only as much as it can be without taking control of the situation. During the protests in 2013, many protestors who wanted to oust Morsi's regime felt angry that the United States was not becoming more involved in opposing the Muslim Brotherhood. However, if the United State becomes too involved, then the situation will become all about creating a democracy in the image of the American government and it will no longer be about the Egyptian people creating the democratic government that they want. 

Western media, at least in the resources that I used for research, makes the assumption that all Egyptian people are united in their two ways of thinking in both cases, thus completely oversimplifying the issue. For both revolutions, the media portrayed all of the people as being either completely supportive of the insurgence or in support of either Murabak or Morsi/The Muslim Brotherhood, respectively. They did not take into consideration or write about any other viewpoints, and in this way I think that the full scope of the issue was under-represented in Western (especially American) media. 

Where I'm From

Wilton, Connecticut

Where I’m from, loose Catholicism is in.

There are churches, of course,

and if you ask around

most will probably say they’re Roman Catholics

of course

but no one really goes to them.

Besides, why go to church

when you’ve got a lacrosse game to make?

Where I’m from, nearly everyone is the same.

You’ve got to wade through crowds of people

who dress, walk, talk, and act the same way

and who all choose to wear the same masks

before you can find one person

who dares to be different.

Or--here’s the scary part--even wants to be.

Where I’m from, it’s beautiful.

Quiet, serene trees

only making noise when they rustle

soothingly in the wind

surround nearly every home

even the apartment buildings.

Daffodils and cherry blossoms bloom

in the spring

and in the fall, nearly everywhere you look

is golden or orange or red.

The roads are peaceful,

and few motorcyclists

disturb the quiet of the residential streets

(and might face a lawsuit if they dared to).

Where I’m from, nearly everyone’s father

has a big, important job in New York City.

All the people’s egos are inflated

with a sense of false self-importance

because of our supposed closeness

to one of the most famous cities in the world.

Where I’m from, people are quietly ignorant.

They speak of their Blue-Ribbon schools

and their expensive curriculums

with a sense of superiority

that doesn’t even stop to consider those

who aren’t so fortunate as to attend such programs.

They say things like, “Stops and frisks shouldn’t be a problem

if you have nothing to hide.”

Parents are frequently heard complaining about Affirmative Action

because their kids would have much less difficulty getting into college

without all of those annoying laws

that promote “equality of education for all.”

What an idiotic concept--right?

They speak of drug and alcohol abuse

as if it’s a far-away issue, an inner-city issue,

something that their own children would never

even come close to.

Everyone looks the other way

when the entire rowing team is caught with marijuana in their systems

and a heroin needle is found in the high school

and they conveniently forget that it’s the suburban towns

like us

“the safest place to raise your kids”

not the bigger cities

that have the highest rates of alcohol-related adolescent deaths.

Where I’m from, I’m Charlotte,

who used to be just like us, but then turned a little

how I shall say it

queer?

And not that there’s anything wrong with that

I’m just saying, that’s all.  

Really.

Where I’m from, the birds sing at 5 a.m.

and the sunlight filters through the leaves

creating a soft array of colors

that steal your breath away

and bring you to the verge of tears

What does it mean to both love

and hate?