Is the internet taking over our lives?

You are getting ready for your day and you are thinking of all the things you have to do. Do you really even have to step out your front door to do any of them? Today, you can do just about everything online. You can buy groceries online, order gifts for others, and even have them delivered to them with a personal note from you. You can do your banking online. You can buy music online and put it on your iPod. Even radio stations have live stream on the internet so you do not even need to be in your car to listen to it or have a radio. You can even chat with your friends online. Could the internet really put department stores out of business? Are any walk in stores still needed?

Now with internet assessable cell phones, everyone can always be connected. Even hotels and food/drink places such as Starbucks and Panara Bread are wired with Wi-Fi; you cannot even eat or drink without being connected. What happened to vacations? With all these places being connected to the internet what is going to make you actually, stay away from work? Do we always have to be connected or have the option of being connected?

When students go to do research for a school paper they do not need to go to the library. All the information they need is right at their fingertips. Books are now online and all you need is a subscription to view them. There are databases that they can use either through the public library or through the school. There are even ways to talk to a librarian through email or instant messaging. Do we still need libraries?Will there come a time when no one ever has to go outside his or her house? How could this affect human kind?

Music Education - Privilege or Essential?

Music Education has been the "cutback" scapegoat of school systems all over the country. The singer and songwriter, Jewel, once said that “Some people think music education is a privilege, but I think it’s essential to being human.”

Is music education a privilege? Or is it essential? Many would argue that music is not as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. While this may be true, is music not just as important?

Aldous Huxley once said "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music". Music is found everywhere, helping everyone, convey their inner emotions. Music expresses what we as humans can not express with words and is arguably the most important form of expression because of this very reason. If school systems deny our future children of this form expression, how will they learn how to express the inexpressible?

Gregory Anrig – President, Educational Testing Service stated: “The things I learned from my experience in music in school are discipline, perseverance, dependability, composure, courage and pride in results. . . Not a bad preparation for the workforce!”

If music education does all of this - how can school systems truly believe that football stadiums are more important? Do people really believe this or is it a ploy to fund a consumer's desire?
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Will the humanities save us? Will anything?

If it's true that in a democracy we get the government we deserve, then is the Bush administration the price we finally must pay for decades of voter apathy? Following World War II Truman established what Gore Vidal has called the "national security state". This mentality is why Eisenhower said in his farewell address to the nation, "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Eisenhower's advice was not heeded. American foreign policy has been described (again by Gore Vidal) as "perpetual war for perpetual peace." This is not a sustainable state of affairs. What are we losing by fighting this war on terror? What intangibles are already gone, what have we left to lose? The human cost has been great, though far greater for the Iraqis and Afghans than for us. What happens if the rest of the world stops seeing America as "the shining city upon a hill"? What happens if the nations and peoples of the world no longer see us as just, fair, and tolerant?

I encourage you to read this article by Christopher Hitchens from the August 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. To write the article Hitchens was waterboarded, twice. He came away shaken. Watch the video. Like most of you I've heard water-boarding talked about in the media, but I had no real idea what it was. It's hard to comprehend when it is just explained in print. You need to see it. I was astonished by how quick it was. Even the most hardened terrorist might only last 2 minutes. "Believe me, it's torture," Hitchens says. What are the consequences of our actions? What are the costs? If there were no terrorists in Iraq before we got there, they are there now. We created them.

The Uses of the Humanities

Stanley Fish, an academic humanist, makes a bold claim about the utility of the humanities. He argues that their main purpose is to provide individual pleasure. They don’t reform, they don’t humanize, and they don’t help us understand the meaning of life, Fish asserts, because if they did, your English, philosophy, music, and history professors would be among the best people on earth (and you already know that they aren’t!).

Is Fish right? Scholars of history make war, writers of novels commit crimes, and gifted creative artists lose their lives to drugs and alcohol. And yet, it was a pamphlet that helped launch the American Revolution, it was music that helped empower a generation to oppose the Vietnam War, and a painting like Picasso’s Guernica is considered a national treasure in Spain.

What do you think? Can training in the humanistic disciplines do anything more than give us individual pleasure?