That's right, I AM a cocky rich kid

It took me a while to recognize the distinct class differences around me. I went through elementary school in one location and hung around mostly people from a lower class than I, then I moved away and everyone seemed to be in that class, so I guess I didn't recognize it. It wasn't until college that I found out I really don't fall into the middle or lower class, that I'm somewhere in the upper class based on my family, my opportunities, and my own preference.

In most of my Sociology classes the professors like to group all of their students in "the middle class" and claim that it is evident by the fact that we are at USU in sociology classes. If we were "upper class" we'd go to harvard or yale or some other school. I highly beg to differ though. Schooling is only a minor part of class. It is more based on wealth and social status.

I never really realized how different I was from everyone around me until I got involved our family's property holdings. We own a modestly sized ranch, a camp site near hardware park, an expensive home (which right now we are unable to sell because it is the highest priced in the market in our area, and for good reason too!) We manage my late grandmother's estate which right now includes a near the Jordan temple and a few acres of land around the corner from our ranch.
We OWN all of these things. We're debt free. And we also have a substantial chunk of money just sitting in the bank looking for a place to be invested at.
I am able to have nice clothes, a nice car, and nice furnishings. I suppose though that the reason why I was so confused is because my parents taught me how to work like the working class and act like the working class. I had to go to college and learn about how the upper class acts in order to start acting more like an upper class man. All through life I think it caused me a lot of problems because people saw me as this Cocky kid who knew everything and yet acted no different than they did. Little did I know that because I was caught in a financially stable world and acted beneath it, it was creating excess friction between myself and that class of people. They could sense it but not recognize what it was.

My grandfather was a wealthy potato farmer in Idaho--sounds like lower middle class doesn't it? --well he also owns a winter home in St. George and a cabin and dock at Island Park along with his massive farm. He knows, or at least appears to know, many wealthy individuals and actually has a few business deals with private investors in which they loan the money to construction companies to build numerous homes at a time to be sold. I've looked to him for a little bit of how I should act, but I don't think he fully has it down either.
My aunt owns GTI, genetic testing institute in Wisconsin. She started it as a paternal testing company in her basement making kits that can be used to determine the father of a baby. It's grown quite a bit and is worth a lot of money right now. She lives the life of a wealthy person.

So as you can see, it runs in my family. And Family is the greatest determinant to class. The second greatest determinant is what you personal think. And I am starting to believe more and more that I am in the upper class. --It sound snobbish to say that, but I don't mean it that way, all that that means is that I am under different obligations to hold a specific job in order to maintain my lifestyle. I have also been blessed with a few investment tricks that only those already in the upper class share with others. There are fewer secrets when it's in your family.

So with that said, I'm no longer afraid to be in this class. I may be in the lower end of the upper class, but I'm at least comfortable being up here. When I thought I was in the middle class, I really did not fit in and I couldn't figure it out. I learned many tricks to fitting in with them and I'm going to carry those advantages with me--I essentially took the life course of being in all classes and I think that's a really beneficial skill. I owe all of my diplomatic abilities to that, and I also owe all of my diplomatic faults to that (because sometimes I just get frustrated and decide to do exactly the opposite of what I should do and it really ticks people off).

Life is interesting, I think. There is so much for me to learn and understand about how my own life has shaped and I feel as I am definitely on a pathway that leads somewhere spectacular, I just have to keep moving my feet and walk the distance.

Choices and chances

One thing I have really been working on over the past few years has been making decisions and choices. If I were to sum up the common theme of my learning experiences for about 5 years (this is an estimate, I've always dealt with this, but recent years it seems to come back to this distinct theme) I would have to say that the theme has been "eventually I have to make a decision". Very rarely, if ever, have I HAD to wait for anything. Even though it would seem like I've been stuck in a situation where I really have no control and just need to wait for things to pan out for me, in reality, I chose to wait, or to postpone, or stall. And almost every time that I've stalled on my decisions, I was really wasting my time. The sooner I become settled on an idea, the quicker I can get on the right track that I need to be on.
If I make a wrong decision, it happens very quickly that I notice it was wrong and I usually quickly recover. On the other hand, if I stall or wait to make a decision before I know sufficient details, I'm only wasting my own time because there is no guarantee that things will work out as I expect in the end until I make a decision.

It kinda sounds like blindly charging into situations, and in a sense it is charging into situations, but I've found that it is always better to have a decision and work for it, or to have an opinion of a matter or to take a side, and then to also always be willing to change sides or be persuaded and make new decisions than it is to stall. Case in point, my college education: I could have stalled making a decision to go to school until after I returned from a mission, but if I did, I probably would never have gone to school. Now, even though i might regret not going to a different school, I can't complain too much because I AM learning and it's better than just wishing and hoping that I would find the time to go to school and that I could pick the perfect school for me.

Life really doesn't work for that. You have to make decisions, accept the consequences and hope that you always have more decisions you can make to make it better. If I really felt like school was a complete waste of time, I wouldn't be here still, and even though I might teeter between the two and think that maybe I would be better without school, I'm sticking with my original decision: that it's better to go to school, and at this point to go to this school, than it is for me to go to another school or to drop out completely. I've weighed my options and I'm sticking with my original decision. If circumstances change I might think twice about my decision, but it will take substantial persuasion to convince me otherwise.

Life is a Learning Experience

For starters, I completely forgot whether or not I wrote a post yesterday or not and I spaced it to the point where I didn't care.

Would you believe I'm running out of uniquely interesting things to say?--It's not really that, it's that I'm not remembering them. I must be going through a standstill phase where I still need to learn some things before I have something so really share.
I'll get something really good soon.

Hobos

Earlier this morning I worked on removing a few parts from an old camp trailer. It seemed like a hobo thing to do. The trailer is too old and worn out to use it for anything, so scrapping it is about the only phase left in its life. I've gutted another trailer before, but this one is a little different due to a particular phase in this camper's lifetime.
When it was younger, barely road worthy, my brother and his friend purchased it to deck it out and turn it into some form of space arcade game. They invested quite a bit of money into it only to abandon it before finishing the job. It has been resting at our family farm for several years; since 2003 I believe, when it received it's last inspection.
So when I say that I was removing parts from this trailer, more than anything I was taking the copper wiring and lighting, which I will be using for another project.

All the while that I was taking these things from the trailer, the thought came to me that this was precisely what hobos do. They can probably get quite a lot of good stuff just from collecting it and in all honesty if they sold it they could probably make a lot of money and survive. I expect I took $300 worth of items in an hour's time(if I bought it from the store--to sell it they would get much less). That's not a lot but it could probably feed them for a while.

Human resourcefulness is quite a profitable business. So is recycling. The only problem is that you need to find someone who will buy recycled items, and usually the people who would by them are resourceful individuals themselves who can usually find fro free what they would buy for cheap..

I just work up from a nap.

Global Weirding

One of my classes went into depth about global warming and---wait for it--wait for it--.....

...

I still don't believe that there is any issue. I mean, sure, we might be heating up and our earth is shifting it's access due to water shifts, and the oceans are rising and lowering in certain places, and part of our stratosphere may have disappeared; but, what does that say?

We've gone up globally 1 degree in temperature. --globally. That means in some places (particularly near cities) it's warmer, and in other places it's getting colder. --Colder.
Really all that this says to me is that we are going to experience more "global weirding" which is basically a fun term meaning that we'll have more extreme wind, rain, snow, and other weather conditions. It's about like boiling a pot of water. slowly the bubbles raise to the surface here and there, but until we get to 212 degrees and everything boils we're not going to be in any danger. (I'm too lazy to cross reference right now, but if I remember correctly the earth's mean temperature is 56degrees--not very hot is it?)

Even still, this DOES affect cities because that's where the heat is really at (some people claim it's due to the amount of black assfault that absorbs heat waves from the sun, but it's more than just that). So our cities are the places that are really heating up. True. Cities are built on modern technology. True. Will modern technology find a way to cool down cities if they get too hot? true.--I shouldn't state that without evidence should I?
Okay, case in point: India and the world cup: Man Made Stadium Cloud Cover

Enjoy.

I hope this article isn't too spuratic and sloppily written. It's late and I'm not all that focused on making this logically and mechanically sound.

English Majors

I am an English Major at USU. It's quite an interesting experience really. I like learning about literature because I feel like it is essentially the study of humanity. I learn about what people are like all over the world, I learn about human nature, and not only that but I learn about what people like and find interesting to read, watch, and study.
To add to it, i get to learn how to write effectively and communicate my ideas. But last of all, my degree sets me up with the correct principles and understanding to continue learning for the rest of my life. I can read things, interpret them correctly, make analytical and critical opinions and assumptions from them, and learn from it.

But I'm noticing that my fellow peers in this major are some of the most strange people out there. I use the word strange but it might be more appropriate to say eccentric or dillusional. For being students of the ways of humans, they sure don't fit into society. Are these the future writers of america? I often wonder this while i sit in class and listen to the comments of people who are overly feminist or environmental, and I wonder if perhaps the truth about life is that the vast majority of what people read and believe is written by someone who is blinded by misunderstanding.
I'm not one to believe that people change very quickly. I could write a post on that eventually and possibly persuade you to believe it with me, but I simply see that the way people are now, or the beliefs that they have at least, are going to stick with them for quite a long time. So these students who say outrageous things, look too deep into life, and are above all "weird" are going to be the ones who write the books your children read and believe and grow up to perpetuate the misconceptions onto future generations.

Knowledge is power

[[I'm purposely being vague, but I suppose if you agree with these points then, mleh]]

Point number one:
Knowledge is power
Point Number two:
Power isn't good or bad
Point 3:
But people with power are tempted more than those who don't
Point 4:
People judge more than they have right to
Point 5:
You can't see life through their life unless you live it
Point 6:
People don't like what they don't understand
Point 7:
Having someone who accepts you can prevent you from doing the worst deeds
Point 8:
People tend to judge those they don't understand and with no one to help them, no one who understands them, their downfall is accelerated.
Point 9:
People use those people mentioned in #8 as scapegoats because it makes them feel better about their lives.
Point 10:
Powerful people are judged and blamed for most of the world's problems
Point 11:
the more you say it the more it happens
Point 12:
The more you blame them and judge them, the more it becomes true
Point 13:
Those people fall even further when history records it


So knowledge isn't bad, but if you can't control it it had been better you didn't know it.
Is there a way to erase knowledge and start back at the beginning? Start back when you didn't have to know all the truth, when it was easier to be blinded lead astray and aloof. Back when it didn't matter what people thought of you because you didn't know what they meant?

How does one redeem their self when they fall? --I'm not sure that it's possible.
What if they do it in secret? Should they expose it to the world for ridicule or move on with life and forget that they slipped up?

One thing I do know: If it happens in secret, keep it that way, fix it yourself and don't give anyone the opportunity to haunt you for it. Blackmail must be worse than any other deed, I just need to prove that now.