Humanities

I am a good citizen because I work hard to pay my bills; I strive to be honest in all my dealings with every individual. I give to the community by teaching piano lessons. I am able to accompany my church choir for performances and I also help teach the youth for Sunday school. I give of my time freely to help individuals whenever I can. I take care of my family and provide meals and monetary means. I believe I am honest with myself and do the things I know to be right, i.e. not lying, stealing littering, and graffiti.

A good citizen in my terms after reading these two documents, are someone that tries to solve a problem even if they aren’t part of the problem. Also someone that is honest. Not just with members of the community, but with themselves. A good citizen takes care of property by not littering, or using graffiti. They avoid doing anything that would harm the community. They pay their bills, and don’t lie.

Thoreau’s definition of a good citizen is basically to act on good conscious. And if you can’t do something in good conscious, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Thoreau was put in jail for not paying a fine. He didn’t believe in the war that was being fought and if he paid this fine, that meant he would be supporting the war. Martin Luther King’s definition of a good citizen would be the idea of “if it applies to me, It should apply to everyone.” He was referring to the white and black racism saying that if someone has an advantage whether it be in wages, a drinking fountain, or side of the bus that someone sits on, and it’s because of their color or any other reason, there is something intrinsically wrong. He basically said some of the same idea as Thoreau in my opinion. Each has the belief that if something feels right or wrong, there is a moral obligation to do what your conscious says to do.

My personal philosophies regarding my own rights are a lot of what Martin Luther King Jr. said. If it’s not ok for me, then it shouldn’t be ok for someone else. What comes to my mind first is our own government. I pay for my health care, I believe Congress should also. I pay for my social security; I believe that Congress should pay for that as well. I pay for my own cost of living expenses; I believe Congress should also pay for that. And since many people in our country haven’t received a raise in many years, I believe that Congress shouldn’t receive raises either. It seems to me that the government is becoming less and less “for the people.”

The responsibilities of being free rest on every individual of our nation. In the way we act with each other. The way we take care of our property. The way we act should reflect that everything universally applies to everyone.

I like how Thoreau says that governments should build roads. Let Mexico be Mexico. We don’t need to go to war. Interestingly enough, around this same time Texas became the Republic of Texas. (I’m from Texas, so that was cool for me to learn.)

A community is made up of many individuals. I believe that everyone has the right to freedom of speech, as long as this freedom doesn’t infringe on another persons right of expression. Kay Anderson had a very good point. I think of him coming from Thoreau’s perspective because he didn’t believe in Michael Moore and what values he stood for. Therefore he didn’t want to have to pay the taxes that were used by the school to support Michael Moore being able to speak and using $40k to do so. But Mr. Anderson was asking for Michael Moore to not be at UVU and because of that he was taking someone else’s freedom of expression away. There were other individuals that believed in Michael Moore’s theories that wanted him to come. Mr. Anderson had the right to not show up to the event that of Michael Moore. I understand that he was upset because this would effect his children and possibly cause them harm…but I believe that children need to learn how to discuss things that are possibly not what they believe, and to have serious background as to why they don’t believe it. I found it interesting that many of the students at UVU had already made up their mind about Michael Moore without ever listening to one of his documentaries. They had perhaps seen only a little portion and then went a long with their friends’ ideas.

Before I began to take this class I was pretty set in my ways and ideas about life, freedom, responsibility. My personal philosophy on the idea of freedom was merely an idea. I didn’t think that anyone could really be “free.”  Throughout the semester I learned a large portion of this class through my journals that I had to complete and do each week. Each one of the questions brought me to go through material and understand it on a personal level. I was then able to internalize many of the authors’ points of view and to establish whether I believed their theory or if I had one of my own. There have been many different journals that I really enjoyed learning about. One was the journal entry that talked about what it means to be a good citizen. I had to think about that a lot and ask myself questions after questions to come up with my own definition. I believe a good citizen is someone that tries to solve a problem even if they aren’t part of the problem.

Now that I am at the end of my semester in Humanities I feel that I have learned a lot. I have been enlightened more than anything else from this course. I feel that I was able to understand a lot of what Thoreau had to say in his argument of what defines a good citizen? Martin L King basically said that “if it applies to me, it applies to everyone.” That theory made me look around at my own country and see if I could apply that to the United States. After evaluating Martin L King’s idea to my own country I could better understand what he meant. I completely agreed with him.

In the future when I am faced with a moral decision I will be able to make a better choice given the tools I have been given to evaluate the situation. I have learned to think in a more deep and critical manner. I was able to spend many nights up talking with my dad and become a better thinker and learn to think critically.

I have “Thoreau”-ly enjoyed this class.