The Garden

I’ll level with you: I’m a “conspiracy theorist.” Although I think the label “not a sucker” is more accurate (not least because most others I find in the conspiracy theorist camp are still suckers), I’m not going to belabor the point. After all, what’s in a name right? Anyway, having said that, it should come as no surprise that I think the spectacle of national elections is nothing but a sophisticated charade. More to the point, I don’t think that casting ballots ultimately counts for anything.

There are two ways I could argue this point. One is to say that the voting system is broken (or corrupted) and that whatever the final tally happens to be, it does not necessarily match the popular opinion; the second is to say that, regardless of whether or not the ballot system is accurate, the quality of the “choices” listed on the ballot are not different enough from each other to count as real choices.

Regarding the former, I think it is worth appreciating how little voters actually know about how their votes are counted. For whatever reason, the majority of voters simply assume that their ballots go wherever it is they’re supposed to go and get counted exactly as they should be counted. It’s a wonderful way to live life—you know, pretending that everything works exactly as advertised—but the reality of the matter is that there is just as much reason to suspect that the system is flawed as there is to suspect that the system is flaw-less. To illustrate this point, let me draw an analogy with money.

On Sep. 10, 2001, the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld publicly stated before the Defense Department the following: “According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” Yeah, you read that right—2.3 TRILLION dollars…missing. Oops. Whether you think that was a result of simple accounting errors, gross negligence or outright corruption, it is nevertheless suggestive of how carefully our government can handle the counting and tracking of things.

If you don’t like that analogy, fine—maybe 2.3 trillion dollars isn’t comparable in value to our precious votes—but what if I told you that your own Supreme Court decided that your votes don’t need to be counted? If you bear with me, we can go back to the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. After issues of improperly tallied votes in Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that an accurate recount of the votes in question was unnecessary, and subsequently granted the election to Bush. Maybe I don’t understand because I’m not on the Supreme Court (nor am I a lawyer for that matter), but isn’t it imperative that for an election to be legitimate that all votes (especially deciding votes) be counted and counted accurately? If all votes are not counted, and your Supreme Court says they don’t need to be counted, then isn’t your voting system a little flawed? Or are things like, way different now that it’s 2008?

The second argument I have against voting is, in my opinion, the more powerful of the two, mostly because it holds irrespective of whether votes are accurately counted. This argument claims that the quality and diversity of viable presidential candidates is consistently too low to render our elections legitimate. Abstractly, to “vote” implies that one have “choices;” but more pointedly, for a vote to have “value,” the options between which the voter chooses must be diverse enough to faithfully represent all real options. In other words, the more choices a voter has to choose from, the more valuable their vote becomes. Think of it like apples. If I grab two apples from a barrel of rotten apples and ask you which one you would rather eat, regardless of which apple you ultimately choose, I’ve nevertheless discovered nothing about your taste in apples; nor have you gained anything useful in terms of lunch. Likewise, if a presidential election involves a mere two candidates, both sponsored from one of two gigantic, dogmatic, and wealthy political parties, is a choice amongst them really saying all that much? I am aware that there are third party candidates floating around (who, by the way, are consistently excluded from major televised presidential “debates”), but instead of assuming that they sufficiently fill-in the gaps left by the two major parties, why not look at all the options? Choosing not to vote is always one of those options.

What does it mean to “choose” not to vote? Despite popular belief, choosing not to vote does not mean that one is no longer politically active. On the contrary, intentional non-voters are arguably the most politically active citizens. I say this primarily because they recognize that the severity to which our country has gone astray cannot be dealt with on the level of voting alone. To put it bluntly, voting is a ridiculously simple, one-dimensional activity that literally anyone (informed or not) can do. It requires nothing in terms of intelligence, awareness or involvement. In my opinion, those that feel voting is enough to declare that they’ve “done their part” to better this country are both lazy and shortsighted—not only is voting easy, it has no prescriptive power (i.e. just because a politician says he’ll do X if you vote for him, that doesn’t mean your vote can make him do X once he’s in office).

More than anything, this country needs intelligent discourse over substantive issues—something that the empty cheerleading and sloganeering of today’s campaigns cannot possibly provide. Substantive discourse requires far more than simple “lesser of evils” thinking—it requires careful, attentive and unrestricted thought. By choosing not to vote, one not only chooses not to limit the scope of their political involvement to mere voting, but they also choose not to compromise their unique beliefs and ideas in order to fit in to one of two mainstream parties. By removing the impetus to conform to one party or another, an intentional non-voter maintains his or her integrity and ability to think clearly and openly, thus preserving their capacity to participate in substantive discourse.

Albert Einstein is supposed to have said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results; voting sure has been tried over and over again, why think this upcoming election will be any different?

After suffering yet another painful school shooting last week Thursday at Northern Illinois University, our country has been forced to attempt to make sense out of the event and decide how to react to it.  While school shootings are incredibly tragic events and unavoidably elicit emotions of heartache and sorrow from people all over the world, it is less obvious how events like the NIU and Virginia Tech school shootings should affect our attitudes about the way we subsequently approach our daily lives.  One specific reaction that is likely to follow from the NIU shooting that I would like to address is the attitude of fear.

The attitude of fear is a common reaction to traumatic events, and naturally so.  Indiscriminate acts of violence like the shooting at NIU carry an especially high potential for a fear response because of the worry that it could happen again anywhere and at anytime.  Given that we are members of a university, the fear can reach even higher levels since our daily setting mirrors that of NIU and Virginia Tech’s.  This fear, while natural, must nevertheless be handled carefully.

The way I see it, fear is a very useful short-term emotion.  In the event that a dangerous situation arises, the fear that kicks in can enhance a person’s ability to deal with imposing threats.  However, if fear becomes a long-term emotion, one’s ability to ration and think critically is curtailed by the intensity of the fear emotion.  It is this long-term fear response that we must be cautious about.

The unpredictability of a school shooting very easily leads one to the conclusion that more security measures are necessary to prevent future shootings from taking place.  Possible examples of this include the demand for an increased police or security presence, harsher consequences for criminal behavior, or more pervasive surveillance systems that reveal more of a person’s private life to authorities.  Alternatively, if one does not have confidence that any preventative measure would be effective, they may decide to heighten their own suspicions around unfamiliar faces or even attempt to withdraw from society altogether.

Even though all of these reactions are more or less understandable given the tragic nature of a school shooting, there is another reaction that I feel is even more important than the fear-based reactions: compassion.

In the face of severe violence, it is difficult to find feelings of compassion for others besides the victims of the violence, your own family and your own friends, because suspicions are likely to run high.  When we are afraid of what happened, or of what might happen, we are more likely to treat each other with suspicion.  This suspicion, in my opinion may, in turn, diminish the amount of compassion we feel for one another.  This, if accurate, is a counterproductive attitude to hold toward the strangers around us.  I say this because humans are inherently social creatures, and, for that feature of humanity to be realized, we need to be optimistic about our ability to trust one another.  If we decide to react with an increased feeling of compassion toward each other instead of fear and suspicion, we may, at least in the long-term, develop a stronger, safer community in which extreme violence is less-common.

Now, I realize that compassion may not seem like much of a solution to the problem of indiscriminate school shootings—in many ways, in fact, it isn’t—but, with all things considered, the more immediate and overt fear-based varieties of reactions do not seem all that promising either.  Unfortunately, the nature of school shootings is an incredibly complex psychological problem to which there is no simple, straightforward solution.  What I propose is that we embrace the complexity of these events and attempt to think about them as calmly and clearly as we can.  To do this, we must find an antidote to the fear we often carry with us because the fear can distort our thinking.  The more attention we devote to the positive aspects we find daily in one another, the more likely we will preserve the qualities of trust and civility that make our communities worth living in.

Yeah, so Valentine’s Day is this week. Super. I think this is the perfect time to tell you why this supposed “holiday” is nothing but a bunch of crap.

First of all, I’m a male. That means that, statistically, Valentine’s Day is designed to frustrate the hell out of me and make my life (a normally smooth sailing enterprise) ten times harder. According to history.com, about one billion Valentine cards are exchanged per year and women purchase about 85 percent of all Valentine’s gifts. If you do the math, you’ll find that only 15 percent of Valentines sales are due to men. 15 percent. What does that tell you about male opinions of Valentine’s Day? It tells you that the majority of males out there despise this pinkish, flowery fiasco—for good reason too if you ask me.

The mysterious origin of this stupid holiday notwithstanding, there are more than enough reasons to boycott this banal attempt at “love” on February 14 by looking at its incarnation today.

Today, Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark Holiday if ever there was one. The retail business plans for this “holiday” months in advance by preparing all their “special,” mass-produced, and heavily advertised Valentine’s Day “goodies” for all those love-birds out there to gobble up. How romantic. I know how great I would feel if a significant other of mine took time out of her busy schedule to stop in at Walgreen’s, pick up a pretty little $2.95 Valentine’s Day card—written by some faceless Hallmark employee—sign her name on it, attach a heart shaped box of novelty chocolates—manufactured by some guy named Russell Stover—and then give me the package as if it were the perfect (not to mention unique!) symbol of her love. Somehow, I fail to find enthusiasm for this most “thoughtful” of gestures.

Maybe I’m more of a romantic than I thought, but it seems to me that real love is the sort of thing that happens regardless of some arbitrarily chosen and impersonal date of annual romantic celebration. I’m going to be bold here and say that those who take Valentine’s Day most seriously are probably the ones that are the least in love. Anyone who really is in a healthy, loving relationship with another would have no need to make a big fuss over an artificial holiday like Valentine’s Day. Instead of doing something to “show they care” on the day everyone else is “showing they care,” partners truly in love would be caring for each other virtually every day of the year; and, if they do happen to do something “special” on a particular day, at least that day would be uniquely meaningful to them personally and no one else. This idea of Valentine’s Day—the letting “the day define the love” rather than having “the love define the day”—leads to my next complaint.

Valentine’s Day creates way too much unnecessary anxiety for those not in the relationship “club” when February 14 rolls around. The public commotion stirred up around Valentine’s Day leaves those leading the single’s life (or those in malfunctioning relationships for that matter) feeling left out of something. Some have started referring to February 14 as “Singles Awareness Day” to illustrate the way Valentine’s Day creates a sort of clique that excludes outsiders from all the fun. As a result of this, many people will seek out others to couple up with just to get through the 14th without being alone—to “fit in” with the rest of the clique. What a pile of crap.

The term “materialism” and the term “physicalism” are closely related, but I would like to take a moment to define each as I use them.

Materialism refers to a belief about the world which holds that everything that exists, or everything that is real, is fundamentally material and governed by the laws of physical reality. It is a metaphysical position that attempts to define the scope of reality. A materialist, then, uses his view to assert that non-materialist propositions (such as the existence of spirits for example) do not exist and are therefore not part of reality.

Physicalism, in contrast, does not attempt to claim that non-physical propositions are false; instead, physicalism simply claims that if non-physical propositions are true, we cannot know them to be true. The physicalist therefore makes the following claim: For every physical event in the world, there is, in principle, a physical cause or set of causes that sufficiently accounts for the physical event in question. Nowhere, according to the physicalist, is it necessary to invoke non-physical entities or events to account for observable physical events; however, unlike the materialist, the physicalist would not assert that non-physical propositions must be false–they very well might exist, but they simply have no impact on physical reality. Physicalism is, therefore, primarily an epistemic position that deals with how we know rather than what we know; even though it has profound implications for the nature of reality.

In short, materialism makes a stronger claim about the world than physicalism does. The materialist denies the possible existence of non-physical reality whereas the physicalist simply claims that there is no need to assert the existence of non-physical realities–physical explanations are all we need to explain the world we observe.

These concepts are important to understand because they seek to define the scope of our reality. If one were to embrace materialism because the view seems intuitive after a cursory examination, then he or she runs the risk of cutting off a potential aspect of their reality that, ultimately, might be worth exploring. If, in fact, we find that there is good reason to suspect the existence of non-physical realities, it will become cumbersome to attempt to straddle both a desire to uphold one’s prior materialistic beliefs and the desire to explore the non-physical possibilities.

I will continue to expand on these concepts of physical reality with the aim of appreciating the challenges a non-materialst/non-physicalist might make. Check back soon for more…

In a testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, January 30th, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey refused to clearly state whether waterboarding—a form of torture—is legal or illegal. As the head of the United States Department of Justice, the Attorney General has the important responsibility of representing the moral and legal standing of the United States. It is with this in mind that I believe the chilling indifference Mr. Mukasey demonstrated over the issue of waterboarding is an aberration of the moral and legal integrity of the United States.

Insofar as the United States is a civilized nation it should be common practice for United States officials to adhere to the most elementary forms of morality and human decency. Contrary to what Mr. Mukasey’s testimony would have you believe, defining the scope of elementary moral practice is not ambiguous over matters concerning the torturing of human beings. The famous 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, very concisely outlined a conception of morality that essentially states the following: Moral behavior, with respect to humans, is such that a person always treat another human being as an end—never merely as a means to an end. Torture, since it is arguably the most flagrant instance of “mere means” treatment conceivable, clearly violates Kant’s simple moral maxim. On that basis alone the United States is obligated to refrain from considering the use of torture as a legal interrogation technique—that is, of course, assuming that the United States wishes to remain civilized.

Some may argue, however, that waterboarding is not clearly torture, and, therefore, that it may not compromise the moral standing of the United States if it were used. Now, I have no idea how one might make the case that waterboarding is not torture (it is a simulated execution after all), but even if such a claim were granted, Mukasey’s own testimony is sufficient to demonstrate how waterboarding violates Kant’s simple standard for evaluating moral behavior. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey stated that the legality of the waterboarding technique depended on “the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it balanced against the value…of what information you might get.” This is quintessential means-end reasoning. Essentially, Mukasey is arguing here that the ends (information) justify the means (waterboarding)—precisely the antithesis of Kant’s moral maxim.

Even though the immorality of torture is the most important argument against its use, there is yet another convincing reason to remove it from the list of possible interrogation techniques: It doesn’t work.

According the Army’s own Field Manual on intelligence interrogation, “The use of force, mental torture… or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

For those who feel that special circumstances, like hypothetical “ticking time-bomb” scenarios, prevent the option of torture from being taken off the table completely, the burden is on you to demonstrate why. It is sickening enough to consider that torture—the abuse of the most basic of human rights—could be used as the means toward the end of “information gathering;” but, it is utterly monstrous to consider that torture could be used toward no further end whatsoever. Since it is well understood that torture yields “unreliable results,” it seems as though the latter scenario is inevitable wherever torture is used. In that sense then, torture becomes its own end—a completely intolerable possibility. In light of this, any country that condones torture, either by actively using it or considering its possible use, is entertaining a position that is so grotesque it has no business calling itself “civilized.”

Disillusionment over the efficacy of national politics is not particularly uncommon in today’s political arena. Some forms of disillusionment are more extreme than others of course, but all forms have their limits concerning what is too ridiculous or too ludicrous to find within the mainstream political community.

Since I consider myself to be significantly disillusioned, I expect very little from presidential candidates during their campaigns (or after they’re elected for that matter). It is with this low expectation in mind that I allowed myself to watch a few segments of the January 24th Republican presidential debate. Despite my extremely low expectations, a comment from the candidate Mike Huckabee nevertheless managed to completely dumbfound me and drop my confidence in national politics practically into negative numbers.

Regarding the “missing” weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, Huckabee attempted to defend the legitimacy of the Iraq invasion by stating the following:

“Now, everybody can look back and say, ‘Oh, well, we didn’t find the weapons.’ It doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Just because you didn’t find every Easter egg didn’t [sic] mean that it wasn’t planted.”

Basically, Huckabee is arguing here that the government’s decision to invade Iraq was infallible from the day the decision was made. In other words, there was nothing that could have happened subsequent to that decision that would have rendered the WMD justification invalid (i.e. the finding or not finding of evidence of WMDs). Since there is no way to prove that something could never have existed, one can always speculate that it might have existed without appeal to evidence. For example, if I claim that the ghost of Elvis exists and that he appeared in my living room last night, how exactly would you go about proving me wrong? No matter what you might say, I could always reply: “Just because you didn’t see him or find any evidence of him doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist.” Clearly, just because you cannot prove that the ghost of Elvis never existed, it does not mean that he does exist, that he likely exists, or that I am justified in acting as if he exists.

It may not be obvious with innocuous propositions like the existence of Elvis’s ghost, but the flaws with this reasoning are incredibly lethal when brought into the real world and wielded against real people. With respect to criminal accusations, Huckabee’s logic suggests that there is no need for sound empirical evidence when accusing another party of criminal behavior. In other words, the accusing party carries no burden of proof. Without a burden of proof to ground criminal accusations, speculative and substance-less “what-ifs” become sufficient for convicting and penalizing the accused. Such a position leaves the accused, dreadfully, defenseless. Indeed, how exactly could the accused ever justify their innocence (assuming they are innocent) if there is no way to negate the charge empirically?

Under this logic, therefore, it was impossible for Iraq to not be guilty of holding WMDs and thus deserving of the ultimate consequence that was, and still is, U.S. Military invasion and occupation. This thinking is tragic when implemented in the real world where people and, in the case of Iraq, entire countries, are subjected to the sorts of consequences associated with the severest of criminal charges. The fact that this type of thinking is even entertained in a serious presidential debate leaves me questioning how, or even if, this political system of ours can function respectably. Of course, I could adopt Huckabee’s logic and conclude that even though I don’t see much legitimacy in our national governance, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Whether scrambling to find last-minute information for term papers or satisfying some obscure curiosity about pop-culture, most college students have already discovered the web-based encyclopedia Wikipedia as a potential source for information.

Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia, with its collection of over 2 million articles available for free over the Internet, has established a considerable presence within the electronic community. Most Google searches almost always match a Wikipedia link to the searched item, which is suggestive of how prevalent the site has become.

What separates Wikipedia from other encyclopedias is that it allows any registered user to create and edit content on the site. It is primarily this feature that, despite its novelty, has resulted in a number of criticisms from potential users concerning the reliability of the site’s information. Without the benefit of some kind of authoritative check, how can the information be trusted? This concern is a valid one of course because there is no mechanism that guarantees the truth of the site’s content. However, even though this criticism is a good one, it is not necessarily fatal to the site.

In my view, Wikipedia exposes a very interesting question about the relationship between information and its consumers. While it is true that consumers of information desire accuracy from their informational sources, to what extent should the consumer himself be responsible for choosing his information wisely?

The average person acquires his information from a myriad of sources throughout his life and it is questionable how many of those sources are actually reliable. For example, people often believe what their family members and friends tell them without going through the trouble of verifying what was said by some rigorous means. This consequently runs the risk of their being misinformed. In these cases, it is expected that the consumer of the information be shrewd enough to hold their beliefs tentatively. However, when authoritative sources are involved, like large news corporations or prestigious publishers for example, should the level of scrutiny on the part of the consumer be allowed to diminish? Are authoritative sources of information reliable enough to render consumer scrutiny unnecessary? I think the answer here is no.

Even though many individuals and organizations go to great lengths to verify the information they present, there is always a chance of error or bias present that can contaminate the quality of the information. Sometimes the contamination is slight and insignificant, but sometimes it can be quite extreme. As an illustration of the latter, consider the behavior of the Bush administration over the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This was an instance where an authoritative body presented misleading information to the public over a matter of incredible importance. Despite the number of prestigious organizations monitoring the actions of the executive branch, the dubious information nevertheless reached the public and generated support for the administration’s cause. It is in cases such as these that scrutiny over informational sources is most needed.

The greatest danger for consumers of information is the assumption that a source of information can be foolproof. It is in these instances that consumers let their guard down and risk investing too much faith in the prestige and authority of the source. Wikipedia does an interesting service for the consumers of information—it reminds them that the merits of a piece of factual information should always be taken with a grain of salt. This is not say that every source of information is as good as any other, but is to suggest is that the responsibility of information consumption belongs at least as much, if not more so, to the consumer himself as it does the source. The fact that Wikipedia candidly publicizes its potential inaccuracies warrants a high degree of skepticism over the site’s information, but it also reminds us that the same amount of skepticism (maybe more) is warranted for those authoritative sources that claim infallibility.

There’s no doubt about the idea that our physical senses are powerful. We are incredibly adept at interpreting our environment through the five dominant sense organs of our bodies. But, should we take these powerful senses to be the very definition of reality?

The philosophical positions of “materialism” or “physicalism” are strong indicators of the logical extent to which these sense organs can dominate our world-views. These philosophical positions hold that all of reality only includes that which is physically extended in time and space. In other words, what is real is only what we can sensationally detect.

On what basis, though, are we justified in wholly negating the existence of a realm of non-physical reality? Surely it cannot be simply on the assumption that our sense organs are wholly complete “reality-observing” mechanisms. The mere existence of other animals with sense organs far surpassing the range of human perception demonstrates how insufficient our sensory apparatuses are at accounting for the whole of our reality. Why, then, is it nevertheless taken to be self-evident by the majority of the intellectual mainstream that considerations of non-physical realities are unimportant?

The more we seek wholly material explanations for apparently material events, the more we limit ourselves to the entire range of possibilities. What is wanted is a comprehensive understanding about the whole of reality; we want to interact with our realities as fully as possibly. To do this, I suggest we explore more seriously the possibility that there are non-physical realities in existence with which we interact. This theme will be further explored and clarified on this site in the near future. Stay tuned…

Is personal privacy something the general person values today? If the social networking website ‘Facebook’ is any indication, privacy might not be all that important to many people.

According to Facebook’s own website statistics, the site has more than 57 million active users, with an average of 250,000 new registrations per day since January of 2007. With so many people using the site, I believe it is worthwhile to consider what impact Facebook might have on the perception of privacy.

As most college students already know, Facebook is a networking program that allows users to create and share personal profiles over the internet. These profiles can include information such as demographics, educational background, interests, sexual orientation, political views, religious beliefs and photographs. This information is voluntarily disclosed by the site’s users and can be viewed anonymously by other Facebook users.

In addition to the basic profile features, Facebook also offers communication applications such as “The Wall” that make it possible to send and receive messages from others that are publicly displayed on the user’s profile page. In this way, not only does Facebook publicize a person’s individual characteristics, it also publicizes that person’s interpersonal relationships for other users to view anonymously.

On the face of it, the use of these features may seem innocuous because, for the most part, only people who know each other will be viewing each others’ profiles. In fact, Facebook offers privacy controls that allow users to limit both their viewable content and who can see their complete profiles. However, since the primary purpose of the site is to share personal information, most users are likely to keep their privacy settings low—especially since the low settings are the default (requiring user’s to take the initiative to protect their privacy). My opinion is that, regardless of who actually ends up viewing a person’s profile, there are psychological consequences to the voluntary disclosure of personal information within a medium whose primary purpose is to share that information publicly.

The central psychological consequence of concern to me is that individuals might become accustomed to living their private lives publicly. Instead of valuing their individual thoughts, beliefs and feelings as part of their private personal property, these psychological commodities, when donated to the public sphere so readily, lose their element of personal significance to the individual. Even though the volunteering of personal information on Facebook is for entertainment reasons, the feeling of knowingly being monitored by anonymous viewers can still erode one’s appreciation for privacy in other areas.

For example, in recent years the concern over terrorism has given rise to many aggressive acts by intelligence and security agencies to probe increasingly deeper into the personal spheres of citizens’ lives. Without a strong appreciation for personal privacy, the general public is less likely to challenge such invasive attempts by authorities and will likely relinquish the details of their personal lives without concern.

Additionally, surveillance technologies such as phone tapping and video recording have made the issue of privacy even more pressing because the act of monitoring has become more ubiquitous and anonymous. Even when the average citizen is aware that they are likely being monitored, they do not necessarily know where, how or by whom. This sort of situation, at its most extreme, can be compared to the Big Brother apparatus described in the novel 1984 where personal privacy is completely annihilated.

As a person who happens to value personal privacy, I believe Facebook users ought to be more careful about how much information they communicate through their profile pages. As surveillance technology evolves (along with the motivation to use it) individual privacy will be continually challenged. The first step in preserving privacy is to resist voluntarily disclosing it in public forums. And nowhere is this more pronounced than in the internet forum Facebook.

It’s no secret that students desire good grades.  Spend any amount of time talking to a student and they’ll tell you how concerned they are about their grades.  Unfortunately however it seems as though this concern over grades might be growing to unhealthy proportions—possibly at the expense of other elements of one’s education.

Grades are sort of the currency of the education system.  They are the units of exchange that delineate intellectual and experiential worth amongst the student community.  Much like money, grades have no intrinsic value.  Grades are meant to quantify accomplishments that are otherwise too abstract or obscure to conveniently classify and exchange with others.  This is so primarily because it is much easier to give someone a letter or a number in order to represent what they “know” rather than actually going through the trouble of explaining what they “know” directly.  As useful as this convenience may be, however, it still comes with some risks.

One risk is the fact that grades are not necessarily accurate.  The degree to which grades are used as a “shortcut” for the marketing of academic achievements is the degree to which the grading system jeopardizes its accuracy.  In other words, the more one tries to simplify something inherently complex, the more the simplification distorts the original.  Clearly, 15 weeks worth of studying and working cannot be condensed down into a single variable reliably.  Doing so must necessarily risk distorting a student’s genuine intellectual or academic standing.

That grades are potentially inaccurate is not terribly alarming.  What is alarming though is how such inaccuracies can corrupt the relationship between students and their learning.  If grades do not necessarily reflect one’s true intellectual ability then there is less reason for a student to associate grades with learning.  The most unfortunate consequence of this is that students are predisposed to invert their perception of the relationship of grades to learning.  Instead of perceiving knowledge as the primary goal of their education (where grades simply compliment the knowledge gained), students begin to perceive the grade as the primary goal of their education (where learning is pursued only insofar as it is perceived to benefit the grade).  In other words, the grade becomes the reason for learning instead of learning being the reason for the grade.

This problem is further augmented by the importance the academic system itself places on grades.  As every student knows, if he or she wants to advance within the academic and employment institutions of our society it is a virtual necessity that he or she maintain a high GPA.  This demand for grades by seemingly important institutions suggests to students that it is the students grades that are most important—not what they actually know.

In addition to this, most instructors amplify a concern for grades within their students’ eyes by providing detailed breakdowns of their particular grading system.  The information that is supposedly the impetus for the course is meticulously dissected into fragments where each fragment is assigned some point value or percentage that the student is to interpret as the amount the piece of information is “worth.”  Because such a rigid and systematized approach to grading reduces the intrinsic value of learning to nothing more than a means to the acquisition of points, it is no surprise that students misperceive that grades are the most important element of their education.

If the goal of academia is to “generate, disseminate and apply knowledge,” as the UW Parkside Mission statement suggests for example, then the over-emphasis upon grades evident in the academic system today needs to be carefully reexamined.