What am I thinking?

       From Andrade's video, he believed that students, or people in general are living miserable lives. This happens because no one is paying attention to what is happening around them rather, they focus on the things that they can only see never putting themselves in their shoes. They would always believe that they care for each other, that they understand each other, but they never actually do, the schools, bosses at work, they never really care about you as a person, you're more of a tool in their eyes. So, people wondering why the suicide and murder rates in Oakland are where they are, it's because of this reason that this is happening. For example, there are examples of these from literature as well. We have Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, three girls suffer from their father's rash decisions. He believes he is making the right choice marrying them off to "good" husbands that follow the holy Torah. However, he is only doing it for his own personal gain. Rather than thinking about their happiness that will lead for the rest of their lives, he would much rather feel his own accomplishment for marrying off his daughters and gaining some sum of money and fame. His daughters come to hate their own father, marrying off to these husbands only to get away from his tyranny. They would much rather live their lives in misery than having to stay with such a father. Andrade's speech states that he wants to help students have a safer environment to work in and hopefully have adults that can understand them. He wants these individuals to have this sense of giving and never taking, hoping to help these students in their social lives lessening in the amounts of suicides and murders. A man by the name of George R. Price was an astonishing individual. He was socially awkward, but a genius in number theory and sense. He was able to formulate a . . . formula . . . for kindness, or altruism. He believed that kindness is only a gene that is passed down from person to person. There is no such thing as TRUE kindness, because kindness is something done out of the good of a person's heart. Rather, he found that there was always an alternative motive between the acts of kindness. When a person performs an act of kindness, it's because they want to feel the self-satisfaction of helping others. This is not because they want to help others, but in order to make themselves feel good, almost like a drug. The reason there cannot be true kindness is because, say there's a person who possess that gene for having the ability to sacrifice their own life for another person. That person will indeed eventually lose their life and that specific gene will be lost forever because they cannot pass it on to another offspring. So from this, the theory of evolution will come into play and show that the idea of true kindness cannot exist because those who had it have already died. This idea comes into play with Andrade's idea of "helping" others succeed in life, and hoping that students will be able to have the access to the "kindness" that teacher's show. Humans are cruel beings, they only think about themselves and only hope others will help them. Sure, you can say people such as soldiers and firemen are sacrificing their lives to save civilians, but it's out of pure satisfaction that they are able to do this. To feel good that they are doing something that will put the idea in people's minds that the soldiers or firefighters are dying for a noble cause. What I'm trying to say is that, no matter how kind a person can be, there will always be an alternative motive behind it. There's a saying "If you're good at something, never do it for free."

         In my perspective, Andrade's speech was more about the social hierarchy rather than the idea of negligence. When he was discussing about Piedmont and how they separated themselves from the rest of Oakland, living in their own protective walls, I believed this was a discussion of class and the constant struggle of social hierarchy. As always in history, the rich are constantly looking down upon the poor. They see them as some kind of disease hoping they can get away from them as quickly as possible. Why? It's not like touching a less fortunate person will bring misfortune to you. From this belief though, they separate themselves from the poor and live next to people of the same social standing, hoping that the fortune will continue to circulate within their area. What they do not realize is, due to this, the poor will only continue to become poorer and rich, richer. For an economy to thrive, money must be circulating through the open market, but how can this be so if the poor have nothing to circulate? The degrading system will only cause harm to those less fortunate leading to worse conditions of higher suicides and murder rates. In order to fix this, we need to harness the ability to work out each others weaknesses. If the rich and invest in some business, the business will soon thrive and allow the money to circulate. The economy will once again rise and the problems will be solved one at a time. It will be a long process, but its the best option we have. But can this really be fixed? History has been a repeating  battle of classes, each leading to a downfall of a civilization. In every history text, there's always a social hierarchy, we saw it in the Mesopotamian age back in 150 BC, we saw it in the Roman age in 31 BC, the French Revolution in the 1800's, heck even now there's a battle of the classes. We see protests for the rich to pay MORE taxes. As if they're not paying enough, we just believe that the rich are wealthy enough to take more of burden so that the poorer folk can have their burden lifted. But let me ask you this, if you have a steady income, and all of a sudden a group of people want that income to be cut in half for their cause, would you allow it? I sure as heck wouldn't. Back in the French Revolution, the entire reason why there was a revolution was because the poor were enraged to the point where they couldn't even buy a single piece of bread for a family of three. The poor literally had no money where the richer folk could dine like gods. The battle of the classes came to point where they started the working class, also known as the lower class, overthrew the kind and queen, decapitated them, and lived on by making another system. Now we're facing the same problems they were having problems of a problem that was developed from over centuries old. The saying goes that we learn from our mistakes, if this is the case, why haven't we solved this thousand year old problem? Simple, power, everyone lusts for power. If you read Animal Farm by George Orwell, it talks about the Russian revolution, but personifies the entire event in the view of farm animals. They talk about being equals and creating a system where the animals can live in harmony with one another. A system similar to communism, but upon doing so, overthrowing the farmer and gaining their independence, the pigs of the farm, being the leaders, take over the position of the farmer. Rather than it being an equal society, they've only redeveloped the old system and polished it to seem new and more equal because the leaders were ones that once were their own brethren. So in order to fix this system, we as a whole have to get into the idea of not standing on top of each other, the idea that is one for all and not all for one. But as we all know, this is not possible.

So here are some questions for you:

1. Why for the last century have we not learned how to cooperate with one another? 

2. Why is it always a constant struggle for classism? 

3. How can the problems be fixed since its been here for centuries, can it?