I'm on a mission to reconnect with people that I've lost contact with but had significant meaning at some point in my life. This has been going on for the past year and there are some successes so far. If you remember my previous post about me moving about 19 times in my life, it's obvious that my environment and those who I'm in contact with is always changing. I envy people who have been in one place for most of their life and went through school with the same people. I was never good at this whole "keeping in touch" thing because I guess I never really learned a good way to do so. I'm always afraid of bothering people or even worse, perhaps they never wanted to continue a relationship in the first place. The latter is most likely due to things that are out of my control and I have come to accept that those are unsalvageable. But you'll never know unless you try, right? The real trick is how to keep an ongoing relationship after reconnection.

I am not a pessimist. I prefer to think of myself as an optimistic realist. My political philosophy is a mixture of utilitarianism, Nietzsche's perspectivism, tolerance for individualism, and the ideal of a socially democratic state. I'm still in the process of developing this complex philosophy.

For all those that are graduating this year (pH, Kumi, Jane, Trish, and others from the UCCS program), congratulations and good luck in the real world! Also congratulations to Tim for passing the Bar exam on his first try!

Apparently, whenever I make a new post on Skeptickle it has been inconsistent in making the same post on my xanga. So the posts I've made in the past few months may or may not have shown up on my xanga. Rob came up with a solution for my future posts but if you want to make be sure that you're reading the latest update on my life then I think it's best to rely on Skeptickle.com for now.

Current status: Sick. I'm trying to get over a whooper cold (or maybe flu?) I contracted sometime late last week which made it so that I could neither be productive nor enjoy my weekend. I have two papers and a presentation due next week and I have not been able to work on them this entire weekend because my head feels like it's full of cotton balls. I am also unable to drive back to Sacramento because my motor skills resemble that of a drunk person driving. Rob has been kind enough to take care of me even though I can tell he's not used to it. It's times like this that I realize how much I do when I'm feeling healthy. I'm always doing something-cooking, cleaning, learning, studying, working, running errands, exercising, etc. It feels weird to not do anything productive for four days in a row.

I made a big realization this weekend after reminiscing with my friends from jr high. I was the biggest Jesus Freak, like, ever! It's scary how a person can go from being a true believer to someone nearly apathetic to religion or spirituality. It wasn't just one thing that made me "fall" from Christianity. It was a variety of things, with the main reason being that I grew up. I realized that I wanted to think for myself and not feel guilty about making decisions that would be poo-pooed by people who have no business in my personal affairs. However, I still have sympathy for those who kept the faith and continue living among those who don't believe. It's tough being a Christian nowadays.

On a side note, it gave me a bit of disgusting pleasure to hear that one of the girls who picked on me in jr high got in deep trouble for vandalizing her high school. I guess what goes around still comes around.

Yay.

All my enemies rejoice.

I am studying in Political Sociology the concept of social capital. Social capital has a few different, and oftentimes vague, definitions but the version I'm referring to is Putnam's. Robert D. Putnam's book Bowling Alone has recently been known to be the definitive source of research for this area of study. I read through most of the book so far and am beginning to understand why people feel so isolated and fail to participate in groups anymore. While he presents a valid case about the effects of low social capital in our society, I think there's more to the source of the problem than mainly television and the internet. I think he didn't emphasize enough that Americans are working more hours with less pay and their job security is less certain than it was half a century ago. We are also now driven by a highly consumer-centric society. Even our "experts" are hired by businesses to support faulty claims that their products will make us happy. So it's difficult to distinguish who to trust or not. He compared groups that are supposed to represent the interests of the people to mail order catalogs. Their members (like the AARP) only participate by writing a check for them once a year. Some of those groups don't even have any members and yet they exist! So who can we trust? Our families and close friends? Toqueville once warned of the dangers of individualism. By focusing inward rather than outward, democracy cannot possibly survive. This does not mean to ignore your own self-interest. In fact, it would require enlightened self-interest to help someone out in the hope that it may come back to you if enough people were of the same mindset (Sidenote: I highly recommend watching the movie "Pay It Forward" for a better idea of this concept). The problem is that there's a general decline in people who have that type of mindset. I learned that evangelicals tend to focus inward rather than outward like other denominations of the Protestant church. That may explain why the spreading of this type of faith has lead to high social capital within it's confines, but provides low social capital to the nation overall.

I'm turning 23 on Saturday. I don't want to turn 23. However, Rob is sweetening the deal by planning the day to distract me from the fact that I'm another year closer to an old-and-wrinkly Sophia. I look forward to it.