Metacognition: Mash-up

Throughout the course of this project I have learned a tremendous amount about my cognition as an intellectual. Looking through this mashup was honestly much more challenging than I thought it once would be. This mash up is intellectually building because it allows us to combine and witness a multitude of intellects. Not only is this exposure to multiple intellects fantastic, creating this delineation and the thread of these ideas was mentally refreshing. I found that I obtained an ability in a multitude of areas:

a) cognitive organization: I found that I had the ability to comprehensively organize an array of ideas and threading them into a single flow of ideas- this was incredibly surprising, for I was never actually challenged to create a single voice or idea from such an array of ideas

b) Comprehensive understanding- to create a single voice, one really has to understand the material that one goes through- I found that I had a greater capacity for comprehension through an array of complicated materials and the ability to construe them all was refreshing

c) inherent understanding- there was something that really surprised me, that was the ability to quickly process so much information and making these delineations to my single voice and line of thought. This came with an inherent understanding of thought and many concepts that I had no idea I obtained the capability to comprehend.

I do believe that I should make a change however, I should be more open to these ideas and challenge myself to look into more than I believe I can hold. You see, I often will look over some ideas because I believe that they have no value to my idea at first thought, but I should ultimately look deeper into these ideas. For, often, the best ideas are the ones that are entirely unexpected.

Ultimately however, I do believe that this project has shown me an immense amount of internal thought and understanding of my own cognition. 

An Inconvenient Truth: The best will not always end on top

Throughout the course of this weekend, I was in Scranton, Pennsylvania because there was a debate tournament that took place in this small town. It was a little surprising to be honest, I expected the place to be more exciting, as it held the setting for the show: The Office, but it was horribly boring. Something else surprised me however, a young team from Georgia achieved an unexpected goal. That goal, was of getting to the semi finals of this national tournament.

They were surprisingly fantastic at this particular tournament, and being just a sophomore and junior were the farthest thing from expected to reach the final 4 of this pool of 70 teams, many being the premier seniors  in America. Better yet, they beat two of the top 10 teams in the nation. One from the Boston area and another from Washington D.C. This was absolutely phenomenal and being close friends with this team, I was ecstatic and incredibly joyful for them. However, the two older teams they defeated in elimination rounds were not. Then I came to a conclusion, deep in thought, about how this upset could have occurred. That conclusion was that the best will not always end up on top. Given that this young team was absolutely excellent, they were simply disadvantaged from the more experience these other teams had on them.

This rubs me the wrong way, because it shows that however hard you work, or whatever you do to become the best will never be enough to win or to get that promotion. There are just too many external factors to guarantee success. It showed me that everything is ultimately put to some risk or chance in decisively winning.

Well, to come to terms with this, I eventually came to yield some fruit from this truth. I realized that all you can do is perform to the best of your abilities and that should be enough, I also recognized that this could always come to my advantage and to never give up. Being younger than most debaters, I know that anybody could beat anybody and that you should never tell yourself that you've already lost because anything can happen.

Maybe this truth isn't so inconvenient at all.

360 degrees: Democracy

The ideals of the free. The soverign liberator of all political binds and chains. Democracy. 

What is democracy? Can it be defined within a sole phrase or idea? Does it remain constant throughout a culture and people? Is it fluid, and it's ideals forever molding to a set of beliefs and morals? 

These are all questions prompted by a multitude of views of what democracy is, and we can recognize that democracy is not the United State's constitutional structure of government or the governmental basis that Germany stands upon, or even the system under the nation of India. It is all of those things, yet definitively not excluded to a single ruling system. The idea of democracy should be viewed  from all angles, or 360 degrees.

One of the perspectives that democracy stands upon is the United State's system of checks and balances and constitutional engagement, in a government for the people and by the people.

Another mold of democracy is Germany, where we do see a varied spin of a democratic model, in a more complicated system. In Germany we recognize a multitude of parties and a system of engagement in a more "intricate" democratic manner.

We also see a varied view of democracy within the crisis of the Middle East. We continually recognize a call for democracy, yet we fail to recognize what many middle easterners view as democracy is radically different from our view of a democratic foundation. They may view it as a system of liberation but not the constitutional system of a separation of powers. An example of this altered view is Nazi Germany, even Hitler believed he was under a democracy.

As we can see, democracy is a fluid ideal and not isolated under one model of a political foundation. We truly do have to look at it from 360 degrees.