Sunday, February 9, 2014
EX Class Week 4 Day 2: Homework in Class
Wednesday's class was nothing short of fast paced. I felt like the class was whizzing by, and I had to hold on or I was going to be lost in the constant stream of thought. While this isn't neccessarily a bad thing, it made me feel as others in the room probably felt; I felt like I had more to say. We started with some of the questions, which really felt like I had to only choose one to talk about, and if no one else talked about that topic, then my notes would be useless. However, we did end up touching on my topic of choice; innocence. I felt some connection between the reading for the class and the reading I did for my own presentation. With the topic of innocence, there are so many questions; but the one posed to us was if at any point in our lives we as a person were innocent. Looking at it from a strictly rational standpoint, I found myself saying, "Yeah, when we're born we're innocent. There isn't something inherent within us that causes our innocence to be destroyed." And I yet I forgot that in our reading it talked about the fact that the Original Sin written about in the Bible negates that very innocence, and the fact of our existence and knowledge that is given to us from birth is a sin in the eyes of a church. And even in masses at churches during part of the prayers the church mentions the fact that they are not worthy of praising god, and they have baptisms to help clean their parishioners of their original sin. So then should we consider them innocent? And of course this has implications about what happens in the court room. Should the jury be made aware that they themselves might be guilty of the same level, if not a higher level, of crime than the man on trial? Can they be an effective jury with their innocence taken from them? Would we even want a jury of innocent men? Furthermore, is innocence even possible? Should we define innocence based on having our "Original Sin" and have everything we do after that be against our innocence? So many questions, not enough class time.
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I believe innocence is largely subjective, and almost never agreed upon. When a food critic judges a plate for a competition he must try to put aside his personal preferences and comment only on the presented criteria but ultimately, he has his own unique set of taste buds. Our own moral taste buds are what decide who is innocent in our own mind, but what the law attempts to do is standardize the whole process. Most times it works, and sometimes it doesn't. One thing I find important to remember is that we are our own judge and jury, free to decide what’s morally wrong and right according to our made up set of values. We ourselves decide innocence, not innocence from the law, but innocence of wrong doing. I prefer this instead of trusting judgment in the hands of others, as we've seen in cases such as Casey Anthony, OJ Simpson, and many others, opinions aren't always agreeable. Now you may not agree with that and judge my view as wrong, and that’s okay, because by having your own and my own values and morals to judge others by, not always negatively, we are allowed to think and most of all to be real.
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