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Jedimike |
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| Michael Newton-McLaughlin |
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 About Me |
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." --Einstein, Albert
Being able to remember things is pretty awesome. I am fascinated by memory, and how intricate and fragile memory is. It is a type of weird synthesis and balance. It is perhaps when I look back into the past two years of my life that I realize how maleable the way we see the world is, yet perceivably our memory does not change. Of course, we also remember things how we want to. With this fickle fascinating in mind though, I'll summarize how I came to be who I am.
After September 11, 2001 I could easily be called an American nationalist. I was expecting to serve in the Air Force reserves, and was already using an Air Force ROTC scholarship at my community college in Sacramento California, my hometown. Yet several events, mostly through the US media not reporting certain bits of facts that I thought Americans should probably know about, lead me to question my reality. Or perhaps, I questioned the reality of the world, the social fabric that I had both constructed and was constructed around me. I stumbled onto TakingITGlobal in December of 2001 and began talking to people from around the world. It is amazing the perspective one gains on a region of the world when you can talk to others living there.
It is also rather ironic that around the same time I decided to listen to some of my more liberal friends and read into US foreign policy beyond the superficial nature that I understood it through the context of US History classes. I also began teaching during the Spring of 2002 as this transformation crept up on me. I still continue tutoring and learning a range of topics, as a student at UC Berkeley. Yet at that present time, I was overwhelmed with working full time, going to school full time, joining a Forensics (speech and debate) team and being active in the Student Government.
In this context of so much going on, it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly prompted me to change the entire mindset by which I thought about things, to refocus the lens that I viewed the world with. Though in early March of 2002 I decided to apply Air Force corps values, the principles they operate by, to some of the military's actions and see if there existed contradictions with my own values. It turned out, through an interesting story, that there were. I cancelled my military scholarship and ended my enlistment into the Air Force reserves.
Through the years, I have worked with youth organizations, done independent web development contacting, lobbied at the state legislature, worked crappy corporate jobs, among other things. And, maybe not surprisingly given that it has provided so much of an opportunity for me to connect to people around the world, I have stayed active with TakingITGlobal. I currently worked on the 'Panorama Publication' among other interesting responsibilities, and generally enjoy being a pain in the ass when I see something that I think needs change.
Whether you see me at a protest for something I am passionate about, or behind the lens of a camera, the other side of a computer terminal, or catch me reading/writing on the beautiful Berkeley campus, please say hello.
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| User Joined: December 2, 2001 |
| Last Login: March 25, 2008
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 Active Rank: #8463 |
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