A protest

My name is Rebekah Chung, and I am a university student in opposition to the SOPA/PIPA bills proposed last year. 

I believe that the internet is an important tool for today's world, and that the censorship threatening it would be intensely crippling.  The free sharing of information online has been a major factor in developing today's information age, allowing people to share cultures, intellectual property, and countless other benefits across the planet.  While internet censorship might protect the property of copyright owners, it would also change the very culture that those individuals cater to, more than likely harming them more than piracy and plagiarism ever could.

The internet may house a great amount of injustice towards copyright owners, but it is also a huge base for the population that buys their property and on which they are dependent.  Hindering musical communities online would hurt the music industry more than harm it, severely slowing the spread of artists' names, for one.  No advertising campaign will ever be as effective as the viral spread of material that occurs in online communities.

Even more importantly, the internet is a huge center for human creativity.  In a system where budding artists are not permitted to experiment and practice with the works of their literary, artistic, or musical heroes through fanart, fanfiction, and other such works, many shy, tentative young minds are robbed of the opportunity to garner critiques and develop their own voices. 

To suppose that the majority of fanbased work that comprises a huge aspect of the internet is a harm to established is a blatant mistake quickly refuted by any familiarity with the actual dynamic that goes on.  Most works online that might be labeled plagiarism are more comparable to hero-worship than robbery, and the results are not the usurpation of artists but the spread of their work and names.  To cripple this nexus of creativity and artistic development is to cling to older works at the cost of the future, to cheat future generations of their potential in favor of what is quickly being outdated.

"Imitation is the highest form of flattery," it has often been said.  Any artist or thinker who thinks himself hurt or offended by the works derived from his pre-established foundations must be in doubt of the impact, quality, and importance of his work and supremely uninterested in the potential of such work as a foundation for future development.  To indulge these figures is to indulge those who are more interested in their personal gain than in the development of humanity, in the progress and good of his country, and in the development and dynamicism of art itself, in the case of artists.  To indulge these figures is a crime.

Realize, please, that the internet bears a great significance on the development of humanity over the coming generations, and that U.S. censorship would set our country behind the development (artistic, cultural, intellectual, technological) of the rest of the world.  The sharing of information speeds up progress by offering to everyone the resources they would otherwise have to develop individually, over and over, redundantly.  Keeping the internet uncensored is not only in the interest of developing artists, but it is in in the best interests of our country.

So to our representatives, in whom we have placed our confidence... Vote down SOPA/PIPA.  Vote down obsolescence, rust, and stagnancy.  Vote to support the creativity of today's youth and the development of technology.  Vote for internet freedom.

I am full of empty intentions.  I intend to change the fact that I am full of empty intentions.  It's time to stop intending and follow through.

Scattered

Reading.  My first love, and as of the past couple of years, my lost love.

I grew up with my nose perpetually in one book or another, and I can honestly say that my early habits of copious reading played a major role in the development of my personality, my likes and dislikes, and in my growth as a person.  I never felt complete without at least one book in the immediate vicinity of my person, preferably open in front of me or, if the present circumstances hindered reading, under my arm.   I whiled the days, months, and years away in tales of the past, in legends and myths, in fantastic worlds limited only by the combined imagination of myself and the writers, in galaxies far away or in my own hometown, years ago... or maybe even a few centuries in the future.

To be fair, there was a downside to my degree of reading-dependence.  I at several points in my young life grew dissatisfied with my life, with the present, with the everyday and the normal.  I couldn't stand to go to school every day, when girls like me in novels went off deciding the outcomes of war after war, saving kings, serving as emissaries to foreign lands.  There seemed no excitement, no romance, no stakes in the day-to-day sea of dullness that was my life.  I struggled through depressions, spent years living as though my real life was only the means by which to support my mind, which allowed me to travel elsewhere.  Nevertheless, when I look back, I miss the days when I used to read more.

Reading was somewhat of a third parent to me, instilling me with more real, more relatable reasons to live by the morals and standards that I had been raised with.  It gave me a healthy thirst for something more than the everyday, piqued my palate for the spiritual and the supernatural in preparation for God to work in my life, and gave me something healthier to do than what many kids my age were doing: Neopets, MapleStory, GameBoy.  Not that any of those were bad in and of themselves [indeed, I still have a keen taste for games!], but it meant that my early life was shaped not by media, music, and flickering screens, but rather by words, by thought, by contemplation and an examination of my life that kept my mind active.

Over the past few years, I have begun to experience more freedom in what I do with my time, as well as a good deal more work.  I find myself with less time and less motivation to read--by the time I get out of school, finish homework, get done with everything that has to be done during the course of the day, I am exhausted, worn out, ready for something completely mindless.  I think I first slowed off on reading because I was busy, but now it has degenerated to the point that reading has even become a little more difficult.  My general thought life has become fragmented, scattered. 

I was known as a kid for my freakish focus.  On one occasion, a friend threw a football past my face, so close he thought he hit me and literally between me and the pages of the book I was absorbed in, and completely failed to notice, so engrossed was I in the story.  [As I remember, this was either The Lord of the Rings or one of Tamora Pierce's wonderful novels]  I could do the same things for hours, was fairly steady, was easy to please, and could memorize the lyrics of any song or the lines of any movie by the second time through.  I had a great capacity for learning that I never really appreciated for its worth.

I am not sure how it happened, but I do know that it was around the time when Tenth Avenue North's The Light Meets the Dark and Taylor Swift's Speak Now first came out that I started realizing I wasn't picking up lyrics, even when I tried.  This struck me as disheartening--I'm getting old, I thought.  Then there were the lectures.  I still can't quite figure out whether the greater factor is my worsening focus or my harder classes upon entering college, but focusing on lectures (or even on everyday conversations!) became a thing of real effort.  If I stopped consciously listening for an instant, I would lose track of the lecture for minutes at a time.  It has gotten to the point where I am strongly considering seeing a doctor of some sort to find out whether there is more going on.

How does this relate to reading?  My theory is that my strong reading habits corresponded with my ability to focus--the loss of which prompted the other, I am still trying to evaluate.  I do know that I haven't read anything for my own enjoyment in over a year--including my all-time favorite, The Lord of the Rings.  It is becoming somewhat of an irritant, depressant, and general source of worriment for me. I have compared my issues over and over to ADHD, due to my inability to stay focused on one thing for any period of time unless it genuinely interests me--I can convince myself it is interesting and still get sidetracked by the first train of thought that comes to mind. 

Whatever the issue is, though... in the interest of attempting to regain my old focus and improve on my information retention, I am going with a slightly lighter courseload for the coming semester, dropping the honors course that has caused me so much stress, grief, lost time, lost sleep, lost health, and generally sent my life to pieces, and working on a healthier lifestyle.  It is my hope that with a little more time to read, better physical health, and even my decision to write every day should help me start gluing the fragments of my thought life together and make the whole a bit more cohesive and easier to handle.  As for how the various changes will help, only time will tell.

I've... deviated significantly from the topic of reading.  Ah well, maybe another day.

Heartwarming moment of the day

My home church has a rather large family for a relatively small building, and in recent years of crowded morning services, we have taken to putting two rows of chairs on the low stage in front, as it is not actually used until what we call "family Bible hour."  Typically, it has been asked that some of the men of the church be wiling to sit there, as ladies often wear skirts, and often it has been the young college guys who are willing to use those seats and open up space in the normal rows for families and visitors. 

Well, this was before the organization of double services due to the overwhelming size of our church family.  For a few months now, we have offered 8:30 and 11:00 services, or some such timing, and people have chosen to go either to the earlier or later set of services so that the chapel has space for people to sit.  Due to winter break, Christmas, and New Years, however, we have had a few Sundays in a row where the entire church has gotten back together in one large, boisterous, wonderful service for the Christmas program, holiday sermons, and such.

With that context... Today the chairs were up front, but as it has been a while since they were needed and used, as well as because in the end we managed to fit everyone into the normal seating, none of the young men sat up front...save one small boy still in elementary school, who it seems volunteered early, before it was apparent that there was enough seating, to sit up front.  All by himself.  It was a brave little gesture, sitting in front of the whole congregation in order to free up more comfortable space for others.  For a little while, he sat up there alone, following somewhat confusedly along with the Bible passages and songs.

Probably about five to ten minutes into the service, one of the elders of the church stood and walked up to the front of the sanctuary, up onto the stage, and sat down next to the little boy at the leftmost side of the row of extra chairs.  In a very friendly, grandfatherly manner, he checked his hymn number with the boy or helped him find it in his own hymnal, and both joined back into the singing.  Just a little gesture, but it was a touching, tender image and a perfect way to start off the new year--the elder and elementary school child, each looking out for the needs of others in their own way, just the way that we as little children learn we ought to do.

It doesn't take much to brighten up someone's day, and that's how we brighten the world--one small gesture at a time.

Happy New Year!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to the wonderful world out there!!  Thank you for existing yet another year!! ♥