Hypocrisy At Its Finest

This instance that I have experienced (and continue to experience) is less of a situation that directly involved me, but is more of something that I observe a friend do. There is a friend of mine whom I have attended church with on a regular basis since 5th grade; when I moved to Cartersville. Without fail, every Sunday, he was at the service. Even more than that he is an active member in the church's youth program and always takes the annual mission trip in the summer. During the fall semester of our junior year of high school (so about 4 years ago now) he took an astrology class, which completely altered his religious beliefs to the extreme that a once devout Christian is now an Athiest. The hypocrisy occurs in the fact that he still regularly attends church, and youth group, sings the songs, prays the prayers, and thinks all of it is a giant crock. He lies to the congregation on a weekly basis in doing this, and comits hypocrisy in its most basic form. After talking to him about this he has made it clear that he likes the people, and church is the only time he gets to see his "friends" so he will continue the facade until it no longer pleases him to do so. But plainly; he is a liar, and he is pretending to be someone he is not for personal gain. Hypocrisy.

Thoughts to share

So this week the blog post was to be a free range, go for it, all out, anything you want type of post. And although my mind is a buzz with thoughts and ideas I feel most of them are best kept to myself most of the time. One in particular feels like its okay to share, however. In the last two years, and especially in these last few months I have been truely figuring out who I am as a person. This has been a question I have been struggling with throughout my teen years, and continuously brushed off because I am still young and it isn't something that should matter right now, but more and more lately the answer has been unfolding before my very eyes. I have learned through talks with people, job choices, and overall decisions that I have been making recently that I know exactly who I am supposed to be. Though the explination of who I am would be quite lengthy I can take comfort in myself knowing that I now have this knowledge. And who knows, the journey ahead is still long, and I might realize that I am who I am meant to be at this moment only, but for now I feel like I have a purpose and fulfilling it here and now has given me more satisfaction than I can ever express.

Troy Maxon: Bitter Rasist or Product of his Time?

Fences, a play by August Wilson, portrays the life of negro trash collector Troy Maxon and his family. Throughout the play many slang and derogatory terms are thrown about in regards to African- Americans and whites alike,  and at first glance it may appear that Troy himself is a rasist, but upon further inspection it becomes clear that he is only a product of the time in which he lives. In a broader analyzation of things we see that Troy is a character (created by Wilson) who is cleverly used to comment on the real-life senarios that played out in Wilson's own reality. Wilson used the characters to highlight the progression of negros in society during the early 80's even though the play was set in the 50's when rasism ran rampant (just some alliteration for you). Troy thought very highly of the African American community and his use of words such as "nigger" were terms of endeerment and showed progression of society's tolerance. There was still a definite seperation in Troy's mind about the social standings of whites and blacks during this era, but it wasn't the spiteful seperation. Troy Maxon was not a racist, he was simply brought up in a way that in today's much less rasist world may appear that way.