oh mY GOSH~I feel very contradictory...

Logically Grace would have Vern's Volvo since she has the original parts. And if Grace actually used those parts to recreate the Volvo, she would be driving Vern's car although with a few touch-up's of her own. To Vern, his car had not changed because he is still driving the car he took from the dealer, just polishing it here and there. But the parts are what he has been driving with are completely different. It's like when a husband and wife decide to get each other a car and end up surprising the other with the same car, they will be the same in look, but not in feel once the owner gets into it. The car itself can have the same look, but they will not be the same. 
There is a strange difference though with a ship and a car though (personally). Truthfully I'm a bit confused about this blog in wondering if it's alright to bring in my own personal beliefs but...I'll take a chance. In the reading of "The Ship" I read several viewpoints of whether the ship is real or not but mostly dealing with the parts. As in if all the parts but one plank or so were replaced, it would still be the same old ship. But if those parts were replaced too, it would be completely different (from most of the peoples view). But a ship is much different than a car. A car, Vern's Volvo in this case would always drive on man-made trails and/or paved roads with an occasional person actually going all out wild with their car (who would do that...?). A ship, usually called "She", travel with something that usually isn't man-made, the ocean and/or sea. Essence comes into mind here. A ship will get their essence from the water, something mother earth has given it. It will ride the waves like it always does no matter how much of it is replaced. It's like it's own person. Not only that but ships have it so that people can live on them, work on them, and it gets taken care of very well (depending on the person) which also adds to a ships splendor. A car barely gets any of that. People use them until used no more, you can only drive with once in a while eating and an occasional sleep in them. You can make memories in a car but not as prominent on a ship. A car will stay with the parts it will come, it's essence you can say are it's parts - once replaced, its all new. 
The parts of a car is it's essence because the paved roads are what gives it it's essence. Cars are machine made and not hand made. It can barely make any impact besides what roads it drives on day after day. Mother nature can't give it anything directly because the car can't take it. If it does it's only to the parts of the car at that moment, and not only but the person give that car parts it's essence. When Vern got his drivers seat chair replaced, he didn't have the feel of the old seat because he has to "break it in", but it won't have the same complete feel of the other seat. It's like the flux compositor from Back To The Future, you can't replace it because it's meaning is priceless. You can make a new one but all the times that one has been through the new one will not have. If there was some sort of "memory transplanter" (imagining that cars have "minds") and you gave the old flux compositor the old flux compositor's memory, it still won't be the same because it never experience the actual feel of the first one. So Vern's Volvo would not be his car but a completely new one because it cannot connect directly with mother nature, and because in this case, it's essence is from the person itself to the original parts. The new ones will get a whole new feel/essence. And Grace in her case, would have both the heap of Vern's Volvo and once she re-creates it, then she will have what was once Vern's Volvo. 

An individualistic society

We have only how much each person wants to contribute to society. But as a whole, we don't have much because we all care for each other. In caring for each other, we care for society because each one family/person, adds to the good of society on a whole. With one bad person, it takes the entire scale off balance, which is what we have and we cannot change it because the person has to change it themselves. What society itself can do is not much except for setting an example on how much better it is to be one way. But the one bad egg can be looked on society in two ways, a rebel which could turn the whole of society on it's tail and make what was good bad, and bad good. Or they can be looked as a criminal to their society (which they may actually be) and may be detained or terminated depending on how much of the society notices. Society does it because they cannot be both, they just want to be one large pie instead of two separate ones, they don't like to choose...usually, which is where a bad (or good depending on the individual) egg can come in. The word society is slightly off in it's definition because it's meant to be a group of people (rather large) but we are all individuals who sometimes think in the same way, making us a society. So society shouldn't only mean a large group of people, but a large group of people who generally think the same. 
Society only has one obligation and that is to try and be good. But that changes with each individual because not many people can think exactly alike, so the perception of good to some people, can be bad to others. But the older generation of society has to set up an example to follow for the younger society which will follow in its footsteps. They also have to try to make the path smoother for the younger generation to follow so as life gets older, it would be easier for the young to move forward and create their society to be the top in the world. We in the United States have our societies do exactly that so that we can beat out other countries in how good our economy/society is, and even when it is down, we are still better than others. And the older generations have the younger ones learn from their mistakes so we don't do it, which is what most of them see as bad, despite how other countries would see it as good. 
Society, under any circumstances, don't have to follow the rules and/or laws we are "required" to follow. They were just put there by the older society that has passed so the society today, does not have to follow them, but they do because that's what they think is the good way, besides certain parts of society. The older society put them there to show the younger that their way was much better than not having any rules/law at all, but we are allowed to change them or think differently. In "Pirates of the Caribbean" it shows this perfectly well. There were rules put down by the pirate court before Barbossa and Jack, being the society before them, and you were supposed to follow it no matter what. But Barbossa just slightly pushes it aside so that he can create a rules so that he can show his crew how to handle anything in certain situations. When talking to Elizabeth because she for the first time comes onto the Black Pearl, he says "First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner ." The third sentence puts the second one out of existence because he doesn't want to follow the code she be a pirate or not. So as our society moves forward the laws will change due to the rebels in society or just the whole of the younger society. 

To know or not to know...

                   Decision, this is the main object of how we know if we know ourself. It is what gives us identity and our own personality. Decide, this is something every minute of the day and there can be obvious ones, or extremely hard ones. The only problem with it is how use it to pick something--the value is rather large. People who can never decide for themselves usually means that they do not know themselves because they are told what to do instead of thinking for themselves. It is very valuable to know this because if you can not decide for yourselves, then the people that can ultimately will, and you may never understand who you are. You would turn into that person's "mini me"/clone essentially.  
                 My own weakness is very general to more specific thinking, and I do have a lot as does everyone. I would say that my own weakness is not taking care of my self/thinking to contradictory (For some reason I feel like calling it Darwinism because I think it's good, but not to others). And my worst quality is jealousy. In fact, it may all revolve around jealousy. The way I think personally annoys me. I don't want to think modernly because, what if everything we are taught, isn't right? Like, we were suddenly put onto a system the entire world follows, which is be born, go to school, don't steal (etc..), try to get into college, get a career, let the government run you, and try to enjoy life as much as possible. What if all we have been taught wasn't true? I always think that because I feel like everything in the world is just a straight line with only some squiggly lines going out at the Cold War and such...But then the more I think about it the more I think about how the past ran their countries; Egypt with pharaohs and deities, Greeks with democracy, and it gets me so confused on how to talk to people because if I did ask such questions, I would be revered as plain old stupid because it's not what we are supposed to do today. An example is that there was a man who started the "Green Revolution" and his name was Norman Borlaug. What he did was save an estimated one billion people from starvation by modifying plants such as corn and rice all around the world. But look at the world's problem right now. If you take all the pieces of the entire worlds problems, it all goes down to one thing--population. The world population is increasing at a rapid rate and not many people acknowledge that. We may face food wars in the future and even water wars because there is not enough for everyone. And when Norman Borlaug "saved" the world, what he did may have been the exact opposite; put the world at an even more risk of falling apart. People are naturally supposed to die, that's how life goes, it is a hard fact but that is how mother nature keeps herself in check too with burning the forests every now and then so that a new forest can grow and form. We have to die so that our Earth can support  itself without us having to weigh it down so much--even if that means dying painfully. On the other hand no one wants to see someone die of starvation, which is my annoying contradicting side of me. There is more in where this goes but the main point is, to answer this question, that I personally believe that the way I think is my own weakness, because I don't think right. 
                  I think that my best quality is to the ability to make friends easily without caring who they are, what they look like, etc...It may seem that this is common among people, and I thought this too, but I've finally realized that it is not. I do have part to blame myself because I don't know much about people (for example I didn't know what pornography was until in seventh grade when a website was blocked in school and I asked my teacher aloud what it was...in front of the whole class) and personally I don't really care about to know so I just go up to people and say hi when they're by themselves,frustrated, sad, etc...I do sincerely think that this is my best quality because I the friends I have around me are all so different, and some don't even like the other because the way he/she looks or acts. An example is that if one person says one something mean/rude about a person I know, I won't agree or disagree with them nor really care about what they say. I would probably just listen to the conversation without acknowledge them unless they say something totally wrong about him or her. This can come into play also though that I am a bad friend because I may not stand up for my friend because what my other friend is saying is their own opinion--be it wrong or rude. It's a bit awkward because it makes me wonder if they really consider me a friend while I cannot stick up for them when another is saying something rude about the other person. Now that I think about it it's all really contradicting to think about, though be it or not, I can still very easily make friends no matter who the person is. 
                        I think it's hard to think/write about ones own weaknesses and strengths because it's make the writer wonder about themselves more then they necessarily need to. People don't just sit around and think about themselves (usually) all day because there are so many other things in the way: school, work, kids, etc...It's also because from what I think, the thinker would constantly contradict him/herself. It makes it hard because despite that they have a strength in one area, we are wired in our brains to always think about the opposite, it all comes down to "the decision" and thinking for yourself. If you are able to think for yourself, then this would be easy to do, but if you do not and are always working for something else (school) then it would be much harder. When I was writing this, I was constantly contradicting myself. Hence why it is very confusing to read and I bet to the reader this will be too. Because without being the writer, it's harder to understand since you're not in the writers shoes. What I feel about writing this is that there are a lot of contradicting and it was actually really hard to write this down. It was hard to write this down because for some reason, I felt that it was easier to think about my weakness and strengths in my head than say it in words. My weakness was my hardest to think about about because of the topic. I felt like I couldn't write a big example because of how odd and horrible it would sound, which would make it hard to think about another example since that was the main example I have been thinking about. Overall, when someone has to write about their weaknesses and strengths, I think that it's very hard not only because it's easier to think about, but that it is very contradicting. 

"Good and Evil", "Good versus Evil", "Good For Evil" and More!

Generally, most people think good should be rewarded while evil should be punished, or in fact there should be no evil at all. And the first part is true, it's just that "there should be no evil at all" is not true. I do believe that the good should be rewarded, but not all the time. An example is that during the spring, my mother likes to garden. Sometimes what she plants does not come out well and that is when her "good should not be rewarded". Evil comes into play here and Job relates to it. Job was doing good with his wealth, children, and wife but he only got punished because Satan told God to. This relates to my mother because what this does is provoke her to try her gardening again, with either the same or different seeds or soils, and she may either forget her last attempt and concentrate on this new one, or keep thinking about it. Job, despite that he was "tortured" by god, once god let go of him/ stopped torturing him, he moved on and had new children--even with a possibility of forgetting his children who were all killed before-- and gained more oxen and wealth. It may be weird to think about it but, with good comes evil, with love comes hate, with potato comes tomato...etc.. They all relate to each other because we cannot have one without the other. 
Humans should act ethically, even though they may be punished for doing so. In some extreme cases people are judged wrongly for something they didn't do (ex: murder, robbery, etc...) and are put into jail, despite all they were doing was watering their plants in their garden. No matter what happens or what people do to prevent it, there are some unlucky people out there that get punished even though they did nothing wrong or they did something good. Though, the human (and other races) should act ethically because it is supposedly the right thing to do. When doing something right, there is sometimes the feeling of uneasiness or other "un" emotions but there is a greater chance of us being thankful and/or grateful for what we have done. Emotion is what makes us do something ethically (besides religion) and right. Getting something physical in return  is not the right way to do something ethical. In religious terms, we have to do something ethical because god wants us to. A lot of this has to do with the Ten Commandments because it sets up laws for us to not do anything bad and only doing good. And even when doing nothing wrong, just as Jesus had, he still got punished. But, in the end something good may happen to them such as getting out of prison early because you were proven innocent or coming back from death. Overall this is a tricky topic because it can differ depending on what view you are looking at, religiously, more modernly, or something that I have not even heard of yet. 
God seems to punish "Job", despite him doing something bad. This personally brings a big break into religion. This is because most religious people think that if they do something good, they will be rewarded, but that is being greedy is it not? An example is the holiday Christmas; its better to give then get. Basically you should give without any hope of getting something "physical" in return. People would say that you would get the feeling of "doing something right" or "happiness", but that may not come sometimes. In fact, people do sometimes get the feeling of wasting something (money perhaps). This could be then the sense of punishment, the fact that you did give something away and the person did like it, but in return you get annoyed or an unfulfilled feeling. Some more modern examples are the fact that despite how much we help developing countries, they may either get little help, stay the same, or become even worse. And today, rather than giving one person punishment, he gives large groups of people punishment (I cannot think of any one person with sever punishment), like Ethiopia (the poorest country in the world), Darfur, and even the people spending the money on them. The last part, "people spending money on them" is true because they could be loosing a lot of money over helping them and it be effecting themselves in the process. I think that the only reason that God would do this is not only to teach us that we are below him (like he has done to Job) but too tell us that there will not always be prosperity no matter how much we want it. It can come to an abrupt end or make a slow decline to it. Scientifically this is true too because all nations start out with and equal amount of births and deaths (in an preindustrial stage), but as they move to a transitional stage, the birth rate stays the same, but the death rates drop dramatically, causing the population to raise dramatically (like India or China), and lastly, by the time the postindustrial stage comes by, they equal to each other again. But what we do not know is what happens after that, and that is where it is up to us. God shows us that we will never be sure about what will happen and that prosperity will not always happen despite what we want to believe. God wants to the people of this world to realize that not everybody is the same and no matter how much you help those in need, it may not ever succeed. 

A drop in the bucket

People can figure out if life has value or not if their own life has value. Which means that we should be happy and should be continuously looking forward to something, such as completing a bucket list. When there is something to complete in life that we want to either possess or experience, we realize that our lives have value.  A bucket list is a great example of knowing weather your life has value or not; it a list where a person writes all the things he or she would like to do before they die. An example is my own bucket list, here are a couple of my own things I would like to possess or experience before I die: Learn Romanian, Learn to Tango, Own  a Volkswagen hippie van, Travel to New Zealand for a month, and Go windsurfing on the coasts of Southern Spain. Each of these ideas has a significant meaning to me which is why I would want to complete them before i die.
 Romanian, I personally think it is an overlooked language and not many people think of it, not even the country. I remember I was working and a family came in, they had a hard accent that I couldn't pin on it so I asked where they were from, they said Romania. And since then I have wanted to learn Romanian (and in fact have learned some). For the Tango, I have wanted to learn it ever since my sophomore year when I had to present with my friend Penelope, and one of the dances we presented were the "Tango". I loved the music so much and got reminded of it while searching for it (like movies such as "Take the Lead" with Antonio Banderas). The reason for the hippie van is because of how colorful they are. Not only on the outside with all the paintings they can have, but also what is on the inside. Sometimes you can have couches, rugs, disco balls! And it can carry so many people, whenever I see one I get very jealous of the people who have them because now it's rare to find that van. New Zealand would be fun to travel too because of the different climates there. The way it's an island in  the ocean, more isolated, it's very green though near the deserts of Australia, and I find it very exotic. Lastly, I have dreamed this past year to travel to the coasts of Spain to go windsurfing. This is because I have a story that I imagine and in that one, a character I have made goes to Spain on a mission and to cover it, he is a windsurfer; during which I visit and go windsurfing. Hence why windsurfing on the southern coast of Spain if one of my dreams I will pursue and experience before I die. Each of these have their own significance, but not to humanity. These are my own experiences that I want to pursue.  If someone says their own bucket list, I do not think it would effect humanity, though maybe a small percentage who shares the same dreams but not much. The only other way that it would effect humanity is if there was "save the world" which would include humanity, which most of mine are (truthfully) selfish. So, what is the meaning and purpose of my life? It's to fulfill those desires as well as others. Overall though, the meaning of life is to find out what you are truly after, and the purpose of it is to fulfill those needs. 

Pessimists, Optimists, and Opportunists

Utnapishtim replies to Gilgamesh's painful search for immortality with simplicity: "There is no permanence" (106). What this quote is saying for humanity is that we, or anything in fact, cannot live forever or will eventually change so much that . Our world today illustrates the notion of impermanence in more ways than one. Graveyards for example; they are there not only to show what some people think as respect for the dead, but to show us that we will die at some point and there is already location (unless you decide to burn yourself) set up for you. Another way is through language and culture. Over the last centuries cultures and languages have been lost due to time and the technology we have made. An example is cuneiform, it is lost, though it has been the basis for many languages today such as arabic, greek, and in the past latin...etc. Though, latin is now considered dead language because no one speaks it as a national language. 
People wake up every morning to new things that can either change their breakfast or lifestyle. I believe that in the past, people didn't think much about moving forward in technology because they just wanted to get through their day as the way it was. Egyptians for example were always using bronze and liked it until the Hyksos took over and showed them iron. And if it weren't for them, I can say that the Egyptians would not have found iron for another dynasty or two because they had such a good lifestyle (granted that their location was next to the nile giving them an advantage over other nations). But in todays modern world, the only thing we look forward to is technology. Medical technology, Cinema technology, Military technology; people want to make things easier so they can relax or in other words, be lazy. The people look forward to it because they know what is coming before it actually hits and they can be prepared for it with either a smile, or giant posters saying "Strike!". 
It is said by many people that we are going to die in 2012 because the mayan calendar ends and the planets will align perfectly (makes me think that someone ripped off Hercules...), but a new study shows that we will die in 3.7 billion years. Happily, I will [hopefully] not be alive then. But when people know when their death is or hear about it or see it, they can either think two things, life is meaningless, or it does have some meaning. For the people who think it is meaningless they have a right to think so because we will eventually all die in the end - this is known as the pessimistic view of everything. But for the people who think there is meaning even with death guaranteed on our plates, they would be considered opportunists and/or optimists. To them, it gives life more meaning because in our "small little world" we have so much we can do. Accomplishment is the key word, even to the pessimists. At the end of the day we all feel accomplished that we have either finished this assignment or walked to the car, even subconsciously or to the point that we don't acknowledge it till days or years. later. This is the meaning of life for all people. 

As mortal beings, we create a sense of order by our justice and law system. 

People who defy it are called rebels but to me, they are considered "rare" compared to the people who follow the justice system/law. As it started back with Hammurabi's law and people eventually changed it with time but kept in mind that we all have a code to follow. Do right, and don't do anything against the law, despite weather you think it is right or wrong. To create a sense of eternal life, we today have advanced much in technology but it also, like the law, it started all the way back to Egyptian times. They started it with mummifying, though it was only for the pharaohs, they believed that once they were buried with their things and encased in gold, they would move on though with the promise of eternal life. And today we have created wrinkle creams and surgeries to make is so that we can "reverse back time" on how we look; creating an illusion that we can live forever, when we can't. Fame also has a big effect because they promote it with their looks and making themselves look younger which make people want everlasting life more. 

Though, as Utnapishtim said, "There is no permanence" (106) nothing can stay forever, it eventually changes or gets forgotten completely. 

The Pressure of being called a "Hero(ine)"

Let me first start off with what I think a Hero is. A hero is a person who uses their own qualities to overcome something they had previously feared or thought they would never overcome. It can be from the simplest thing like getting over a talent that someone else possesses but you do not have or a complicated maze that has dragons in it and you have to go through it in five minutes. 

Still though, the most popular knowledge of the word "hero(ine)" though is some one who is mythological or legendary who has great strength and/or ability. 

The people today, including myself, all have nearly the same idea of what a heroic act or behavior is. We think a hero is someone who is courageous and stands up for what is right, and/or helps people in need; an example would be a 9/11 firefighter or Superman.

Women are heroes, though they are called a heroines and over the last couple of generations people are starting to believe that more and more; Oprah, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sally Ride, etc... The problem here is that there aren't many because we have it already locked in our minds that men are hero's due to our past. Take Mesopotamia for example, there were no female rulers because they weren't thought to be fit for war as men were. And when the war's came and the male rulers won them, everyone praised them and not once was there a thought of a woman who could lead an army; they were only looked at as a prize or someone to take care of a family. This thought kept women in this line until around the 1920's when there was a equal rights amendment for both men and women. Since it was so early, people(mainly men and still some women) had to get used to the idea of female heroines. It took many years until "heroine" started to get familiarized with people, and it still is today. Classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter, The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, or movies like Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings. Most of these books and movies took place in a time period where women weren't looked on as heroines and only as family keepers. And all of them have a main male hero. The authors weren't used to the fact that females were heroines then, only as either a family keeper or a damsel in distress. In these movies/books, not all of the male characters posed as "heroes" are actually heroes. Take Huckleberry Finn for example, he is a boy who fights for himself and ends up running away from his father because he doesn't want to deal with his pressures. He runs away and meets up with a runaway slave like Jim. Together they go through their adventures and Huckleberry is looked at as a hero because he helped Jim a lot, but in fact he isn't. People now-a-days say not to run away from you problems, and that is exactly what Finn did.  So is he a hero? In one way yes, but overall no.

Heroes serve multiple purposes but overall, they make something once awful turn into something favorable. And as the world that we live in today, we do desperately need them. We need scientists, engineers, doctors, people who can help others not only with humans, but with animals and our one and only Earth. The way we live is with flaws to what we want to think isn't there but it is truly our nature. We have oil spills like the recent one in the Gulf of Mexico, overpopulation like in China or India, families without food, water, or shelter; it's all of this and more that make us desperate for heroes that we don't have enough of. Bertolt Brecht once said "Unhappy the land that needs heroes." and what he says is right. Places that need heroes, are places that aren't happy with they way things are, places that need help and can't find anything to support them. That's why "land that needs heroes" is true even to us. We, as a country and Earth, are not happy and are devastated; heroes like firefighters, doctors, are truly sad because they help the most unhappy people try to become happy in return for their unhappiness. Our world(or land) is truly, unfortunate.