John+T.+White's+Page

** John T. White **
 * This I Believe **



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The First Amendment to the US Constitution states, and I quote: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof; nor abridging the freedom of speech, nor of the press, nor the right of the people peaceably to assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” These words were intended to lay down, unequivocally and for all time, those basic freedoms which were to be forever known as “inalienable human rights.” As such, it is disturbing to me that a landlord or a property manager can, without any fear of the law, dictate how a tenant displays articles of their own faith. While admittedly there is something of a loophole (it is not Congress, after all, making these rules, but the property manager) I believe that such policies are a violation of the spirit of the Bill of Rights none the less.



Let’s back up for a moment and put this issue in a more human context. I’m a Buddhist, and, while I freely admit that I am not the most devout traveler on the path to Nirvana, I do follow certain beliefs and practices. One practice that has always held a great deal of significance for me is the flying of Buddhist prayer flags. Buddhist prayer flags are intended to be flown outside, where the wind can carry their mantras to the world (rather than the human voice). Yet as a property renter I am not allowed to hang my prayer flags outside my apartment because the ceiling in front of my apartment is not my own personal private property. To my mind this policy is a direct prohibition upon the free exercise of my faith, of my religion.



So, if this policy is, in fact, totally legal (and if free exercise of religion is truly an inalienable human right), what am I supposed to conclude? The only logical answer is that humanity is tied to the ownership of property in this country. Yet the US Constitution deliberately changed the phrase “…life, liberty, and property…” to the phrase “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” Are renters of property, thus, less than human? I believe that we are not, and furthermore I believe that policies which restrict our free exercise of religion are not only unconstitutional but morally abhorrent as well.

Production Notes: I had the greatest difficulty with the audio editing. I had first intended to use an old headset with microphone which I borrowed from work to record my sound files. This did not work because my computer did not recognize the device. Instead, I used a friend's digital voice recorder. This worked very well, with excellent sound quality being produced. I decided that given this method of recording I would be better off doing everything in one take. Some people have expressed reluctance to do this, but i have experience modulating my voice from my time working in a call center. As a result I found the process of recording a good take fairly easy. Audacity proved to be fairly easy to work in. I pulled in a few musical tracks to see how they would sound with my voice over the top, but could not find one which I felt really did what I needed it to. In the end I simply looped the first segment of a song that had a good sound to it. Since the song changes it's tempo after the point I cut it off, I had a little difficulty getting the loop to sound alright. In the end I simply turned the volume on the musical track down so that my voice covered the points where the loop started over each time. At that point I ran into trouble. I went to mix the tracks and export them as an MP3 and hit a wall. I could not find the correct link to download the MP3 encoding library. I got to the point where I was ready to put my fist through my computer and gave up. I emailed the media lab, and fortunately Tim got back to me with a working link. All that left was the images. The first one I downloaded from my Facebook page, I think it's a good general shot of me. The second I liked because it showed His Holiness with some Buddhist regalia in the background (though as some of you may have noticed this shot is taken inside, so no, those are not the sort of prayer flags I am referring to). I found the image on Goolee Images, after a fair bit of searching for one that didn't include some pale-faced foreign dignitary. I had chosen another picture of me partying to close out the essay, but I decided that it would be more appropriate to show a shot of me meditation. This shot is staged (since I don't usually have a photo crew when I sit down to meditate) but I feel it captures the idea well none the less. Finally, I considered rephrasing the second to last sentence of my first paragraph as you (Dr. Zizzi) suggested. I decided that "their own faith" had a better sound to it than "his or her own faith" and left it as is since there is no gender-neutral singular, third person reference in the English language.