Susan Lampert Smith begins by blaming modern technology and TV shows for students' lack of civil involvement. I don't quite understand. With new technology it is easier to schedule around entertainment; our little worlds of personal electronics let us run things on our own time. Also, cell phones and other communications technologies can help organize large groups of people, as we saw in the mass twittering phenomena of the most recent election. If today's students really cared about something, technology would not be a deciding force to stop them.
"They care--but not that much." sums up, I think, a more plausible argument for the change in protests. Fewer people have personal connections to this war than did to the Vietnam war. Advances in technology should be giving us even more information, understanding, and cause for protest, but we have so little personal information that it does not make up the difference. To protest effectively, people have to make sacrifices ("Grey's Anatomy" is a pretty mild one), and to be willing to do that, they need to have a personal connection that makes it not just worth it, but necessary and meaningful.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Rites and Credos and Carnivores
First of all, I would like to offer a conditional apology. When I presented Joseph Campbell's sprawling 12-page discourse on The Importance of Rites, I began the discussion with an unsympathetic "So suck it up." I know that many of you actually enjoyed it, and that several of you usually take the time to re-read essays to gain a better understanding of them. This is an essay that all but demands multiple readings, and you only had one night with it. I retract the coolness of my reaction insofar as I am able; I made it in jest because I had no idea how you were going to react.
I bring up The Importance of Rites again because it is very directly related to "A Carnivore's Credo", the essay on vegetarianism we read for class last Thursday. Roger Scruton dissects the sense of moral guilt we as humans feel toward eating meat, and proposes that for many thousands of years we have relieved this in how we care for animals and respect them in death.
This is exactly the kind of rite Joseph Campbell was talking about.
A key concept in Campbell's argument is the idea of the "great mystery," the thing which is inaccessible and incomprehensible to humans and therefore transcendent of mortal life. He discusses how different cultures have different focuses on the mystery due to different ways of life--the farming culture hallows the fertile earth, the culture of discovery (e.g. rising Mesopotamia or Renaissance Europe) has a fascination with the heavens.
The fundamental purpose of religion, the "deeper meaning", is not moral in nature. Morality becomes an important part of religion because religion is a very effective way to communicate cultural values (the "payload" in the essay "Lies We Tell Kids"), but by this same function morality in religion is extremely relative to time and place. Religion's deepest meaning, the one for which it probably arose, is linked to the great mystery. What religion is about, or should be about, or has been intended to be about, is simply how to live; how to survive as a human, even in the presence of the unknown and overwhelming. The primary function of religion is to transform the great mystery and the powerful fear we experience at being left in the dark into reverence and certainty.
The earliest human cultures were hunters and gatherers, so our fascination with the animals that die to sustain us is the mystery at the heart of the oldest spiritual systems. Our relationship to animals is crucial to the understanding of our own nature. We condemn human murder, so why is it OK to kill animals? How are we different from them? As humans, we possess self-consciousness, and that gives us the obligation to reflect on our actions and take responsibility for them. We can recognize the gravity of death and killing, yet we kill living things to physically survive. (Animals have always been more worrysome to us than plants because we ourselves are animals.)
We can't deal with it ethically; we have developed evolutionarily to eat meat, and that is outside of the control granted by our self-consciousness. (Yes, now we can make the choice not to eat animals, but most early humans depended on meat as a source of food, and even today we cannot change the fact that our bodies are suited to it.) We can't deal with it or understand it morally, so we philosophized and created myths and rites to reinforce it and integrate it into our culture. The ethical treatment of animals and the gratitude and honor we show at meals of their flesh is a recognition of the ethical discrepancy. By treating their remains with respect, almost as we would our own, by affirming the value of a life that has passed and not merely been lost, we retain our human dignity.
I bring up The Importance of Rites again because it is very directly related to "A Carnivore's Credo", the essay on vegetarianism we read for class last Thursday. Roger Scruton dissects the sense of moral guilt we as humans feel toward eating meat, and proposes that for many thousands of years we have relieved this in how we care for animals and respect them in death.
This is exactly the kind of rite Joseph Campbell was talking about.
A key concept in Campbell's argument is the idea of the "great mystery," the thing which is inaccessible and incomprehensible to humans and therefore transcendent of mortal life. He discusses how different cultures have different focuses on the mystery due to different ways of life--the farming culture hallows the fertile earth, the culture of discovery (e.g. rising Mesopotamia or Renaissance Europe) has a fascination with the heavens.
The fundamental purpose of religion, the "deeper meaning", is not moral in nature. Morality becomes an important part of religion because religion is a very effective way to communicate cultural values (the "payload" in the essay "Lies We Tell Kids"), but by this same function morality in religion is extremely relative to time and place. Religion's deepest meaning, the one for which it probably arose, is linked to the great mystery. What religion is about, or should be about, or has been intended to be about, is simply how to live; how to survive as a human, even in the presence of the unknown and overwhelming. The primary function of religion is to transform the great mystery and the powerful fear we experience at being left in the dark into reverence and certainty.
The earliest human cultures were hunters and gatherers, so our fascination with the animals that die to sustain us is the mystery at the heart of the oldest spiritual systems. Our relationship to animals is crucial to the understanding of our own nature. We condemn human murder, so why is it OK to kill animals? How are we different from them? As humans, we possess self-consciousness, and that gives us the obligation to reflect on our actions and take responsibility for them. We can recognize the gravity of death and killing, yet we kill living things to physically survive. (Animals have always been more worrysome to us than plants because we ourselves are animals.)
We can't deal with it ethically; we have developed evolutionarily to eat meat, and that is outside of the control granted by our self-consciousness. (Yes, now we can make the choice not to eat animals, but most early humans depended on meat as a source of food, and even today we cannot change the fact that our bodies are suited to it.) We can't deal with it or understand it morally, so we philosophized and created myths and rites to reinforce it and integrate it into our culture. The ethical treatment of animals and the gratitude and honor we show at meals of their flesh is a recognition of the ethical discrepancy. By treating their remains with respect, almost as we would our own, by affirming the value of a life that has passed and not merely been lost, we retain our human dignity.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Blog log help, please!
Hello, fellow AP Compers.
I began this blog ignorant of my "blog log" responsibilities, so I am trying to catch up on my records. I'm having trouble tracking down all of my comments, though, so I would like your help if you would be so kind. If you know I commented on one of your posts, just tell me which one by responding here or emailing me.
Also, I would like to use this as an opportunity to remind you to update your blogrolls so that newcomers can benefit from your wisdom.
Thank you.
I began this blog ignorant of my "blog log" responsibilities, so I am trying to catch up on my records. I'm having trouble tracking down all of my comments, though, so I would like your help if you would be so kind. If you know I commented on one of your posts, just tell me which one by responding here or emailing me.
Also, I would like to use this as an opportunity to remind you to update your blogrolls so that newcomers can benefit from your wisdom.
Thank you.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Geekery part III: Semantics to Vocabulary
I've finally decided to divide this into three posts so you may skim or ignore as you like.
I think that vocabulary must affect our thinking, too. In English, the words gratitude, gratification, and gratuitous have very different meanings, but they all come from the same Latin root. The Romans, then, when they exercised their social niceties with the "Thank you" phrase "Tibi gratias ago," had more associations with the ideas we might call pleasure, prosperity, and goodwill than with ideas we would call thanksgiving or gratitude.
Words are a shorthand way for us to think of and express the complex and formless concepts in our heads, so they often take on cultural connotations as well. When we begin to manipulate ideas in our heads, we are more likely to use ideas or sets of ideas connected to the words in our language than to come up with something completely new, even if we are not "thinking in words."
The Latin word anima denotes the seat of human sentience and feeling. We have no single English word that directly translates. Anima is a combination of our ideas of heart, mind, and soul, which are separate in our language and in turn have cultural connotations that are not present in the Latin anima. As English thinkers, we concern ourselves separately with minds, hearts, and souls, not animae.
Tibi multas gratias, and thank you to any and all besides Mr. Kunkle who have read this far. You are awesomer in the eyes of Thoth for having done so.
I think that vocabulary must affect our thinking, too. In English, the words gratitude, gratification, and gratuitous have very different meanings, but they all come from the same Latin root. The Romans, then, when they exercised their social niceties with the "Thank you" phrase "Tibi gratias ago," had more associations with the ideas we might call pleasure, prosperity, and goodwill than with ideas we would call thanksgiving or gratitude.
Words are a shorthand way for us to think of and express the complex and formless concepts in our heads, so they often take on cultural connotations as well. When we begin to manipulate ideas in our heads, we are more likely to use ideas or sets of ideas connected to the words in our language than to come up with something completely new, even if we are not "thinking in words."
The Latin word anima denotes the seat of human sentience and feeling. We have no single English word that directly translates. Anima is a combination of our ideas of heart, mind, and soul, which are separate in our language and in turn have cultural connotations that are not present in the Latin anima. As English thinkers, we concern ourselves separately with minds, hearts, and souls, not animae.
Tibi multas gratias, and thank you to any and all besides Mr. Kunkle who have read this far. You are awesomer in the eyes of Thoth for having done so.
Geekery, cont.
After Stefanie's comment I realize that I didn't quite accomplish what I set out to do with my last post, so here is a hearty supplement. I will continue to use Latin examples because it is the only non-English language in which I feel I have some grammatical authority. Sorry, Spanish students, I'm neither as normal nor as practical as you, and you have my respect.
What I mean by "an effect on how we associate ideas" is something like this:
The Latin verb curo means "care for." Not "care," like the English verb, but "care for." The prepositional idea of "for" is part of the verb. Curo can take a direct object in the objective [1] case with no preposition or inflection. This means that in Latin, the idea of caring is much closer to the direction of the action than in English. When a Roman used the word for "care," it was assumed that there was a person or object receiving the care. There was more emphasis on the receiver, and maybe less on the giver, than there is in English.
We have something similar with some English verbs, although we still say the preposition. Take the phrase "fed up." The verb "fed" doesn't have the same meaning if it is not used with the preposition; they are linked into one idea. A sentence using "fed up" sounds strange and clumsy if you treat "up" as a normal preposition and separate it from the verb: That is the sort of mean-spirited criticism up with which I am fed. [2]
In general, we are a preposition-happy language, which means we isolate ideas from verbs into prepositional phrases. Latin is verb-friendly: the verb often has meanings other than the action attached, and many more words in any given sentence will be somehow directly associated with the verb. Just think about it. It's fascinating, really.
[1] Actually the accusative case in Latin, but objective is the English equivalent here. Most of you probably don't care either way, hence the footnoteage.
[2] Winston Churchill's rebuttal upon being corrected for less-than-perfect preposition placement.
What I mean by "an effect on how we associate ideas" is something like this:
The Latin verb curo means "care for." Not "care," like the English verb, but "care for." The prepositional idea of "for" is part of the verb. Curo can take a direct object in the objective [1] case with no preposition or inflection. This means that in Latin, the idea of caring is much closer to the direction of the action than in English. When a Roman used the word for "care," it was assumed that there was a person or object receiving the care. There was more emphasis on the receiver, and maybe less on the giver, than there is in English.
We have something similar with some English verbs, although we still say the preposition. Take the phrase "fed up." The verb "fed" doesn't have the same meaning if it is not used with the preposition; they are linked into one idea. A sentence using "fed up" sounds strange and clumsy if you treat "up" as a normal preposition and separate it from the verb: That is the sort of mean-spirited criticism up with which I am fed. [2]
In general, we are a preposition-happy language, which means we isolate ideas from verbs into prepositional phrases. Latin is verb-friendly: the verb often has meanings other than the action attached, and many more words in any given sentence will be somehow directly associated with the verb. Just think about it. It's fascinating, really.
[1] Actually the accusative case in Latin, but objective is the English equivalent here. Most of you probably don't care either way, hence the footnoteage.
[2] Winston Churchill's rebuttal upon being corrected for less-than-perfect preposition placement.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Warning: This post contains Serious Geekery. (Reader discretion advised.)
In our reading on the history of English, one paragraph in particular struck me as being monumental. The block of text under the heading "The Vikings Simplify English" is fairly modest, but it describes an event which has had a lasting impact not only on the way we write and speak, but also on the way we think.
Take the English sentence, The dog bit the poet. If you were to rearrange at random the words in the sentence, you would get sentences that have different meanings (The poet bit the dog.) and sentences that make no meaning at all (The bit poet dog the.). This is because in English we do not inflect, or change the spellings of, nouns to signify how they function in a sentence. Poet is spelled poet whether he is biting or being bitten.
The result is that in Latin, the order of the words has almost no bearing on their meaning, while in English we are dependent upon sentence structures and forms. Different languages are inflected to different degrees and have extremely different structures. I think it very likely that that these differences have an effect on how we associate ideas, even if we're not consciously making grammatical decisions in our thoughts.
To give another (gratuitous) example: Dixit, et ignotas animum dimittit in artes naturamque novat.
He said he turns his attention to the unknown things in nature and the arts, he shapes his mind anew.
In the Latin order it reads: He said and unknown things mind he turns attention in art nature and he shapes anew. Two distinct clauses, completely violated and mangled into one formless conglomerate. WTF Ovid!?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Go back into the water.
Pill bugs. I don't know why, but pill bugs. Maybe it's not explicitly a "fear," but I have an extreme aversion to them which extends into complete unwillingness to condone their presence. I am uncomfortable so long as they are within my sight or there is the possibility of physical contact.
Other people think they're cute, and actually play with them, prodding them until they roll up into little grey bundles. I would gladly welcome the power to remain indifferent. But then again, other people fear spiders while I enjoy arachnid company.
That's the thing, isn't it? Spiders are arachnids. They are meant to dwell on land and in dusty corners, among us humans. Pill bugs are crustaceans. They belong in the sea, and they know it, so I wish they'd end this little charade. On land they are grotesquely smooth and soft and wet, like little ambulatory boils wriggling through rot and crawling concealed through damp decay.
Other people think they're cute, and actually play with them, prodding them until they roll up into little grey bundles. I would gladly welcome the power to remain indifferent. But then again, other people fear spiders while I enjoy arachnid company.
That's the thing, isn't it? Spiders are arachnids. They are meant to dwell on land and in dusty corners, among us humans. Pill bugs are crustaceans. They belong in the sea, and they know it, so I wish they'd end this little charade. On land they are grotesquely smooth and soft and wet, like little ambulatory boils wriggling through rot and crawling concealed through damp decay.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
A week ago I was playing my violin. When I had finished and put away my instrument, I walked into the living room and found my parents both watching a television program pasted together from bits of handheld camera footage of the September 11 attacks. I felt strongly compelled to sit down and watch with them, and as I did so I was impressed with the unfortunate irony of my abridged perceptions of that day.
On September 11, 2001, I was being driven to a violin lesson when my mother told me about the attacks. I just remember thinking, this is a lot bigger than I think it is. I knew then that I didn't understand. They had happened while I was at school, and no one had told me or my classmates. I did not see the news reports or watch with the rest of the country as the second tower was hit. All the adults around me hid their reactions. I did not know that three thousand people were dying, and that thousands more were being choked by smoke and debris as their lives were changed forever. I saw all of that, the real people and their responses, for the first time eight years after the fact. I realized that the desire to protect me had backfired.
I was nine years old and at a complete loss; nothing I had experienced had prepared me to judge anything of that magnitude and complexity. Because I didn't see adult reactions to the attacks, I didn't know how to react. Because I didn't see the attacks themselves, they had always seemed somewhat remote to me, like something from a history book. By most adults I was shielded from all but the shallowest implications and displays of paper patriotism, and I took the attacks only as seriously as they were presented to me. For some time I regarded them with a degree of cynicism, of which I slowly came to be ashamed as years passed. Now that attitude seems disgusting and alien to me, but I have no individual to blame but myself. I was nine years old, and people had to deal with my reactions as well as their own. I' m just glad that I have come around to some sort of understanding, broken as it is, after eight year
On September 11, 2001, I was being driven to a violin lesson when my mother told me about the attacks. I just remember thinking, this is a lot bigger than I think it is. I knew then that I didn't understand. They had happened while I was at school, and no one had told me or my classmates. I did not see the news reports or watch with the rest of the country as the second tower was hit. All the adults around me hid their reactions. I did not know that three thousand people were dying, and that thousands more were being choked by smoke and debris as their lives were changed forever. I saw all of that, the real people and their responses, for the first time eight years after the fact. I realized that the desire to protect me had backfired.
I was nine years old and at a complete loss; nothing I had experienced had prepared me to judge anything of that magnitude and complexity. Because I didn't see adult reactions to the attacks, I didn't know how to react. Because I didn't see the attacks themselves, they had always seemed somewhat remote to me, like something from a history book. By most adults I was shielded from all but the shallowest implications and displays of paper patriotism, and I took the attacks only as seriously as they were presented to me. For some time I regarded them with a degree of cynicism, of which I slowly came to be ashamed as years passed. Now that attitude seems disgusting and alien to me, but I have no individual to blame but myself. I was nine years old, and people had to deal with my reactions as well as their own. I' m just glad that I have come around to some sort of understanding, broken as it is, after eight year
Thursday, September 3, 2009
How I Write
Most of the time, which is to say when I'm writing for school, I really don't write the way Dr. Romano suggests. I write slowly, I think before each phrase and sentence. I consistently do poorly in any sort of situation where I am timed, unless I have had time to think ahead and prepare. When a teacher says, "Pull out you notebooks! We're going to write about -- now!" I'm often not in that "writing state of mind." I get lost in the thoughts before I stick them on paper. And how will I have time to revise and rewrite if I'm turning it in in five, ten minutes?
The subject matters, I think. I mean, just how passionate can one be, within the realm of decency, when one is writing about vacuum filtration in alum synthesis? A-Rod wasn't looking for me to rhapsodize. On the other hand, that sort of passion might create the sort of ease and fluidity that is valued in any writing, without necessarily a flowery aspect.
I am capable of the "gush," but people rarely see the result. I abandon it too soon, or devalue it, or decide to keep it to myself. What is beautiful in the park at 10:30 at night is too often garish the next morning. I hope that eventually I will develop a "writing state of mind" that is appropriate and useful in many contexts.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Guns, Germs, and Steel
I have heard many and mixed review of this book, from the former AP student, who groans at its mention, to my father, who has trouble keeping it "in stock" at our house because he is continually gifting it to friends and acquaintances. I now hear my classmates' languishings with some sympathy. Yes, it is a long book, and yes, it could be a third shorter shy the repetitions and reiterations, but it is also a beautiful, evolving masterwork.
In form it is almost 19th-century [1], and the painfully exacting logic which leaves no equid unturned was galling at first, but I began to appreciate it as I took in the vast scope and depth of Diamond's imparted knowledge. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a highly relevant multidisciplinary analysis of our planet: its geography, its inhabitants, and the massively complex underlying movements that got today's societies where we are today. That Diamond was able to make his research, which spans such various fields as biology, sociology, epidemiology, archaeology, and linguistics, at all accessible to the layperson is remarkable.
It saddens me that this book has received criticism for being racist. Diamond has been accused of prescribing racial deficiencies, for example, when he says that Native Americans "failed" to domesticate a local species of apple. This is preposterous. In Diamond's own words, "The objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong." His theory of socioeconomic evolution is not only comparative, but comprehensive. He stresses again and again that, had disparate populations of humans been interchanged in prehistory, or local geographic and ecological conditions been different, Montezuma could very well have sent conquerors to Spain and brutally dethroned King Charles I, instead of the other way around.
In fact, it is the specificity of these contentious illustrative examples which makes Guns, Germs, and Steel so interesting and valuable. The sections which absorbed me the most were always the stories of real people and peoples, some of whom my Euro-centric upbringing had not even seen fit to mention. This book is very scientific, almost mathematical, in nature, but it was conceived and driven by a passion for human understanding. It shows the tribes and nations and races of our world not as alien curiosities, but as the cultural and material sums of millions of years of interaction with their environments. I believe that it is at least as significant, if not more so, for this image, as it is for its charts of cereals and carbon dates.
[1] On the Origin of Species could have been a pamphlet.
In form it is almost 19th-century [1], and the painfully exacting logic which leaves no equid unturned was galling at first, but I began to appreciate it as I took in the vast scope and depth of Diamond's imparted knowledge. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a highly relevant multidisciplinary analysis of our planet: its geography, its inhabitants, and the massively complex underlying movements that got today's societies where we are today. That Diamond was able to make his research, which spans such various fields as biology, sociology, epidemiology, archaeology, and linguistics, at all accessible to the layperson is remarkable.
It saddens me that this book has received criticism for being racist. Diamond has been accused of prescribing racial deficiencies, for example, when he says that Native Americans "failed" to domesticate a local species of apple. This is preposterous. In Diamond's own words, "The objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong." His theory of socioeconomic evolution is not only comparative, but comprehensive. He stresses again and again that, had disparate populations of humans been interchanged in prehistory, or local geographic and ecological conditions been different, Montezuma could very well have sent conquerors to Spain and brutally dethroned King Charles I, instead of the other way around.
In fact, it is the specificity of these contentious illustrative examples which makes Guns, Germs, and Steel so interesting and valuable. The sections which absorbed me the most were always the stories of real people and peoples, some of whom my Euro-centric upbringing had not even seen fit to mention. This book is very scientific, almost mathematical, in nature, but it was conceived and driven by a passion for human understanding. It shows the tribes and nations and races of our world not as alien curiosities, but as the cultural and material sums of millions of years of interaction with their environments. I believe that it is at least as significant, if not more so, for this image, as it is for its charts of cereals and carbon dates.
[1] On the Origin of Species could have been a pamphlet.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Yes, probably. Or at least it is making us shallow and diffuse. I too have been worrying about my changing reading habits, and it is refreshing to hear an adult admit to his own waning attention rather than pawning off his concerns on "today's youth."As a prerequisite to the course I took at Northwestern University this summer, I had to take a "web fluency" seminar, conducted entirely online. Many of the assignments, and all of the quizzes and exams, were timed. Although I feel I benefited from exercises, it bothered me that in almost all cases the information itself was secondary to the skills I was learning. It is as if all summer I have been living a double life as I switch between two ways of thinking.
I have also noticed that I write very differently in different media. When I write using a pencil and paper, I always feel more connected to my work. I need to carefully consider what I write before I write it because I cannot simply strike a key to change it or interchange sentences and paragraphs at whim. For this reason, I often write out my more important assignments and more personally valuable works longhand. When I type them into a computer, it is a part of rewriting and editing process. For me, this blog feels yet one more step removed. It is ethereal and transient, and consequently I tend to be lazy and careless with it.
I used thesaurus.reference.com to find the word "diffuse" for the second sentence of this post. I was not being stupid. I know the word diffuse, and I knew I wanted to use it, but I couldn't quite place it in my mind. It would have taken me some time to remember it or use a physical text to find it. Most people would deem this particular use of the internet "defensible," but soon thereafter the line blurs. Reference.com is meant to be used--well, as a reference. But the internet automatically changes any material into quick reference: it is there, not as a whole, but as a collection of phrases, bits of information to be sifted and siphoned by undiscerning browsers. The main substance of any length of writing lies in the connection and ordering of ideas. The "search" and "find" functions ultimately destroy the text as a cohesive entity and thereby obviate the authorship.
Carr has a point, though, in discussing past resistance to technologies we now take for granted. We can never see ahead, and there will always be late and early adapters. We can, however, be cautious and open-minded when considering how new technologies are shaping our culture. Each of us, individually, holds the power to become become a pancake or not. I still read books and long articles. Hell, I still memorize. I also use the internet frequently and extensively, and I feel I have benefited. Kudos to all of you who made it this far, who read this as a whole and not the sum of its parts, as well as to those of you who faithfully read the mouseover text on webcomics. Extra points for the use of the word "gewgaws."
http://baryka.blogspot.com/2007/05/and-he-ate-only-pops-that-were-lolly.html
I have also noticed that I write very differently in different media. When I write using a pencil and paper, I always feel more connected to my work. I need to carefully consider what I write before I write it because I cannot simply strike a key to change it or interchange sentences and paragraphs at whim. For this reason, I often write out my more important assignments and more personally valuable works longhand. When I type them into a computer, it is a part of rewriting and editing process. For me, this blog feels yet one more step removed. It is ethereal and transient, and consequently I tend to be lazy and careless with it.
I used thesaurus.reference.com to find the word "diffuse" for the second sentence of this post. I was not being stupid. I know the word diffuse, and I knew I wanted to use it, but I couldn't quite place it in my mind. It would have taken me some time to remember it or use a physical text to find it. Most people would deem this particular use of the internet "defensible," but soon thereafter the line blurs. Reference.com is meant to be used--well, as a reference. But the internet automatically changes any material into quick reference: it is there, not as a whole, but as a collection of phrases, bits of information to be sifted and siphoned by undiscerning browsers. The main substance of any length of writing lies in the connection and ordering of ideas. The "search" and "find" functions ultimately destroy the text as a cohesive entity and thereby obviate the authorship.
Carr has a point, though, in discussing past resistance to technologies we now take for granted. We can never see ahead, and there will always be late and early adapters. We can, however, be cautious and open-minded when considering how new technologies are shaping our culture. Each of us, individually, holds the power to become become a pancake or not. I still read books and long articles. Hell, I still memorize. I also use the internet frequently and extensively, and I feel I have benefited. Kudos to all of you who made it this far, who read this as a whole and not the sum of its parts, as well as to those of you who faithfully read the mouseover text on webcomics. Extra points for the use of the word "gewgaws."
http://baryka.blogspot.com/2007/05/and-he-ate-only-pops-that-were-lolly.html
Responce to Wollstonecraft excerpt
This was a bit of a shock after the meticulously logical (as well as modern) outline of Guns, Germs, and Steel. The title and date lead me to expect a carefully structured academic argument, not such a personal essay. Although I enjoyed a few of Wollstonecraft's more artful phrases (eg. "out Quixote Cervantes"), I at times found her argument difficult to follow when she began to discuss what she might have written instead, or why she wasn't going to write about a topic about which she was writing. Most aggravating were the tangential supporting arguments she squished in around the corners. Many of her metaphysical ponderings about the nature of love and evil did eventually relate back to her arguments for the moral capacities of women, but they were not always presented in an effective way, or even in one contiguous piece.
The greatest criticism I have of the substance of this essay is that it focuses exclusively on the upper class and bourgeoisie. Wollstonecraft names idleness, preoccupation with appearance, and lack of education as deficiencies in the required feminine character. During the late 18th century, a woman of the lower class could not afford idleness or a "fondness for dress." Education would be out of the question for her; her husband and sons would be lucky to be literate. In the lower class, sexism usually extended to subordination and condescension without the insulting pampering.
Wollstonecraft's social exclusivity is not the only indication that her mode of thought is strongly flavoured by the principles of the Enlightenment. The terms "natural" and "instinctive" are used numerous times throughout the essay as she asks the reader what is quintessentially "feminine." At a time when intellectuals were seeking the "natural" solutions to everything, and "natural" often meant "intended by God," it was easy for philosophers like Rousseau to leave women out of a social revolution by explaining that the natural, and therefore best, social structure places women below men, where they can best express their natural qualities of gentle deference. Wollstonecraft's refutation of "nurture" rather than "nature" must have been wildly unpopular. She clearly supports "natural" religious virtue for humankind as a whole, but refuses to accept double moral and social standards for the sexes. However, she chose to chop this provocative assertion up into little bits wedged into remote parts of the essay, and she rarely committed to more than rhetorical supposition. Was she trying to placate less receptive readers by interspersing it with the more familiar ethical preaching?
To do every thing in an orderly manner, is a most important precept, which women, who, generally speaking, receive only a disorderly kind of education, seldom attend to with that degree of exactness, that men who from their infancy are broken into method, observe.So maybe it's not her fault. Or maybe people in general just didn't write in such an "orderly manner" during her time.
The greatest criticism I have of the substance of this essay is that it focuses exclusively on the upper class and bourgeoisie. Wollstonecraft names idleness, preoccupation with appearance, and lack of education as deficiencies in the required feminine character. During the late 18th century, a woman of the lower class could not afford idleness or a "fondness for dress." Education would be out of the question for her; her husband and sons would be lucky to be literate. In the lower class, sexism usually extended to subordination and condescension without the insulting pampering.
Wollstonecraft's social exclusivity is not the only indication that her mode of thought is strongly flavoured by the principles of the Enlightenment. The terms "natural" and "instinctive" are used numerous times throughout the essay as she asks the reader what is quintessentially "feminine." At a time when intellectuals were seeking the "natural" solutions to everything, and "natural" often meant "intended by God," it was easy for philosophers like Rousseau to leave women out of a social revolution by explaining that the natural, and therefore best, social structure places women below men, where they can best express their natural qualities of gentle deference. Wollstonecraft's refutation of "nurture" rather than "nature" must have been wildly unpopular. She clearly supports "natural" religious virtue for humankind as a whole, but refuses to accept double moral and social standards for the sexes. However, she chose to chop this provocative assertion up into little bits wedged into remote parts of the essay, and she rarely committed to more than rhetorical supposition. Was she trying to placate less receptive readers by interspersing it with the more familiar ethical preaching?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Skunk Dreams Response
I have never particularly disliked skunks (I actually rather like their smell, from a great distance), but I can't honestly say that I have ever thought of them as being spiritually transcendent.
Louise Erdrich writes universally, "The obstacles we overcome define us." In her own experience, she wants to preserve beyond her death the self she has created by laboring through obstacles. However, her desire itself forms another obstacle, similar to the fencing around the preserved wilderness of the game park. She encounters the impermeable barrier even in her dreams, which mirror her waking life rather than a disembodied afterlife without limits.
The author imagines that the skunk also has dreams similar to its waking life (although she admits she can't be sure). The skunk, on the other hand, sees no obstacles in either realm. It passes through the fences, does as it pleases, and does not fear death.
Erdrich carefully details her changing definition of out, which is similar to the skunk's ellusive state of serenity. It represents her maturing thirst for something greater and freer than her limited human experience. At first the only place she identifies as out is her childhood home, the familiar and obviously expansive West. Later, she learns to accept the new and complex environment of the Northeast even though it lacks the drama she required as a teenager. When she finally discovers and enters the game park from her dream, she defines out as in. Rather than looking outside herself for an afterlife, she finds preservance by overcoming her inner obstacles. She has gained the Confidence of the Skunk.
Louise Erdrich writes universally, "The obstacles we overcome define us." In her own experience, she wants to preserve beyond her death the self she has created by laboring through obstacles. However, her desire itself forms another obstacle, similar to the fencing around the preserved wilderness of the game park. She encounters the impermeable barrier even in her dreams, which mirror her waking life rather than a disembodied afterlife without limits.
The author imagines that the skunk also has dreams similar to its waking life (although she admits she can't be sure). The skunk, on the other hand, sees no obstacles in either realm. It passes through the fences, does as it pleases, and does not fear death.
Erdrich carefully details her changing definition of out, which is similar to the skunk's ellusive state of serenity. It represents her maturing thirst for something greater and freer than her limited human experience. At first the only place she identifies as out is her childhood home, the familiar and obviously expansive West. Later, she learns to accept the new and complex environment of the Northeast even though it lacks the drama she required as a teenager. When she finally discovers and enters the game park from her dream, she defines out as in. Rather than looking outside herself for an afterlife, she finds preservance by overcoming her inner obstacles. She has gained the Confidence of the Skunk.
Friday, July 3, 2009
"Talk of the Town" Response
Please bear with me, as I have recently suffered a mild, jazz-related head injury.
I think that this article made a very pointed statement about how our society deals with violence. After a horrific shooting, people always look around for something to blame. They argue that it was the shooter's parents or classmates that pushed him over the edge, or vehemently condemn violence in media. While some of these claims may have bearing on a particular case, they lose sight of the larger issue. I agree, in fact I strongly believe, that the mechanics and values of a society can manifest themselves as domestic concerns. The problem I see with our society concerning guns is that we are so uncomfortable discussing certain aspects of the issue that we have failed to initiate an effective solution.
I find Tim Kaine's statement to be naive and destructive. The family members do need to be comforted for their terrible losses, the community does need to heal, and to do that they need to be allowed to ask questions and to look for the answers. The imposed squeamishness of outsiders is selfish. It is wrong and hurtful to require silence, to stunt our own growth, just so we can spare our own, far-removed feelings. Discouraging productive political discussion about guns is setting up the community--or the one next door, or across the country--to be hurt again.
OH. There's another article. I'd better read that.
My reaction to the second article is similar. It is another example of Americans dangerously mishandling a destructive event, but on a much larger scale. Once again people were more concerned with comfort than with practical safety measures, and the government's official attitude was coddling rather than constructive. I remember well my own thoughts and experiences in the aftermath of the catastrophe: my mother picked me up from school to take me to a violin lesson and was shocked and angry to find that I had been told nothing at school. In the following weeks I looked and listened and asked for what was being done to help the thousands dead and injured and hurt by loss, and I found sad paper flags and impersonal kind words.
We need more than flags and words. Our first reaction as a country should not be to step away from our problems and hide in our self-image. The farther we bury our heads in "self-righteous drivel" and the blinder parts of "deeply American belief," the less likely we are to rationally examine the success of European gun laws or understand Middle-Eastern suicide bombings.
I think that this article made a very pointed statement about how our society deals with violence. After a horrific shooting, people always look around for something to blame. They argue that it was the shooter's parents or classmates that pushed him over the edge, or vehemently condemn violence in media. While some of these claims may have bearing on a particular case, they lose sight of the larger issue. I agree, in fact I strongly believe, that the mechanics and values of a society can manifest themselves as domestic concerns. The problem I see with our society concerning guns is that we are so uncomfortable discussing certain aspects of the issue that we have failed to initiate an effective solution.
I find Tim Kaine's statement to be naive and destructive. The family members do need to be comforted for their terrible losses, the community does need to heal, and to do that they need to be allowed to ask questions and to look for the answers. The imposed squeamishness of outsiders is selfish. It is wrong and hurtful to require silence, to stunt our own growth, just so we can spare our own, far-removed feelings. Discouraging productive political discussion about guns is setting up the community--or the one next door, or across the country--to be hurt again.
OH. There's another article. I'd better read that.
My reaction to the second article is similar. It is another example of Americans dangerously mishandling a destructive event, but on a much larger scale. Once again people were more concerned with comfort than with practical safety measures, and the government's official attitude was coddling rather than constructive. I remember well my own thoughts and experiences in the aftermath of the catastrophe: my mother picked me up from school to take me to a violin lesson and was shocked and angry to find that I had been told nothing at school. In the following weeks I looked and listened and asked for what was being done to help the thousands dead and injured and hurt by loss, and I found sad paper flags and impersonal kind words.
We need more than flags and words. Our first reaction as a country should not be to step away from our problems and hide in our self-image. The farther we bury our heads in "self-righteous drivel" and the blinder parts of "deeply American belief," the less likely we are to rationally examine the success of European gun laws or understand Middle-Eastern suicide bombings.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
About Me
Hello, fellow Comp bloggers. I'm off to a late start already, I'm afraid, because of a devilish combination of technical difficulties and lazy frustration. I unfortunately lack the direction to announce that I intend to become a doctor or a journalist, but I will attempt to introduce myself to you by way of my more immediate activities.
One of my greatest loves is music. My main instruments are piano, violin, bassoon, and baritone, and I have dabbled in many others. I compose as well. This summer, I am playing in three musical groups: my father's Dixieland jazzband, the McFarland Community Band, and WSMA State Honors Orchestra. I have just returned from the intensive Honors camp, which lasted three days and included 22 hours of rehearsal. Yes, I am joyful to be back among the living.
I also love the written word, which is why I am taking this class and why I don't mind in the slightest that the Academic Decathlon selection for this year is A Tale of Two Cities.
My least desirable summer activity will be a three-week accelerated calculus course at Northwestern University. I have no great passion for math, but that is precisely the reason I am pursuing it early. I don't relish the thought of taking it next school year and neglecting it in favor of AP Comp, AP Euro, and Latin IV. Unfortunately, my solution has a downside as well: I doubt that while I'm in Illinois for three weeks taking integrals and whatnot I will also be blogging and writing essays.
I suppose I should finish off with some of the old standards. I am currently 16 years old (but only for another two weeks), I live with my mother, father, and paternal grandmother, and I have an older brother named Autumn who recently graduated from UW Madison. I also have some fish, who are all nameless. But don't worry, I name plenty of inanimate objects to make up for them.
One of my greatest loves is music. My main instruments are piano, violin, bassoon, and baritone, and I have dabbled in many others. I compose as well. This summer, I am playing in three musical groups: my father's Dixieland jazzband, the McFarland Community Band, and WSMA State Honors Orchestra. I have just returned from the intensive Honors camp, which lasted three days and included 22 hours of rehearsal. Yes, I am joyful to be back among the living.
I also love the written word, which is why I am taking this class and why I don't mind in the slightest that the Academic Decathlon selection for this year is A Tale of Two Cities.
My least desirable summer activity will be a three-week accelerated calculus course at Northwestern University. I have no great passion for math, but that is precisely the reason I am pursuing it early. I don't relish the thought of taking it next school year and neglecting it in favor of AP Comp, AP Euro, and Latin IV. Unfortunately, my solution has a downside as well: I doubt that while I'm in Illinois for three weeks taking integrals and whatnot I will also be blogging and writing essays.
I suppose I should finish off with some of the old standards. I am currently 16 years old (but only for another two weeks), I live with my mother, father, and paternal grandmother, and I have an older brother named Autumn who recently graduated from UW Madison. I also have some fish, who are all nameless. But don't worry, I name plenty of inanimate objects to make up for them.
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