Humanities

Geopolitics child watching                                                             the birth of a new man

The Earthly Way

I am so fragile

Emerging from my cloak

People are coming out to fight

Coming to their country

Seeing who they are.

Holding strength with in

Freeing small amounts at a time

Blood shed all around

Europe so small and insufficient

Causing so much damage

Africa is split up,

Crying,

South America, melting off the earth

America; gaining need, attention, power

Controlling the fate of the world,

Attention is focused

People are watching,

Waiting for the next move

Hoping all will go right.

In the Eyes of the Child

Seeing the death of the world

So scared of the blood

Made to watch

This will be me tomorrow,

Leading the world

Don’t understand,

Why or how

Need to be so much more

The world of tomorrow,

So unknowing

I am in control.

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Omelas seminar reflection

A comment that was made that I disagree with was made by Gregory Wallace. He said that we have never had happiness, and we still have no happiness. I completely disagree with that because I feel that we do have happiness in our modern society. I feel that I am happy even though I have experienced tragedy such as our house fire. I have over come that and I feel that for the most part I have had a happy life. It also depends how you explain happiness and in a starter a little while ago we said that happiness is a long-term pleasure and that pleasure is having a good feeling for a short time. I think that we have all had happiness and it doesn’t depend on how rich or poor we are and we all have different levels of happiness.

Connection

I really feel that this distopian world really relates to the world of Brave New World because there is no real happiness in BNW. Their happiness is run off soma and the world of Omelas’ happiness is based off the sadness of the child. The child is like the soma because they are both controlling the happiness of the community. The people that walk away from Omelas are like John the Savage, because John is free from the society of BNW, and the people that walk away are free from the fake happiness of Omelas.

What's the difference between the people who walk away from Omelas and those who stay?

The people who stay in Omelas

The people that learn to accept that the happiness that they are living off is supplied by a lot of sadness of one child, need to understand that it is not fair for one child’s life to be ruined so they can have unlimited happiness. I feel that it is important for people to understand that in order to completely understand happiness and experience it, then they would have to experience sadness as well.

Those that leave

I feel that the people that leave are better people because they understand that life shouldn’t be all happiness and the sadness can’t just be put on one person. I also believe that the people that walk away come into a world like ours because they will probably feel sadness outside of Omelas. In our world we are all happy and sad throughout our lives.

Questions

Where do all the people go that walk away from Omelas?

How was the little boy chosen?

Was this short story written to resemble our world?

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Being Peace seminar

A comment that I really thought was interesting was mentioned by Ashley, the one that was about the question that said, “would the mindfulness training ideas help us to have a more peaceful world?” She said that it would work if everyone was to commit to these but everyone doesn’t have the time to do that. I feel the same way except that I feel if we were to inform every one of these ideas that world would be peaceful for a year and then it would just go berserk. I say that because the idea would sound grand to a lot of people and then they would become lazy and realize what they really wanted and try and achieve that.

How does this relate to your life if you are not Buddhist?

Even if you are not Buddhist I feel that you can follow most of the mindfulness training rules. I feel that because if these are all ideas that would make the whole world a lot more peaceful, like I said above. This relates to my life because after reading this article I feel like being super peaceful and kind to everyone. If I were to read these rules every day then I would be a lot nicer person.

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I feel that on a daily basis that the average person would be able to use a few of the mindfulness training techniques on a daily basis. I think the third would be good because it says, “Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our views on others…” I think that someone could use that because I feel that people shouldn’t force ideas on others. I also feel that we should follow the fifth because it talks about enjoying life rather than trying to become famous with lots of money “while others are hungry and dying.” I think that this is something that a lot of people try to do but don’t realize how it effects other people. The sixth is also one that people can strive for even if they aren’t Buddhist, because others don’t like it when you take your anger out on them. The eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth talk about being nice to your community and the world. I believe that if the average person could follow these then your world would be a lot better place.

Connections

One connection that I have with this text is with an audio CD that we have. This CD was in a with a religion CD set. I thought it was interesting how different all the religions were but at the same time all had things in common. I found it cool how Buddhism had similarities to anyone, religion or no religion.

Questions

1. One thing that I found confusing about the 14 mindfulness trainings was that in the ninth it says, “We will do our best to speak our about situation of injustice, even when doing so may threaten our safety.” Then in the first one it says, “They are not doctrines to fight, kill or die for.”
2. I don’t understand the idea of interbeing, how the author explains it is confusing. To help me figure this out I could google search it and find out.
3. Which mindfulness training would get you closest to Nirvana.

#2 answer after looking it up.

Interbeing is actually a word made up by the author that relates to “Tiep” and “hien” which mean “to be in touch with”, “to continue”, and “the present time”. Interbeing is a word to describe both of those.

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Roots of War Seminar Reflection

Reaction-

One point that I strongly disagreed with was when Michael said that war is child abuse. I can under stand when a dad goes to war that the child will lose someone very important to them, but not a whole lot of dads will go to war. I can see Michael’s point if he said war is like parent abuse because most people that go to war are in their 20s and I don’t know a lot of 20 year old dad’s. I do know a lot of people in their 20s and their parents would be heart broken if they died in war. I don’t agree with Michael but I can see war being parent abuse.

Changes in thinking-

Before going into the Seminar I believed what it said in the article, if we take away all the weapons then we will be one step closer to ending war, but someone said that if we eliminate all the weapons that we would just resolve problems in economic wars. We would sanction people and eventually we wouldn’t be able to trade with anyone. I changed my thinking by believing that taking away weapons would solve war, but now I think it would result in even greater issues.

Self Evaluation-

Personally I don’t feel that I did that good during this seminar I wasn’t really able to connect to the text that well. I got lost a couple of times during the seminar and didn’t really make any strong points. I kind of just tried to listened to what other people were saying. I feel that I could improve in all the categories but the one I would like to improve in the most would be bringing in a new idea, I think that is a very important part of the seminar. This was not one of my better seminars.

Connections-

Like I said above I didn’t really connect to this article very much. I kept getting lost when reading and it was a challenging article for me to read. 

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Deogratias Seminar Reflection

1.) What was the most interesting idea from the Deogratias Seminar?

I thought that the most interesting idea from the seminar was Alicia’ s point about how Deogratias is a dog. She was saying that dogs are white people’s pets. Deogratias could be referenced a Jonas’ “pet”, because Jonas is controlling what Deogratias does and makes him feel like his dog. I didn’t really understand why he would turn into a dog before the seminar, but now the story makes more sense and I understand why Deogratias is a dog.

2.) How do you think your group's seminar went?

I think as an overall our group had a pretty good seminar, even though it was a little bit iffy at the start I felt that we were having some great conversations throughout the seminar. At the beginning we would all be trying to get out what we had to say, but toward the end we were all starting to take turns and it was flowing a lot better. Then the seminar went completely out of control when Jonathan tried to explain something with a Star Wars analogy. All in all I think that our seminar was an 7-8 on a scale of 10.

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Slaughterhouse Five Seminar Reflection

React to another person’s comment:

I thought that there were several great comments made that changed my thinking or challenged my thinking. Including a question that I really liked, “Are the Tralfmadorians right about time?”. Ashley made the comment that I liked most when we were talking about why Billy is so passive. I thought that she came up with a great answer to that. “He is so passive because he realized that what ever he tries to do to change anything won’t make any difference in what happens in the world over time. I thought that is very true because almost everything in history won’t mater in a couple hundred years. The bombings of Dresden, for example, in 200 years people will not even pay attention to that. I really like how Ashley described why Billy is so passive.

How did your thinking change through the seminar?

Through out the seminar my thinking on the Tralfmadoians changed quite a bit. A first I thought that they were just random thoughts of Billy’s, but as the seminar went on I realized that they were just another way for Billy to look back on his life while writing his book. I realized the saying, “why me, why you, why anyone.” in Tralfmadorian world and in the war world. It didn’t click that the Tralfmadorians were just out of the book that Billy had read, when I was reading that section.

Outside connection to the seminar:

I connected to the comment that Ashley said that I explained above. I feel that I could just let life go by and not try to do well in life. In Brave New World they talk about conditioning as a kid, and I feel that I have been conditioned to do well in life and try my best.

Seminar self-assessment:

I felt that I did a lot better in communication in this seminar than I have done in any other seminar. I felt that I had mad some good points and added to the conversation. I feel that I could have done more with connecting to other books or to context that we did in class. I could connect by coming into the seminar with books that are like what we are doing the seminar on, or just being prepared to make connections before the seminar. 

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DULCE ET DECORUM EST

(Sweet and Right)

I think that Jonathon’s comment that war is sweet and right is kind of out there and I’m not sure how you could see war as being sweet or being the right thing to do. War can be sweet for the government because they get more power and most of the government will get paid for going to war and spending the nations money. I have never heard of war as being the right thing to do, killing innocent people and having your own people die. I feel that war being sweet and right is slightly crazy.

I really thought that reading a poem and then seminarian on it was interesting because of all the different ways that people are able to interpret the poem and all the feelings that people express. I thought it was especially interesting how many different opinion were expressed with the last couple lines,

“To children ardent for some desperate glory,


The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est 


Pro patria mori.”

I really liked listening to people argue and share ideas on these lines.

Like I said above I feel that it would never be sweet and right to die for your country. I personally feel that war is stupid and the world should all get along because we are so small compared to the whole universe and we could work together as a world to discover what else is out there. That is off the point though, I feel that fighting for your country is a good thing but I would disagree with anyone who would want to die for his or her country.  I feel that dying for your country is not worth your short life or worth your family’s pain and suffering. 

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Armenian Genocide Newspaper

A picture of the Newspaper that is American

The Armenian newspaper

In the Armenian Empire in 1915 was genocide where the Turks were exterminating the Armenian population. The genocide is said to be the first modern day genocide, I found that very interesting. The main reason that I decided to chose this genocide was because I thought it was intriguing how the Turks still to this day deny that the genocide ever existed. The Turks say that the genocide was a civil war because the Armenians were fighting back. The Turks were trying to make one empire with their fellow Turks farther North in Russia. The Turks Deported Hundreds of thousands of Armenians to try to accomplish this goal.

My partner and I decided to do a newspaper article because it would represent both sides of the story, the Turks say it was a civil war and deny that it was a genocide, while the rest of the world is trying to prove that the Turks had a genocide. The Turks are trying to defend themselves by saying that “the Ottoman-Armenian Civil War waged during World War I.”, while most the rest of the world says that the war was a genocide of the Armenian people. I thought it is very cool that we can get both sides of the story.

I think that our finished project is going to be really cool because it will have both sides of the story that will be related to the real world and how each side of the story would be presented in the real world. 

Stephan                     Ty

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Join The Allies

The Allies are a very power force in World War 1 and that is the message that my poster is getting across. The Allies have lots of strong country powers. My poster is using bandwagon. Bandwagon is when everyone else is doing it and so should you. My example of this is, a lot of the other countries have joined the Allies and so should you. The flags not only show flag waving, but also really represent the unity and great power of the Allies. Flag waving is when you show patriotism for you country or in this case for the Allies. Faulty cause and effect can also be used because you can’t always protect some one but you can try your hardest. Direct order is used in the context that my poster is directing you to join the Allies.

My poster connects to the historical context of World War 1 because of the flags on it. The flags are of all the countries that fought with the Allies in World War 1. The Allies are side that the United States fought for, after the British intercepted a letter from Germany to Mexico. My poster is targeting the neutral, or the countries trying to stay out of the war because it is convincing those countries that they will be safe on the Allies side. The Allies would need to send this message so that they could intimidate the Central Powers and make them surrender, the Allies would not have to lose as many soldiers that way. The Central powers consist of Germany, Austria-Hungry, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The Allies fought with great power and defeated the Central Powers in 1918.

Propaganda plays such a big role in how people perceive the world, for example the Dove Real Beauty example that John had us look at for the socialization project last year. According to this example propaganda is a bad thing. People look at those women and want to be like them so they will go buy their products. Propaganda can be a good thing though; it can influence us on who we want to vote for. The candidate will try to convince you to vote for him/or her by using Propaganda. Propaganda influences what people buy, whom they vote for, or what they do.

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WWI Project Reflection

1.)  Over the past few weeks we have been studying World War 1. We haven’t got into the battles too much; we have been mainly focusing on weapons that they used during this time, how the war started, but most of all, the propaganda used to persuade people what to believe. Lori has been showing us some of the propaganda that was used in WWI. We were then instructed to create our own propaganda from WWI. We had to go through revision after revision to make our poster perfect. Our propaganda was then printed out in a very large size.

2.)  For my poster and my poster analysis I had to do some refining to make them pieces of art. My poster started off as an American flag with some writing. I didn’t like that so I did some more brainstorming and came up with the idea of doing a combination o combing all the flag of the allies. Another step of revision on my poster was at first all flags were just drawn on in no order, then Becca helped me make them very organized and look unified. My analysis that I gave to Lori for critique still needed lots of work; she gave it back to me with some great questions to think about. I went back through and made it more thoughtful and deep. I got lots of great critiques from peers and my teacher.

3.) I am really impressed with the product that I got out of this project. My poster looks amazing and my propaganda analysis turned out not half bad. I think that my poster has a lot of unity and has a strong message behind it. My analysis was not very good at first but then I sat down and got work done and made it pretty decent. I also enjoyed creating this piece of work because I got to do a lot with Photoshop, and I really enjoy Photoshop.

4.)  From working on this project I learned so much about propaganda. The techniques of propaganda, what it is, and how it is used. Before we did this project I didn’t really know what propaganda is but know I could explain it to someone who doesn’t have any idea what it is. I now know several techniques used to make convincing propaganda.

5.) I felt that this project that I just did was very successful, because the final project turned out really well. If I were to redo or have another step for revisions I would have another revision step on my analysis because it could use one more step of revision. On my poster I would hide secret little objects in and amongst the flags to add character.