Blogging around

I commented on Anna Busch's post about progress and Future. In it she talked about how we live in a bubble of ignorance and how she hopes that one day our society can escape this bubble.

My comment to her:

Anna,
I really liked your post, but I think I'm going to have to disagree with you on somethings. I don't think that we will ever be able to live in a society devoid of ignorance, it's just too engrained in our lives. And at this point, it seems, that sometimes ignorance is the only way to go, but I wouldn't say that it is ALWAYS a bad thing. Sometimes subconscious ignorance is the only thing that keeps people going and I don't really have any issue with that, however conscious ignorance, now that I do have a problem with. I think that if you are willingly and knowingly denying something, then that's not okay, and that's where our society runs into an issue. How do we find the balance between conscious and subconscious ignorance? In order to reach the progress that you were talking about, I think that we as a global population must define this balance and then use it to our advantage to better our world. Great post though, I really liked your insights.


I commented on Jordan's blog about her Jane Eyre Mash up. She talked about challenging the status quo and how it related to our english curriculum so far this year.

My comment to her:

Jordan,
Your post made me think back on the books we have read this year and it made me realize how much they all have to do with challenging the status quo. "Orlando" challenges it by dressing as a man when she was a woman and writing, even though the spirit of her age made her hands shake to try and stop her from doing it. In "King Lear", Lear's daughters Goneril and Regan are rude and malicious towards their father, as they try to overthrow him and take his thrown. "Heart of Darkness" isn't so much about defying the status quo as it is about understanding it, the main character Marlow is thrown into Africa and forced to see the injustice of the status quo, but he also has to realize that there isn't much he can do about it. Lastly, "Jane Eyre" is all about her becoming a strong independent woman who chooses to be herself, instead of being like everyone else. It is a story of choices and how continuously Jane's choices, while they may be unpopular, are her choices and no one else's. Thank you for writing this post, it really made me think about how connected theses books are, I guess I had never really thought about them from this perspective before.

Dialectics: Simulation and Reality

The biggest concept in The Matrix, is the idea of simulation versus reality. In the matrix everything is simulated, and it is up to those who have escaped the system to discover and preserve reality. This brings up several questions. A small sampling being: What is reality? And Which is better simulation or reality? 

In one of the most pivotal scenes of the movie, Cypher has to make the choice between remaining outside of the matrix with the rest of his shipmates on the Nebuchadnezzar or returning to the matrix with no knowledge of his time beyond it's grasp. He chooses to go back to the matrix and accept it's totalitarian control. While I don't agree with Cypher's choice, I understand why he made it. Earlier in the movie Neo is asked if he believes in fate and says no because he doesn't like the idea of not being in control of his life. I too don't believe in fate, but I like the idea of it. Fate is sort of like a cop-out, it's an excuse for not doing well. If something in your life goes wrong you can just blame it on fate, say it was out of your hands, and I think that's what Cypher wants. He doesn't want to have to make the tough decisions anymore, he just wants to be ignorant. He doesn't want to be in control anymore, and I sympathise with him. It's hard to know that your mistakes are all of your own doing. Sometimes it's nice to just push the blame off on someone or something else, not all the time, but sometimes. 

As our society continues to develop and grow technologically, it is possible that we will be faced with a choice similar to Cypher's. Eventually, we may have to choose between simulation and reality.I think that there are many people out there who, when given this choice will choose simulation, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. To put it simply, life's rough. It's hard and exhausting and a lot of the time it just feels like more than you can handle. Therefor, it makes sense that people who have been overworked, and probably under-appreciated, would choose to enter a world that they knew would give them some relief. It would be like an instant weight being lifted off their shoulders However, other people seem to thrive on life's struggles. It propels them to do better and better, and so for them a world of simulation would be like torture. 

The most important thing to take away from this is that both life styles are completely valid. Just because someone chooses to live blissfully unaware, does not mean that they are a lesser person it just means that they have a different opinion. And really it's no one's place to judge how someone chooses to live because life is so subjective. It's completely up to you to decide your own path, regardless of what someone else thinks... or doesn't think, I guess. You get to decide for yourself what your reality will be. 

So, which would you choose, the blue or the red? 

Metacognition: True love

I've always been a cynic about love. For awhile I just completely refused to admit it even really existed. I'm not quite as blunt about the topic now, but I am still hesitant to accept people's emotions as truth when they say they're "in love". So, when we were reading Jane Eyre, I think what surprised me most about the story was that I believed it. I genuinely felt that Jane and Mr. Rochester were in love and I rooted for them to end up together. But even more surprising than me believe in their romance, was other people not believing it. When I would talk to my classmates, they would comment on their disdain for Mr. Rochester and how they didn't think that he really loved Jane and was just lustful instead. I was shocked, and it made me start to question my faith in their relationship. I didn't understand how a sceptic like me could believe something that other people doubted. 

When I started my mashup, I settled on the love prompt because I thought it was the one that I most easily connected to. As I gathered quotes and outside sources, I was still weary of Jane and Rochester's relationship, rocked by the opinions of my peers, but as the project progressed my stance changed. With each passage that I found, I felt like it was just further proving my original claim about their love. I became more and more confident it my belief that they really did love each other and by the end of my project I was positive that their's was a true and good marriage. 

I guess it makes me a little sad that I was so easily swayed by the opinions of others, but in the end I was able to hold to my original convictions and that's really the most important part. Usually I have very strong opinions that I stick to like glue, but this time was different and I'm not really sure why that is. I understand that it is important to see other people's points of view, that's what I wrote my last blog on, but I just hope I'm not going soft and am starting to doubt myself or my beliefs. I'm glad that this projected allowed to me reaffirm my stance on the relationship and reassure my faith in my conclusions. 

Metacognition: I'm stubborn

 
In general, anytime I write something, the two most prominent emotions that arise seem to be stubbornness and doubt. Usually when I write I'll come up with an idea very quickly, and then become so attached to it that I can think of nothing else. This is probably one of the greatest downfalls of my writing, because it doesn't allow me to take constructive criticism very well. I become like a horse with blinders on, obtuse to everything around me, only able to see the bigger picture straight ahead. The problem is that I get so invested in what I'm writing that I don't think anyone else's suggestion could help it be even better. I'll make up some excuse that they don't understand the point or they can't see where I'm coming from, but really I'm just incredibly stubborn.

Usually, the next step in my writing process is a slow decline into hatred for whatever it is I have created. Most of the time I start out completely enthralled with my idea and where I've taken it, but then gradually I run out of steam. I start to lose interest in the story and my brain seems to turn to mush, I don't think I've ever written something that I was totally happy with in the end.

Part of this is my refusal to accept advice from people. I won't take their suggestions into account and then when I hit a wall I start to doubt what I have written. I’ll scrutinize every little detail and soon I won’t be able to think of anything because everything just seems so… stupid. This was my biggest struggle when writing my short story. I started off so strong, with a concept I found interesting and I was excited to write about, but then I became fed-up with the story because it wasn’t going where I wanted it to go. The most frustrating part was that in my head, it all made sense, the story seemed great, but when I tried to put it on paper, something just wasn’t translating. My words were muddled and the message was lost somewhere that I couldn’t determine. I had sought help on my story but decided to only follow part of the advice because I didn’t want to compromise its integrity. In the end though, I was left wondering if accepting someone else’s thoughts would have stopped me from ending up with a story that left me content, but not completely satisfied.

Someday I would like to not be so stubborn; part of me understands that I don’t know everything, but the other part of me in crushing that part. And while I am proud of myself for standing up for the things I believe in, I wish that I could just accept what others have to say and not turn everything into an argument with myself that will probably just leave me frustrated in the end.

An inconvenient truth: Love is weird and everything is Romeo and Juliet

In reality, the movie Once is just Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Two people fall in love but the guy used to be in love with another woman and the woman is either married or engaged to be married to another man, the only difference is that instead of dying in the end, our irish Romeo gets on a plane, while Juliet gets a piano... that she then plays for her husband. Basically, it's just a story of star crossed lovers who weren't meant to find each other, but they did, and then couldn't be together in the end because of odd circumstances. The resounding them in both productions is about them being uncomfortable and trying to figure how they fit together but not really succeeding because they are just too damn awkward. Romeo and Juliet are so bumbling when they first meet that they just touch hands and stare at each other, this sense of being clumsy and inept continues throughout the book with them always sort of rushing into things unplanned and then mis-communicating with each other so things get messed up (ie their deaths).The two main characters in Once never really have a smooth conversation, everything is coarse and weird, even the way they look at each other makes the audience feel uncomfortable.But I guess that these qualities are supposed to be endearing and give the characters a sense of reality, because "love" is supposed to weird and icky, just ask any ten year old. 

Another example of this is The Cathedral by Raymond Carver, which is quite possibly one of THE most uncomfortable things I have ever read. But through the clumsy encounters of a man, his wife, and his wife's blind friend, we are supposed to see how much they really care about each other. You could argue that this short story also has hints of Romeo and Juliet sprinkled in it, the blind man and his deceased wife Beulah, or the man and his wife, or the wife and the blind man, or even the blind man and the husband. They all have an element of not really knowing how to react around a person that by some stroke of luck has fallen into your life to change the path you were previously travelling on. Furthermore, all of these Romeo and Juliet like scenarios have this theme of finding someone who is equally as bizarre as you are, and then preceding to be bizarre with them.  

So, I guess, this means that love is weird and therefore every love story should technically have elements of Romeo and Juliet. This makes logical sense if you think about it, seeing as how we've already proven that Shakespeare's famous play was all about being awkward and love is supposedly supremely awkward. If this is true though, it would mean that you could never write a love story that isn't a cliche because they would all just be Romeo and Juliet, a hefty implication indeed. But really, we must admit that love is pretty cliched itself and ridiculously over used most of the time. In conclusion, Once and The Cathedral are just copies of an old love tale, with somewhat modern twists. 

Captured Thought: Dueling Societies

Just start off this blog on a rather random note, the picture to the left is the image I have in my head of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness.  Now, I know that Kurtz is supposed to be incredibly thin and sickly, but anytime I picture him, this is all I can see. I have no idea why. 

Alright, now on to the actual blog. This week in class we have been discussing the book Heart of Darkness and one of the main topics brought up was the idea of restraint. It seemed to me, that the majority of the class was of the state of mind that while the African people were considered savage by the Europeans, it was really the Africans who demonstrated a restraint typically associated with a western lifestyle and the so called civilized Europeans were the ones who acted savagely. It seemed like they highly praised African society and just completely bashed on the Europeans. While I agree with them that the Europeans did in fact act with an unnecessary ferocity, it does not mean that we should write of their life style completely. Neither society is perfect and they both have their faults, simply the societies are just different. Furthermore, the people in both societies show restraint, just in different ways. There are so many things that European people had to deal with that the Africans didn't, and vice versa. The Europeans didn't have to hunt through the jungle in search of game, but the Africans didn't have to labor in factories or struggle with an incredibly strict and oppressive social structure. Both societies we're a challenge to live through and you can't really say one was better than the other because they both had their challenges, and their rewards. 

One of the biggest themes in the book is savagery vs. society and how those two are interwoven. Heart of Darkness, in my opinion, does an incredible job of clearly showing your conscious the weaknesses of both societies, while simultaneously allowing your subconscious to realize their strengths. It enables you to draw your own opinion of the savagery and restraint  both societies display, and therefor deepens your understanding of society at large, and what it means to be "civilized". 

Blogging Around

Emily Horvath wrote a blog about her experience writing the multiple drafts of her poem. In it she expressed her perception shift as she went from hating the assignment to genuinely enjoying it in the end. I replied with:

I just want to start of by saying that I love your writing style and your gifs made me laugh, a lot. After reading your blog I feel as though we sort of went on opposite journeys during this assignment. I started out loving poetry and so excited to write my own that I began writing it that day in class. But then with each draft that I turned in and every revision, I started to hate my poem. I started to feel less and less creative as my poem grew longer, because I just didn't know how to fix what I had already written, so I instead just kept adding stanzas. Whereas you started out apprehensive and then were able to condense and enjoy each new draft you handed in.

I think that our journeys differed so much because of our attitudes when we started. I enjoy poetry and was so happy with the second draft of my poem that I became stubborn. I didn't want to change what I thought was good writing just because someone else didn't like it, but after awhile it got hard revising something I desperately wanted to keep the same and in the end I ended up just getting angry and frustrated. However, you came into this project with an open mind and were able to take criticism and mold it into a a better, more concise poem. You were able to succeed where I pretty much failed, and I have to give you props for that because I know it was no easy task. 
Jordan Arrigo wrote a blog about organizing her makeup drawer. In it she talked about how neat her drawer now was, while the rest of her room stayed messy. She expressed how rewarding it was to have even just a little thing be so tidy, but how terrifying it can be to have to organize the rest of your life. I replied with: 

I'm in the same situation. My makeup drawer is in perfect order, but the rest of my room is a disaster. It's just never really bothered me that my room is a mess though, because at least it's my mess. I've always felt like it shouldn't matter if your things are organized as long as you know where everything is and are happy with it, because really, at the end of the day, who is going to be meticulously going through your stuff? 
It bothers me so much when my mom tells me to clean my room, because I think to myself, "The door is always closed, you only ever go in there about once a week, why does it matter?" The last time I checked my mother wasn't giving tours of my room to the neighborhood, so I really just don't see why it has to be PERFECT.

At the end of your blog you talked about how scary it is to organize your whole life, but I don't really see why that is necessary. Order isn't always what's best for people and if everything in your life is immaculate I feel like you would just get stuck in a rut. So before you attempted to revamp and reorganize everything, I wanted to tell you that little chaos is a good thing and it can go a long way.