Geez, This is a tough assignment. However, I prefer this over the synthesis essay ANYTIME. That essay was brutal, for me at least. I hate to sound cliche but a "journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." Ok, the other 999 miles are tough to but still... I have read all my stuff and made an outline but I keep modifying it. There is so much I could say but I feel like I have to stay close to the prompt... I chose reading Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov. I felt like I was on shrooms for awhile when I started reading it. People change into other people, in-laws drag their furniture into a prison... Weird stuff but I liked it. The prompt states that I have to find parallels between the world the main character Cincinnatus creates and The world of the Iran Republic. Easy enough, but what is hard is that I have to state why Nafisi and her students are heroes because they chose to not fit in. I don't know what happened but I ended up going on tangent about the illusions of the world and what not. In the end I had to scrap the first couple of pages because they were so off topic. All my hard work was wasted in a a sense. Sometimes it's very hard to stay true to the prompt because the issue you are asked to write about brings to mind all the other concepts that go along with it. I know when I was writing my synthesis essay on propaganda, I wanted to incorporate things about the Iraq War in it but I also had to scrap out that concept because it was taking over my work. It's like I am trying stuff a whole bunch of apples in my mouth at once because they all taste delicious. That's what I wanted to do with the synthesis essay but I didn't.
Well back to the last essay... What I really also have a hard time doing is finding the right research to go with it. I found some good articles that could help me but when I read and reread them, they turned out to be lacking the material I needed. So now I have to go find some new material again... Awesome. That's my fault though, I find the research to be one of the hardest things to come by. I can always twist things to my advantage but the work is so much easier if the right materials are present. But I like the challenge this essay has given me because it forces me to expand my critical thinking. I think alot but it's not always in the critical style mentality. Besides, I really liked both the novels I had to read so this is bit a bit of work and pleasure, so I will stop complaining. So, I am going to bust my booty this weekend and do the best I can. That's all I can do.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Double Life, Double the Lies
The way I see it, e-mail and other "social discourse" online allows room for deception. While it is easier to talk online because there is no face to face interaction (unless by webcam). For very shy people, its awesome. They get to express Ideas they could never have done in reality snd it may even allow them to have more friends. But this is the problem I see with it. Online conversations create an alternate reality, where some real life rules are not applied. Here, I read this situation that illustrates my point:
There was a young man who had been going out with his girlfriend throughout college. But he was feeling bored and felt that he needed a change. He had so many things he wanted to do but he hadn't done them by the time he and his girlfriend got engaged. So he created a fake account where he would portray all the stuff he wished he did and was like being a black belt in Karate, a musician and having an interesting life. When he did this, he started getting friends, mostly females. His fiance found out about this and felt that he was unhappy with her because of this fake account. He argued that the girls didn't matter and he was doing nothing wrong because the character he created did not even exist.
This situation illustrates the alternate reality created by the secrecy of oline conversation. That is the incredible danger with online conversations. When people are not there to monitor you or may you think they are watching, we get a burst of elation because we can get away with things that we could not normally. Take for example speeding on the freeway or even road rage. You go as fast as you want until you see a cop and then you slow down. In road rage, you curse and yell as much as you want but when you are out side your car, walking in the street, you won't act the same. We act this way because we believe that the bubble of anonymity will protect us. For goodness sake, this is how pedophiles masquerade on the internet. They know that many believe that online reality and this living reality are the same and these sick people take advantage of that. Children are especially vulnerable to it because they are still learning to distinguish from reality and fantasy.
I don't believe all conversations are going to be digital in the future. We still need that human contact. Not just to make sure we have human contact to know we exist, but also to monitor our actions. When we are left to our own devices we do more stupid things in certain situations. I believe that online conversation need to have the same rule of reality applied to it, otherwise there is too much deception to handle. I love this line: "Who watches the watchers." This is the reality of online conversations and I cast a bleak future on it.
There was a young man who had been going out with his girlfriend throughout college. But he was feeling bored and felt that he needed a change. He had so many things he wanted to do but he hadn't done them by the time he and his girlfriend got engaged. So he created a fake account where he would portray all the stuff he wished he did and was like being a black belt in Karate, a musician and having an interesting life. When he did this, he started getting friends, mostly females. His fiance found out about this and felt that he was unhappy with her because of this fake account. He argued that the girls didn't matter and he was doing nothing wrong because the character he created did not even exist.
This situation illustrates the alternate reality created by the secrecy of oline conversation. That is the incredible danger with online conversations. When people are not there to monitor you or may you think they are watching, we get a burst of elation because we can get away with things that we could not normally. Take for example speeding on the freeway or even road rage. You go as fast as you want until you see a cop and then you slow down. In road rage, you curse and yell as much as you want but when you are out side your car, walking in the street, you won't act the same. We act this way because we believe that the bubble of anonymity will protect us. For goodness sake, this is how pedophiles masquerade on the internet. They know that many believe that online reality and this living reality are the same and these sick people take advantage of that. Children are especially vulnerable to it because they are still learning to distinguish from reality and fantasy.
I don't believe all conversations are going to be digital in the future. We still need that human contact. Not just to make sure we have human contact to know we exist, but also to monitor our actions. When we are left to our own devices we do more stupid things in certain situations. I believe that online conversation need to have the same rule of reality applied to it, otherwise there is too much deception to handle. I love this line: "Who watches the watchers." This is the reality of online conversations and I cast a bleak future on it.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Understanding Comes from Pain
I know one of the essay prompts is to meant to explain why "stories that are so sad, so tragic—make us so happy." The reason this quote has stuck with me throughout Lolita in Tehran is because of what happened in my Child Development the class the other day. We had to present a poster of ourselves on how we got socialized. Socialization is where individuals acquire the knowledge, skills and character traits that enable them to participate effectively in society. It was very intriguing to see how people became who they are, it's a mixture of psychology and sociology. One of my classmates was a forty-year old woman and she was going to present a big ass poster that had our class going like "Damn! She is going to present that!" But our shock and exasperation was replaced by wonder and horror. She had lived in Iran during Ayatollah Khoemini's reign. Some of the things she described were so horrorific that I teared up a bit. She described how before Khoemini came to power, things were good. The women could makeup and there was a bit more freedom. But as he came to power, things changed. She was a teenager when that happened. Later on she described how she got married and had a child. She feared for her child everyday because she was christian women living in a very radical world. She described how Saddam Hussein poisoned the water in the water reserves (she lived close to Iraq) and the children in the town were dying and bleeding diarrehea. She described, soon after, how she fled to Greece with fake papers and lived in a basement for eleven months. I don't know if it was coincidence, but It helped bring the memoir to mind and cement the theme of the story.
I can understand why we like to hear about tragic stories. It helps us remind us why our life is good. After hearing my classmates story of her life, I felt blessed to be living in this country and my concerns and problems are insignificant when compared to hers. I complain about being lonely, she was isolated from her beloved brother for fifteen years. I complain that the government is restricting our freedom of speech, she didn't know what it was for her a large part of her life. Without tragedy, we can never know true happiness. We have to be able to compare two different situations to see which is better. But most importantly, when we overcome the tragedy, it is so much sweeter. I believe you can't have happiness without sadness, joy without sorrow, tragedy without triumph. Without any dark emotions, we can't have light emotions. It's like having pure sun without the night. How can we know what sunlight is when we have no darkness? There would be nothing, things would just exist. I think that we would just exist, if we only had positive emotions. We would not live. There is a difference. Existing implies that we move from one scenarios to another, we are rootless with no foundation. Living means that we have an active role in shaping our future, we actively feel and change. That's all I have to say.
I can understand why we like to hear about tragic stories. It helps us remind us why our life is good. After hearing my classmates story of her life, I felt blessed to be living in this country and my concerns and problems are insignificant when compared to hers. I complain about being lonely, she was isolated from her beloved brother for fifteen years. I complain that the government is restricting our freedom of speech, she didn't know what it was for her a large part of her life. Without tragedy, we can never know true happiness. We have to be able to compare two different situations to see which is better. But most importantly, when we overcome the tragedy, it is so much sweeter. I believe you can't have happiness without sadness, joy without sorrow, tragedy without triumph. Without any dark emotions, we can't have light emotions. It's like having pure sun without the night. How can we know what sunlight is when we have no darkness? There would be nothing, things would just exist. I think that we would just exist, if we only had positive emotions. We would not live. There is a difference. Existing implies that we move from one scenarios to another, we are rootless with no foundation. Living means that we have an active role in shaping our future, we actively feel and change. That's all I have to say.
Friday, November 5, 2010
What Change?
As this semester has trudged along, I haven't felt a big change in my writing. I still feel like I could do so much better. For me, it feels like I have been swimming up a waterfall, just trying to move up from the place I have been. This is how a salmon must feel. I have very high expectations for myself and I feel like I am not living up to them. I really feel no change at all. But that doesn't mean I haven't had some change, I probably haven't noticed it yet. What I do need is a change of venues though, but I am starting to get off topic.
What I have noticed are my strengths. I have found that I am decent at analyzing things and good at telling stories. I noticed this when I got good comments on my first and second essay which involved those two things. But I hate doing timed writings. I hate them with a passion. I used to do them in high school and I always dreaded them. At least the timed write in this class allowed us an hour and twenty-five minutes to respond to one prompt.
What I have enjoyed doing was actually responding to other blogs. My classmate's thoughts are so different from mine that I have had to think of ways to support my own views. If anything, this is what has strengthened my writing. I really has made me think. Many have actually had me modify some of my own beliefs, like the justification of hate speech. I really believe in the Socratic method of teaching, where we have to defend our positions in order to understand them. I feel that is what we have been doing in this class.
The reading I really disliked was ON BULLSHIT by Frankfurt. I felt like I was turned in circles over and over again. I learned more about bullshit than I ever wanted to know. It did get me to think logically, which is something I haven't done in a while. But I felt like it was just BULLSHIT he was spitting back at us. That's how I felt.
The hardest part of this course, for me, is doing group work. I can be a lone wolf and sometimes it's bothersome to do group work online. In person, I would be like "Hell Yeah! Let's do this!" But doing it online makes me lazy because I don't have my partners in front of me motioning to work. That's just me. The PDR has helped me idefntify my faults and has sharpened my thinking. I don't like to do it, but it does have its uses, just like farting I guess.
But once, again I have not felt a change in my writing. I don't want to compare my writing in high school and my writing now because I am tired of staring at my past. Maybe the reason, I haven't felt a change in my writing is because I feel trapped in this place. There is always a point where we all need to change our appearance, values and the place we call home. I am now at this place and I can't see anything but the change I want. My vision is narrowed, so I can't really analyze my change right now.
What I have noticed are my strengths. I have found that I am decent at analyzing things and good at telling stories. I noticed this when I got good comments on my first and second essay which involved those two things. But I hate doing timed writings. I hate them with a passion. I used to do them in high school and I always dreaded them. At least the timed write in this class allowed us an hour and twenty-five minutes to respond to one prompt.
What I have enjoyed doing was actually responding to other blogs. My classmate's thoughts are so different from mine that I have had to think of ways to support my own views. If anything, this is what has strengthened my writing. I really has made me think. Many have actually had me modify some of my own beliefs, like the justification of hate speech. I really believe in the Socratic method of teaching, where we have to defend our positions in order to understand them. I feel that is what we have been doing in this class.
The reading I really disliked was ON BULLSHIT by Frankfurt. I felt like I was turned in circles over and over again. I learned more about bullshit than I ever wanted to know. It did get me to think logically, which is something I haven't done in a while. But I felt like it was just BULLSHIT he was spitting back at us. That's how I felt.
The hardest part of this course, for me, is doing group work. I can be a lone wolf and sometimes it's bothersome to do group work online. In person, I would be like "Hell Yeah! Let's do this!" But doing it online makes me lazy because I don't have my partners in front of me motioning to work. That's just me. The PDR has helped me idefntify my faults and has sharpened my thinking. I don't like to do it, but it does have its uses, just like farting I guess.
But once, again I have not felt a change in my writing. I don't want to compare my writing in high school and my writing now because I am tired of staring at my past. Maybe the reason, I haven't felt a change in my writing is because I feel trapped in this place. There is always a point where we all need to change our appearance, values and the place we call home. I am now at this place and I can't see anything but the change I want. My vision is narrowed, so I can't really analyze my change right now.
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