Month: December 2024

When I was looking at this class during registration, I didn’t pay too much attention to the course description. I had just seen it was a 4 credit course that was at a decent time and looked like an easy way to break up my core classes, as just doing math all day can be quite exhausting and I’ve always loved to read. However, upon entering this class in August, I realized just how much of an oversight it was not to look at the course description. It started slowly, just simple things I should’ve looked closer to, or brought up sooner, things I never thought cut as deep as they did stung anew the further we got in the course. I’ve seen homelessness and the insanity it drags behind it firsthand, it has always been something I was intimately aware of throughout my life. We had moved around a lot when I was a kid, never staying in one place long enough to really call it a home, for a myriad of different reasons. From just not liking the heat in Vegas, to losing our house in Hurricane Sandy, I’ve witnessed expulsion on many levels. Homelessness was always a threat that hung over my head, whether it was the chance of being evicted or desperately trying to show I was worthy of the space I took up. What really set the awareness for me was this class. When we started The Tragedy of King Lear, I didn’t focus too much on it, I found the language difficult, and I’ve never been fond of plays. However, when we watched the rain scene in class, I saw the story in a whole new light. Being witness to close family members having those exact breakdowns, I had a different insight into the scene, and it made me connect with the story from a different perspective. 

A Mercy was different, however, as I’ve always loved analyzing literature, and non-linear stories and unreliable narrators are some of my favorite things to pick apart. Symbolism is by far my favorite thing to look for when reading a story, and A Mercy was packed full of it. While there were definitely times when I didn’t focus enough on the subtext or didn’t finish the reading by classtime, I still had a strong understanding of the story, and its explanation of expulsion through people really resonated with me. Florens’ connection to her mother, and later the Blacksmith meant a lot to me, especially after learning how the entire book was Florens carving her story into the walls. We all are desperate to leave a mark, to have someone hear our story, and to see that exposed in such a way was incredible. When thinking about the arc of the story in modern times, I completely agree that this story can be taken as an interpretation of the housing crisis. People so often get boiled down to an I.D. number, or just a face in the crowd, and experiencing loss like Florens and the homeowners during their respective times gives people an intrinsic need to be seen. Without something to call your own, and everybody looking at you cross, people devolve, trying to burn themselves into the minds of passersby. In the Old Man and the Storm video, we watched how he was so desperate to keep something to himself, and all the paperwork and false promises made by the government pushed him further and further to panic. That was the house he built with his own hands, he carved those details into the wood, that was his mark on the world, and to see it fall so short of what it once had been created such a divide between the family. The Parable of the Sower was truly the nail in the coffin for me. The Parable of the Sower being so closely tied to our current reality, while sickening, was an interesting parallel. Especially with the Parable of the Sower’s connection to The Big Short, and learning how the event unfolded in its entirety.  

Lauren fought to have her voice heard, even knowing how she’d be looked at once sharing, and still, no one could look past their comfort or fear to believe her anxieties. Her story does a beautiful job of showing just how easy it is to lose everything when you’re not paying attention. The world was already in shambles, people desperate for money, burning on the streets of abandoned cities and the fire department charging a fee to put out the fires. This dystopian aspect of the essay is what truly parallels the agony behind the 2008 Housing Crisis, as Lauren’s life is not too far from what those people were forced to experience. One of the ideas emphasized in Parable of the Sower is learning from what’s happened before you, as well as taking what you’ve learned to adapt to the change in your environment. We see this quite often in Lauren’s travels, from her warning signs of the community’s demise following similar signs from the falls of larger cities, to her spreading her beliefs of Earthseed to get people to be more cautionary and less reliant upon blind faith or trust in the present. The recurring theme of “God is change.” not only references how change is an uncontrollable force but also how consistency is, in itself, inconsistent. You have no control over what happens, but you can accept and learn from it, something that ultimately led to her community’s failings, as well as our own shortcomings in the housing crisis. People are reluctant to accept what’s being shown in front of them, especially when it puts them in a position of power. However, on a larger scale, we see an emphasis on resilience through Lauren and her group throughout the novel which teaches more about perseverance rather than recompense. Octavia Butler’s story directly parallels the Parbale of the Sower story from the Bible, in which Jesus tells the people how different fallen seeds have grown. “Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.  But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Matthew 13 4:9, NKJV). This parable, a story meant to tell a moral or spiritual lesson, serves to show how important the planting of seeds is. You can spread your wealth of knowledge as far as the Earth allows, however, poorly placed seeds with shrivel the moment they spring. Seeds received by the wayside are seeds planted and grown, however not understood, leaving them easily torn away, similar to the people who worked on Wall Street not understanding the policies they set out, but enforcing them anyway. Seeds received in the “stony places” are information readily, and enthusiastically received, however poorly rooted and gain no depth so they only survive for a short period, similar to Lauren’s neighborhood. Seeds received within the thorns is information received, however, misled by the riches of the world surrounding them, like Lauren’s father understanding the signs himself but allowing himself to be caught up in the delusion of stability, or the people relying on government aid during the Housing Crisis holding faith that the everchanging and tumultuous process would be a saving grace. Finally, seeds received in rich soil in information readily received and understood. It has taken root and bore fruit a hundredfold of its original promise, paralleling Lauren’s character. She saw the signs of failure, and internalized them, not allowing the seeds to be uprooted by the comfort of her town or the loss of everything she cared for. She moved forward and held steadfast in her beliefs which ultimately led to a stronger and more secure community.

Viewing this class with the experience of someone with close ties to homelessness and expulsion, while sometimes making me feel a little too close to the material, it also gave the material a different air than what it could’ve been for someone without that context. It gave me a different kind of dedication to the course. There were things my classmates couldn’t read into the same way I could, or smaller details that were more easily overlooked had you not existed in that scene. Lear’s breakdown in the rain can at first seem dramatic or crazed, however comparing it to real-life scenarios, it’s completely justified. His crazed ramblings and turbulent emotions are something we see every day amongst the homeless population and often pity the same way the jester and guard hesitated around Lear. Florens’ complete dependence on the Blacksmith and her explosive reaction to seeing him “choose” a child over her is something everyone has experienced; whether it be witnessing someone dig their nails into something in desperate attempts to cling on, or lashing out at the nearest person after losing something we’ve depended on. The way no one in Lauren’s community listened to her fears about the end of the neighborhood until it was too late, or how devastatingly apparent the Housing crisis was and yet no one stopped to check themselves in The Big Short is something absolutely everyone has been affected by. One person not being able to convince the masses of an apparent disaster, and those in power knowing every step of the way the damage their footsteps pave into the earth is a widespread disease. Once one person doesn’t wear a mask,  it is simply a matter of time before we all fall ill. 

Throughout the semester, it is clear that housing is a necessity, not only for shelter but also for maintaining physical and mental health. The Parable of the Sower establishes water as the most expensive and valuable commodity. However, “The country was full of people who could earn or steal food and water, but could not rent even a cot” (Octavia Butler, 174). So, even those who possess water, the most expensive commodity—regardless of how they obtained it—are still homeless. 

Alternatively, there is a seemingly intangible value placed on shelter. In an environment where storms are rare, there is no obvious reason for housing. Lauren notes that her house is in disrepair, as “time, wind, and earthquakes have taken a toll” (Parable of the Sower, 48). Additionally, she explains that “If it only rains once every six or seven years, why bother” repairing the roof of the house” (Parable of the Sower, 48). Again, for how rare rain is, having shelter against a storm is irrelevant. If anything, being in a house during an earthquake is a detriment. So, ultimately, the only reason to have shelter is to protect against the wind. It is almost as though shelter is only valuable because it is scarce. In a way, it is a luxury good. This can be related to The Big Short because the value placed on housing was artificial. Ultimately, the value placed on a house is finite. This is similar to the intangible value placed on housing in The Parable of the Sower.

The Parable of the Sower can relate to The Big Short in that crises often create conditions where the powerful are immune and the powerless are vulnerable. For example, leading up to the early 2000 financial crisis, “A giant number of individual loans got piled up into a tower. The top floors got their money back first and so got the highest ratings from Moody’s and S&P and the lowest interest rate. The low floors got their money back last, suffered the first losses, and got the lowest ratings from Moody’s and S&P” (Lewis, 26). Notably, “In 2005, over $1 trillion of bonds like Toxie were created. It was an ocean of money flowing into the housing market, contributing to the crowds of people showing up at open houses and home prices that kept rising” (Lewis, 145). Although immense wealth was created, it was artificial. To use the metaphor made by Lewis, the tower was built on unstable land. The housing bubble was bound to crash, and once it did, thousands of homeowners lost their property while Banks on Wall Street were bailed out. Just as Octavia Butler’s character Lauren says “Maybe God is a kind of big kid, playing with his toys,” the formulators of subprime mortgages in many ways were playing God. Knowing their position is secure, they are indifferent to the disastrous ripples their policies have (Butler, 16). Interestingly, The Parable of the Sower refers to a land speculator who banked on the thought of large housing developments to take place on his land, only for it to fail. The speculator said,  “I own three hundred acres. I bought the property years ago as an investment. There was going to be a big housing development up there, and speculators like me were going to make tons of money, selling our land to the developers” (Butler, 273). However, “The project fell through for some reason, and I was stuck with land that I could either sell at a loss or keep” (Butler, 273). In many ways, this relates to the 2005 housing crisis. For example, Lewis mentions that “the underlying loans were heavily concentrated in what Wall Street people were now calling the sand states: California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona” (Lewis, 97). Florida, in particular, was subject to several failed housing developments shown in “Human Landscapes in SW Florida.” Many speculators with enough capital to invest in housing complexes anticipated monumental profits from skyrocketing housing prices, something that never materialized. After the housing bubble ended, speculators in subprime loans were left with worthless bonds and undeveloped land, just like the speculator in Parable of the Sower. Although land has intrinsic value, subprime loans do not. In many ways, the value of subprime loans was fabricated. Historic prerequisites and regulations on grading the credit of subprime loan lendees were overlooked, therefore artificially inflating the price.

A consistent theme throughout the course is the extent to which someone has rights is determined by how much property they have. For example, in King Lear, although King Lear spent years as King, once he lost material possession of his Kingdom, he lost his status. A more direct example involves his expulsion from his daughters’ houses, where he was left in a storm without shelter. In the storm the deranged yet disillusioned King Lear reflects “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness defend you” (King Lear, Act 3, scene 4). Regarding the impoverished in his Kingdom, King Lear laments “O, I have ta’en Too little care of this” (Act 3, scene 4). Now deprived of his property and, by extension, his legitimacy as King, King Lear’s status is comparable to that of poor Tom. 

This relates to the Parable of the Sower because there is a literal and intangible barrier between those who own property and those who do not. Lauren’s hometown, Robledo California, is a gated community that physically separates sheltered people from homeless people. There is also an intangible distancing of Robledo residents from those outside the barrier by dehumanizing them. This trend is not unique to Robledo. For example, “The people of Olivar aren’t frightened, impoverished victims. They’re able to look after themselves, their rights and their property” (Parable of the Sower, 120). Of course, selfishness is a learned behavior. There is a finite amount of houses in California particularly, which is constantly threatened by arsonists, so it is natural to cherish property. However, placing a premium on the value of property inevitably leads to selfishness and conflict. In contrast to King Lear, the residents of Robledo are not necessarily threatened by the elements, especially rain, since water is an invaluable resource.

Interestingly, property is often listed first when listing objects lost during a robbery or arson over necessities like food and water. For example, the Parable of the Sower mentions that rich people “managed to hold on to their property and feed their families” (Parable of the Sower, 264). In another example, when describing a robbery, “Someone’ property was lost—someone’s food, no doubt” (Parable of the Sower, 208). In both examples, priority is placed on property, naming it first instead of a necessity like food. The Parable of the Sower may also suggest that housing and property are prerequisites for necessities. In a land where water is scarce, independent farming is impossible, necessitating preexisting capital to trade for goods like food and even water. Relating back to the land prospector, he obviously had enormous preexisting capital to invest in housing complexes, allowing him to pivot to farming after the housing market dried up. 

The semester started off to a rocky pace at first for me. I was finding a grasp on the course for myself while also gaining an understanding of my other classes. I had the impression this course was going to heavily involve reading and writing and that would be the main gist of the class. Through the mini collaborations I quickly learned this was not the case. Working together with teammates helped my understanding of course topics as well as how to manage workloads in groups. We gained a deeper understanding of the text as well as our own professor’s style of teaching. Many of the course concepts have applied to my own sense of learning through the class such as apophenia, good faith, and trust. As I navigated the course I started to deepen my understanding of how the course concepts not only relate to the book but to my life as a student. 

The first thing we got started on was memorizing course concepts and what they mean. The course concepts are trust, good and bad faith, liquid, liquidity, expulsion, swap(ping), foreclosure, surviving, and apophenia. The ones that have resonated with me the most have to be apophenia, good faith, and trust. When working on mini collaboration one we were focused heavily on King Lear and how liquid(ity) and swap(ping) as language/concepts/plot points as well as how these terms interact when it comes to engaging expulsion in the play.

Act one scene one of King Lear, Lear ask’s his daughters to express their love to him. When his youngest daughter, Cordelia, turn comes up she states she has nothing to say because she loves her father, “as her father”, and not for his money, “Nothing comes from nothing.” Lear replies. King Lear then expelled his daughter from the kingdom and inheritance when she refused to prove to him why she loved him more than her sisters and why she should inherit his riches over them. What I learned from King Lear that applied to my own life were the thoughts of expulsion. This form of expulsion taught and made clear to me how some people are blinded by their power and privilege that they do not see the truth of certain situations. I feel as if this relates to me as a student because as a student of color at Geneseo which is a predominantly white institution I feel as if sometimes others do not understand the struggle that comes along with that. Cordelia was impacted and overlooked because of the differences between her and her family as well as her emotional disconnection to wealth as it was not important to her. To connect myself to Cordelia, at this campus I sometimes feel outshined by peers or overlooked in certain topics due to my demographic background and other students most likely do not take notice of this advantage they have. This can be related to King Lear in the sense that he did not understand Cordelia truly loved him as her father and did not care about his liquidity while his other daughters saw only his wealth. This is my reflection of how I believe expulsion from King Lear can relate to my own life through emotional disconnection to everyone else.  

Expulsion is a course concept that I have experienced many times in my life but have never known what it meant. As we watched the “Old Man and the Storm” we saw many more examples of bad faith and expulsion as well as trust. The “Old Man and the Storm” highlighted the 2005 tropical storm called Hurricane Katrina and how many people were displaced from their homes. The government failed to properly establish support programs for people after Hurricane Katrina which left thousands expelled from their homes and even towns. As a reflection of myself I realized how an event such like this relates to myself before my life as a college student. In New York City there is a housing program called NYCHA which stands for New York City Housing Authority. Its primary target is to shelter and house low income individuals and families so that they may have a place to stay with access to water and electricity. Me, my mother, and my little sister lived in Walt Whitman’s NYCHA unit in Fort Greene for fourteen years. So such as how people were shown from the “Old Man and the Storm” being displaced by a natural disaster and slow government response is similar to how Hurricane Sandy affected NYC and its housing programs in 2012. Slow response and failure form the mayor and governor to acknowledge the truth affected the way the state government paid to fix damages caused by the storm. Many people including my family had no access to electricity, no clean water due to flooding from sewage systems, and poorly insulated homes due to damage to brick layers. These problems were too slowly fixed just as we can see how the federal government for natural disaster prevention handled the thousands affected by Hurricane Katrina. 

To reflect on the topic of how I felt physically and mentally when engaging “Parable of the Sower” in the context of that which would seem to connect to the 2008 financial crisis,’ ‘foreclosure crisis,’ ‘subprime mortgage crisis,’ or ‘housing crisis?’ I would say yes one hundred percent. When reading Octavia Butler’s novel all I could think about was the beginning of our course. The way Lauren interacts with her world and even the way her world is shaped are all examples of a potential future we could face(of course with a little added drama). The way she wants to branch out her new religion known as Earthseed is a perfect example of people we see today who often try to start their own forms of belief systems such as regular people, celebrities, and politicians. Lauren states, “There is no single thing that broke America. But a combination of things: greed, laziness, and selfishness were major factors. We allowed ourselves to become too dependent on big business. We allowed our government to be bought. We forgot about caring for the Earth, for each other, and for ourselves. And we forgot that some things just can’t be trusted to take care of themselves.” This encapsulates the connection between our world and how the current world is today. Too many people are focused on themselves that they do not bother to examine the world around them as it crumbles apart. Global warming is a big part of the story which is what heavily affected America in the book as well as the world today. Global warming is a current world issue that has and will continue to affect us all. 

Another way to reflect upon connections I learned between Parable of the Sower and the 2008 crisis is about the current state of the world we live in and how people do not care until it is too late. Everyone fails to realize the detrimental impact of their failure to be woke in today’s world so long as they are satisfied in their current life. In chapter 3 Lauren states, “People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.” Once everything hits the fan is when people wish everything could return to the way it was. Take covid for example, for nearly three years we wanted everything to go back to the way they were. We did not take the proper action as a country under terrible leadership at the time and we fell apart. We were afraid to leave our homes, many people passed away, the world became polluted with disease, it seemed like the apocalypse. 

My final connection to course concepts comes from “A Mercy” by Toni Morrison. The biggest connection I have in my own life as well as to “A Mercy” is Florens sense of apophenia. Apophenia is the habit of forming connections between objects or material that may not have a true deeper meaning. As a student I always make observations in order to try to establish connections between things in order to deepen my understanding, however these things may not actually be connected. My connection to Florens through this is her similarity or observation and critical thinking. In chapter seven when Florens is sent through the forest on her own to find the blacksmith. Another example of being forced to leave(expulsion), as she goes on her own. She notices the changes of light and quiet movement of the animals but lacks the knowledge to interpret those things. This observation of light comes into connection with apophenia because she perceives signs or meanings where there are possibly none to distinguish. This highlights my point because it represents our similarities between the way we observe things and how we interpret those things in order to make connections. This was something I learned about myself stressing over missing small details as a college student. In terms of whether or not all of this matters according to GLOBE‘s insistence that Geneseo students should gain practice in the ability to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time” I would stand by the argument that it does. As a college student venturing into adulthood it is important to apply what we learn in our courses to our own personal lives. Not only does it help us gain insight into who we are as people but it allows us to navigate through the rest of our years at college. We pay thousands of dollars to waste such useful info that could be useful in representing ourselves. Applying everything I learned from this course into my own life has helped me discover more of my identity and has given me a newfound understanding of the type of man I want to become.

By:Nathan Walz

                  In class I have been reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. As I’ve been reading, I have noticed that there are parts of the book that connect really well with our study of the 2008 housing/financial crisis. Along with this there are parts of the book that relate to what we did in class throughout the semester.

The first thing that I noticed was the events that took place. In Parable of the Sower, I observed a doomsday-like event where basically everything was in ruins. There is tons of crime and there is a big housing crisis because there are so many people without homes. “I heard on the news today that more water peddlers are being killed” (17) Water peddlers are people who sell water to the ultra-poor and homeless. In the book water is now far more expensive than gasoline. This shows just how bad things are that people are people getting killed while selling water which is now a luxury item. Lauren in this case would say that the change that caused this violence is God. Earthseed; Lauren’s newfound religion is based around the notion that God is change.  This relates heavily to what happened as the 2008 crisis unfolded. What was previously standard at the time; having a home was now a lot more rare and luxurious because of the horrible sub- prime mortgages and the actions taken in bad faith by the mortgage lenders and rating agencies. A lot of this can be seen in The Big Short. This stood out to me personally because there was change. When I see change, I immediately default to thinking about how and why it took place. There were huge changes in both the fictional world of Parable of the Sower and in 2008 when the housing/financial crash happened. The changes do relate but they are seen in a different light. One was portrayed as God, and one was portrayed as something done by giant/evil companies. 

                  The next thing that I noticed was the sharing taking place both in the book and during the 2008 housing crisis. In the book Lauren has a disease called hyperempathy. When Lauren is close to someone, she feels the physical feeling they have. So, if they are being hurt by something she will feel their pain and same thing if someone is feeling some other kind of physical stimulus. “The sharing isn’t real after all. It isn’t some magic or ESP that allows me to share the pain or pleasure with other people” (11) This ultimately makes her vulnerable in case she needs to defend herself. When she hurts someone, she feels exactly what the other person feels. “Then I was lost, no more good for anything. I died with someone” (297) When Lauren’s group got into a shootout someone got shot and died. Lauren was close enough that when they were dying so was she. She ended up passing out due to her hyperempathy. There is also the other side of Lauren’s hyperempathy. “I got caught up in their lovemaking, and had all I could do to lie still and keep quiet. I couldn’t escape their sensation.” (200) This highlights the other side of Lauren’s hyperempathy. When people are feeling pleasure, she also feels it. Lauren’s sharing goes both ways. This relates to the big banks that ended up failing during the 2008 housing crisis. 

Before the housing crisis the banks had brought up a bunch of CDO’s. These are collateralized debt obligations. In this case the debt is people’s mortgages. A CDO contains tons of people’s mortgages, it’s like bundling up a bunch of mortgages into one big package. The banks were buying these mortgages because they looked like really good investments. There were even rating agencies that would give each CDO a rating based on how likely the people paying the mortgages were to actually pay. This all sounds really great however the rating agencies lied about how good these mortgages were. Some of this had to do with what kind of mortgages were in the CDOs. There are fixed rate mortgages and there are variable rate mortgages. At the time the housing market was booming so a lot of people wanted to buy homes because of how good an investment it was. This includes people that couldn’t afford homes and people with horrible credit ratings. As said in The Big Short “Mortgage borrowers typically repaid their loans when interest rates fell, and they could finance more cheaply” (7) However with this new type of adjustable-rate mortgage it was made super difficult to pay the mortgage after the first few years. These were called subprime mortgages. There would be a super low interest rate (a teaser rate) for the first few years then the interest rate would skyrocket, and it would become super expensive to pay for the mortgage. The subprime mortgage was made available to just about everybody even if they had a really bad credit score and or couldn’t afford the house without the teaser interest rate. The mortgage lenders that supplied these super risky subprime mortgages would take a few low-risk mortgages and group them into a CDO with tons of risky subprime mortgages. The lenders would then pay to have them rated and the rating agencies gave these CDOs super high ratings even when the real rating should have been trash. These false ratings made it so that banks wanted to and did buy these horrible CDOs. After a few years when the interest rates skyrocketed, and the mortgages failed the big banks struggled and some of them even failed as a whole. This made people lose their jobs, lose their savings and lose some of their investments. In other words, the banks were sharing their financial pain with everybody. However, before this when the banks were doing well, they didn’t share any of their profits with regular people. They kept it all to themselves and gave their executives enormous bonuses. Even when the government came to bail out some of the banks, they still kept it to themselves and gave their executives more money. So, there was really only one side to this sharing. It would be like if Lauren (regular people) only felt others'(banks) pains instead of feeling both pleasure and pain. This really stood out to me because there was sharing in both worlds but one of them only shared one side of what they felt. 

                  The last thing I noticed was the foresight into what happened in both 2008 and in the book. In the book Lauren is constantly preparing for an event that would leave her with no protection from the wall. “I’ve finally assembled a small survival pack for myself–a grab-and- run pack” (80) Lauren can clearly feel that something is going to happen that causes her to need what is in the survival pack. Lauren feels this but nobody else around her does. None of her family/neighbors are getting survival packs ready. They have confidence in the wall. Lauren proved to be right to prepare because it wasn’t too much longer before she was forced to leave her home and have no protection from the wall. There was a similar situation before the 2008 housing crisis. In The Big Short Dr Michael Burry sees that there is a housing bubble and that it’s going to pop. He also sees how bad the CDOs are. So, he finds a way to bet against the success of the CDOs/subprime mortgages. ““If I bought a credit default swap, my downside was defined and certain, and the upside was many multiples of it”” Credit default swaps are basically insurance policies on, in this case CDOs. If the banks were to lose money on the CDOs/subprime mortgages Burry would make however much they lost even if he only bought a fraction of that in credit default swaps. When the crisis happened, Burry made tons of money because he basically bet that the subprime mortgages/CDOs would fail. In both the book and in the housing crisis someone had foresight into what was going to happen. Because of this both Burry and Lauren prepared to be successful when the event they predicted happened. The only difference is that Lauren prepared for something that would be bad for her whereas Burry prepared for something that would make him and his fund a lot of money.

                  These things that I noticed portray my journey through the semester. At first, I really struggled with the concepts and major points of the course. The first thing that I did to improve that was noticing that change needed to happen so that I could be successful. Noticing this really helped me start thinking about what needed to change and what needed to be done. One thing that I noticed needed to be changed was my preparation for class. I wanted to ensure that I could understand and interpret what was happening when discussing books and other topics. The next part of my journey through the semester was sharing. By this I mean sharing my ideas and thoughts with my peers. Toward the beginning of the semester, I wasn’t really participating in the discussions that happened in class. However, after I noticed that I should be sharing I started to participate more. This led to a lot more success based not only on what I contributed but what my peers contributed when taking what I shared into account. An example of this was sharing my thoughts in our small groups and people sharing their thoughts based on what I had already shared. This happened especially a lot when we were reading The Big Short. The last part of my journey through the semester was gaining foresight into what was expected so I could be the most prepared. I noticed some repetitiveness when writing our group essays (mini collaborations). After the first two I knew exactly what needed to be done to be successful in writing these essays. Throughout my semester-long journey I have improved immensely by looking for things to do better. And in doing that I have not only grown as a student but also as a person.

There has been much more to this semester than just discussing the financial crisis of 2008 or reading Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel Parable of the Sower which takes place in a future America where political failure, economic inflation and climate change have caused civilization to collapse. The narrative centers on Lauren Olamina, a young child with hyperempathy who develops the ‘Earthseed’ belief. Lauren recruits a group of followers and teaches them how to adapt to change and work together to create a better future as she navigates a scary and dangerous world after losing her home. In a seemingly damaged world, the tale is about surviving, overcoming  challenges, and finding hope. 

Finding links between books and the actual world, between the past and the present, and even between me and the greater scheme of things has been the focus in class. Writing this feels like a struggle because, to be honest, this is the one book I really understood the most so I have a lot of thoughts on it. Many people were severely impacted by the 2008 financial crisis, often referred to as the subprime mortgage crisis, the foreclosure criticism, or the housing crisis. It demonstrated how erratic the world can be, particularly in regards to money and faith. I saw the connection between that crisis and the world of Power of the Sower. Both deal with the breakdown of trust, structures, and things that people believed to be stable. This got me thinking about how people manage to survive while everything around them collapses. 

The primary thing that caught my attention was how the 2008 financial crisis and Parable of the Sower are both about the collapse of the systems we rely on. Lauren lives in a civilization in Parable of the Sower where the police, the government, and even local communities have essentially failed. After people are left to fend for themselves, Lauren develops the Earthseed philosophy, which emphasizes flexibility. Fortunately, the 2008 crisis wasn’t as severe as the events in the novel, but it still felt like institutions were breaking. Millions of people abruptly lost their houses as the housing market imploded after banks lent out loans to unworthy borrowers. Families had to learn to live when everything they relied on collapsed. It made me think of Lauren’s situation when her town is devastated and she is forced to escape and start fresh. People in both situations had to quickly adjust or risk falling behind. 

Despite the similarities, I believe that one significant distinction is the amount of authority people had to make changes. Lauren is incredibly resolute and takes charge of her life. In the Parable of the Sower, in her journal she envisioned a new community that she refers to as Earthseed, and therefore produces something new instead of waiting for someone else to save her. However, those who lost everything in 2008 didn’t always have the same choices in real life. It wasn’t as easy as starting over if you were evicted from your home or were unable to find employment. The story’s depiction of how unfair structures can be got me thinking. The banks and businesses that triggered the crisis, for example, received massive bailouts, but the average person received far less assistance. Those who received bailouts were those who most likely shouldn’t have received the loans in the first place, particularly given they already had bad debt. Those with good credit and reasonable loan borrowing, on the other hand, were left to continue repaying their debts without any assistance or bailout

A further example of how unfair system failures can be is that the big companies that precipitated the crisis were, as I said, bailed out and permitted to continue operations, while regular people lost their houses and their jobs. This is similar to the world of the Parable of the Sower, where the weak and impoverished suffer the most while the wealthy and strong appear to have everything under control. This led me to also wonder if the structures we depend on are designed to safeguard the wealthy and ignore the rest of the world. It’s distressing, but it also made me understand how critical it is to consider how we might improve these institutions and challenge their fairness. This made me question whether the systems are designed to fail the average person while protecting the powerful. I find that to be annoying but it helps me understand the significance of Lauren’s statement “God is Change”. Which means she thinks we need to be prepared to adjust because nothing stays the same when she says “God exists to be shaped. God is Change.” because the only constant is change. 

So why is any of this important? In my opinion, both the 2008 financial crisis and the Parable of the Sower teach us that things aren’t as stable as they seem. The Parable of the Sower illustrates how brittle society can be when people disregard the warning signs around them, while the facial crisis demonstrates how easily the systems we depend on, such as banks and housing markets can fail us when overloaded. Although that can be frightening, it also forces us to consider our course of action under those circumstances. For Lauren, it’s her faith in community and Earthseed. For individuals in 2008, it was organizing food banks, and mutual aid. Both demonstrated how crucial it is to support one another when systems malfunction. The fact that these kinds of reflections aid in our understanding of the wider picture is another reason it matters. Events like the 2008 financial crisis can be easily reduced to statistics, such as stock market crashes, unemployment rates, and foreclosures. However, it becomes more relatable when viewed through a lens similar to the Parable of the Sower. You witness the struggle for survival, the people and the terror. I’m now more sympathetic and conscious of how these issues impact actual lives as a result of that viewpoint. 

This semester, one of the most important things I’ve learned is how to look at events and incidents objectively. I might have previously dismissed the 2008 crisis as something I didn’t need to worry about because I was still a little child when it occurred, or I might have simply dismissed Parable of the Sower as a nice dystopian book. However, I can see how they relate to more general concepts like community, inequality, and even climate change. I can also see how these teachings are about preparing for the future rather than merely the past. Laurens belief in change, for instance,  caused me to reflect on how I handled difficulties. Do I embrace change or do I fight it? Everyone should in my opinion ask themselves those questions, particularly when facing issues like climate change or even more minor personal challenges. The way that Earthseed promotes flexibility in the face of change is another key part of laurens concept that has stayed with me. Similar concepts can be found today in movements like community building initiatives in the wake of disasters. Real world communities work together to overcome difficult obstacles and adjust to their surroundings, much like Laurens community in the Parable of the Sower. There is something potent about these communities’ ability to adapt and go forward whether it is through organizations fighting climate change or individuals joining together following natural disasters. When we consister how we must get ready for unforeseen changes in our environment or economy, Laurens saying that “God is Change” appears even more appropriate. 

I didn’t expect that Parable of the Sower would have such a lasting impact on me at the beginning of the semester. I just got the book and put it under my bookshelf until I needed it in class. While knowing the events of the 2008 crisis, and then reading Parable of the Sower it developed a sense of significance and felt very genuine as I read it. They demonstrated to me the vulnerability of systems and the necessity of individuals depending on one another in times of crisis. They also served as a reminder that there is always hope, whether it be via Earthseed, helping one another out, or simply not giving up. Looking back, I realized this semester has taught me that thinking back on what I’ve learned is more about than just comprehending the past. It’s about seeing how those teachings shape my perspective and prepares me for whatever happens next. I’m confident that these concepts will stay with me whether I’m writing essays like this or just talking to people. Who knows? Perhaps telling my story will inspire a different perspective in others. 

Jordan Welker

Final Reflective Essay

At the beginning of the semester I truly had no idea what this course would have to offer me and did not really think too much about the class before the semester started. I can remember the week before class started when I actually started to look at the syllabus for each class and remember being a little overwhelmed with this class in particular because I can remember seeing all the course texts and all of the things that seemed different about this class. I remember thinking to myself that it seemed like a much more involved class than others because it seemed like professor McCoy really cared about us reading over the brightspace before class started so we would be much more prepared going into this new semester with a new class that I seemingly had no real idea what it could be about. This reminds me a lot of the problems that occurred throughout the course texts including Parable of the Sower, King Lear,​ The Big Short, and A Mercy, that relate to the 2008 housing crisis and the many problems of trust leading to expulsion throughout these events and books. 

In the 2008 housing crisis pretty much all went bad due to the trust that the homeowners put into these people in charge of their mortgages. People acting in bad faith just to get money as quick as possible and at the expense of others caused the bubble’s tension to build until it could not take any more of this. However, it can be said that if these homeowners, who were to their credit mostly acting in good faith, could have been way more cautious of these things that led to their problems, but they were just not aware and did not have the knowledge or experience to know such things. This is very relevant to the way of life portrayed in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower because this novel shows a way of life that leads to the people depending on constant trust and people almost flushed away and not given the ability to live in one stable place for an extended period of time. We are also shown an extreme version of what can happen when all goes wrong in society. Which we saw in a certainly not as harsh way when it happened in 2008, causing so much more than just housing problems to occur. In Parable of the Sower people are forced to live in a state of constant worry and fear of what is to come next. Mrs. Sims is a good example of this. Someone who lived in good faith herself, was grossly used and taken advantage of by others leading to her mental demise and expulsion of her life. In the book it states “she decided to trade pain for eternal pain in the hereafter”(Butler, 24). Suicide is something very real and serious and is pretty much the ultimate self-expulsion. Mrs. Sims is a perfect example of how people preying in bad faith on those who act in good faith. The anarchy and no rule society shown in this novel directly leads to the downfall of Mrs. Sims. The book talks a lot about how religious she was and that she did in fact believe that suicide lead to hell. So this shows that she would rather burn forever instead of living in this gross society being preyed on for her innocence by bad faith acting people. These people can be seen as the companies and people trying to get as much money from the unfit homeowners of 2008 that preyed on their innocence and low knowledge. Many of these people being young homeowners with no experience buying homes. They were pretty much used just because they were and easy target, very similar to Mrs. Sims situation. Both scenarios where the problems stem from the top, the people who do know what they are doing and deciding to do it in bad faith anyway. 

I also think many of the principles that I have applied from the course readings and how they relate to the 2008 housing crisis can apply to something like me throughout this class this semester. This class has certainly interested me much more than a majority of the other classes from my time here, and made me actually think about my growth as a student and really learn about myself as a student. With saying earlier that I read the syllabus about a week before class and really noticed how much professor McCoy really seemed to care that we were all up to date on everything on brightspace prior to class. I certainly think this reflects on the themes learned from the course material because we constantly learned how not reading and understanding things leads to these horrible downfalls. So that really seems like a theme based off of what we learned in class itself, that problems occur when both parties are not on the same page. The fact that GLOBE says we need practice in the ability to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time” shows that a course like this is important in a students overall growth. Most classes I have gone through with basically no real thought as to how I am learning or how it can all connect on a bigger and broader scale. For example, no other class has really ever tried to get me to connect thing together that are not simple, let alone something that seems to be complete opposites. Many of the books we read would appear at first to have no relation or connection to a financial crisis at all. But upon reading and really opening up a deeper thought process, I found myself really seeing things before they even happened. After the first mini collaboration, I really started to see the class themes unravelling throughout reading the course texts while and before even finishing the story. Even when reading King Lear, I found myself seeing how people acting in carelessness were doomed by people taking advantage of them just like in the housing crisis. And I can honestly say, without being forced to do such a thing and really being made to think about it, I would have never really opened my mind to this kind of learning. I am not one to really do anything extra in class or add to discussion normally. But during the mini collaborations I really found it helpful because we were all going through this learning experience for the first time together by comparing these things to something that seemed very different. Taking in the other students’ interpretations of their own comparisons and thoughts opened my mind as well. I believe this was because we were all acting in good faith to help each other come to a conclusion, however if there were someone in the group who did not do the reading or did not want to add anything in the discussion, that could be considered bad faith which could cause problems. In general, this course was very reliant on reading and being in the loop. However, professor McCoy acted in good faith and constantly told us this is what was needed so everyone knew. Going through the course it was clear that this was very important, and the one time I did forget to do the reading it had a chain effect and it made me feel the importance of reading the brightspace and being caught up. When we went into group work that day I was unable to really add anything of value which has its consequences, I didn’t really get to add to the discussion or do any critical thinking because of my lack of knowledge. While I did not act in bad faith by doing this, I saw how it affected me and those around me and how I should not let that happen again. In the 2008 housing crisis, if everyone was made aware of the importance of reading about your mortgages and making sure it was something reasonable, many people would not have gotten themselves into these things. This is very relevant in Parable of the Sower as well because Lauren knows how important the ability to read and write is and how it could improve and save so many people which is why she wants to teach more people. In many cases basically, reading and being aware can be two huge stepping stones to avoiding any kind of disaster or mess up.

In the 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler writes, “The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” This is the goal of Lauren Olamina: creator of Earthseed who began developing her principles of the religion in 2024 (ominously, our current year). Earthseed is Olamina’s religion, which is comprised of many other religious and philosophical concepts of empathy and generosity all centered on the ultimate goal of humanity evolving to leave Earth and colonize other planets. This destiny of Earthseed parallels the idealized American dream of owning a home with a white picket fence—a symbol of stability and a safe place to raise a family—because it’s challenging and more improbable than not. During the 2008 housing crisis, many Americans were confronted with the reality that owning property felt as unattainable as humanity colonizing Mars. In Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, she envisions our world collapsing from the weight of economic instability, environmental catastrophe, and social and political fragmentation. Reflecting on the course concepts explored this semester, I will identify some of the parallels between Parable of the Sower and the 2008 Housing Crisis and how these connections bridge the gap between our reality and our fiction.

            One similarity is in both cases is that people experienced exploitation by those in power behaving unethically to preserve and strengthen their control and position. In an alternate and fictional 2024, Parable of the Sower describes a world where the economy has collapsed, inequality is rampant, and the world is quite a bit worse than our current 2024 Earth. But beyond that, resources like food and water are even more scarce, homelessness is widespread, and much of society has descended into anarchy. The latest president, President Donner of the United States of America, has shut down the space initiatives (with the same goal as Lauren, to colonize elsewhere and abandon Earth). He promised stability and efficient use of funding but failed to address any of the crises facing society, such as economic collapse, environmental destruction, widespread poverty, hunger, mental illness, and substance abuse.

President Donner allows companies like Olivar to exploit the unemployed (which is the majority) into surrendering their rights in exchange for a job and protection from the dangers on the streets. Lauren learns about Olivar in 2026, thinking,

“Anyone KSF hired would have a hard time living on the salary offered. In not very much time, I think the new hires would be in debt to the company. That’s an old company-town trick—get people into debt, hang on to them, and work them harder. Debt slavery. That might work in Christopher Donner’s America. Labor laws, state and federal are not what they once were.” (Butler, 1993, p. 52).

Lauren is 17 years old here, reflecting on the predatory tactics utilized by both Donner and Olivar. These actions betray the trust of those who are willing to surrender all they own and know because they promised stability and security for a better life. Labor laws that once would have protected workers in these new positions have been removed and President Donner approves of the deregulation, making it much easier for companies like Olivar to exploit vulnerable people.

            This is much like the disaster of the 2008 Housing Crisis, which led to the displacement of approximately 10 million Americans (Investopedia, 2021). During this time, millions of families faced foreclosure as a result of the disgustingly greedy practice done in bad faith offering high-risk subprime mortgages to individuals who could not afford them, promising the American Dream of homeownership with no background check necessary. As the housing market collapsed, the value of homes crashed which left many homeowners underwater with mortgages they could no longer pay due to sudden unemployment. Massive layoffs during the 2008 Housing crisis happened because of the economic downturn that followed the collapse of the housing market. Banks and financial institutions began failing and it had a domino effect, making it difficult for businesses to operate among other challenges. People lost their homes and savings, they spent less (which hurt industries and the economy further), and this lead to a massive loss of jobs across the board. By 2010, an estimated 8.7 million American jobs had been laid off (Gratton, 2024). This is much like the fate of the world envisioned by Butler, in which people lose what they have due to the deregulation of an authority or power in this case our 2008 Wall Street and Butler’s 2024 companies, resulting in homelessness and lack of financial stability.

            Another similarity is the factor of risk in both cases. In Parable of the Sower, an example of extreme risk for chance of reward is Lauren’s brother Keith. Keith believed he was stronger, smarter, and victorious because he was willing to take and kill when he wanted to and hadn’t died yet. He truly believed he was making the best decisions, which he displays in this scene with his mother Cory. He brings her a large sum of money and she is shocked when she realizes he doesn’t intend on staying home anymore. Desperate, she clings to him pleading with her son, “ ‘No! You’ll be killed out there! What’s the matter with you? Stay home!’ ‘Mama, I won’t let him beat me again,’ he said. ‘I don’t need him hitting me and telling me what to do. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to make more money in a day than he can in a week—maybe in a month.’ (Butler, 1993, p. 43-44). Keith wants freedom and a better life, which he believes his father is not providing. He is confident in his plan and decisions because he will achieve his goals by doing it his way rather than his father’s way, just as he thought. Despite the warnings, Keith continues to make as much money as fast as he can, reflecting his desperation. Unfortunately, he dies.

            Many families during the buildup to the 2008 Housing Crisis took on the risk of subprime mortgages in the hopes of achieving homeownership. They were lured in by easy access loans and the teaser low-interest rate to believe that they could afford to buy a house much sooner than they thought possible. But with adjustable rates that ballooned after the teaser period, borrowers were never expected to be able to afford their properties in the long run. When the housing market collapsed and property values dropped, many homeowners were drowning in debt, with devastating consequences for those who took on the risk and even those who didn’t (Investopedia, 2021).

            In Parable of the Sower, the powerful and rich are in charge and allow those beneath them to suffer. Much how in the real world, the housing crisis revealed that taxpayer money was used to bail out major financial institutions that had been responsible for the crisis, further highlighting the consequences of unchecked corporate power and government inaction in both scenarios. In both Parable of the Sower and the 2008 Housing Crisis, people were exploited by those in power. This led some to take risks in the hope of better but faced consequences for their ambition instead. In the novel, Keith takes extreme risks because by opposing his father and pursuing fast money he will achieve independence. Similarly, in the housing crisis, many families took on the risk of subprime mortgages, but these were designed to become unaffordable over time and families suffered instead.

            In both Parable of the Sower and the 2008 Housing Crisis, individuals were exploited through risky decisions driven by promises of a better life, only to suffer the consequences of unchecked power. These events highlight the dangers of corporate greed and government inaction. Reflecting on these risks is essential for understanding how power dynamics shape our world, and connects to GLOBE’s emphasis on self-improvement and reflection. The events in the fiction and non-fiction predict and communicate that history will repeat itself over and over if we fail to learn from past mistakes. It reminds us that if we don’t stop and critically examine our past and adapt we will risk allowing similar injustices to happen again.

When I signed up for this course, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I registered because the course fulfilled multiple general education requirements and the fact that it’s not often I get to take an English course with my majors. After I had finished registering for all of my classes and the stress died down, I turned back to the ENGL 111 course description and learned that it is actually self-graded, and then I really didn’t know what to expect. I will admit that I assumed this class would be much more similar to my INTD 105 class I took during the fall of my freshman year. Meaning, I thought it would be a bit more lecture heavy and nit-picky on our individual writing. I was both excited and nervous when I realized this course was going to focus a lot more on our personal growth and working to connect multiple different texts revolving around the 2008 housing crisis. I have learned so much about how fluid language can be and how using the same words in multiple different contexts can totally change the meaning. Introducing our course concepts in the beginning of the semester and working to incorporate them with each piece of literature we read truly helped me to improve my critical thinking skills and I am grateful for challenging myself in this class.

We took the time to read four pieces of literature throughout the semester. First, Shakespeare’s King Lear, then The Big Short by Michael Lewis, A Mercy by Toni Morrison, and finally Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. We looked at all of these novels through the lens of the 2008 housing crisis and made connections between the texts that I never would think to make on my own. Three out of four of those texts were written years before the crisis, yet we were still able to use our course concepts and the reality of what happened in 2008 to find connections between all four. In 2008, there were greedy companies who wanted to continue making risky financial decisions and almost treated it like gambling. For example, page 256 of The Big Short says, “The line between gambling and investing is artificial and thin.” The risk of credit default swaps, which Investopedia defines as “… a financial derivative that allows an investor to swap or offset their credit risk with that of another investor. To swap the risk of default, the lender buys a CDS from another investor who agrees to reimburse them if the borrower defaults” was greatly underestimated and was a big cause for the crisis. The banks were giving out easy loans which inflated the prices of houses and created a housing bubble. When the bubble burst, prices dropped again and people were not able to pay back their loans. Credit default swaps greatly amplified the 2008 financial crisis and essentially led to foreclosures, expelling people from their homes. It didn’t matter how they made money, all that mattered was that they were getting rich. For example, page 257 of The Big Short states, “What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions–if they can get rich making dumb decisions?” If the mortgageg companies were making good money, they didn’t care how or who got expelled from their homes. When reading all four texts, I was able to keep the idea of expulsion in the back of my mind and look for examples of that, as well as other course concepts, in each book.

Most recently, we read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. This novel is about a post-apocalyptic world where no one, except the absolute elites, can afford to live safely and healthily. It follows a teenage girl named Lauren who is the daughter of a preacher and is lucky enough to live in a nice, gated community. However, there is a ton of crime and mass poverty outside of her community’s walls. The intense crime gets so bad outside those walls that thieves and drug addicts eventually break in and start setting the community on fire and robbing everyone’s homes. Families get killed or separated from each other and the survivors finally realize that they need to get out. I have actually read this book before for my INTD 105 course last fall, but we read it with the focus of addiction and the drugs used throughout the book, so I was interested to read it with a different focus and think about how important expulsion is in the novel. Of course, the first time I read this book, I understood how prominent expulsion was as mass amounts of people were forced out of their homes. Since the setting of this book is a sort of dystopian society, there is barely any enforcement from the government or landlords, so there isn’t a direct person/company forcing people out, but rather the horrible living conditions in Southern California. While there is a difference in what directly caused these expulsions, there is still the same result of people tragically being forced to move because of the lack of money. As I read Parable of the Sower for the second time, I realized how much more related it is to the 2008 financial and housing crisis than I originally thought.

I believe that it is very important to not only educate ourselves about the past to make sure history does not repeat itself, but to also read novels like Parable of the Sower that explore what our world could look like. Like I said before, I read this novel just last year, but reading it for a second time in 2024, after the recent election, made it feel more real than I’d like to admit. Before this course, I didn’t know much at all about the 2008 housing crisis. I knew that it happened, but I never truly understood how or why it was able to get so bad. Reading Parable of the Sower amplifies issues that we currently face in our world and I think that the reader should feel a little scared while reading it. During the 2008 crisis, people had to leave their homes because of financial factors, and while poverty is still a huge issue in Parable, climate change is also very prominent and something I would say is more relatable to our world right now. For Lauren’s family specifically, both of her parents have respected jobs as her father is a preacher and her stepmom teaches people to read and write, which many don’t know how to do anymore. As unfair as it is, socioeconomic status is different for everyone, and especially in the setting of Parable, there is a clear divide between the rich and the poor. The rich are still able to hold on to a somewhat sustainable life as they can afford electricity and clean water, but the poor won’t have access to these things unless they steal. However, I believe that climate change is an issue that affects everyone equally. Something everyone on Earth has in common is the fact that we simply all live on Earth, and if our climate becomes so polluted that we can’t breathe healthily, or go outside because it’s too hot, everyone’s health is equally impacted. At the very beginning of chapter five of Parable of the Sower, there is finally a rainfall and Lauren writes in her journal, “That’s all there has been for six years”. I can’t even imagine what a six year drought would feel like, and I don’t think we should ever have to worry about that happening. Parable of the Sower should almost cause readers to “wake up” and do what they can to keep our Earth from ever getting to this extreme of a state. We must do everything we can so people aren’t expelled from their homes because of extreme heat, rising sea levels and floods, or any other climate related issue. 

With Geneseo’s Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education (GLOBE) it is important that students are able to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time”. I believe that this is important in both the context of Parable of the Sower and as a student in general. As I said before, we should read Parable with an open mind rather than thinking there’s no way this could be our reality. While I do agree that the lives people live in the novel are a bit extreme, I don’t think they are completely out of touch with what could happen in years to come. We must reflect on and learn from history and the struggles we have had in the past, such as the 2008 crisis, and do what we can to keep settings like Parable of the Sower from occurring in the future. No one should be without a comfortable place to live. No matter their financial circumstances or what’s going on outside, every human deserves to have a place they can call home.  As for reflecting on changes in learning as a college student in general, I believe that not only Parable of the Sower but this class as a whole has allowed me to grow as a learner. As I said above, I expected this English class to be more similar to classes I have taken in the past where the teacher is much more critical about our writing. Where a lot of our ideas are either right or wrong and we are docked points for grammar. I was very pleased to realize how that wasn’t the true focus in this class and we instead were encouraged to think and make connections anyway we could. Of course, we were still expected to be able to back up our claims with evidence to show we were acting in good faith and truly responsible for our own ideas. I have never taken a self graded course, and I honestly really enjoyed this class structure. I feel it forced me to really hold myself accountable and prove that I am a student who truly cares about my own learning. Instead of getting the satisfaction of a good number grade after each assignment or putting more care into only the assignments worth the most of my grade, I had to work hard and show up to each class with the same preparation and care. I did my best over the course to improve my learning and I really hope that showed. I worked hard in group discussions, but especially small groups, and I think I made adjustments throughout the semester to really step up my game. For example, after our first care check ins I realized I wasn’t taking advantage of the class notes like I should have been, so from that point on I made a big effort to read every single class note and I think it helped me to be even better prepared. Over the semester, I was able to get away from my idea of a “typical” English class and worked hard to adjust my learning style just like GLOBE encourages. I am grateful for taking this course!

Within the novel Parable of the Sower there is a correlation between the 2008 global financial crisis and what occurs in the novel. Parable of the Sower written by Octavia E. Butler was written in the 90s but is set in our present day; the 2020s. We follow a fifteen-year-old girl named Lauren Olamina. Her community was destroyed, and she chose to leave her home. On her journey she spoke about her philosophy of the Earthseed. Lauren believes that God is change and humans are meant to shape God, accept change, and colonize other planets. As Lauren finishes her journey to leave her home, she creates a little community where she spreads her beliefs more and lives according to her Earthseed philosophy.

Engaging this book within the context of what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis brings forth some connections between the novel and the crisis. In the novel and during the 2008 financial crisis course concepts are intertwined in the events that happened. Course concepts such as expulsion and bad faith are common themes. In the novel we see the destruction of a community where many people are killed or are forced to flee, this is an example of expulsion. People like Olamina left their town because the home that they knew was not the same anymore, it was ruined. An example of this from the novel was when Olamina said, “Last night, when I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning. The houses, the trees, the people: Burning” (Butler 153). Robledo was in shambles; people were dead and homes and buildings were destroyed. Olamina chose to leave her town, but she really had no other choice. She either stayed in the war zone of a town or she had to leave and start her life over again. When you engage this example of expulsion with the financial crisis of 2008 you see similarities. In the 2008 crisis people were expelled from their homes. And although the destruction of Robledo is very different from a global crisis, it is also very similar. In both cases people were forced to leave their homes and start new lives with less than they had before. In both the novel and the crisis people’s lives were uprooted and immensely changed. Another course concept that relates to the novel and the 2008 crisis is bad faith. In the novel many robberies and murders occurred. This is one of the biggest examples of bad faith. In the book it says, “This is the seventh incident since Keith was killed” (Butler 117). In this section of the novel the number of robberies and deaths were discussed. Even an elderly woman was killed. People were acting in bad faith by taking lives and stealing from townspeople. In the global crisis bad faith was heavily at play. During the 2008 crisis people were forced out of their homes because they could not pay their mortgages. This was because people who did not have a high income were given subprime mortgages and those who issued those mortgages knew they would not be able to pay them back. Those in power and in the financial industry knew that they were hurting others but did it anyway. This is similar to Parable of the Sower because people were acting in bad faith in both cases for selfish reasons. And although the Parable of the Sower might be fiction and set in a dystopian world it can feel like our real world. And that is the point of many dystopian-esque novels; to make you see how similar our world can be to that of a dystopian world.

Engaging the Parable of the Sower within the context of the 2008 global financial crisis does matter given GLOBE’s insistence that students should be reflecting on changes in learning and outlook over time. It matters because when thinking of the novel in the context of the crisis you can see how what you have learned has grown. And your opinion or outlook changes, or shifts, or expands. It is important to relate literature and other global events to one another. This is because what we read in books is what we see on the news, it’s what we see in real time. Even old literature like Shakespeare relates to modern events. And focusing on relating other pieces of work to each other and to global events like the 2008 crisis greatly expanded my knowledge.

 Reflecting on changes in my learning and my outlook over time has also led me to change my outlook over and over again. And now I have come to the conclusion that history is going to repeat itself, the wealthy and the powerful will never change, and the rest of us need to stand up for ourselves. Time and time again our world has been negatively impacted by people with power and money. And each time it happens people like you and me are affected. If we don’t do something, nothing will change. This outlook I have is due to my prior opinions of the world, but it is also due to the readings we have done in class. Constantly comparing different situations with each other and finding common denominators has been useful. I’ve seen that it is always someone with power who shouldn’t have power that causes these issues. But then I wonder if anyone should have that kind of power? Maybe you start off as a moral person and then you come into power and wealth, and then you become someone whose heart is cold and makes decisions based on what will keep them rich. I also start to think that power and wealth are diseases. It seems like having great power and wealth is a parasite. Your mind gets overtaken, and you just keep feeding the parasite those one hundred-dollar bills. And you’re left with a shell of a person; your empathy is gone, your soul, your love for your neighbors. The parasite takes it all. I feel that it is much less fulfilling and rewarding to live your life as a wealthy and powerful person than to live as someone like me. I don’t have money, I don’t have power, but I have a soul. And I feed my soul love and music and adventures. In my eyes I am far richer and powerful than the “big dogs”. I get to focus on the little things in life. I can look at the trees and call them beautiful instead of pricing them up for lumber. I converse with my friends while eating cheap food on our stained rug. The life I have is challenging and weird and it’s beautiful. I would not trade my strange little life for one filled with power and wealth. Because then I would lose my soul and the innocent, unconditional love that surrounds me.

As you can see, our ability to reflect upon what we learn and change our outlooks is important. It is beyond important; in fact, it is essential. Not only does this GLOBE standard make me a more well-rounded student it makes me a more well-rounded human. And throughout this class and our readings of literature such as Parable of the Sower and our focus on the 2008 financial crisis I saw how cruel our world can be. This class has helped me expand my knowledge beyond just “school stuff”. It has shaped who I want to be and has helped me to see how lucky I am to have had the opportunity to learn all of this. I think it is important to understand how literature seeps into your life beyond the classroom and that’s why the GLOBE standard is a necessary standard.

By Madelyn Perry

After my scheduled course registration period this past summer, which I was embarrassingly late to, I browsed through English courses hoping to find something of more interest to me than the classes my advisor or whatever responsible department automatically enrolled me in. I knew that I was not in a position to be picky about my options, but at the time, I could not help feeling like as long as I reached out in earnest to a few folks, I would be able to arrange a schedule I really wanted, and that is exactly what I did. I recall reading the GEN ENG 111: Lit: Expulsion and Housing Crisis course description and being interested because it described a way of learning (reading) that I am good at to understand issues about which I can never know enough of. That is to say, one of my biggest qualms in coming to college, as well as coming into adulthood, is the repulsion to defining myself by just one study for the rest of my life. I wholeheartedly enjoy studying English and I believe it is what I am supposed to do. However, in feeling drawn towards a specific study, I cannot help also feeling like this is secretly because I would be unfit to do anything else. I am familiar with the term Imposter Syndrome which is often thrown around college campuses specifically at incoming and overwhelmed students and refers to the feeling of being less qualified or less deserving than one’s peers. Coming to Geneseo, I did not feel that this term applied to me. I love to read, I love being in a classroom, and I know that I care deeply about the quality of work I produce. I know that I belong in an academic environment. Although I have this armor, I am still not immune to the short end of the stick that English majors sometimes get when put next to STEM folks. This is in no way meant to incite competition amongst the two, but the disregard for the value of English has power over me nonetheless. All of this is to say that I figured, in good faith, that a course so outside of my realm of knowledge would surely make me a more well-rounded student, and in this process, prove that I am fit enough to engage in dense and complex discussions about topics that are important enough to warrant national attention.

            Little did I know, learning about why the Global Housing Crisis of 2008 exploded to the severity that it did would lead right back the values I hold dear. In all the works throughout the semester, from Shakespeare’s King Lear to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, there lies a common denominator of undervaluing the power of word, written and spoken. And in every work, this proves to be a condition that invites a war of good faith and bad faith that ultimately results in expulsion. In Lear, the King’s abundant trust puts him at odds with his daughters who have a knack for using it to their advantage. In Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, the real-life CEOs who are best known for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis also failed to see the human lives behind the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), products that were comprised of mortgage loans which were destined to be defaulted on, although when mixed with more secure loans, seemed like low risk and high reward opportunities for investment. In the disastrous wake of the housing crisis and recession, it is clear that to the big bankers and CEOs of Wallstreet, CDOs had a label that read Get Rich Quick but had a fine print that said *At the expense of ordinary Americans and countries all around the world. In Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, an enslaved girl Florens is skilled in interpreting signs and some written words, yet she cannot read the character of the Blacksmith, her older and non-enslaved lover, and thus she fails to see that the value she imbues in him is not equal to that which he places in her. And although the consequences of not reading are restated repeatedly in these works, I cannot escape the irony of taking this course at a college that is inevitably full of students, myself included, that take these skills for granted.

Seeing this firsthand every day, Parable of the Sower’s own Lauren Olamina’s frustration with her community’s indifference to becoming observant resonates with me deeply. But perhaps Lauren’s interaction with her good friend Joanne, in which Joanne resists the idea of preparing against disaster should it strike the community, is better described not as indifference but as fearful distancing. While certainly some folks in Butler’s not so dystopian California are indifferent to its horrors because they capitalize on them, such as the Paints (the havoc wreaking, fire-setting, drug addicted arsonists and anarchists), most are concerned with their survival amid dangers like drought, poverty, starvation, and crime. For those like Lauren and Joanne who have only ever known a life such as this, these threats are very real yet very normalized. From inside their wall and safer than most, it is not so easy to see the definite shift towards worse times. And, because of the human tendency to become accustomed to one’s conditions, whether privileged or deprived, it is difficult to remove oneself and view those conditions with objectivity. Naturally, Joanne cannot do this without first acknowledging that her quality of life is reaching a point of no return, and that she risks death or enslavement if she does not adapt. To Lauren, adapting means becoming educated and self-sufficient to shape the future. But to Joanne, this means reckoning with issues that are too large for her to conceive, thereby making them real and imperative to her, which naturally she does not want to do, as this brings a state of fear and anxiety that no one would wish to live in. Whereas Lauren sees this as a character flaw, by Earthseed, a religion of Lauren’s own creation in which “God is Change” (Butler, 3), Joanne and the rest of the community are God fearing people.

So, in looking at the ways in which the fictional Parable of the Sower can be examined in light of the 2008 financial crisis, it becomes easier to see how a repulsion to reading is not necessarily equivalent to a lack of intelligence, but rather as a way to remove oneself from reality. This, however, weakens the ability to, as previously mentioned, view circumstances objectively. In The Big Short, the CEOs and big bankers had thought they discovered an infinite money hack in trading bad loans like a game of hot potato to ever consider that there would be a recession, just as Joanne and much of Lauren’s community felt far more secure behind their neighborhood wall than the rest of the world to ever consider that it might come down. But it is Lauren, Mike Burry, and Steve Eisman who prevail, not Joanne who is never heard from again, and not the CEOs who lost billions on bad trades. What these characters have in common is the skill of observing all that can be read around them. While this does not necessarily make them ethical people, it means they survive the chaos. For a lot of students here at Geneseo, reading is a skill that is left uncultivated because it has already been learned. Florens’ opening question in A Mercy, “Can you read?” (Morrison, 1) at first seems rhetorical when linked to the second question, “Who is responsible?” (Morrison 1) as if these two things- knowing how to read and assigning accountability- are inextricably linked. But, in a story of colonial America where folks are only literate enough to get by, if at all, it is not so easy to place blame or find the point of origin, thus illustrating that basic functional literacy is not sufficient enough to understand the world as well as it could be. Reading is not the same as understanding, and while it takes time and energy to narrow this gap, it is something that this course has done well to draw attention to.

Ultimately, while I joined this course for the good faith reason of wanting to broaden my horizons, I admittedly did so believing that the information covered would be of more value than that of my other classes. I am now proudly well versed in the topic of the 2008 housing crisis, but this would not be the case had I not understood the importance of reading. In this way, this course has taught me that I do not need to abandon one set of knowledge in favor of another, but instead that is my background of English study which makes me more than qualified to have meaningful discussion with folks and topics outside of my major.