No one should be alone. We, as humans exist in/within communities, groups, population, cultures, families among others. From birth, an individual’s community/family assumes responsibility for the upbringing of the individual. From the kindergarten teachers to next-door neighbours, a network of people periodically provide support and care. Kids are encouraged to go out and make friends. Holidays, rites of passages celebrations are only complete with family and with long standing traditions; families are responsible for guiding the individual in their eventual situation to life. Humans usually live communally or simply tolerate each other hence we are regarded as social but complex creatures. The old adage “No man is an Island” is heard too often from the mouths of those who wish to talk introverts out of their highly valued internal conversations. Can you respect my privacy please? Tolerate. Even when research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption (Cain, 2012. ) The old biblical story of the tower of Babel highlights the great power of team work and collective experience. After the flood in the post-Noahic world; humans on earth were united in one language. Soon after, they decided to team up together and build a tower that could reach the heavens. They built a sky high edifice, continued building until they were struck by God and started to speak different languages. The workers abandoned the work and migrated to different ends of the earth. The tower of Babel became desolate; a withered testament to the power of unity. In my lonely times, I wonder about the unspeakable power in team work. Men and women;if matched together in intelligence, fervor and ambition could indeed change the world like the workers of Babel attempted to. If individual achievements matter; then the world exists on the axis of collective achievements. Greatness is in the WE not I, alone .
English Class Trust
When I talked to my mom about college classes the number one thing that I would bring up is that I really like English classes. When she would ask me why I would say something like, “well, in most classes I would usually only know the people that sit next to me, but in my English classes I know every person’s name. I really like the group comradery in it. It feels a lot like I’m back in high school”. This has become probably one of the main reasons that I continue to take English classes and why I made it my second major, almost like it feels like a breath of fresh air compared to some of my other classes where we all stare at a PowerPoint and try to jot down the notes as fast as possible before the professors changes the slides. Continue reading “English Class Trust”
Difficulties with the Final Project
As we near the end of the semester (and our class wide group project), I am finding it more and more clear what Butler in Bloodchild when she said “There is danger in working with a partner. ” Similarly to Denis’s post, I too am struggling with what it means to work with a partner.
Following the Flow of Fulfillment
In my last blog post “Supply and Demand,” I wrote about how an individual’s environment severely affects their rights and, therefore, their identity. Depending on the environment, certain behaviors and actions are either stimulated or repressed because of their social and/or economic standpoint. Some areas restrict/control an individual’s ability to marry whoever they want, live wherever they want, work whatever job they want, etc. However, a person’s reaction depends on what they define their identity to be made of after these influences have affected them. In this case, will the backfire effect help or prevent positive progress from being made? Continue reading “Following the Flow of Fulfillment”
Phenylethylamine: The Chemical Composition of Love
For all my fellow romantics, this one’s for you. Featuring Octavia Butler’s Clay’s Ark and Anastasia: The New Broadway Musical
Phenylethylamine [phe·nyl·eth·yl·amine]
It’s the reason why we get butterflies in our stomach when we think of our significant others. It’s the reason why we feel nostalgic when we leave our homes. It’s what every Disney princess sings about (except Moana). It is the feeling of euphoria. And it is the answer to the question that Stephen asks Rane after her refusal to love a child that will look like Jacob, it is the chemical composition of love.
Continue reading “Phenylethylamine: The Chemical Composition of Love”
Does anyone truly have autonomy?
I, too, like Sandra, was struck by Katie’s post. It got me to thinking whether any of us are really truly autonomous. I would have to say no.
I consider myself to be very self sufficient–I pay for college by myself, I pay rent out of my own pocket every month, I pay for groceries without help from my family, and I even sometimes treat myself to a few new articles of clothing (not without justifying it first: “I’m entering the working world soon! I need nice clothes!”) or a concert ticket. However, I am also bound to this system of autonomy–doesn’t that make me immediately not autonomous? I am not free to do whatever I want with my belongings, or money, or life, really. I am bound to the system. I need to do well in school, because if I don’t, I will have wasted the money I worked so hard to get so that I could attend college. Still, not everyone is this lucky.
Voluntourism vs Volunteerism
I notice that some people in my life think that the most impactful thing one can do is something that is far away, something to invest a lot of money into so that they truly make a huge impact and difference. Yes, voluntourism can do a lot to help, but that is overlooking whats right in front of us. There’s this idea that one has to travel out thousands of miles to “help the starving children in Africa,” all the while there are children right in the cities we live in facing issues that can possibly stay with them the rest of their lives. According to the nonprofit No Kid Hungry there are currently 13 million children in the United States who do not receive nutritious food on a regular basis. The “tourism” aspect of voluntourism can have a tendency to outshine the real work, and I think it’s important to remember the term’s roots. Volunteering. Continue reading “Voluntourism vs Volunteerism”
Understanding the Literary Cannon and How It Pertains to This Course
In my ENGL 203 course, we have been taking a look at literary theories, and one of them pertains to this course that I thought I would share with you all. One of the theories, ethnic studies, states that “You can thank literary theory and criticism for much of the positive change that has occurred over the past few decades. Students are still assigned works by many of the “dead white European males” that used to monopolize reading lists, but those students are now likely to be assigned books by Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison or Amy Tan alongside with those by Charles Dickens or John Milton”. If you take a look at the first name in that list of authors, you’ll notice Toni Morrison’s name among the list. What this quote from the book is saying that we owe reading Home this semester, to the literary canon, which is known as the change in the collection of texts read in classrooms.
This term literary canon often reflects national culture, which is another way this term relates to this course. It talks about how some people view culture as a broad collection of a countries practices, while others see culture as a kind of goal or ideal. That second view of culture reminds me of our journey through this course. We took a look at several pieces of literature this semester on the topic of how racism has played into medical treatments and consent, with a goal in mind of raising awareness on this topic. Books such as Home illustrated examples of consent within the text and illustrated topics we looked at in Medical Apartheid to life. We owe being able to dive into such a topic due to the literary canon, as it has changed into reading texts that encourage discussion and questioning.
Transitioning as a Class and Incorporating GLOBE
Through our discussion of the Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education (GLOBE) while all the outcomes are important, our group emphasized the importance of “Leadership and Collaboration” and “Diversity and Pluralism” during our construction of the collaborative course statement. Continue reading “Transitioning as a Class and Incorporating GLOBE”
This Is Why We CAN Have Nice Things
We all do things we don’t like. It’s a fact of life at this point. Consent under duress, if you will. But it’s also something that has cropped up during this community effort to create a cohesive document. It is clear, at times, that there is discontent. It would be naïve to think that there wouldn’t be discontent. But simply because we are brought together by a need to do something, does not mean that people cannot and will not divide over the same thing that brings them together. Have we grown from this exercise? Probably. Have we accomplished something? We succeeded in putting a document together. Are all of us happy 100% with it? Probably not. But my philosophy has always been this: you need to do what you need to do, you do what you need to do, and then when you have finished doing that, you do everything else that you have to do, without attentive regard of the individual’s level of content. To clarify the latter part of that last statement, we cannot always consider the individual needs of each and every individual per group. It is infeasible to think that anything could get done that way. And this is why we can have nice things – because typically we do what we have to do, not always what we want to do, and doing what we have to do does not always constitute doing what we want to do.