Blogging Around

The first comment I decided to make was on Ruxi's blog. In short, it emphasized on how Sherman Alexi's poem about Facebook applies in real life. That Facebook and other, similar social media sites/objects (i.e. smart phones) are degrading us due to the fact that they are unnatural, and are "messing with our brains". Along with that it states how we are becoming lazier and more dependent on technology now that everything is at our finger tips. My comment was:

I think that their intentions as social networking innovators were good, to connect people who normally wouldn't be able to talk on a daily basis. And in some ways that has seriously helped. For instance, this past summer I went to camp with kids all over the country to Mombasa, Kenya, and created strong relationships with many of the Africans that we were working with there. The only way for me to keep in touch with these kids is through social networking sites. This was the main purpose of the creation of these sites, and it has served its purpose well. I mean how would the Arab Spring, or numerous other ideas and revolts start if it weren't for this interaction of people assisted by technology?

In my opinion, what makes these sites appealing for us is the fact that by nature, humans are social, and the main role of all these innovations and technologies revolve around that very idea. Humans also tend to "Want" to be happier and more relaxed people, which is why drugs and alcohol became such a big hit. Or maybe altogether, its just the fact that for both (drugs/alcohol, and social networking/media) a few "cool" people begin doing it and through your own mental pressure on wanting to be like others, you fall into the trap as well and so do the people around you. And through that, a norm in society is established.

But I have to agree with you, the instant gratification can make us lazier than we already are. I once read an article in eighth grade about how scientists think that kids brains are being wired differently due to the influence of technologies on our lives. In today's world, it can make us lazier than we already are due to the fact that teaching and work methods are similar to those of the pre-computer/cellphone era. I now see that schools as well as the workforce are making efforts to adapt to the new norm, but the status-quo still remains firmly rooted in these two areas.

The problem is that the instant gratification of these sites is more interesting to us than what we learn in school. This is a tough era for teachers as well as for students. Teachers are going to have to step their game up and so will students. Props to Mr. Allen because I think these blog posts are the perfect way to get students to do homework. It allows me to do the same as I would on Facebook, share my own ideas and thoughts, and to view and comment on others. This socialization is what students want, and this has allowed us to speak our minds in a productive manner.

I wouldn't compare Facebook to bad drugs, but I would associate the use of it to an overdose on say Tylenol. It helps you feel better, but in large amounts it can have devastating consequences. Through experience one must realize what abusing these sites can do and should step by step recover, and take the social networking in the recommended dosages as said on the package of Tylenol. Students must also understand that the teachers themselves have this procrastination issue You will have less stress and won't be prone to procrastinate even more if you understand where to draw the line in terms of procrastination.

Many seem to love to advertise their personal lives on these sites, and complain that people are getting "into their business". Well obviously you make a status and post a picture of what you were doing all the time! Who wouldn't know what was up? Do you spend your entire day on Facebook? 
All in all, I agree that the whole factor of things being at our finger tips is going to cause us to be lazy, that's inevitable, but we just have to adapt to it. This is the information age. In the late 1900s who would want to go to the library if they had a computer to tell them all they needed? We have to be able to draw the line at some point and everyone is going to have to change their ways, we can't have the same factory styled school system as we say in Mr. Morgan/Widner's video last year, we have to change how things work, because we are no longer in the same era.
Great blog post! (:

The second post I did was on Julia's post about how her voice in writing seems to be suppressed by the fact that she is writing to please others rather than herself, similar to the way in which Orlando wrote in the very beginning of Virginia's Woolf's novel, Orlando.  Through this her voice has been lost and covered by the generic "Student trying to hard to please the teacher" voice rather than her own, and every since, she has been trying to reconnect with her original writing. The comment I made was:

This is some really deep stuff!

I can totally relate to how you feel about writing. I feel like that is the same as almost any other thing in life. My friends will tell you that it is not an uncommon sight to see me breaking down in tears due to stress about getting into colleges and receiving good grades. I worry about getting good grades more for the sake of college admins rather that the sense of self accomplishment I would feel in middle school when I received all As. I have allowed grades to define who I am, and rather than caring about my own learning, I feel like I am working hard to please some random college administrator who probably just doesn't care because he or she has seen multiple cases of hard work everyday.

My pediatrician told me that she regrets just getting good grades for medical school, she stated that she wished she could have "learned for herself" and not just stressed out over grades. Its gotten to the point that I don't know what defines me or not, just as you cannot distinguish your generic voice for your teacher through your writings from your true voice. From a young age society holds us in chains and tells us that we will not succeed unless we do things to please others who are higher up on the social scale, whether it be teachers, the "popular kids, the person you like,etc. 

I miss the thrill of being able to write my mind, and feel the power of my pen running on to my paper and I wish I could have it back one day! Now of days, there is no such thing as writing in your own style, there is just a generic, scholarly like voice that every child assumes, as if they were robots! I feel as if I have to painfully scratch out every word onto paper just to please a certain structure of writing with all the formalities. It sickens me.

Personally I want to be a journalist, so I must somehow find a way to rebel against this generic voice before it's too late...This blog post is a good way for me to truly express myself in an unconventional format, that's why I love these assignments. Teachers may be trying to help guide us in the right direction, but what makes amazing literature (as well as good college impressions) is the ability for the writer to do something against the norm of the generic voice and to truly express themselves.

THIS IS AMAZING!!!!! :D

An Inconvenient Truth: Language: A Prison

           Language is limiting.  I write, I read, and I write, I reread, I like what I read.  Yet why does it seem like I am circumnavigating what the strong and clear mental image in my mind is? Why is it that I cannot seem to define my experience as it was through my eyes without having to alter it a bit?  Browsing through poems in a poetry book I realize that try as I might, I will never be able to attain the exact picture the author is creating in his or her head, neither would anyone else who read my writing.  Even Virginia Woolf stated in her novel, Orlando, that, "...Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another.  Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces..." (14).  Yes folks, we have been deceived by our childhood teachers who told us that we could write anything.  The First Amendment has failed us, for how is there a freedom of speech when speech in itself is our prison!  The truth is that we can write and say things that don't exactly hit the mark of the definite picture in our heads.  This is the same with other forms of expression (e.g. art, music, etc.).  The writer of a poem or a novel may have an extremely rich idea which they wish to convey to an audience: an image, a sound, a firework bursting within their craniums, yet it's as if they have gone mute and must sign the words they are looking for.  It's something hard to accept, the fact that the only principal we have been taught to communicate with is in actuality, quite restricting.

           This bothers me.  Growing up in America I was taught that our country was one in which freedom ought to ring throughout the land.  If our basic foundation is filled with holes, how do our forms of expression still stand? For example: When deeply reading an opinion piece in the news paper my brain begins to grasp the concept of what the author is talking about.  My brain does this by connecting to similar images and/or sounds I think the author is depicting that I have seen in the past.  This action can be both subconscious and conscious. But by doing this will I ever know what the author truly wanted to tell me? Sadly the answer is no.  The experiences that I have had are unknowingly intertwined with the text the author has written.  I will end up receiving and understanding a tainted version of the author's message, a message tainted by my own self.  Language holds us in chains for trying to express an idea which cannot be fully explained with the words and sentences it provides to us.

           Now imagine a more telepathic world in which ideas could be communicated just the way we want them to be, and then leave our brain to interpret it without leaving any holes that still need to be filled on the author's part.  Ideas would be clearer, make more sense, and most of people would be more educated, critical, and understanding of what they are reading.  We would finally be on intimate terms with the text as well as the author.  We could receive a full picture of experiences, meanings, emotions, ideas, and more that the author has all wrapped up in one!  People would finally get the chance to speak the truth of what they think and feel rather than the fluff of it by merely skipping around what truly occurred, which is what language causes us to do today.  One may argue that though we don't understand what the author is trying to say, the holes make for better critical thinking.  This could be true, but that is not the point I am trying to make! If you truly wanted to argue that point though, I would say that it depends on what the author wants from his or her audience.  Does he/she want to leave the material through interpretation? Or does he/she want the audience to truly understand what they are trying to say, and to truly appreciate the craft of the novel?  If it is for the second reason, then the use of language today would only lead the audience into bliss ignorance, making them think they know exactly what the author is talking about and why, with really only fragments of their own connections facilitating their opinion.

           This leads to yet another problem.  In Plato's Cave Allegory (As mentioned in my previous blog) the prisoners were forced to see a depiction of life through moving pictures across a wall with various sounds echoing in the background, they interpreted that life was one way when in actuality it is another (ex: A picture of a dog would be depicted on the wall, and a sound would come along with that, but it may not be a barking noise).  None of the prisoners had ever seen the light of day.  But when one of the prisoners was released and saw how life truly was as well as the sun, and was amazed.  Just like the Cave Allegory, language right now is giving us a mere depiction of the event that truly occurred, it is up to our interpretation to find out what the truth (real life/the sun) of what the author really is trying to say.  By using our interpretation rather than the true image or sound or feeling the author has allows us to create somewhat of a "fake reality" in which we only see things in how it relates to ourselves rather than what the true thing the author is trying to present to us.  Our brain ends up seeing a connected world it has created, rather than the world the text wants you to see.  That is why at a young age I was taught as a Muslim that the Qur'an was written so as to allow followers of the religion to have different interpretations of what it means.  This also leads me to believe that many wars, fights, arguments, etc. about things said, things done, written, painted, sung, and more often then not are caused by the fact that language has been restricting the the speaker, painter, or author's ideas or thought in totality.  Our language cannot truly define that of our existence, actions, and the complexity of our brains.

           Let's take a silly example.  In the first paragraph I stated how in Virginia Woolf's novel, Orlando, she said that: "...Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another.  Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces." (14) Say I'm the author and I am trying to portray a certain shade of green.  A color, like "lime green" or "emerald" just won't do,I'm looking for a forest green but with a tortoiseshell pattern due to alternating light patterns of the sun.  It is a combination of.....now I must stop, there truly is no shade of green to describe the shade I am looking for.  I see a perfect leaf in my head , there is a green quality about it that I want to depict, but I can only describe it.  This creates murkiness of the readers understanding of the green I am trying to explain, it makes the reader quite confused.  It is something that is beyond words and therefore leads readers to think of their own shade of green.  Now lets say that this "green" was a controversial issue.  Some people though that the green I was describing above was a lime green and forest green life, while others thought it was a sea green and forest green leaf.  Who is right? Who is wrong? The viewpoint that it must be lime and forest green probably have a context and a connection in their mind ready for the view of green in nature.  It is a view long influenced by experiences and events in their lives.  This is the same with myself as well as the sea and forest green people.  No one can understand why I see a certain shade of green in my head, I cannot understand why they see theirs.  Due to this an argument breaks out and the true shade of green I was trying to communicate to my audience lives to be highly disputed in infamy.  Lives are lost in some cases, voices unheard, because language didn't allow me to fully explain the green I was picturing in my head.

           Though language is our prison, we must cope with it, no matter how much in may drive us insane (hence the teenage quote: "You just don't understand!").  We must deal with it until some sort of Utopian communication system is created. So far     though we have been thoroughly lived in blind ignorance of the fact that language is imprisoning     the human race has done a good job of describing what the author is saying to the point of exasperation.  Though I cannot fully explain the green I am seeing, I can describe it with like terms such as , "forest green" and "tortoiseshell patterns" to give the readers some idea of what type of green I am trying to convey to them.  To truly make an effort to reach Utopian communication, the author or speaker must provide experiences or a context that have caused them to think, feel, act, etc. a certain way.  For example: I see the color green.  When I was a child I admired the green, and my grandfather told me...etc.  It would be a good idea for these thoughts to be general connections, that the majority of your audience can connect with as well, narrowing the chance of misinterpretation.  In addition to that, the book, Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a good example on how to truly exemplify emotions the author feels.  Though Pi didn't have quite an interesting or adventurous experience as he did in his "story version" he conveyed the emotions he felt, whether, he was angry, empowered, happy in an extreme version of a story of what really happened.  The emotions are the same, yet the experiences different.  I would recommend this method to musicians, authors, and speakers who want to focus on their emotions throughout their craft rather than the order of events and experiences.

           Although breaking free of this prison seems impossible, one must live with it, and the coping that the human race is already doing through descriptions can be tweaked a bit, to make the cold and frigid jail cell be a bit more luxurious.  Hopefully one day the answer to this problem will be found.

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

Dialectics: Freedom and Safety

           After recently finishing the novel, Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, in class, I was brought to remember Plato's Cave Allegory in which Orlando, the main character, is forced to choose between the safety of the Spirit of the Age or the freedom of literature and writing.  Last year, my teacher brought up an interesting point in class which was left unanswered after reading the Cave Allegory.  His question was "Would you rather prefer safety and security or would you rather have freedom?".  This duality seen throughout the Cave Allegory between these two completely opposite ideas was astonishing.  The same realization occurred to me when reading Orlando, the forces of freedom and safety had to work together in Orlando's life.  Yet the funny thing about dualities, especially in the case of freedom versus safety and security is that they are extremely close in relation to one another, yet are considered to be the complete opposites of a situation.  

           But what is the relationship between freedom and safety? They both are desired traits by many people, but they get in the way of one another.  In the Cave Allegory, the prisoners were safe and sound in their cave, and they never had to worry about being hurt from the outside or anything.  But they were not able to see the truth, they didn't have the freedom to go into the outside world and to really live life to its fullest.  Freedom and safety are both needed in society, and are forever interlocked with each other.  The purpose of the concept of safety is to protect people from the bad consequences freedom can have.  An extreme example of this would be: A terrorist wants to terrorize people because freedom allows him to, but safety and security prevents its people from getting hurt.  In the same manner certain laws are set up to protect its people, and to prevent the freedoms of others, like hacking laws, etc.  Yet to what extent can safety be utilized? Can peoples freedom be cut off so much that their entire lives can be recorded by government agencies, etc?  

           As for freedom, the concept of safety was probably first created when people realized how much power they had and how frightening it could be if misused.  Or maybe circumstances forced people to limit their freedoms because it would hurt more than help them.  The fact is that freedom probably came before safety, but safety and security must be put in place to limit the dangerous of freedom and to keep people safe.  But what should the ration of safety and security be to freedom? Who should determine this? Why?

           Thinking deeper about what life would be like without safety and security put in place is pretty hard.  But I'm trying to expand my mind a bit...I imagine a world without these measures put into place to be chaotic (or is it because the nature of the 21st century human brain is that we NEED order in society) and disorderly.  That people could do what they wanted to without having to worry about the consequences their actions may impose upon others or themselves.  Unfortunately we have seen what a nation is like when safety and security has been imposed heavily upon it, and this is not very good either.  Just like you shouldn't have too much of anything, a society should have a reasonable balance between its safety and security. If America really is "the land of the free" then should we still be allowed to impose extensive security measures on our people (like graffiti laws, etc.)?

           It also depends on the people within the place whose measures you would like to change.  Lets take a household for example (for within each household is its own nation):  If their are only young adults in the house/apartment/etc. then they would probably prefer freedom over safety because that's where their mindset probably would be, but if the house hold contained a couple with young children, then they would probably say that they would prefer safety over freedom.  It depend on the mindset of the people.  I personally, as an adolescent would prefer freedom over security and safety.  Other than typical teenage reasons for favoring freedom over safety, I came to this choice because I realized that without the concept of freedom, safety would be non-existent.

           Knowing the relationship between safety and freedom opens the door to insight on how our modern day government was formed and may even give us an idea on how to "fix" our government limitations today. Though our nation is young we have had years of influence from other countries on our government (e.g. The Roman Empires democracy taken from an idea of the Ancient Greeks, the pilgrims coming to America had left their country for an escape from religious oppression and to gain freedom, etc.) and to see how our government has been formed and what has and what hasn't worked, as well as working with the spirit of the age, we can find a near perfect solution between the balance of security and freedom in our nations.  All of this was inspired from Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando and Plato's Cave Allegory two amazing books which portrayed the duality between freedom (literature, the truth/sun) and safety/security (The spirit of the age, which Orlando always had to obey, and the chains which bound the prisoners and caused them to believe in a fake reality).