The idea of postcolonialism is that one group of people are more important of more inclined then another. In the beginning, the White Europeans were seen as the dominant group of people. They were able to use their power and exert in on others at any time they wanted to. They often used this on people in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world. The White Europeans believed that they were ones with all the answers. They believed that everyone else in the rest of the world wanted to be exactly like them and that they were doing the world a favor by bring in their culture and religion either into Africa or Asia. They especially looked at the people in Africa as the "other". They believed that they were "savages" who knew nothing about culture and ways of living.
Whether the colonizers of Europe came into Africa or Asia or the people came to them, they were all given a new culture that they were"consciously or unconsciously asked to conform to the prescribed hegemony" (Postcolonialism 234). Whether the people had there own culture or not whenever colonizers came in they were asked to completely change it. This came along with changing they way they ran their villages or homes, the way they conducted their families, and especially what they believed in. The colonizers came in and completely took away the people's religion and told them that what they were believing was completely wrong and that they should except the European's ways and beliefs. This idea plays a major part in Things Fall Apart because as soon as the colonizers came in things throughout all the villages either were destroyed or completely fell apart.
According to the ideas of postcolonialism "the message sent to these "Others" by the dominant culture has been clear and consistent- conform and be quiet; deny yourself, and all will be well" (Postcolonialism 234). In other words the colonizers wanted the people in whatever land they took over to deny everything they had grown up with since they were children and believe everything that the colonizers told them no matter if it made sense or not and then all would be well. The trouble began when the people did not want to go along with the colonizers said. That is when the trouble broke out because the colonizers were a more powerful people and they could force the people of that "other" nation to conform with what they say. However, the colonizers didn't always worry so much if the other people excepted their ways of religion they more just wanted to excerpt their power and take over another land. However, they justified what they were doing by saying God wanted them to come into to other lands, take over, and then give their culture to others who they believed were less of a people.
In Things Fall Apart the trouble happens when the colonizers come in to the small village in the eastern parts of Nigeria and begin to set up there ways of living. They set up the church and some of the people in the Ibo tribe are drawn to the church because they are excepting of all types of people where as the Ibo culture tossed them out and saw them as outcasts. They felt like they had a home with the church. However, other members of the tribe that had a more powerful positions looked at the church as something that made absolutely no sense and that it caused corruption with in the tribes. Reverend Smith was one of the leaders who came in and took over the Christian Church. However, he condemned the policies of compromise and accommodation set up by the previous leaders. He was a man who "saw things as black and white.And black was evil" (Achebe 151). Reverend Smith had a view that people that were white were automatically better and that people that were black were completely evil. He made himself and those of the church who followed him the "dominant hegemony". The people in the Ibo tribe would follow what they wanted or he would do what was necessary to make them submit to him as the dominant leader. Reverend Smith didn't want to spread Christianity in the right way he just want to show how powerful he was and made the Ibo people give up all that they were. He started using extreme violence on the people. Reverend Smith is an example of a colonizer who "justified their cruel treatment of the colonized by invoking European religious beliefs. From the perspective of many white Westerners, the peoples of Africa, the Americas, and Asia were "heathens", possessing ways that must be Christianized" (Postcolonialism 236). In Reverend Smith's eyes the people of the Ibo culture were "heathens" and they needed to be educated on the right ways to life and that he was the one that needed to bring it to them.
Reverend Smith also captures the six important leaders of the Ibo tribes and the District Commissioner comes in and begins to tell the men '" We shall not do you any harm, if you only agree to cooperate with us. We have brought a peaceful administration to you and your people so that you may be happy. if any man ill-treats you we shall come to your rescue. But we will not allow you to ill-treat others. We have a court of law where we judge cases and administer justice must as it is done in my own country under a great queen...I have decided that you will a fine of two hundred cowries" (Achebe 159-160). In essence this is what the White Europeans did. They came in to other parts of the world and classified the people as the "other". They were the ones that needed to be taken over and changed so that they were part of a more "functional" culture. The District Commissioner came in and told the leaders that he and his people had brought in peaceful administrations and ways of life that would make them happy. He assumed that the Ibo culture was dysfunctional and that he need to come in a rectify it. It is the same with the Europeans that came in and used their religion as a shield to say that they were just helping the people in Africa or Asia because they needed to be brought out of their savage ways and shown the right ways. However, when the colonizers actually came in they didn't really care about the people at all. They became more worried about he resources they could steal from them. The example in Things Fall Apart is when the District Commissioner starting demanding ransom for the six leaders that he invited to come and meet with him. He is just concerned that they cooperate with what he says and then give him the resources that he has asked. He and Reverend Smith have not only come in a tribe and decided they knew best for what culture they should follow, but now they are taking advantage of the resources they have to offer.
Postcolonialism is something that really applies to Things Fall Apart because in the novel it shows the effects of when a more dominant country or group of people come in to other parts of the world and start forcing their ways on them. Some of the people will listen to what they have to say, but others will be greatly offended that the colonizers would come in and take over when they know absolutely nothing about the culture. In the novel the Ibo tribes felt as if they got along just fine with life. They had a religion that they believed strongly in and they believed that the way they conducted things functioned very well. However, when others come in and believe they know what is best it causes a lot of problems and violence and those that are what the dominant will do whatever it takes to take over the land that they have entered. It won't matter if it through violence or any other tactic. The dominant hegemony believes that they are the better people and that those who are considered the "other" are lucky that they would even consider coming in and showing them the right way, however instead of making positive impact they often caught doing the wrong things and resented for it.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Thoughtlessness: The Way to Run Society
Neil Postman described Technopoly as a thoughtless world. It is a place where people have no thoughts and don't come up with anything on their own. "Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself..." (Postman 48). This means that having a thoughtless civilization is the only way to run any society and keep all the people loyal to the teachings and laws. Brave New World is a technopoly because the people within the World State aren't allowed to have any thoughts. They take Soma to solve all of their emotional issues and problems they come across so that they are literally incapable of remotely coming up with anything tangible, and they are conditioned only to have a certain level of intelligence, so that they don't have to think about the job they were programmed to do. A technopoly makes thoughts "invisible and therefore irrelevant" (Postman 48). "And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy" (Postman 48). This type of society takes everything that is important to people and changes them so that they fit the criteria that they want "their" people to live by and believe. If they want family and intelligence to no longer be important they make those things foreign to people. '" We predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future... ' He was going to say 'future World Controllers,' but correcting himself, said 'future Directors of Hatcheries,' instead"' (Huxley 13). In Brave New World intelligence is predestined so that people don't try and become smarter than they were made to be and cause problems within then the World State or think that there is something better than what they are living through. They make thoughts of a higher intelligence and even family foreign because people are made in bottles and decanted. It goes further with a totalitarian technocracy which could also be seen as technopoly because it is a civilization completely dependent upon technological advances and not anything cultural, religious, or thoughtful. Within Brave New World Huxley defined this era within the emergence of the Henry Ford Empire. That is when everything technology took over and everything that had to do with religions and cultural customs was pushed away because advancement in machinery or technology was the only thing that was important.
Another idea that can define a society is the idea of a Technocracy, a society that is loosely controlled by social customs and religion, but is more focused on inventing. A man named Adam Smith named our species the "Economic Man" which are people "who are born with the instinct to barter and acquire wealth" (Postman 41). This differs from a technopoly because it was made up with people who had ideas and who advanced them into something that could make society progress. Within a technocracy royalty was not inherited by or reserved for men who had come from high origins, but for men who where full of intelligence and who were daring, which made civilizations soar. A Technopoly is where inventions had already taken over and were used to control people where as a technocracy is a place where intelligent people made the civilization soar because of the new things they created. A technocracy created new freedoms, new forms of social organization where nothing was left behind except a "tool-using" society. However, "technocracy found no clear place for the human soul, its citizens held to the belief that no increase in material wealth would compensate them for a culture that insulted their self respect" (Postman 48). Citizens that were involved in a technocracy society believed that material things such as money and even technology could not make up for a culture that took away the respect they had when they made things for themselves and built up their own societies. And so a new line was drawn with how far certain people who go with technology.
Brave New World is a civilization that started as a technocracy and ended as a technopoly. It was a civilization that had men such as Henry Ford build assembly lines and create machines that made the civilizations flourish, however it then turned from a technocracy to a technology where machines took over the lives of the people, and where only certain people were able to determine a person's intelligence, and a person's way of life through the technology. It was turned into a thoughtless society who's main function was to make people "consume manufactured articles as well as transport" (Huxley 23). They wanted to create a society that was completely dependent on technology, but was efficient through the ways of consumption which is exactly what a technopoly is. Fredrick Winslow Taylor had the same idea of efficiency. In 1925, the Interstate Commerce Commission held hearings of the application of Northeastern railroads as in increase in freight rates to compensate for higher wages for railroad workers. Although Taylor was not part of this trial his name was brought up many times because of his "scientific management" ideas and how it could solve every one's problems (Postman 50). However, it was ruled against because the Commerce thought the railroads were not making enough money. In 1911, Taylor published a book called Principles of Scientific Management, which is the first outlines of the thought- world of Technopoly (Postman 51). "These included the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgement; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity, that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts" (Postman 51). This is the same idea as with Brave New World people were conditioned to only have a certain level of intelligence and then were only allowed to complete certain tasks with in the society. They did not want people trying to be better than they were or work above their intelligence level. Another way they created efficiency was to discard things that may cause an uproar. Such as when Mustapha Mond is reading "A New Theory of Biology" he thinks to himself that it is the , "... sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes- make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge" (Huxley 177). Just like Taylor the ideas within Brave New World were to keep people at such a low intelligence that they only worked towards the efficiency of the society by going to work and being consumers. They didn't want people reading books that may give them a greater meaning in life and show them that there may be something better they just need to get out there and find it. They wanted to keep people in the World State thinking that they had the ultimate happiness and that there was nothing better. This is a technopoly because they are keeping the people thought-less not allowing any of their knowledge to grow. The World State is dependent upon the people thinking the are happy and contributing to the efficiency of the society.
The ideas of Neil Postman and Ray Kurzweil's are extremely different. Neil Postman is against the idea of technology taking over. The "success of twentieth- century technology in providing Americans with convenience, speed, hygienic, and abundance was so obvious and promising that there seemed no reason to look for any others sources of fulfillment or creativity or purpose" (Postman 54). People didn't need a greater meaning in life because technology gave them everything they need and made it so easy. For everything people would ever need to work for there was an alternative that took care of the problem without people actually doing anything. Ray Kurzweil believes that one day technology will soon take over and that people will merge with technology. He also believes in bringing people back to life and having people live forever just by technological advances. These two men differ extremely because one is showing that there needs to be a greater meaning in life where as the other is showing what benefits people will be able to have if they let technology advance. I think the Aldous Huxley the author of Brave New World would also be trying to show that there is something more than technology. And things such as intelligence and families have to be valued because one day they could be gone. He is trying to show that technology can be helpful but going down the road of technocracy and technopoly as a way to run society can only lead to disaster and people's lives being run by the very thing they created.
Another idea that can define a society is the idea of a Technocracy, a society that is loosely controlled by social customs and religion, but is more focused on inventing. A man named Adam Smith named our species the "Economic Man" which are people "who are born with the instinct to barter and acquire wealth" (Postman 41). This differs from a technopoly because it was made up with people who had ideas and who advanced them into something that could make society progress. Within a technocracy royalty was not inherited by or reserved for men who had come from high origins, but for men who where full of intelligence and who were daring, which made civilizations soar. A Technopoly is where inventions had already taken over and were used to control people where as a technocracy is a place where intelligent people made the civilization soar because of the new things they created. A technocracy created new freedoms, new forms of social organization where nothing was left behind except a "tool-using" society. However, "technocracy found no clear place for the human soul, its citizens held to the belief that no increase in material wealth would compensate them for a culture that insulted their self respect" (Postman 48). Citizens that were involved in a technocracy society believed that material things such as money and even technology could not make up for a culture that took away the respect they had when they made things for themselves and built up their own societies. And so a new line was drawn with how far certain people who go with technology.
Brave New World is a civilization that started as a technocracy and ended as a technopoly. It was a civilization that had men such as Henry Ford build assembly lines and create machines that made the civilizations flourish, however it then turned from a technocracy to a technology where machines took over the lives of the people, and where only certain people were able to determine a person's intelligence, and a person's way of life through the technology. It was turned into a thoughtless society who's main function was to make people "consume manufactured articles as well as transport" (Huxley 23). They wanted to create a society that was completely dependent on technology, but was efficient through the ways of consumption which is exactly what a technopoly is. Fredrick Winslow Taylor had the same idea of efficiency. In 1925, the Interstate Commerce Commission held hearings of the application of Northeastern railroads as in increase in freight rates to compensate for higher wages for railroad workers. Although Taylor was not part of this trial his name was brought up many times because of his "scientific management" ideas and how it could solve every one's problems (Postman 50). However, it was ruled against because the Commerce thought the railroads were not making enough money. In 1911, Taylor published a book called Principles of Scientific Management, which is the first outlines of the thought- world of Technopoly (Postman 51). "These included the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgement; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity, that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts" (Postman 51). This is the same idea as with Brave New World people were conditioned to only have a certain level of intelligence and then were only allowed to complete certain tasks with in the society. They did not want people trying to be better than they were or work above their intelligence level. Another way they created efficiency was to discard things that may cause an uproar. Such as when Mustapha Mond is reading "A New Theory of Biology" he thinks to himself that it is the , "... sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes- make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge" (Huxley 177). Just like Taylor the ideas within Brave New World were to keep people at such a low intelligence that they only worked towards the efficiency of the society by going to work and being consumers. They didn't want people reading books that may give them a greater meaning in life and show them that there may be something better they just need to get out there and find it. They wanted to keep people in the World State thinking that they had the ultimate happiness and that there was nothing better. This is a technopoly because they are keeping the people thought-less not allowing any of their knowledge to grow. The World State is dependent upon the people thinking the are happy and contributing to the efficiency of the society.
The ideas of Neil Postman and Ray Kurzweil's are extremely different. Neil Postman is against the idea of technology taking over. The "success of twentieth- century technology in providing Americans with convenience, speed, hygienic, and abundance was so obvious and promising that there seemed no reason to look for any others sources of fulfillment or creativity or purpose" (Postman 54). People didn't need a greater meaning in life because technology gave them everything they need and made it so easy. For everything people would ever need to work for there was an alternative that took care of the problem without people actually doing anything. Ray Kurzweil believes that one day technology will soon take over and that people will merge with technology. He also believes in bringing people back to life and having people live forever just by technological advances. These two men differ extremely because one is showing that there needs to be a greater meaning in life where as the other is showing what benefits people will be able to have if they let technology advance. I think the Aldous Huxley the author of Brave New World would also be trying to show that there is something more than technology. And things such as intelligence and families have to be valued because one day they could be gone. He is trying to show that technology can be helpful but going down the road of technocracy and technopoly as a way to run society can only lead to disaster and people's lives being run by the very thing they created.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Is Man Loosing Himself to Technology?
Singularity: the idea that man will eventually be taken over by technology. Lev Grossman wrote an article in the Times Magazine called "2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal" in which he talks about an extremely intelligent man named Ray Kurzweil who developed a computer that could write music when he was only 17 years old and who believes we are approaching singularity. "Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity-our bodies, our minds, our civilization- will be completely and irreversibly transformed"(Grossman1). Kurzweil believes that this is inevitable and cannot be avoided. He believes that the end to human civilization is coming very soon because computers and getting faster and faster every day and eventually they will be at the same level with human intelligence. This is the idea of artificial intelligence because it is technology based and not man based. Artificial intelligence could lead to the idea of sharing the planet with another form of intelligence that is computers. Theories about artificial intelligence have gone as far as people thinking that "maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely" (Grossman1).
A group of people that believe in Singularity also believe that it can make people's lives longer. They believe that artificial intelligence can be used to defeat Biological boundaries that most people see as permanent. They believe that they can stop death and they believe that old age is actually just a sickness that can be cured and allow people to live longer or even forever. Kurzweil talks about the fact that many people are open to the idea of computers becoming more intelligent than people but the idea of increasing life is more controversial because it interferes with people's religions and their ideas of life and death. Singularity is an idea that is believed by some, where others find it very ridiculous, but Ray Kurzweil believes it is inevitable and will happen because of the exponential growth of technology.
Brave New World is very similar to this article in the fact that they create people with technology. People no longer come from a mother of father and are part of a family. They are created by machines and their intelligence and place in society is predetermined. They are not given a choice to be their own individual person. Bernard is one of the major characters that recognizes this. He is part of the World State but he feels as though there could be something more. In Chapter 6 he goes on a date with Lenina and takes her to look at the sea. Bernard says, "it makes me feel as though... as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More my own, not so completely a part of something else." (Huxley 90). Bernard wants to believe in the idea of being authentic and original not copied. He believes that the World State has just made him part of the part of a manufactured society and he wants to be his own free thinking person. Brave New World is like the Time Magazine article in the fact that technology is taking over the civilization because they have machines who are manufacturing people and determining when and where everything will happen. The civilization is not man based or based on each person's individual intelligence. It is all based on how smart the technology has allowed them to be. In the book people and technology have already merged together because people aren't created through families they are not even allowed to create their own happiness or expand their own intelligence. It is given to them through machines.
I think in the context of today's society we could be in danger of technology taking over. I think the Times Magazine article makes a good point in saying that technology really is growing faster and faster every day. The Apple Company is a good example of this because almost every other month they are coming out with a new IPad or a new IPhone that is increasingly faster and has more applications. People are extremely dependent on technology to the point that if it was taken away from them they probably wouldn't know what to do. In a sense people are merging with technology and that could take away their chances to be authentic and have the ability to be their own free thinking person. I think that within Brave New World Bernard is just being romantic into thinking that there is some pristine state that man can achieve because the World State controls everything that is going on with technology which doesn't allow man to achieve anything for himself. Within today's society Bernard does make a good point that people are loosing themselves to technology because they don't really think for themselves. They have technology to think for them. They now no longer have to be authentic because technology thinks the same for everyone. They also have technology to connect to friends for them. There is no more writing letters to people you haven't seen in a while when you can just log on to Face book and that problem is taken care of. I think people within the world today do have to watch and be cautious of how fast technology is growing so that we do not loose ourselves and our own individual intelligence. We don't want the world ending up where computers are smarter than we are and no longer our own person just like what happened in Brave New World and the predetermined assembly line people.
A group of people that believe in Singularity also believe that it can make people's lives longer. They believe that artificial intelligence can be used to defeat Biological boundaries that most people see as permanent. They believe that they can stop death and they believe that old age is actually just a sickness that can be cured and allow people to live longer or even forever. Kurzweil talks about the fact that many people are open to the idea of computers becoming more intelligent than people but the idea of increasing life is more controversial because it interferes with people's religions and their ideas of life and death. Singularity is an idea that is believed by some, where others find it very ridiculous, but Ray Kurzweil believes it is inevitable and will happen because of the exponential growth of technology.
Brave New World is very similar to this article in the fact that they create people with technology. People no longer come from a mother of father and are part of a family. They are created by machines and their intelligence and place in society is predetermined. They are not given a choice to be their own individual person. Bernard is one of the major characters that recognizes this. He is part of the World State but he feels as though there could be something more. In Chapter 6 he goes on a date with Lenina and takes her to look at the sea. Bernard says, "it makes me feel as though... as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More my own, not so completely a part of something else." (Huxley 90). Bernard wants to believe in the idea of being authentic and original not copied. He believes that the World State has just made him part of the part of a manufactured society and he wants to be his own free thinking person. Brave New World is like the Time Magazine article in the fact that technology is taking over the civilization because they have machines who are manufacturing people and determining when and where everything will happen. The civilization is not man based or based on each person's individual intelligence. It is all based on how smart the technology has allowed them to be. In the book people and technology have already merged together because people aren't created through families they are not even allowed to create their own happiness or expand their own intelligence. It is given to them through machines.
I think in the context of today's society we could be in danger of technology taking over. I think the Times Magazine article makes a good point in saying that technology really is growing faster and faster every day. The Apple Company is a good example of this because almost every other month they are coming out with a new IPad or a new IPhone that is increasingly faster and has more applications. People are extremely dependent on technology to the point that if it was taken away from them they probably wouldn't know what to do. In a sense people are merging with technology and that could take away their chances to be authentic and have the ability to be their own free thinking person. I think that within Brave New World Bernard is just being romantic into thinking that there is some pristine state that man can achieve because the World State controls everything that is going on with technology which doesn't allow man to achieve anything for himself. Within today's society Bernard does make a good point that people are loosing themselves to technology because they don't really think for themselves. They have technology to think for them. They now no longer have to be authentic because technology thinks the same for everyone. They also have technology to connect to friends for them. There is no more writing letters to people you haven't seen in a while when you can just log on to Face book and that problem is taken care of. I think people within the world today do have to watch and be cautious of how fast technology is growing so that we do not loose ourselves and our own individual intelligence. We don't want the world ending up where computers are smarter than we are and no longer our own person just like what happened in Brave New World and the predetermined assembly line people.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Awesome Stuff: Similarities Between Many Different Cultures Seen ...
Awesome Stuff: Similarities Between Many Different Cultures Seen ...: http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/394/contemporary-poetrys-influence-on-cross-cultural-perceptions Kristina S. Ten wrot...
Similarities Between Many Different Cultures Seen Through Poetry
http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/394/contemporary-poetrys-influence-on-cross-cultural-perceptions
Kristina S. Ten wrote an article called "Contemporary Poetry's Influence on Cross-Cultural Perceptions", in which she shows that through literature, such as poems people that come from different cultures can have more similarities than they seem to think. Her purpose in writing this essay is to demonstrate that many people from different parts of the world are culprits of stereotyping others from other places in the world before they have even met them. Everyone across the world is subject to being misinterpreted or even prejudged based on where they live and not based on who they are as a normal person who just so happens to inhabit a different part of the world than someone else. In her article Kristina Ten is trying to accomplish the idea of showing people that if they just take the time to get to know someone on an individual basis, instead of holding on to what society around them says about the other person's culture and background they will be able to better identify with one another, and not feel like they could never understand each other because of their different cultures. This statement is also close to her thesis in which she talks about how people let small differences stop them from getting to know someone on individual basis. I think this is a very important point because everyone forms stereotypes about someone from a different culture whether they recognize it or not and it can stop them from getting to know someone who may be able to contribute a lot to the world but our never given the chance. This thesis however, could be seen as controversial because some people will say that they never formed stereotypes at all and they are not judgmental, but deep down they know that when they see someone they already start forming ideas about them based on the color of their skin, their culture, or the way they dress before they even meet them.
Ten's intended audience seems to be every person throughout the world. Ten does seem to be aware of her audience because she uses words like "our" and "we". This means that she is including herself as well as everyone else throughout the world. This shapes her writing because all her thoughts and examples that were used are directed at the person reading her article as well as herself. She doesn't exclude herself by saying "you" but rather includes herself as being someone who also has formed stereotypes at one time or another. In order to support her thesis and accusations against people throughout the world the author uses two poems from two very different authors to show that through literature people from all across the globe can find connections to each other.She also uses many articles to prove a similar point. The poems she selected are called "I Do Not" by Michael Palmer and "Tourists" by Howard Moss. She uses both these poems because they effectively show how people from other countries treat outsiders. These two poems are very important to the author's essay because they both go into extensive detail about how people from other countries treat foreigners who come into their country because they believe that they can't keep up with them because of the language barriers or because of the fact that foreigners don't fit in with the people. They believe that foreigners will not try and embrace new things from the culture they are visiting but rather stick to what they are used to. But through these types of poems people are able to understand other cultures and how they feel about certain things which allows them to relate to each other and find similar values and similar interests.
This essay was written and formatted in a very easy to follow and understandable way. Ten started out with an overall summary about what her paper would be about giving the reader some background about what she would be addressing and trying to prove. Her introduction was very powerful because it showed that she was very passionate about what she was writing about and she wanted others to really understand her point of view. She then when on to take quotes from the poems and other articles and back them up with commentary so that they could prove her overall point. I think that the way she set up her essay was very effective because it made the essay easy to follow and it was clear what her thesis was and how she was going to prove it. The author does not use transitions, but she does take the time to make her essay flow from paragraph to paragraph. It is easy to follow when she is going to begin talking about a new topic because her closing sentence from the previous paragraph sets it up very well. The author also does use powerful diction. Her words are selected carefully so that they drive home the point she is trying to prove. She does not try and sugar coat what she is saying. Her words are to the point and they say exactly what she wants. Her word choice is serving her purpose because she is passionate about what she is writing about and she wants people to understand her. The author also did not use any similes or metaphors, but she did use a lot of comparisons when she wrote. She spend a great deal of time showing how the poems and articles she used were similar in the points they were trying to prove and then furthered to prove her thesis. I do think the author is a credible authority on the subject just because she pulled from so many different sources that allowed to her to fully prove what she was so passionate about. She used comparison to really further her arguments and show that she was credible.
I don't believe that this essay contradicts any of the rules I was told to follow whenever I go to write an essay of my own. Kristina Ten opened up her article with a clear and concise introduction and then moved into her body paragraphs in which she provided adequate information and evidence to support her overall thesis. She pulled from many different sources so that her opinion or the opinions of the articles she pulled from could not be biased in anyway. The article did surprise me in the fact that she was very passionate about what she wrote about and she really wanted people to see her point of view so that they could then think to themselves about if what she said was really right. I don't believe her writing was unconventional she did follow the basic outline with what an essay looks like. In a sense that she did have quotes or evidence backed up with commentary. Her ideas may be a little unconventional because others may not see the same topic from her point of view and may have their own ideas about it, but she sufficiently proved her own thoughts . Overall this essay doesn't contradict anything I have learned and I think that it is a very well written essay that had a lot of good information and ideas to look at.
Kristina S. Ten wrote an article called "Contemporary Poetry's Influence on Cross-Cultural Perceptions", in which she shows that through literature, such as poems people that come from different cultures can have more similarities than they seem to think. Her purpose in writing this essay is to demonstrate that many people from different parts of the world are culprits of stereotyping others from other places in the world before they have even met them. Everyone across the world is subject to being misinterpreted or even prejudged based on where they live and not based on who they are as a normal person who just so happens to inhabit a different part of the world than someone else. In her article Kristina Ten is trying to accomplish the idea of showing people that if they just take the time to get to know someone on an individual basis, instead of holding on to what society around them says about the other person's culture and background they will be able to better identify with one another, and not feel like they could never understand each other because of their different cultures. This statement is also close to her thesis in which she talks about how people let small differences stop them from getting to know someone on individual basis. I think this is a very important point because everyone forms stereotypes about someone from a different culture whether they recognize it or not and it can stop them from getting to know someone who may be able to contribute a lot to the world but our never given the chance. This thesis however, could be seen as controversial because some people will say that they never formed stereotypes at all and they are not judgmental, but deep down they know that when they see someone they already start forming ideas about them based on the color of their skin, their culture, or the way they dress before they even meet them.
Ten's intended audience seems to be every person throughout the world. Ten does seem to be aware of her audience because she uses words like "our" and "we". This means that she is including herself as well as everyone else throughout the world. This shapes her writing because all her thoughts and examples that were used are directed at the person reading her article as well as herself. She doesn't exclude herself by saying "you" but rather includes herself as being someone who also has formed stereotypes at one time or another. In order to support her thesis and accusations against people throughout the world the author uses two poems from two very different authors to show that through literature people from all across the globe can find connections to each other.She also uses many articles to prove a similar point. The poems she selected are called "I Do Not" by Michael Palmer and "Tourists" by Howard Moss. She uses both these poems because they effectively show how people from other countries treat outsiders. These two poems are very important to the author's essay because they both go into extensive detail about how people from other countries treat foreigners who come into their country because they believe that they can't keep up with them because of the language barriers or because of the fact that foreigners don't fit in with the people. They believe that foreigners will not try and embrace new things from the culture they are visiting but rather stick to what they are used to. But through these types of poems people are able to understand other cultures and how they feel about certain things which allows them to relate to each other and find similar values and similar interests.
This essay was written and formatted in a very easy to follow and understandable way. Ten started out with an overall summary about what her paper would be about giving the reader some background about what she would be addressing and trying to prove. Her introduction was very powerful because it showed that she was very passionate about what she was writing about and she wanted others to really understand her point of view. She then when on to take quotes from the poems and other articles and back them up with commentary so that they could prove her overall point. I think that the way she set up her essay was very effective because it made the essay easy to follow and it was clear what her thesis was and how she was going to prove it. The author does not use transitions, but she does take the time to make her essay flow from paragraph to paragraph. It is easy to follow when she is going to begin talking about a new topic because her closing sentence from the previous paragraph sets it up very well. The author also does use powerful diction. Her words are selected carefully so that they drive home the point she is trying to prove. She does not try and sugar coat what she is saying. Her words are to the point and they say exactly what she wants. Her word choice is serving her purpose because she is passionate about what she is writing about and she wants people to understand her. The author also did not use any similes or metaphors, but she did use a lot of comparisons when she wrote. She spend a great deal of time showing how the poems and articles she used were similar in the points they were trying to prove and then furthered to prove her thesis. I do think the author is a credible authority on the subject just because she pulled from so many different sources that allowed to her to fully prove what she was so passionate about. She used comparison to really further her arguments and show that she was credible.
I don't believe that this essay contradicts any of the rules I was told to follow whenever I go to write an essay of my own. Kristina Ten opened up her article with a clear and concise introduction and then moved into her body paragraphs in which she provided adequate information and evidence to support her overall thesis. She pulled from many different sources so that her opinion or the opinions of the articles she pulled from could not be biased in anyway. The article did surprise me in the fact that she was very passionate about what she wrote about and she really wanted people to see her point of view so that they could then think to themselves about if what she said was really right. I don't believe her writing was unconventional she did follow the basic outline with what an essay looks like. In a sense that she did have quotes or evidence backed up with commentary. Her ideas may be a little unconventional because others may not see the same topic from her point of view and may have their own ideas about it, but she sufficiently proved her own thoughts . Overall this essay doesn't contradict anything I have learned and I think that it is a very well written essay that had a lot of good information and ideas to look at.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
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