One Grand Story.(comments would be nice,not necesarrily for this one either)long title

(this will soon be edited)Well lets start off this blog with a great big, i have no clue what to write about. So with that said i am going to "wing-it." Hopefully the ideas will flow through my fingers or bullshit will flow through them making something terrible difficult to read. Well, while we were all indulging in the Postmodernism for Beginners book I was applying Lyotards(from here on known as L, no you crazy Bleach fans not that L). Well applying L's ideas to our current day. I was noticing that many countries still use this Metanarrative aspect to steer their people into the desired direction. First example that comes to mind, would be President Obama and his health care reform. He is desperately, it seems, trying to steer the people into the direction of reform; while the counter-party trys to drastically do the opposite scare the hell out of people associating the word reform to socialism. This all is leading to the grand narrative of this american story here, well all of this would be steering the american people towards being "better off". (kinda lost track here.)On page 29 L defines metanarratives as "big stories, stories of mythic porportions." With this I will rant until the cows come home. What exactly is our metanarrative now? The overall metanarrative of America? the world? It seems to me that world wide the Metanarrative would be to become "successful", in American depending on the person it would be to have the white picket fence, two cars in garage, a wife and kids all in a suburban setting. But who creates these metanarratives? i would say the media, the past and many other things. This "success" meta narrative would sum up all of the desires and needs aroung this one thing(picket fence etc). These grand narratives are also used as propaganda in some senses, such as the Prop 8 grand narrative; Gays will take over california and eat your children, ok maybe not eat your children but turn them gay. Meta Narrative are used to define or give meaning to our lives. Some use meta narratives to guide their lives and their own morals, religion a large meta narrative a very versatile narrative that exists in some form or another in every country. In brave new world this metanarrative is somewhat smudged over, it seems to be apparent in a direction of "efficiancy" but there is no universal direction or point to why they are doing any of this. The reason of their life is just to fulfill their enacted roll, if one dies there is no problem he/she can be easily replaced.

Define Human

The many different subjects that could be explored in Brave New World, im highly tempted to use quotes from outside of 1-4 and usually boundaries never stop me but there is plenty in just 1-4 to be discussed. Again i give a warning to my few readers that my thoughts are not strctured; instead they are tons of thoughts that will spill out into this canvas that i am given to express my self on. The people of this BNW are machines. In my mind they are not humans, the human beings of the book so far have been contained to Bernard Marx, and that in the slightest word his freind Helmholtz. Even Helmholtz internally reverts back to being a machine of the BNW. This BNW has this plan that they will create these "humans" as tools they have mechanizied all of these beings into the castes having them be completely happy within their own caste not wanting more or less, constantly happy with what they have and if not given soma, on page 45 "Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable object?" The question was awnsered by a negative silence. The simple fact of them never having problems, never experiencing sadness, grief, care, or love; the only feeling they ever will feel are those regulated by BNW that the human body necesarrily needs. Those of sexual desire, fulfillment within their class, and cerebral happiness. Now you might even ask what is human? My own perspective is that of mayn different categories i define Bernard Marx as human for he has greif, happiness, depression. These things may be seen as something to be avoided even in our world but they define the human being in the fact that these emotions are so strong as to almost control the persons minds and bodily state. Why would this government do this to their people why would they want to create machines out of humans? why would they want to destroy individuality something that seems to diversify but also decrease slowly within our own culture. The machines are more efficent for this BNW than the humans are human have feelings constant wants needs, ideals, opinions, ever changing ideas. Machines need to be greased (in this case recreational sports, obstacle golf), fueled(in this case food), and in this case kept happy( soma and the abundance of sexual pleasure. The sexual promsicuity that is endorsed is kept to make sure no human traits are born such as love and connection between two people not the sudden passion but a lasting love that will slowly develop between two people, this factors in many problems for this government divorce leads to sadness, jealousy leading to conflict possible deaths. With the destruction of love they have completely destroyed that of parent/child love that is the connect the different opinions, morals that the parents will teach to their children the next generation. Instead the government is in the role of the parent. This individuality leads to many problems for the government not efficent enough spread of workers, some not working, some dieing earlier than others. The individuality is destroyed with group sing as they are all one the same cloths the castes are all the universal person that it is better for the "community" even deaths are not morned but simply giving back to the community as the billows of ashes of dead people are simply converted into fueled later used by the inhabitants of BNW. In our culture today individuality is expanded and decreased drastically, people do take on these "castes" or "clques" even if they feel they are individuals they take on the aspects the music the culture of their "discourse" but do not expand look any further those who hate country will forever put it down and never give it a chance or those who hate "rap" will never listen to a rap song with seriousness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LwAkavpCvA (something in sorts related to what im saying, i'd look at the lyrics a little bit closer :) you might see some funnies.)But as we are humans this is all subject to change the beauty of our culture is the flexibilty of our change we can be this today something else tommorrow. The categorizing of people within these cultures is something that is just as bad as the caste system in BNW. This is one of the lacking blogs, nt very motivated i dont feel much in this passage for some reason no real emotion maybe this machinity is passing onto me the fact that our culture expects us to be just as robotic and perfect is something of hilarity.

I want

to post a new blog but, just throwing this out there Mr. D blog is under my random blog.... It'd be niceeee if someone cared to read it :) I'd love the comments?

Plethora of Thought

So it seems i begin to use this space as a free think area, this is completely seperate and in no way with Mr. D's class(so if you expect anything more than a rant then look elsewere you expect structure one consistent thought oooh you wont find that here!)(Photograph is copyright by Rachel Marie Taylor btw). I have considered why it is we live. What is our eternal purpose. For each to their own yes? We all have reasons to live, we all have this perceived American Dream(ohh menindo you were going somewhere with all that ranting i see), we also have this capitalistic ideal of where we want to be in life. Something that is either fed in through childhood or picked up from the television. Why is it that parents want their child to achieve more than they had, is it not already perceived that the child already attains what the parents already has, for many this is obviously not the case. But if i was to tell someone at my age that my lifes goal was eventually to leave everything material behind and head to the far reaches of the earth and spend a year or so in total solitude, would i not be seen as insane or ridiculous almost a laughable? But who is this other person to laugh at my dream, what if i laugh at your "american dream" or your parents dreams i'm sure you would feel quite hurt. But is having solitude from humanity all so different is there things that do not give one satisfaction even though it happens to leave behind everything that the materialistic society represents. Why is it in our society we resent differences? As a child i didnt speak english of any sort up until the second grade where i was finally fluet, through this time my peers were generally accepting as there were many japanese, korean, and chinese student in the same boat thus i grew up learning many strange accents within my wording and to this day you can hear these strange things stick out my english switching from horrid "grammar" to something of a solid chop-chop-chop english to a british english all of these different englishes effecting me, and from what i can tell i can carry a conversation with any given english speaker fairly well. What im trying to point out with this situation is why would this be seen as such a horrible thing why is it so horrible for achild to want to grow up to be nothing more than a farmer? Do we have a right to look down on this child? How does all of this connect to overall happiness of this child, is he any less happier than the struggling college student making loans and constantly stressing to just get to the internship that awaits him in his long journey to his actual goal? And when this college student reaches his goal is he happier than the farmer? The capitalistic compelling of america, will be the next subject. Why you ask do europeans live longer? why are they smoking and still living longer? Maybe its food, health insurance plethora of different things who knows! my personal thought, my father's personal thought. the American Drive: as we say. This american drive may be a bad thing may be a good thing. Starting from the puritan work ethic it grew to what it is now. America as my dad says "24 hour buisness that never stops running even when it runs out of fuel it will run on the blood of the employees" with this it explains much of what we "opinionize" this country has stressed so much in more, more more people do not sleep, we stress, we all want nothing but more. We want bigger and better everything (not necesarrily a bad thing) we have bigger fruit because of chemicals our chicken if you compare KFC chiken in hong kong to the local chiken you will see the obvious difference in size. The cars here are gigantic compared to everything else in the world our freeways are jam packed our traffic tickets are sky scrapers in amount. We do nothing but more money more food bigger food at the fastest possible way ever. My father has lived in most countries of Europe(Finland, Germany, France, England, Norway, Sweden) everyone closes down at what time, 6 pm, people go home at what time 8pm sure they are loosing that money possibly but what exactly are they gaining are they working their fingers to the bone? Are they happy in what they have? Are they content where they are living? Are they content with their small car middle sized house and small family? Mostly yes. Obviously the nature of capitalism is just that more progress more money strive for a better future but is that the future YOU really want? In all honesty take away your parents the media the house you live in the technology everything. What is it that you REALLY want? Is it that new ipod on the market or is it something simpler like more freinds to come to your picnic(because people have picnics now a days). Really i think if we really take the influences we have from everything around us if we explore deep within ourselves you can see what it is you truley desire in life, once you have that you may actually see what your reason to living is. for anyone who has read so far i am in no way against capitalism i am in no way a dirty marxist crazy right left up or down i am simply me nothing more nothing less, i am neither deep nor shallow or am i attempting at that. I am not trying to persuade or show my horrible grammar/punctuation errors to the world. Simply writing to write.

Cultural or Secular Genocide, you choose.

After our Socratic circle experience in Mr. D's class I've motivated my self to get off facebook and write in this blog. During "Socratic interaction" i took many notes on all of your ideals and view points from this i will draw my own viewpoint, this perspective will be expressed in this little bit of data called a Blog. My viewpoint will be textually based going through the text from one interesting point to another hopefully smoothly enough to cypher into what we call the English language.

From the first statement we all knew what this article was exactly about the tug of war between church to state, left to right; secular to nonsecular, and multicultural to uni culture. This article summarized in one statement "debate over how much faith belongs in American History classrooms." My own viewpoint be it full of worth or not, from what i have heard from you all in class is something of less right or left; and maybe because of this it is so radical it should be thrown to a wind as a statement of heresy. My viewpoint being, the neither of both sides we should neither take out emphasis of the bible in history nor overly emphasis to the point of propaganda. I believe school should be a center of the most unbiased education you may get; textual education, base education; something that should be taught as a fact then gone home to the parents to where they may sway the child in the direction they feel is correct within their own culture. These radical ideas of mine may not seem all that radical but to those on the far left or far right this seems to be blasphemy, why argue when you can "meet in the middle" in joined hands to find something that is agreeable to both sides. But who is deciding this "education routine" the politicians pushing their own regime, the reverends emphasizing their own religious view, or the parents of these children? Who are we really changing when we make these decisions the power of either side or the future of man kind, the children who are learning this education? The fact that some want to de-emphasis multiculturalism is something i see as completely ridiculous and outright a "censorship" for advantage of their own past, any de-emphasis of the bible in the founding of American government is also censorship. The fact that this all boils down to the history books, is something of ridiculous, when the proportions of the actual argument is between those i have stated early in this blog. The middle ground is something that should be taken for our future, but what middle ground should we take? Those between secular and non secular, or a variety of different types? Even if we are able to take the middle ground of scores of different groups there will be millions more of individual ideas that will never be taken into account. But how will we be able to incorporate ideals within our history books without turning them in over-sized thesaurus's of pure opinion bull. Or maybe this is what we need from the texts that i have read for Academic Decathlon a much hated activity in most circles, the text was completely different opinions of different writers during the period of the subject (civil war), the both sides and generality of those in the other areas, from slaves to those gash darn hill folk. But within all of this opinion there was no "fact page" or "answer sheet" that told us within the program what exactly was right or wrong it left us the choice , the ability to choose for ourselves. Now giving children this freedom may create many different solutions these solutions may not be socially correct or testable but as of now, whether the history books are biased to one group or another eventually, by hope, the children are able to make their own decisions their own biases separate from or near to their parents or politician of choice. But while these children are formulating, thinking of their opinions they should be given at most possible a sterile history book void of opinion as much as possible for it is not the left or rights's authority to persuade children that are not of their own loins.