fahrenheit 451

Yesterday in class we discussed an article called “The Elusive Big Idea” by Neal Gabler. Gabler argued that we are currently in a time where facts are all that matters, not the ideas behind them. I believe this to be true, that a majority of Americans care more about the color of their shirt than what the meaning of life is. Thinking big ideas is too much work for the newer, lazier generation. This reminded me of “Fahrenheit 451.” I read this book for the first time last summer, and after finishing it all I could think was that Ray Bradbury predicted the future. I can see traits in my younger sister that resemble those of the characters in Bradbury’s novel. All they care about is getting the next thing that’s on the market. Books are banned because they are dangerous, they spark ideas. These ideas could make us aware of the faults in the system and that is unacceptable in the fictional governments’ eyes. Now, without governmental intervention, books are being neglected by many and instead replaced with new gadgets that allow for gaming and instant communication. And even there we are numbing ourselves to new technology because we expect the next new thing to be released in a year or so.

So how do we fix this phenomena? I’m not sure we can. Many people are too stubborn to have to use their brains and think. If only we had a system that taught children, early on, that reading opens up new worlds. Right now, at least in my sister’s eyes, reading has been stigmatized to mean nerd or anti-social. If we can get rid of this stigma, we’d have a better educated nation. We’d also have a nation that knows how to think of these big ideas.

White Privilege

After our discussion this past week on Peggy McIntosh’s article White Privilege, I discussed the topic with my professor Olon Dotson, who teaches the class Cultural and Social Issues in Architecture. After talking about this, he emailed me this youtube video, while an extensive video (about an hour) it is a very good argument about white privilege and social inequality. Tim Wise starts out his lecture by stating that he is on that stage because he is a white man and that if a person of color tried to present something like this on that stage they would probably have been denied that right.
So is there a solution to this? I believe that as long as ‘white’ people remain a majority in the United States, this problem is not going to go away. A good portion of Americans are too stubborn to learn about these issues, or else remain ignorant of the fact that they exist. So these ignorant or stubborn people will not try to do anything about an issue like this until they learn what it feels like to be a minority, to be stereotyped and oppressed.

‘Gender-Bender’ Manga

Reading Simone de Beauvoir’s text and discussing it, reminded me of a manga genre I read when I was in high school. The genre is called “gender bender.” Gender bender storylines revolve around a character’s choice to disguise themselves as a person of the other gender. Most of the plots I’ve read in this genre are about girls who for some reason relevant to the story act like men. Typically it is not as if they want to be the opposite gender, or that they go as far as getting a sex change, it’s just that they are in a situation where acting the other gender is necessary.

For example the Manga on the right, “Ouran Highschool Host Club,” has a main character who is a girl who presents herself as a male so that she can get into the school she wants, Ouran Highschool. This Highschool is a prestigious one and only allow so many males and females in, and since all the female slots had filled, she applied as a boy and was accepted. So the story revolves around a group of boys who end up finding out her true identity.

Remembering this genre had me thinking about why women would disguise themselves as men. After reading de Beauvoir’s piece it dawned on me that there are more privileges to being male than I had previously realized. I now have more of a desire to learn more about feminism and its goals.

Night

While reading Hannah Ardendt’s article on Totalitarianism for Honors 203, I was also reading Elie Wiesel’s “Night” for my history course. Reading them at the same time allowed for me to draw parallels much more easily. Elie Wiesel’s novel is his first-hand account of life in the concentration camps. His accounts of starvation and death verified Ardendt’s view of Totalitarianism. In her article she states that for the Nazis to be able to completely be able to control the Jews they had to strip them of their humanity. “Night” tells of this loss humanity. At times Wiesel speaks of only wanting the next food rationing because that is all their lives have come to.

My main note to leave here is that reading the two texts together left a more lasting impression than I believe they would have separately.

“Let’s talk about sex”

In last Thursday’s school newspaper there was this article which talks about casual sex in relation to college life. Essentially the article stated that it has become a norm for casual sex to occur now-a-days. This example coincides with a couple of Simone de Beauvoir’s points. The first of which is virginity. Having casual sex means that the care of one’s ‘purity’ or virginity is a thing of the past (at least in college). Partners, generally, now don’t care whether or not they’re with someone who has had sex in the past. The days of stoning the deflowered girl are gone (again, at least for college students in America). Another point the article covers os sexual pleasure. Since having casual, consensual sex is commonplace, it is understood that the women who are willingly participating, are enjoying it. In class we touched on the fact that in some cultures women are mutilated so that they can’t get pleasure from sex. The idea that women shouldn’t have pleasure has changed with time.

Students for Reproductive Justice

In Simone de Beauvoir’s writing about the myths of the second sex she brings up many of the ways in which men have suppressed women over the years. A good portion of these myths revolve around man’s reaction towards women regarding sex. To summarize, some of the myths state that men can have sex freely, whereas women can not. Men can jump from woman to woman, but a woman can not go from man to man.

This had me thinking about a new club that has been formed on campus this semester called “Students for Reproductive Justice.” While this club mostly concerns itself with advocating for contraception, information about sex, and women’s ability to choose, it also touches on fighting stigmas towards women when it relates to sex. Similar to the Feminists for Action organization, this club is fighting against the “patriarchal regime [when] man became master of woman.” (p. 154)

Ink Drawing titled “Not Yours” by Heather Keith Freeman. This piece expresses what it means to be pro-choice.

Catalyst

While perusing the internet, this YouTube video came on my news feed. Watching this showed me that one incident can change a person’s life. All he needed was a catalyst to get his life on track. A catalyst being an event that affects one’s life and leads to other events. Mr. Ramsey’s character goes through a catalyst as well in “To the Lighthouse”, the death of his wife, instead of finding a way to get through the event and change his life for the better, it adversely affected him causing him to avoid the house near the lighthouse for ten years.

Everyday we experience different catalysts and it is our decision on how they affect us. This video teaches us that we must appreciate the opportunities that are given to us.

blacked out poetry

In class yesterday we took a page out of “To the lighthouse” and blocked out some of Virginia Woolf’s words to create our own meaning, this is what I came up with:

Messages breathed. | Never sleep. | Lull deeply. | Whatever dreamt wisely murmuring- laid in the clean sea. | Exactly mattered were entreating would at least see jewelled eyes tired out. | At once read a book. | Had more power. | Preferred argument. | Voice gently would break tenderly through her eyelids. | Falling asleep. | The voice wrapped the blackness, be content with this. | The sigh breaking soothed them.

The entire class did this with the same page from the novel and it was interesting how everyone chose their words differently, no two poems were exactly alike. Occasionally there were overlapping phrases but each poem brought its own meaning. I know it’s choppy, but I like the meaning I got out of it. I feel it applies to the novel in many ways, like alluding to Mr. Ramsey’s personality, but also has a more universal meaning as well.

A more universal theme I got out of mine was the power of knowledge. The lines “At once read a book. | Had more power. | Preferred argument.” show that reading is a powerful ability. It brings us new information which allows us to understand life better, which in turn allows us to effectively argue for ourselves and what we belive in.

The Transience of Life

In To the Lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay is depressed about the plateau of his career and he dwells on it. Mrs. Ramsay, on the other hand, understands how transient time is and it causes her to cherish the time she has left. Reading these two opposing sides has left me thinking that Mr. Ramsey’s view does nothing but make him more solemn person. While Mrs. Ramsey’s view is more ideal, I feel as if we can’t always make the most out of life, there are always things we’ll dwell on that may hold us back. So the human way of looking at the transience of life is to have a balance of the two.

Personally I tend to not dwell on things. But like most people I do have those moments where I’m stuck in a rut. But I use other moments in my life to get me out of the rut. For example, field trip week I went on an excursion from Cincinnati, OH to Charlottesville, VA to New York, NY to Boston, MA. Moments along this trip stood out to me as most memorable because of my mindset those days.

When I saw the statue of liberty for the first time it didn’t sink in until I called my grandma and talked to her about it. It has always been a dream of hers to visit the statue of liberty. Knowing this, I appreciated my experience even more so.

Another moment later that week was when I saw the ocean for the second time in my life. The first time I was in elementary school and didn’t appreciate the vastness and the beauty of it. When I saw it again a month ago I felt like a little girl again collecting sea shells and staring at the cool water.

New Perspectives

About a month ago I participated in a design-build competition that took place in Toronto. The project was to design a Sukkah. This is a Jewish temporary structure in which meals and celebration take place for a week. Going into this project I had very little knowledge of Jewish culture. AFter participating, I have a better understanding of the culture. Trying something new has led me to re-evaluate myself and what I believe in. Similar to how Virginia Woolf offers everyone’s perspectives to create a cohesive whole in “To the Lighthouse”, this experience has opened my eyes to another culture helping me understand who I am.