I was upset that people are being prevented from researching controversial topics by the stupid politics of our day. Also, Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition saying that "scientists overall don't believe in God, and they don't want to be questioned," is irrelevant and misleading. Irrelevant because her conception of god excludes anybody else's metaphysical structure from legitimacy, and misleading because scientists do want to be questioned. That's the scientific method- you make a hyptothesis, test it, support or deny it with your data, and then submit it for peer review. Ignorance is her number one traditional value, hahaha. I'm tired of writing this fricking paper.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Politics/Story?id=6273751&page=3
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/11/18/scientists.self.censor.response.political.controversy
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
thesis freewrite
I am choosing to answer "Should 'hate speech' be censored by universities?" with this assigned rhetorical argument essay.
When students make arguments that seem hateful and threatening to any population of the the student body, the university's responsibility is to facilitate intelligent dialogue rather than censor, except in the case of genuine threats to the physical and intellectual integrity of students. One argument is that people who hold reviled positions on controversial topics often will mention taboo facts that need to be heard. "Hate speakers" need to be invited into and trained in the art of rhetorical argument; if they are not emotionally mature for this task, they could be assigned to academic probation along with something like Outward Bound.
When students make arguments that seem hateful and threatening to any population of the the student body, the university's responsibility is to facilitate intelligent dialogue rather than censor, except in the case of genuine threats to the physical and intellectual integrity of students. One argument is that people who hold reviled positions on controversial topics often will mention taboo facts that need to be heard. "Hate speakers" need to be invited into and trained in the art of rhetorical argument; if they are not emotionally mature for this task, they could be assigned to academic probation along with something like Outward Bound.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
from wence came this hallmark holiday?
reprinted from From Werewolves With Love - History Of Valentine's Day
By Brad Steiger
FATE Magazine - February 2006
2-11-6
Everyone thinks they know the origin of Valentine's Day. According to the most commonly accepted story, Emperor Claudius of Rome issued a decree forbidding marriage in the year 271. Roman generals had found that married men did not make very good soldiers, because they wanted to return as quickly as possible to their wives and children-and they didn't want to leave them to fight the emperor's battles in the first place. So Claudius issued his edict that there should be no more marriages, and all single men should report for duty.
A priest named Valentine deemed such a decree an abomination, and he secretly continued to marry young lovers. When Claudius learned of this extreme act of disobedience to his imperial command, he ordered the priest dragged off to prison and had him executed on February 14.
Father Valentine, the friend of sweethearts, became a martyr to love and the sanctity of marriage, and when the Church gained power in the Roman Empire, the Holy See was quick to make him a saint.
The early Church fathers were well aware of the popularity of a vast number of heathen gods and goddesses, as well as the dates of observation of pagan festivals, so they set about replacing as many of the entities and the holidays as possible with ecclesiastical saints and feast days. Mid-February had an ancient history of being devoted to acts of love of a far more passionate and lusty nature than the Church wished to bless, and the bishops moved as speedily as possible to claim the days of February 14 through 17 as belonging to Saint Valentine, the courageous martyr to the ties that bound couples in Christian love.
February Is for Mating
Actually, there is no proof that the good priest Valentine even existed.
Some scholars trace the period of mid-February as a time for mating back to ancient Egypt. On those same days of the year that contemporary lovers devote to St. Valentine, men and women of the Egyptian lower classes determined their marital partners by the drawing of lots.
But the time of coupling that comes with the cold nights in February before the spring thaw likely had its true origin very near where Valentine supposedly met his demise.
Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Wolf Charmer was called the Lupicinus. Perhaps hearkening back to prehistoric times, the Lupicinus may well have been an individual tribesman who had a particular affinity for communicating with wolves. As the tribes developed agriculture and small villages, it was necessary to have a person skilled in singing with the wolves and convincing them not to attack their domesticated animals. The Lupicinus had the ability to howl with the wolves and lead them away from the livestock pens. In some views, because he also wore the pelt of a wolf, the Lupicinus also had the power to transform himself into a wolf if he so desired.
Rites of the Lupercalia
The annual Lupercali festival of the Romans on February 15 was a perpetuation of the ancient blooding rites of the hunter in which the novice is smeared with the blood of his first kill. The sacrificial slaying of a goat-representing the flocks that nourished early humans in their efforts to establish permanent dwelling places-was followed by the sacrifice of a dog, the watchful protector of a flock that would be the first to be killed by attacking wolves.
The blood of the she-goat and the dog were mixed, and a bloodstained knife was dipped into the fluid and drawn slowly across the foreheads of two noble-born children. Once the children had been "blooded," the gore was wiped off their foreheads with wool that had been dipped in goat milk. As the children were being cleansed, they were expected to laugh, thereby demonstrating their lack of fear of blood and their acknowledgment that they had received the magic of protection against wolves and wolfmen.
The god Lupercus, represented by a wolf, would next inspire and command men to behave as wolves, to act as werewolves during the festival.
Lupus (wolf) itself is not an authentic or original Latin word, but was borrowed from the Sabine dialect. Luperca, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, may have given rise to secret fraternities known as the Luperci, who sacrificed she-goats at the entrances to their "wolves' dens." For centuries, the Luperci observed an annual ritual of chasing women through the streets of Roman cities and beating them with leather thongs.
Scholars generally agree that such a violent expression of eroticism celebrated the ancient behavior of primitive hunting tribes corraling captive women. Once a wolfman had ensnared a woman with his whip or thong, he would lead her away to be his wife or lover for as long as the "romance" lasted. Perhaps, as some scholars theorize, this yearly rite of lashing at women and lassoing them with leather thongs became a more acceptable substitute for the bloodlust of the Luperci's latent werewolfism that in days past had seen them tearing the flesh of innocent victims with their teeth.
As the Romans grew ever more sophisticated, the Lupercali would be celebrated by a man binding the lady of his choice wrist to wrist, and later by passing a billet to his object of desire, suggesting a romantic rendezvous in some secluded place.
Christian Marriage
One can easily see why the early Church fathers much preferred the union of man and woman to be smiled upon by St. Valentine, rather than the leering wolf god Lupercus. And, of course, they encouraged a knot tied securely by the sacred rite of marriage and blessed by the priest, rather than a fleeting midnight liaison.
By the Middle Ages, the peasantry in England, Scotland, and parts of France honored St. Valentine, but their customs seemed very much to hearken back to ancient Egypt and Rome. On the evening before Valentine's Day, the young people would gather in a village meeting place and draw names by chance. Each young woman would write her name or make her mark on a bit of cloth and place it into a large urn. Then each of the young men would draw a slip. The girl whose name or mark was on the piece of cloth became his sweetheart for the year.
This method of celebrating St. Valentine's Day quite often led to circumstances and situations that encouraged long-term and lasting relationships, blessed by the recital of marriage vows in the local church. If the young couple did not take the necessary steps to become bound in a church-sanctioned union, the parents of the respective "bride" and "groom" would actively arrange for the marriage sacrament to be observed.
It wasn't long before the peasant method of utilizing St. Valentine's Day to guarantee the next generation of field hands, construction workers, and merchants reached the ears of the upper classes, and the custom became popular among the young men and women of the aristocracy and the landed gentry. Since the prospect of arranged marriages between successful families meant far more to the upper classes in Europe than to the peasantry, parental supervision most often limited the interaction between their children to be "sweethearts" during Valentine's Day parties.
By the late 1400s, the upper classes of Europe and England would come together in homes to celebrate Valentine's Day and allow their young men to draw a "valentine" with the name of a member of the opposite sex, beside whom he would be seated at a lavish dinner party. Hostesses took advantage of the holiday theme to express the tradition in colorful decorative schemes.
Gradually, Valentine's Day came to be synonymous with the exchange of pretty sentiments, written in flourishes on scented paper and decorated with hearts, arrows, doves, and cupids-those little pagan deities maintaining their hold on the ancient holiday. By the early 1800s, young men were taking care to create symbols of their passion on elaborate cards that they could offer to "My Valentine."
Today's Customs
By the 1850s, Valentine's Day cards were being manufactured and sold commercially in England, and the custom of observing the holiday with cards to one's sweetheart became popular in the United States in the 1860s, around the time of the Civil War.
Today, of course, we have vast commercial enterprises centered around St. Valentine's Day, insisting that callow young men and seasoned husbands must buy their sweetheart a box of candy, a dozen roses, a diamond ring or necklace, or at least a five-dollar card. But don't let the slick advertisers fool you with all this talk of a saint named Valentine who was martyred for love. Remember that it all began with a hyped-up wolfman smeared in blood chasing the object of his desire with a leather thong.
One last word of advice: Forget the whip and stick with flowers and candy
Brad Steiger is a professional writer who deals with the strange and unknown.
By Brad Steiger
FATE Magazine - February 2006
2-11-6
Everyone thinks they know the origin of Valentine's Day. According to the most commonly accepted story, Emperor Claudius of Rome issued a decree forbidding marriage in the year 271. Roman generals had found that married men did not make very good soldiers, because they wanted to return as quickly as possible to their wives and children-and they didn't want to leave them to fight the emperor's battles in the first place. So Claudius issued his edict that there should be no more marriages, and all single men should report for duty.
A priest named Valentine deemed such a decree an abomination, and he secretly continued to marry young lovers. When Claudius learned of this extreme act of disobedience to his imperial command, he ordered the priest dragged off to prison and had him executed on February 14.
Father Valentine, the friend of sweethearts, became a martyr to love and the sanctity of marriage, and when the Church gained power in the Roman Empire, the Holy See was quick to make him a saint.
The early Church fathers were well aware of the popularity of a vast number of heathen gods and goddesses, as well as the dates of observation of pagan festivals, so they set about replacing as many of the entities and the holidays as possible with ecclesiastical saints and feast days. Mid-February had an ancient history of being devoted to acts of love of a far more passionate and lusty nature than the Church wished to bless, and the bishops moved as speedily as possible to claim the days of February 14 through 17 as belonging to Saint Valentine, the courageous martyr to the ties that bound couples in Christian love.
February Is for Mating
Actually, there is no proof that the good priest Valentine even existed.
Some scholars trace the period of mid-February as a time for mating back to ancient Egypt. On those same days of the year that contemporary lovers devote to St. Valentine, men and women of the Egyptian lower classes determined their marital partners by the drawing of lots.
But the time of coupling that comes with the cold nights in February before the spring thaw likely had its true origin very near where Valentine supposedly met his demise.
Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Wolf Charmer was called the Lupicinus. Perhaps hearkening back to prehistoric times, the Lupicinus may well have been an individual tribesman who had a particular affinity for communicating with wolves. As the tribes developed agriculture and small villages, it was necessary to have a person skilled in singing with the wolves and convincing them not to attack their domesticated animals. The Lupicinus had the ability to howl with the wolves and lead them away from the livestock pens. In some views, because he also wore the pelt of a wolf, the Lupicinus also had the power to transform himself into a wolf if he so desired.
Rites of the Lupercalia
The annual Lupercali festival of the Romans on February 15 was a perpetuation of the ancient blooding rites of the hunter in which the novice is smeared with the blood of his first kill. The sacrificial slaying of a goat-representing the flocks that nourished early humans in their efforts to establish permanent dwelling places-was followed by the sacrifice of a dog, the watchful protector of a flock that would be the first to be killed by attacking wolves.
The blood of the she-goat and the dog were mixed, and a bloodstained knife was dipped into the fluid and drawn slowly across the foreheads of two noble-born children. Once the children had been "blooded," the gore was wiped off their foreheads with wool that had been dipped in goat milk. As the children were being cleansed, they were expected to laugh, thereby demonstrating their lack of fear of blood and their acknowledgment that they had received the magic of protection against wolves and wolfmen.
The god Lupercus, represented by a wolf, would next inspire and command men to behave as wolves, to act as werewolves during the festival.
Lupus (wolf) itself is not an authentic or original Latin word, but was borrowed from the Sabine dialect. Luperca, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, may have given rise to secret fraternities known as the Luperci, who sacrificed she-goats at the entrances to their "wolves' dens." For centuries, the Luperci observed an annual ritual of chasing women through the streets of Roman cities and beating them with leather thongs.
Scholars generally agree that such a violent expression of eroticism celebrated the ancient behavior of primitive hunting tribes corraling captive women. Once a wolfman had ensnared a woman with his whip or thong, he would lead her away to be his wife or lover for as long as the "romance" lasted. Perhaps, as some scholars theorize, this yearly rite of lashing at women and lassoing them with leather thongs became a more acceptable substitute for the bloodlust of the Luperci's latent werewolfism that in days past had seen them tearing the flesh of innocent victims with their teeth.
As the Romans grew ever more sophisticated, the Lupercali would be celebrated by a man binding the lady of his choice wrist to wrist, and later by passing a billet to his object of desire, suggesting a romantic rendezvous in some secluded place.
Christian Marriage
One can easily see why the early Church fathers much preferred the union of man and woman to be smiled upon by St. Valentine, rather than the leering wolf god Lupercus. And, of course, they encouraged a knot tied securely by the sacred rite of marriage and blessed by the priest, rather than a fleeting midnight liaison.
By the Middle Ages, the peasantry in England, Scotland, and parts of France honored St. Valentine, but their customs seemed very much to hearken back to ancient Egypt and Rome. On the evening before Valentine's Day, the young people would gather in a village meeting place and draw names by chance. Each young woman would write her name or make her mark on a bit of cloth and place it into a large urn. Then each of the young men would draw a slip. The girl whose name or mark was on the piece of cloth became his sweetheart for the year.
This method of celebrating St. Valentine's Day quite often led to circumstances and situations that encouraged long-term and lasting relationships, blessed by the recital of marriage vows in the local church. If the young couple did not take the necessary steps to become bound in a church-sanctioned union, the parents of the respective "bride" and "groom" would actively arrange for the marriage sacrament to be observed.
It wasn't long before the peasant method of utilizing St. Valentine's Day to guarantee the next generation of field hands, construction workers, and merchants reached the ears of the upper classes, and the custom became popular among the young men and women of the aristocracy and the landed gentry. Since the prospect of arranged marriages between successful families meant far more to the upper classes in Europe than to the peasantry, parental supervision most often limited the interaction between their children to be "sweethearts" during Valentine's Day parties.
By the late 1400s, the upper classes of Europe and England would come together in homes to celebrate Valentine's Day and allow their young men to draw a "valentine" with the name of a member of the opposite sex, beside whom he would be seated at a lavish dinner party. Hostesses took advantage of the holiday theme to express the tradition in colorful decorative schemes.
Gradually, Valentine's Day came to be synonymous with the exchange of pretty sentiments, written in flourishes on scented paper and decorated with hearts, arrows, doves, and cupids-those little pagan deities maintaining their hold on the ancient holiday. By the early 1800s, young men were taking care to create symbols of their passion on elaborate cards that they could offer to "My Valentine."
Today's Customs
By the 1850s, Valentine's Day cards were being manufactured and sold commercially in England, and the custom of observing the holiday with cards to one's sweetheart became popular in the United States in the 1860s, around the time of the Civil War.
Today, of course, we have vast commercial enterprises centered around St. Valentine's Day, insisting that callow young men and seasoned husbands must buy their sweetheart a box of candy, a dozen roses, a diamond ring or necklace, or at least a five-dollar card. But don't let the slick advertisers fool you with all this talk of a saint named Valentine who was martyred for love. Remember that it all began with a hyped-up wolfman smeared in blood chasing the object of his desire with a leather thong.
One last word of advice: Forget the whip and stick with flowers and candy
Brad Steiger is a professional writer who deals with the strange and unknown.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Thinking Critically about "Paintball: Promoter of Violence or Healthy Fun?"
1. My own view of paintball has been this: it's a militaristic rich kids sport that fosters a social acceptance of war in children. It does this by glorifying the physicality and the adrenaline rush, the strategy and the comraderie that soldiers must engage if they want to survive. This is my position, personally informed by the support of America's foreign policy and a fascination with killing machines in general, exhibite by my economically priviledged, paintballing classmates during highschool. Also I have played the sport, once, and succeeded in grasping some of Taylor's well-spoken examples from that experience. Ross Taylor's essay did little in moving my understanding over to his position, however. The largest addition to knowledge that I took away was new appreciation for why people are attracted to the game. "Paintball is a fun, athletic, mentally challenging recreational activity that builds teamwork and releases tension," says Taylor. So are a lot of other sports that do not precisely glorify war. Taylor offers no rebuttal to this. The points and evidence of what they enjoy about paintball were relatively strong, especially the around it being mentally challenging and building teamwork. However, the teamwork building of Fortune 500 companies who bond over paintball is a joke in that it buries his poorly thought out attempt to wrestle with the main controversy nagging the sport. Fortune 500 companies are an exemplary part of the military industrial complex that paintball trains us to live for. For Fortune 500 employees, paintball reinforces the twisted Social Darwinism that our economy is paritally based on.
2. Taylor's appeals to ethos are often strong but not entirely consistent. The strength of their tone and depth of experience lend credibility. He holds fun, competition, physical fitness, collaboration and mental challenge as values, all of which are easy for Americans to relate to. He also seeks to address certain criticisms, the two which he claims that opponents of their position commonly cite. These are the possible dangers and violence of the sport. For the safety issue,Taylor gives strong examples of why paint ball can be very safe. For example, reported eye injuries are very rare, and most people who are hurt this way were not wearing the appropriate eye protection. However, they stop thinking straight when it comes time to thoughtfully reflect on the violence issue. That paragraph is a jumbled mess, and it's the most important paragraph for defending the pro-paintball position. Taylor does not mention how paintball is used as a tactical exercise in the American military, which clearly indicates that it is used to promote violence. If I ever bear offspring, I would strongly object to them marrying anyone who doesn't understand the nature of violence. It should be obvious that forms of play which mimic mortal combat are instilling violence as a value in children. This lack of clarity really disrupts the ethos of Ross Taylor.
3. Pathos, the appeal to reader sympathy, is very effective in this piece. Taylor "goes there" with drive-by paintball shootings, which are probably sensationalized television news stories. He calls such individuals rare, bad apples. During my reading of Taylors description of the physicality of their sport, I found myself getting pumped up. The chest beating and "splendor and glory" Taylor feels is contageous.
4. The Logos of the argument (the appeal to reason with evidence)is mostly solid in this piece. Taylor clearly demonstrates that paintball can have the beneficial, positive characteristics of other common team sports, like soccer, ultimate frisbee, and pickup baseball. The problems grows from the critical lack of support for how paintball doesn't usually reward violence. One result of fragging somebody is "a nice dark bruise" (my emphasis). Purposefully damaging another organism is usually, rightly considered violent behavior. I realize the players agree to this, but a lot of humans and non-human organisms living in a war zone don't have the choice to opt out of their location, and this sport encourages war more than probably any other that's commonly played in this country.
5. Ross has validated half of their argument- paintball is a sport, sharing the essential, beneficial characteristics of other American sports. Paintball is not much more dangerous than any other contact sport that result in bruises. However, the rhetoric comes apart when Taylor defends paintball as aloof and separate from other violent human expressions.
2. Taylor's appeals to ethos are often strong but not entirely consistent. The strength of their tone and depth of experience lend credibility. He holds fun, competition, physical fitness, collaboration and mental challenge as values, all of which are easy for Americans to relate to. He also seeks to address certain criticisms, the two which he claims that opponents of their position commonly cite. These are the possible dangers and violence of the sport. For the safety issue,Taylor gives strong examples of why paint ball can be very safe. For example, reported eye injuries are very rare, and most people who are hurt this way were not wearing the appropriate eye protection. However, they stop thinking straight when it comes time to thoughtfully reflect on the violence issue. That paragraph is a jumbled mess, and it's the most important paragraph for defending the pro-paintball position. Taylor does not mention how paintball is used as a tactical exercise in the American military, which clearly indicates that it is used to promote violence. If I ever bear offspring, I would strongly object to them marrying anyone who doesn't understand the nature of violence. It should be obvious that forms of play which mimic mortal combat are instilling violence as a value in children. This lack of clarity really disrupts the ethos of Ross Taylor.
3. Pathos, the appeal to reader sympathy, is very effective in this piece. Taylor "goes there" with drive-by paintball shootings, which are probably sensationalized television news stories. He calls such individuals rare, bad apples. During my reading of Taylors description of the physicality of their sport, I found myself getting pumped up. The chest beating and "splendor and glory" Taylor feels is contageous.
4. The Logos of the argument (the appeal to reason with evidence)is mostly solid in this piece. Taylor clearly demonstrates that paintball can have the beneficial, positive characteristics of other common team sports, like soccer, ultimate frisbee, and pickup baseball. The problems grows from the critical lack of support for how paintball doesn't usually reward violence. One result of fragging somebody is "a nice dark bruise" (my emphasis). Purposefully damaging another organism is usually, rightly considered violent behavior. I realize the players agree to this, but a lot of humans and non-human organisms living in a war zone don't have the choice to opt out of their location, and this sport encourages war more than probably any other that's commonly played in this country.
5. Ross has validated half of their argument- paintball is a sport, sharing the essential, beneficial characteristics of other American sports. Paintball is not much more dangerous than any other contact sport that result in bruises. However, the rhetoric comes apart when Taylor defends paintball as aloof and separate from other violent human expressions.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Homework for Monday, January 26 freewrite coming into knowledge, understanding and wisdom
i want a lot of things from life. i have begun to question whether that is the best thing or not, and furthermore i am now questioning my question and my questioning. i want to evolve my life so that it is as happy, harmonious and sustainably so.
The hurdle to get to these is that i am hard headed. I bullishly pursue certain courses of action, and feel hapless sometimes in changing how I do things. Like the patterns of actvitiy in my past sometimes dictate what I do more than what i figure out is the best thing to do. Also, I feel like the environment I am in plays a huge roll in how I behave. So how does one get outside their old thought patterns and achieve, findoneself in, get to know and appreciate new thoughts? Creativity getting uncorked, if the soil is compacted, how can water and air get down into the non-existent pores of the soil? If my somewhat hard-headed, more robotic thinking may be compared to this soil, than it's obvious to me as a gardener. A hard clay pan of soil will benefit from nobody walking on it, compacting it further. In otherwords don't push on the hardheadedness further by applying more of the same thinking that has got you acting in rigid patterns. Next get some good, dead and decomposed organic material from and cut it into the parent soil, with a hoe or digging fork or shovel. And then get some plants in there! The new soil getting cut into the old clay is new experiences, being consciously intruded into the old experience and directly contradicting parts of it by its presence. Then plants coming into the soil, independent freely living organism, sunloving plants, captures Carbon from the air and builds roots with it, which push down into the new soil and eventually start to penetrate down deeper into the clay layer. Little cracks are opened, where the basic elements of water and air can bring the fire of oxygen respiration down into the soil. These new roots, what kind of plants should we plant in our head?
Other people seem happier and more harmonious even as they react novelly and appropriately to the situations of life. Schooling, what kind of pedagogy, what kind of teaching is going to make students come to vibrant inner life? Specifically, should certain books be censored from the curriculum and if not, why not?
The hurdle to get to these is that i am hard headed. I bullishly pursue certain courses of action, and feel hapless sometimes in changing how I do things. Like the patterns of actvitiy in my past sometimes dictate what I do more than what i figure out is the best thing to do. Also, I feel like the environment I am in plays a huge roll in how I behave. So how does one get outside their old thought patterns and achieve, findoneself in, get to know and appreciate new thoughts? Creativity getting uncorked, if the soil is compacted, how can water and air get down into the non-existent pores of the soil? If my somewhat hard-headed, more robotic thinking may be compared to this soil, than it's obvious to me as a gardener. A hard clay pan of soil will benefit from nobody walking on it, compacting it further. In otherwords don't push on the hardheadedness further by applying more of the same thinking that has got you acting in rigid patterns. Next get some good, dead and decomposed organic material from and cut it into the parent soil, with a hoe or digging fork or shovel. And then get some plants in there! The new soil getting cut into the old clay is new experiences, being consciously intruded into the old experience and directly contradicting parts of it by its presence. Then plants coming into the soil, independent freely living organism, sunloving plants, captures Carbon from the air and builds roots with it, which push down into the new soil and eventually start to penetrate down deeper into the clay layer. Little cracks are opened, where the basic elements of water and air can bring the fire of oxygen respiration down into the soil. These new roots, what kind of plants should we plant in our head?
Other people seem happier and more harmonious even as they react novelly and appropriately to the situations of life. Schooling, what kind of pedagogy, what kind of teaching is going to make students come to vibrant inner life? Specifically, should certain books be censored from the curriculum and if not, why not?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Names and URLs for my English 151 class blogs
Wendy VanDellon http://wendyv151.blogspot.com/
Chris Brausch http://brauschreport.blogspot.com/
Kyle Damron http://kyledsblog.blogspot.com/
Daron Disabato http://dd371207.blogspot.com/
Peter Gaglio http://petesblog123log1.blogspot.com/
David Ginley http://davidsblog151.blogspot.com/
Badger Johnson http://noblesavagery.blogspot.com/
Kyle Kaethow http://kylekaethow.blogspot.com/
Kendall Kidder-Goshorn http://kendallk-g.blogspot.com/
Kevin Kretz http://kretzer719.blogspot.com/
Justin Marcinizyn http://jm283508.blogspot.com/
Michael Messmer http://michaelsblog12.blogspot.com/
Brian Muehlenkamp http://bm179707.blogspot.com/
Kyle Raffel http://raffdaddy.blogspot.com/
Jacob Richardson http://jr192307.blogspot.com/
Jeff Scarbro http://jeffscarbro.blogspot.com/
Jason Shaffer http://jasonenglish151.blogspot.com/
Tanner Smith http://eng151tsmith.blogspot.com/
John Stewart http://stewcat80.blogspot.com/
Mitch Wilcox http://mitchwilcox151.blogspot.com/
Wendy VanDellon http://wendyv151.blogspot.com/
Chris Brausch http://brauschreport.blogspot.com/
Kyle Damron http://kyledsblog.blogspot.com/
Daron Disabato http://dd371207.blogspot.com/
Peter Gaglio http://petesblog123log1.blogspot.com/
David Ginley http://davidsblog151.blogspot.com/
Badger Johnson http://noblesavagery.blogspot.com/
Kyle Kaethow http://kylekaethow.blogspot.com/
Kendall Kidder-Goshorn http://kendallk-g.blogspot.com/
Kevin Kretz http://kretzer719.blogspot.com/
Justin Marcinizyn http://jm283508.blogspot.com/
Michael Messmer http://michaelsblog12.blogspot.com/
Brian Muehlenkamp http://bm179707.blogspot.com/
Kyle Raffel http://raffdaddy.blogspot.com/
Jacob Richardson http://jr192307.blogspot.com/
Jeff Scarbro http://jeffscarbro.blogspot.com/
Jason Shaffer http://jasonenglish151.blogspot.com/
Tanner Smith http://eng151tsmith.blogspot.com/
John Stewart http://stewcat80.blogspot.com/
Mitch Wilcox http://mitchwilcox151.blogspot.com/
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Intention Economy, by Daniel Pinchbeck
While exploring shamanism and non-ordinary states, I discovered the power of intention. According to the artist Ian Lungold, who lectured brilliantly about the Mayan Calendar before his untimely death a few years ago, the Maya believe that your intention is as essential to your ability to navigate reality as your position in time and space. If you don’t know your intention, or if you are operating with the wrong intentions, you are always lost, and can only get more dissolute.
This idea becomes exquisitely clear during psychedelic journeys, when your state of mind gets intensified and projected kaleidoscopically all around you. As our contemporary world becomes more and more psychedelic, we are receiving harsh lessons in the power of intention on a vast scale. Over the last decades, the international financial elite manipulated the markets to create obscene rewards for themselves at the expense of poor and middle class people across the world. Using devious derivatives, cunning CDOS, and other trickery, they siphoned off ever-larger portions of the surplus value created by the producers of real goods and services, contriving a debt-based economy that had to fall apart. Their own greed — such a meager, dull intent — has now blown up in their faces, annihilating, in slow motion, the corrupt system built to serve them.
Opportunities such as this one don’t come along very often and should be seized once they appear. When the edifice of mainstream society suddenly collapses, as is happening now, it is a fantastic time for artists, visionaries, mad scientists and seers to step forward and present a well-defined alternative. What is required, in my opinion, is not some moderate proposal or incremental change, but a complete shift in values and goals, making a polar reversal of our society’s basic paradigm. If our consumer-based, materialism-driven model of society is dissolving, what can we offer in its place? Why not begin with the most elevated intentions? Why not offer the most imaginatively fabulous systemic redesign?
The fall of capitalism and the crisis of the biosphere could induce mass despair and misery, or they could impel the creative adaptation and conscious evolution of the human species. We could attain a new level of wisdom and build a compassionate global society in which resources are shared equitably while we devote ourselves to protecting threatened species and repairing damaged ecosystems. Considering the lightning-like pace of global communication and new social technologies, this change could happen with extraordinary speed.
To a very great extent, the possibilities we choose to realize in the future will be a result of our individual and collective intention. For instance, if we maintain a Puritanical belief that work is somehow good in and of itself, then we will keep striving to create a society of full employment, even if those jobs become “green collar.” A more radical viewpoint perceives most labor as something that could become essentially voluntary in the future. The proper use of technology could allow us to transition to a post-scarcity leisure society, where the global populace spends its time growing food, building community, making art, making love, learning new skills and deepening self-development through spiritual disciplines such as yoga, tantra, shamanism and meditation.
One common perspective is that the West and Islam are engaged in an intractable conflict of civilizations, where the hatred and terrorism can only get worse. Another viewpoint could envision the Judeo-Christian culture of the West finding common ground and reconciling with the esoteric core, the metaphysical purity, of the Islamic faith. It seems — to me anyway — that we could find solutions to all of the seemingly intractable problems of our time once we are ready to apply a different mindset to them. As Einstein and others have noted, we don’t solve problems through employing the type of thinking that created them, but rather dissolve them when we reach a different level of consciousness.
We became so mired in our all-too-human world that we lost touch with the other, elder forms of sentience all around us. Along with delegates to the UN, perhaps we could train cadres of diplomats to negotiate with the vegetal, fungal and microbial entities that sustain life on earth? The mycologist Paul Stamets proposes we create a symbiosis with mushrooms to detoxify eco-systems and improve human health. The herbalist Morgan Brent believes psychoactive flora like ayahuasca and peyote are “teacher plants,” sentient emissaries from super-intelligent nature, trying to help the human species find its niche in the greater community of life. When we pull back to study the hapless and shameful activity of our species across the earth, these ideas do not seem very farfetched.
In fact, the breakdown of our financial system has not altered the amount of tangible resources available on our planet. Rather than trying to re-jigger an unjust debt-based system that artificially maintains inequity and scarcity, we could make a new start. We could develop a different intention for what we are supposed to be doing together on this swiftly tilting planet, and institute new social and economic infrastructure to support that intent.
---------------------
Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications. reposted from http://consciouschoice.com/2009/01/pinchbeck0901.html
This idea becomes exquisitely clear during psychedelic journeys, when your state of mind gets intensified and projected kaleidoscopically all around you. As our contemporary world becomes more and more psychedelic, we are receiving harsh lessons in the power of intention on a vast scale. Over the last decades, the international financial elite manipulated the markets to create obscene rewards for themselves at the expense of poor and middle class people across the world. Using devious derivatives, cunning CDOS, and other trickery, they siphoned off ever-larger portions of the surplus value created by the producers of real goods and services, contriving a debt-based economy that had to fall apart. Their own greed — such a meager, dull intent — has now blown up in their faces, annihilating, in slow motion, the corrupt system built to serve them.
Opportunities such as this one don’t come along very often and should be seized once they appear. When the edifice of mainstream society suddenly collapses, as is happening now, it is a fantastic time for artists, visionaries, mad scientists and seers to step forward and present a well-defined alternative. What is required, in my opinion, is not some moderate proposal or incremental change, but a complete shift in values and goals, making a polar reversal of our society’s basic paradigm. If our consumer-based, materialism-driven model of society is dissolving, what can we offer in its place? Why not begin with the most elevated intentions? Why not offer the most imaginatively fabulous systemic redesign?
The fall of capitalism and the crisis of the biosphere could induce mass despair and misery, or they could impel the creative adaptation and conscious evolution of the human species. We could attain a new level of wisdom and build a compassionate global society in which resources are shared equitably while we devote ourselves to protecting threatened species and repairing damaged ecosystems. Considering the lightning-like pace of global communication and new social technologies, this change could happen with extraordinary speed.
To a very great extent, the possibilities we choose to realize in the future will be a result of our individual and collective intention. For instance, if we maintain a Puritanical belief that work is somehow good in and of itself, then we will keep striving to create a society of full employment, even if those jobs become “green collar.” A more radical viewpoint perceives most labor as something that could become essentially voluntary in the future. The proper use of technology could allow us to transition to a post-scarcity leisure society, where the global populace spends its time growing food, building community, making art, making love, learning new skills and deepening self-development through spiritual disciplines such as yoga, tantra, shamanism and meditation.
One common perspective is that the West and Islam are engaged in an intractable conflict of civilizations, where the hatred and terrorism can only get worse. Another viewpoint could envision the Judeo-Christian culture of the West finding common ground and reconciling with the esoteric core, the metaphysical purity, of the Islamic faith. It seems — to me anyway — that we could find solutions to all of the seemingly intractable problems of our time once we are ready to apply a different mindset to them. As Einstein and others have noted, we don’t solve problems through employing the type of thinking that created them, but rather dissolve them when we reach a different level of consciousness.
We became so mired in our all-too-human world that we lost touch with the other, elder forms of sentience all around us. Along with delegates to the UN, perhaps we could train cadres of diplomats to negotiate with the vegetal, fungal and microbial entities that sustain life on earth? The mycologist Paul Stamets proposes we create a symbiosis with mushrooms to detoxify eco-systems and improve human health. The herbalist Morgan Brent believes psychoactive flora like ayahuasca and peyote are “teacher plants,” sentient emissaries from super-intelligent nature, trying to help the human species find its niche in the greater community of life. When we pull back to study the hapless and shameful activity of our species across the earth, these ideas do not seem very farfetched.
In fact, the breakdown of our financial system has not altered the amount of tangible resources available on our planet. Rather than trying to re-jigger an unjust debt-based system that artificially maintains inequity and scarcity, we could make a new start. We could develop a different intention for what we are supposed to be doing together on this swiftly tilting planet, and institute new social and economic infrastructure to support that intent.
---------------------
Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications. reposted from http://consciouschoice.com/2009/01/pinchbeck0901.html
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Summary/Strong Response Essay: Neither sex can be freed in the exploitation of the other
Who are you? You are a unique individual, who is constantly expressing original behavior in all of your interactions with the rest of the universe. Every self-organizing body acts on this principle. Human are subject to this freedom, constantly thinking and moving out of the same unrealized potential. Simply put, our social contract is this: mutual respect for universal self-expression. Unfortunately, many people assign and coercively enforce behavioral expectations on one another that severely limit our ingenuity. At times, these expectations seem as great in scope as the limitless paths they are blocking, but rest assured that division and subtraction cannot really destroy it. One current trend expectation is designed to micromanage everyone's behavior, on the basis of which of two roles your body is predisposed to play in biological reproduction. Since it is unnecessary and oppressive to the open-ended structure of our beings, we should examine this and all other pervasive cultural demands. When we have come to understand them, we will freely reject or accept them to our taste. Current thought blockages demand adherence to a rigid dramatization of our relationships, the parts of which are cast based on gonads and ovaries. Rest in the fact that these social demands are not humans, but ideas, and humans need feel no compassion in dismantling harmful thoughts. In “There Is No Unmarked Woman”, Linguistics professor Deborah Tannen observes and criticizes a particularly offensive demand that society places on female-sexed people.
Tannen reports how in the academic workplace, women are expected to unceasingly project a positive identity, using their physical appearance as a medium. The author objects to this expectation for a number of reasons, mainly because it is a social inequality set up between equals. Tannen makes a linguistic analogy to this expectation , comparing it to a “mark”. A mark is a language particle which tweaks the commonly assumed, basic meaning of a word but remains impotent when not assigned to a root expression. The effect of how women are marked is described through the story of an academic conference. “Each of the women… had to make decisions about hair, clothing, makeup, and accessories, and each decision carried meaning” (411). Tannen proceeds to describe how none of the men present chose to express anything unique about themselves through their dress. In fact, they seemed to be wearing an interchangeable uniform. Tannen makes another objection to the mark, describing how some observers punish women who choose to convey little or nothing through bodily presentation. Finally, Tannen entertains the idea that men are biologically more comparable to a linguistic mark, noting among other things that the default sex of non-reproducing worker ants is female. The author concludes regretfully how the essay’s content may qualify them as a male-bashing feminist, and that being an unmarked woman seems impossible. I agree with Tannen that treating women as marks, who only gain meaning by wearing beautiful accessories, is grotesque and unfair. I also appreciate how well the text flows. But Tannen is overlooking the mark society puts on non-conforming men, and misleads us by suggesting we might solve the marking problem by marking men instead of women. We start moving past the mark by appreciating how broad and mutable our identities are and can be.
Deborah Tannen has observed, recorded and criticized patterns of oppressive behavior. For this they are applauded. Furthermore, Tannen earns more credit for the outrage they muster against the less-than-wholesome role women are brainwashed to enact in the academic workplace. Though the right to dress provocatively remains ours, we must also be able to rely solely on other communication mediums and say nothing particularly with bodily adornment. The ideas we express in vocalized words and gazing could be further explored as alternatives. Reacting to societal expectation requires the use of a person’s energy, time and creativity, and to always be performing a spectacle is wearying. The right to remain silent is supposedly the law of the land, yet women who withhold biography from costume are ostracized. Tannen reports that “a woman whose hair has no particular style is perceived as not caring about how she looks, which can disqualify her from many positions, and will subtly diminish her as a person in the eyes of some” (412). If my English professor embarked on the quest for tenureship at Ohio University, dressing professionally without making her suit an expressionist art piece would unfairly hurt her prospects. If they were a man, they could dress in a uniform suit and tie and be considered perfectly acceptable by the selection committee, instead of inviting scorn for being uncreative or emasculated.
Content considerations aside, this essay effectively unsettled me with its thesis and made for an easy, pleasant read. Tannen’s use of repetition was effective at illustrating her problematic thesis. Each category of a female’s personal accessories was shown as a response to society’s mandatory female expressionism. The essay also utilizes imagery to evoke strong feelings, coherent pathos, early on in the narrative. The description of the conference women, on pages 409 and 410, does a good job weaving the objectively described details about the women's appearances with subjectively experienced qualities about their personas. “the hair robbed her of bifocal vision and created a barrier between her and the listeners”, Tannen astutely observes, noting how the particular woman was “full of dignity and composure.” That description also sets up a strong contrast with the next woman’s appearance, who is portrayed more as an image-sensitive bimbo. These two women are symbolic of the competing needs Tannen describes having, the needs for privacy and self-expression. "Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman." (415) We infer and agree that on any given day, making the choice of broadcasting your personal vibe semiotically, non-verbally, is desirable. Why then did all of the men at the 3 days of conference dress in exactly the same manner?
Tannen shows how all eight of the men were remarkable in their unified plainess. "There could have been a cowboy shirt with string tie or a three-piece suit or a necklaced hippie in jeans. But there wasn't. All eight men wore brown or blue slacks and nondescript shirts of light colors. No man wore sandals or boots; their shoes were dark, closed, comfortable, and flat. In short, unmarked." Would a man be judged unequally if they got more creative in dressing? Is there an expectation of men to be less visually self-expressive than women? The men may have been unremarkable, but were they unmarked as Tannen says? Tannen demonstrates that a large, burdensome amount of personal expressiveness being forced onto women yields an inequality- women are marks without their costume. "The men in our group had made decisions, too, but the range from which they chose was incomparably narrower. Men can choose styles that are marked, but they don't have to, and in this group none did." (411) If only one of these men had chosen to express themselves with more semiotics, they would have been an exceptional case. None could report that this hypothetical, exceptionally dressed human male was completely normal.
Depending on the nature of their deviation, a man's sexual orientation, values and mental balance are intrusively up for question in ways that won't be applied to women. A good example of this is wearing bright, colorful clothes together with a smile. On a woman, bright colors and a smile are perfectly acceptable. However when a male walks into your lecture hall class encased in a pink polo shirt with an indulgent smile on their face, it is stunning, and some people will assume they are homosexual. The guy could be smiling because he thinks the tendency to make major characterizations based on clothing is immature, and is having a private laugh at the expense of his classmates. If people are pigeon-holing such guys as homosexual for utilizing a range of color and facial expressions that are acceptable for females, than they are being judged less fairly than women. Expressive men are judged to be absurd when they stray from their prescribed range of stylistic choices, and yet their range is "far narrower" than that available to women. Men’s prescribed range of expression is more outrageously restricted than women.
For men, dressing uniquely is frequently and incorrectly assumed to exclusively be a targeted attack on common identity. When I wear a kilt to Alden library, some regularly-dressed men glare at me, or cut the sweep of their gaze short when they see the pleats of cloth swishing around my legs. It's true that I do mean to insult the plainness to which they hold themselves. I object to their plainess for two reasons. For one, it demonstrates a stunted version of what masculinity can look like, an immaturity to sees oneself and others as insufficient on their own. Men need women, women need men, and we need to express this as a stylistic codependence to mimic our symbiotic roles in biological reproduction. That is what I see when a guy looks like he's trying to blend in with a bunch of other guys who are trying to blend in. Another part of what I'm objecting to with my kilt is their tense hold on what is acceptable for men to wear. By agreeing to all wear pants or shorts, wearing a kilt makes me look like a wingnut. I am also expressing a positive message with my kilt. The range of possible expressions that we can accept as normal becomes infinite as we accept the infinite expanse of the universe as normal. My kilt expresses that I as a "white" person have ethic roots that I treasure and can use to relate to oppressed minority groups. The native cultural wisdom of my Celtic ancestors was destroyed by the invasion of the Roman empire, and continues to be degraded by the British occupation of Wales, the Isle of Man, etc. We can see what Tannen disregards the mark of socially reinforced, unfairly restricted self-expression on males. Unfortunately they also go beyond this and enter into tired, feminist male-bashing. This detracts from the coherency of the message.
Tannen uses a faulty interpretation of biological phenomena to weakly justify socially marking men, instead of women. They were “intrigued to see Ralph Fasold bring biological phenomena to bear on the question of linguistic marking”. (413) Fasold “stresses that language and culture are particularly unfair in treating women as the marked case because biologically it is the male that is marked.” (413) Tannen is extremely misleading with this argument. Implied is that marking men can be more fair than marking women. I believe that the injustice of marking humans stems from how these coercive, limiting social expectations stand violently in the way of self-expression. Differences in our anatomy, such as whether we have either gonads or ovaries, do not cause our social marking of either sex because people are marked in the mind. From our mind, and not necessarily the particular layout of the sex organs, do we muster the will to express sexist grudges. The injustice of marking females and males is unqualifiedly unfair, and is not essentially why violence against us is wrong.
Tannen questions whether their own activity can objectively be labeled “male-bashing” (414), and concurrently argues for linguistically casting males as superfluous to females. In male-bashing men for an identity that is legitimately beyond their control, Tannen is only insulting one person. A better question that Tannen does not ask is: where do we go from here? As I see it, our task now is growing a society that is more respectful of our own and each others’ freedom, which will lead to more self-expression. That way, people may choose to live out their existence in community that is more beautiful and tricky than a pre-scripted diatribe across some sex binary.
Being socially cast as half of a co-dependent, biological relationship places unnecessary restrictions on one’s range of self-expression. Getting out of this bind can take two routes. The immediate need is to de-attach ourselves and develop a sense of self- worth and that is not sex-dependent. We create the reality of our persona from our self-worth through our words, thoughts and deeds. When we choose how to act and sensibly define who you are, other people must live alongside you in that self-defined reality, and you are free from their social pressure. If they reject you and you do not violate them by accepting their behavior as legitimate, or mark them as less than human because of their unkindness, than you are free during and after you part ways too. The other route that we are using to escape the shackles of our physiological limitations is wrestling them to the ground.
If you were capable of reproducing without anybody else’s assistance, it would put you outside the consideration of the two-sexed reproductive cycle and therefore the precise marks that are reserved for men and women. This is a path that is already being explored by humans today. Women choosing artificial insemination over a man ejaculating inside their uterus are already in this territory. Despite marking being a mental activity, there’s no sense ignoring the current requirement for intersex cooperation to make new babies. Tannen sites that asexual lizards of the Cnemidophorus genus create fertile eggs in their ovaries, without insemination. They make a poor analogy between the lizards and human females: “Thanks to parthenogenesis, they have no trouble having as many daughters as they like. There are no species, however, that produce only males. This is no surprise, because any such species would become extinct in its first generation.” (413) Though the lizards have ovaries and can technically be considered “female”, these lizards are not subject to the duality of the sexes that humans are because there are no males in some of these species. The sexual abilities necessary for reproduction of Whiptail lizards are not divided between two genotypes. All the necessary parts and abilities are united in one being, which can reproduce without help from another being. We have a ways to yet to go on this path, yet. The word “hermaphrodite”, which describes the lizard as analogous to a self-pollinating flower, comes from a mythological concept we have yet to achieve. The male trickster god Hermes, merged with a female sex goddess Aphrodite, into one composite, self generating organism. The gods did it for fun, and medieval European alchemists strove to this ideal in their search for immortality. Will we become de-attached hermaphrodites and realize our destiny as truly sovereign individuals?
Works Cited
Tannen, Deborah. “There Is No Unmarked Woman.” Blackboard. 20 Jan. 2009. Path: WRITING AND RHETORIC I ENG_151_A20_winter_2008-09; Course Documents
Tannen reports how in the academic workplace, women are expected to unceasingly project a positive identity, using their physical appearance as a medium. The author objects to this expectation for a number of reasons, mainly because it is a social inequality set up between equals. Tannen makes a linguistic analogy to this expectation , comparing it to a “mark”. A mark is a language particle which tweaks the commonly assumed, basic meaning of a word but remains impotent when not assigned to a root expression. The effect of how women are marked is described through the story of an academic conference. “Each of the women… had to make decisions about hair, clothing, makeup, and accessories, and each decision carried meaning” (411). Tannen proceeds to describe how none of the men present chose to express anything unique about themselves through their dress. In fact, they seemed to be wearing an interchangeable uniform. Tannen makes another objection to the mark, describing how some observers punish women who choose to convey little or nothing through bodily presentation. Finally, Tannen entertains the idea that men are biologically more comparable to a linguistic mark, noting among other things that the default sex of non-reproducing worker ants is female. The author concludes regretfully how the essay’s content may qualify them as a male-bashing feminist, and that being an unmarked woman seems impossible. I agree with Tannen that treating women as marks, who only gain meaning by wearing beautiful accessories, is grotesque and unfair. I also appreciate how well the text flows. But Tannen is overlooking the mark society puts on non-conforming men, and misleads us by suggesting we might solve the marking problem by marking men instead of women. We start moving past the mark by appreciating how broad and mutable our identities are and can be.
Deborah Tannen has observed, recorded and criticized patterns of oppressive behavior. For this they are applauded. Furthermore, Tannen earns more credit for the outrage they muster against the less-than-wholesome role women are brainwashed to enact in the academic workplace. Though the right to dress provocatively remains ours, we must also be able to rely solely on other communication mediums and say nothing particularly with bodily adornment. The ideas we express in vocalized words and gazing could be further explored as alternatives. Reacting to societal expectation requires the use of a person’s energy, time and creativity, and to always be performing a spectacle is wearying. The right to remain silent is supposedly the law of the land, yet women who withhold biography from costume are ostracized. Tannen reports that “a woman whose hair has no particular style is perceived as not caring about how she looks, which can disqualify her from many positions, and will subtly diminish her as a person in the eyes of some” (412). If my English professor embarked on the quest for tenureship at Ohio University, dressing professionally without making her suit an expressionist art piece would unfairly hurt her prospects. If they were a man, they could dress in a uniform suit and tie and be considered perfectly acceptable by the selection committee, instead of inviting scorn for being uncreative or emasculated.
Content considerations aside, this essay effectively unsettled me with its thesis and made for an easy, pleasant read. Tannen’s use of repetition was effective at illustrating her problematic thesis. Each category of a female’s personal accessories was shown as a response to society’s mandatory female expressionism. The essay also utilizes imagery to evoke strong feelings, coherent pathos, early on in the narrative. The description of the conference women, on pages 409 and 410, does a good job weaving the objectively described details about the women's appearances with subjectively experienced qualities about their personas. “the hair robbed her of bifocal vision and created a barrier between her and the listeners”, Tannen astutely observes, noting how the particular woman was “full of dignity and composure.” That description also sets up a strong contrast with the next woman’s appearance, who is portrayed more as an image-sensitive bimbo. These two women are symbolic of the competing needs Tannen describes having, the needs for privacy and self-expression. "Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman." (415) We infer and agree that on any given day, making the choice of broadcasting your personal vibe semiotically, non-verbally, is desirable. Why then did all of the men at the 3 days of conference dress in exactly the same manner?
Tannen shows how all eight of the men were remarkable in their unified plainess. "There could have been a cowboy shirt with string tie or a three-piece suit or a necklaced hippie in jeans. But there wasn't. All eight men wore brown or blue slacks and nondescript shirts of light colors. No man wore sandals or boots; their shoes were dark, closed, comfortable, and flat. In short, unmarked." Would a man be judged unequally if they got more creative in dressing? Is there an expectation of men to be less visually self-expressive than women? The men may have been unremarkable, but were they unmarked as Tannen says? Tannen demonstrates that a large, burdensome amount of personal expressiveness being forced onto women yields an inequality- women are marks without their costume. "The men in our group had made decisions, too, but the range from which they chose was incomparably narrower. Men can choose styles that are marked, but they don't have to, and in this group none did." (411) If only one of these men had chosen to express themselves with more semiotics, they would have been an exceptional case. None could report that this hypothetical, exceptionally dressed human male was completely normal.
Depending on the nature of their deviation, a man's sexual orientation, values and mental balance are intrusively up for question in ways that won't be applied to women. A good example of this is wearing bright, colorful clothes together with a smile. On a woman, bright colors and a smile are perfectly acceptable. However when a male walks into your lecture hall class encased in a pink polo shirt with an indulgent smile on their face, it is stunning, and some people will assume they are homosexual. The guy could be smiling because he thinks the tendency to make major characterizations based on clothing is immature, and is having a private laugh at the expense of his classmates. If people are pigeon-holing such guys as homosexual for utilizing a range of color and facial expressions that are acceptable for females, than they are being judged less fairly than women. Expressive men are judged to be absurd when they stray from their prescribed range of stylistic choices, and yet their range is "far narrower" than that available to women. Men’s prescribed range of expression is more outrageously restricted than women.
For men, dressing uniquely is frequently and incorrectly assumed to exclusively be a targeted attack on common identity. When I wear a kilt to Alden library, some regularly-dressed men glare at me, or cut the sweep of their gaze short when they see the pleats of cloth swishing around my legs. It's true that I do mean to insult the plainness to which they hold themselves. I object to their plainess for two reasons. For one, it demonstrates a stunted version of what masculinity can look like, an immaturity to sees oneself and others as insufficient on their own. Men need women, women need men, and we need to express this as a stylistic codependence to mimic our symbiotic roles in biological reproduction. That is what I see when a guy looks like he's trying to blend in with a bunch of other guys who are trying to blend in. Another part of what I'm objecting to with my kilt is their tense hold on what is acceptable for men to wear. By agreeing to all wear pants or shorts, wearing a kilt makes me look like a wingnut. I am also expressing a positive message with my kilt. The range of possible expressions that we can accept as normal becomes infinite as we accept the infinite expanse of the universe as normal. My kilt expresses that I as a "white" person have ethic roots that I treasure and can use to relate to oppressed minority groups. The native cultural wisdom of my Celtic ancestors was destroyed by the invasion of the Roman empire, and continues to be degraded by the British occupation of Wales, the Isle of Man, etc. We can see what Tannen disregards the mark of socially reinforced, unfairly restricted self-expression on males. Unfortunately they also go beyond this and enter into tired, feminist male-bashing. This detracts from the coherency of the message.
Tannen uses a faulty interpretation of biological phenomena to weakly justify socially marking men, instead of women. They were “intrigued to see Ralph Fasold bring biological phenomena to bear on the question of linguistic marking”. (413) Fasold “stresses that language and culture are particularly unfair in treating women as the marked case because biologically it is the male that is marked.” (413) Tannen is extremely misleading with this argument. Implied is that marking men can be more fair than marking women. I believe that the injustice of marking humans stems from how these coercive, limiting social expectations stand violently in the way of self-expression. Differences in our anatomy, such as whether we have either gonads or ovaries, do not cause our social marking of either sex because people are marked in the mind. From our mind, and not necessarily the particular layout of the sex organs, do we muster the will to express sexist grudges. The injustice of marking females and males is unqualifiedly unfair, and is not essentially why violence against us is wrong.
Tannen questions whether their own activity can objectively be labeled “male-bashing” (414), and concurrently argues for linguistically casting males as superfluous to females. In male-bashing men for an identity that is legitimately beyond their control, Tannen is only insulting one person. A better question that Tannen does not ask is: where do we go from here? As I see it, our task now is growing a society that is more respectful of our own and each others’ freedom, which will lead to more self-expression. That way, people may choose to live out their existence in community that is more beautiful and tricky than a pre-scripted diatribe across some sex binary.
Being socially cast as half of a co-dependent, biological relationship places unnecessary restrictions on one’s range of self-expression. Getting out of this bind can take two routes. The immediate need is to de-attach ourselves and develop a sense of self- worth and that is not sex-dependent. We create the reality of our persona from our self-worth through our words, thoughts and deeds. When we choose how to act and sensibly define who you are, other people must live alongside you in that self-defined reality, and you are free from their social pressure. If they reject you and you do not violate them by accepting their behavior as legitimate, or mark them as less than human because of their unkindness, than you are free during and after you part ways too. The other route that we are using to escape the shackles of our physiological limitations is wrestling them to the ground.
If you were capable of reproducing without anybody else’s assistance, it would put you outside the consideration of the two-sexed reproductive cycle and therefore the precise marks that are reserved for men and women. This is a path that is already being explored by humans today. Women choosing artificial insemination over a man ejaculating inside their uterus are already in this territory. Despite marking being a mental activity, there’s no sense ignoring the current requirement for intersex cooperation to make new babies. Tannen sites that asexual lizards of the Cnemidophorus genus create fertile eggs in their ovaries, without insemination. They make a poor analogy between the lizards and human females: “Thanks to parthenogenesis, they have no trouble having as many daughters as they like. There are no species, however, that produce only males. This is no surprise, because any such species would become extinct in its first generation.” (413) Though the lizards have ovaries and can technically be considered “female”, these lizards are not subject to the duality of the sexes that humans are because there are no males in some of these species. The sexual abilities necessary for reproduction of Whiptail lizards are not divided between two genotypes. All the necessary parts and abilities are united in one being, which can reproduce without help from another being. We have a ways to yet to go on this path, yet. The word “hermaphrodite”, which describes the lizard as analogous to a self-pollinating flower, comes from a mythological concept we have yet to achieve. The male trickster god Hermes, merged with a female sex goddess Aphrodite, into one composite, self generating organism. The gods did it for fun, and medieval European alchemists strove to this ideal in their search for immortality. Will we become de-attached hermaphrodites and realize our destiny as truly sovereign individuals?
Works Cited
Tannen, Deborah. “There Is No Unmarked Woman.” Blackboard. 20 Jan. 2009. Path: WRITING AND RHETORIC I ENG_151_A20_winter_2008-09; Course Documents
Monday, January 12, 2009
Log #2
The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing introduces four new concepts in Chapter 2. The first of these is that we students must memorize whatever basic material we sign up to learn, and then bring the knowledge to new situations and apply it. This deepens our understanding of the lesson, because as we are “wallowing in complexity” our minds are grasping at the material and, finally, getting a hold of it and making it ours. Professors value this probing into the messy (read: apparently contradicting) details that surround problematic situations. The text cites six critical thinking skills to for “wallowing in complexity. Start by posing problematic questions and analyzing the different dimensions of your stated problem. After assimilating, one is charged with making sense of the available facts, imagining alternatives to the problem and then finding an answer which one can defend to satisfaction. Harvard professor William Perry has described that college students come to proficiency in these practices over time, as their experience teaches them that there can be more than one well-argued, satisfactory answer to complex problems.
“The very act of writing- often without concern for audience, structure, or correctness- can stimulate the mind to produce ideas.” This is valuable to understand, because it leads aspiring writers to pen and paper for writing’s own sake in the reasonable expectation of it leading to better writing for an audience. “Good writers use exploratory strategies to think critically about subject-matter questions” is the fifth concept. The strategies that Allyn and Bacon describe are called freewriting, focused freewriting, idea mapping, dialectic talk and “playing the believing and doubting game”.
Freewriting is getting a stream of thoughts down on paper, which can be very general or focused on a specific problem or question. Idea mapping is a similar technique that that utilizes your optic nerve pathways, too. Both of these would be good for exploring what you know about a situation and begin the sensible organization and assimilation of data. The believing and doubting game is pretending to believe and also doubt a thesis and supporting your pretend position with the details that you can entice to mind. This seems like a good strategy to use for assimilating the facts once you have brought them into your mental viewfinder. The dialectic talk strategy seems like it would be really good to undergo between a rough and final draft. Once a framework of ideas is set up in the draft, you can offer it to colleagues and look for contradictions in their work in exchange for similar attention on yours. Holding your mind open to receive dialectic incite sounds helpful in crafting your solutions to be more effective.
Concept six states that a persuasive position statement catches your reader by surprise. Your thesis challenges them by constructing obstacles between them and their opinion with surprising facts, and showing them a different way through the problem. To sustain the effect of surprise, writers hold their reader in tension with ideas that pull them away from their point of view with a “surprising reversal”, a thesis that acknowledges their incite and shows how its problems demand further examination.
The second chapter of The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing comes to a head describing the basic paragraph structure of persuasive, closed-prose writing. We make a point, or rather share our idea, and when we’ve stated this position we must fill in representative data that enforces the idea until it feels well-supported. When the point of opinion has the weight of substantially observable phenomena logically associated with it, the reader can easily begin to play with. Towards the end of a writer’s initial research phase, we begin to assimilate the data and points occur to us. Once we have a few points, we begin figuring out the direction in which a solution lies and our task becomes reporting specific information and developing further points that support our thesis.
Our class read Sean Barry’s sample essay, titled “Why Do Teenagers Get Tattoos? A Response to Andres Martin”. Barry introduces the first paragraph by referring back to the title’s phenomenon, taking takes in a view of it in one, panoramic glance. He concludes the introduction with a thesis statement that I found unsatisfactorily broad. The thesis is a run-on sentence with little tension. For instance, Barry accuses the psychiatrist author he is evaluating of romanticizing the act of getting a tattoo. He cites the psychiatrist’s use of two, identity-seeking Moby Dick quotes as evidence for this. That Herman Melville’s Ishmael character was searching for identity and got a tattoo for it doesn’t address how leaving a visible, symbolic mark on one’s skin has intrinsic deep significance. Since a tattoo will always be with you, even if it’s only as a burn scar from laser surgery removal, Barry has insufficiently supported the point.
I admire Barry’s writing structure, though. It strikes a pleasing rhythm, by smoothly transitioning between the different paragraphs. The paragraphs contain distinct genres of strong writing response that he blends nicely. Going “with-the-grain” of the psychiatrist’s thesis was an effective way of demonstrating that he had read and appreciated certain strengths of his opponent’s thesis. Relating it back to a personal anecdote makes me believe that he opened himself to the psychiatrist’s ideas and simply found them wanting, given the greater bulk of his own experience.
“The very act of writing- often without concern for audience, structure, or correctness- can stimulate the mind to produce ideas.” This is valuable to understand, because it leads aspiring writers to pen and paper for writing’s own sake in the reasonable expectation of it leading to better writing for an audience. “Good writers use exploratory strategies to think critically about subject-matter questions” is the fifth concept. The strategies that Allyn and Bacon describe are called freewriting, focused freewriting, idea mapping, dialectic talk and “playing the believing and doubting game”.
Freewriting is getting a stream of thoughts down on paper, which can be very general or focused on a specific problem or question. Idea mapping is a similar technique that that utilizes your optic nerve pathways, too. Both of these would be good for exploring what you know about a situation and begin the sensible organization and assimilation of data. The believing and doubting game is pretending to believe and also doubt a thesis and supporting your pretend position with the details that you can entice to mind. This seems like a good strategy to use for assimilating the facts once you have brought them into your mental viewfinder. The dialectic talk strategy seems like it would be really good to undergo between a rough and final draft. Once a framework of ideas is set up in the draft, you can offer it to colleagues and look for contradictions in their work in exchange for similar attention on yours. Holding your mind open to receive dialectic incite sounds helpful in crafting your solutions to be more effective.
Concept six states that a persuasive position statement catches your reader by surprise. Your thesis challenges them by constructing obstacles between them and their opinion with surprising facts, and showing them a different way through the problem. To sustain the effect of surprise, writers hold their reader in tension with ideas that pull them away from their point of view with a “surprising reversal”, a thesis that acknowledges their incite and shows how its problems demand further examination.
The second chapter of The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing comes to a head describing the basic paragraph structure of persuasive, closed-prose writing. We make a point, or rather share our idea, and when we’ve stated this position we must fill in representative data that enforces the idea until it feels well-supported. When the point of opinion has the weight of substantially observable phenomena logically associated with it, the reader can easily begin to play with. Towards the end of a writer’s initial research phase, we begin to assimilate the data and points occur to us. Once we have a few points, we begin figuring out the direction in which a solution lies and our task becomes reporting specific information and developing further points that support our thesis.
Our class read Sean Barry’s sample essay, titled “Why Do Teenagers Get Tattoos? A Response to Andres Martin”. Barry introduces the first paragraph by referring back to the title’s phenomenon, taking takes in a view of it in one, panoramic glance. He concludes the introduction with a thesis statement that I found unsatisfactorily broad. The thesis is a run-on sentence with little tension. For instance, Barry accuses the psychiatrist author he is evaluating of romanticizing the act of getting a tattoo. He cites the psychiatrist’s use of two, identity-seeking Moby Dick quotes as evidence for this. That Herman Melville’s Ishmael character was searching for identity and got a tattoo for it doesn’t address how leaving a visible, symbolic mark on one’s skin has intrinsic deep significance. Since a tattoo will always be with you, even if it’s only as a burn scar from laser surgery removal, Barry has insufficiently supported the point.
I admire Barry’s writing structure, though. It strikes a pleasing rhythm, by smoothly transitioning between the different paragraphs. The paragraphs contain distinct genres of strong writing response that he blends nicely. Going “with-the-grain” of the psychiatrist’s thesis was an effective way of demonstrating that he had read and appreciated certain strengths of his opponent’s thesis. Relating it back to a personal anecdote makes me believe that he opened himself to the psychiatrist’s ideas and simply found them wanting, given the greater bulk of his own experience.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Summary of “There Is No Unmarked Woman”, Badger Johnson
(note: I will be writing a strong respone essay on either this one or August's. which one would you rather read about? both have me pretty stimulated and ready to write, YAY!!!)
Deborah Tannen is a Georgetown University linguistics professor who studies conversation. She gives explanation of the meaning, and motivation, for what we say to other. Her essay “There Is No Unmarked Woman” was published in an anthology on language. In that essay, she describes how normal it is in this society for women to be superficially judged for character on the basis of appearance. This is in contrast to men, who are given the social option to remain “incomparably” unremarked by attire.
The context for Tannen’s thesis is an academic conference, at which all of the men wore similar unremarkable suits, and the women expressed their personas through clothing. The men could have worn more individually expressive costumes but they chose an anonymity of uniform. The women all said something with their clothes, and therein lies Tannen’s thesis: women currently must choose what message they want others to interpret from their appearance, because their character is judged, based on appearance.
“Marked” qualifies an alteration in the basicly assumed meaning. Marking is done by adding extra something to the expression, something extra that only has meaning in the context of the root expression. Tannen brings our attention to what “marked” means for expression of your personality. She uses personal examples of how she is marked: “merely mentioning women and men marked me as a feminist for some.” (My emphasis added). An important observation that Tannen foraged from her conference experience, is how women are expected carry off an expressive visage. “Each of the women… had to make deciscions about hair, clothing, makeup, and accessories, and each decision carried meaning.” They went on citing how the desire to look attractive is often, frustratingly interpretted as acommpanying availability for sexual availability. When a female-bodied person eschews style, for whatever reason, people may well wonder what message the curious person is seeking to communicate. How probable is it that an observer will first conceive that the person being seen wishes to remain unmarked? That the observer will not mark the person in their own mind is possible but less likely. In “There Is No Unmarked Woman”, Tannen highlights the scenario that is more likely and much more problematic: “no makeup is anything but unmarked. Some men see it as a hostile refusal to please them.”
Tannen cites how in the workplace and popular human imagining, men may choose unmarkedness. This is accomplised in these social circles she mentions by wearing suits, slacks, and “nondescript shirts of light colors”. Such uniform does not disclose biographical information, besides a temporary compliance with this currently enacted operating principle of mainstream society. The author cites biologist Ralph Fasold’s conclusion that outside of human society, the female sex can be considered as a biologically “unmarked” sex. She cites the chromosonal basis of sex division: “While two X chromosomes make a female, two Y chromosomes make nothing. Like the linguistic markers s, es or ess, the Y chromosome doesn’t ‘mean’ anything unless it is attached to a root form- an X chromosome.” The point Tannen makes is that if we were to pattern our language after vertebrate zoology, than we might assign males to marked status, females unmarked, which seems like essentially the reverse of the current tendency. She ends the essay with a simple summary conclusion.
Deborah Tannen is a Georgetown University linguistics professor who studies conversation. She gives explanation of the meaning, and motivation, for what we say to other. Her essay “There Is No Unmarked Woman” was published in an anthology on language. In that essay, she describes how normal it is in this society for women to be superficially judged for character on the basis of appearance. This is in contrast to men, who are given the social option to remain “incomparably” unremarked by attire.
The context for Tannen’s thesis is an academic conference, at which all of the men wore similar unremarkable suits, and the women expressed their personas through clothing. The men could have worn more individually expressive costumes but they chose an anonymity of uniform. The women all said something with their clothes, and therein lies Tannen’s thesis: women currently must choose what message they want others to interpret from their appearance, because their character is judged, based on appearance.
“Marked” qualifies an alteration in the basicly assumed meaning. Marking is done by adding extra something to the expression, something extra that only has meaning in the context of the root expression. Tannen brings our attention to what “marked” means for expression of your personality. She uses personal examples of how she is marked: “merely mentioning women and men marked me as a feminist for some.” (My emphasis added). An important observation that Tannen foraged from her conference experience, is how women are expected carry off an expressive visage. “Each of the women… had to make deciscions about hair, clothing, makeup, and accessories, and each decision carried meaning.” They went on citing how the desire to look attractive is often, frustratingly interpretted as acommpanying availability for sexual availability. When a female-bodied person eschews style, for whatever reason, people may well wonder what message the curious person is seeking to communicate. How probable is it that an observer will first conceive that the person being seen wishes to remain unmarked? That the observer will not mark the person in their own mind is possible but less likely. In “There Is No Unmarked Woman”, Tannen highlights the scenario that is more likely and much more problematic: “no makeup is anything but unmarked. Some men see it as a hostile refusal to please them.”
Tannen cites how in the workplace and popular human imagining, men may choose unmarkedness. This is accomplised in these social circles she mentions by wearing suits, slacks, and “nondescript shirts of light colors”. Such uniform does not disclose biographical information, besides a temporary compliance with this currently enacted operating principle of mainstream society. The author cites biologist Ralph Fasold’s conclusion that outside of human society, the female sex can be considered as a biologically “unmarked” sex. She cites the chromosonal basis of sex division: “While two X chromosomes make a female, two Y chromosomes make nothing. Like the linguistic markers s, es or ess, the Y chromosome doesn’t ‘mean’ anything unless it is attached to a root form- an X chromosome.” The point Tannen makes is that if we were to pattern our language after vertebrate zoology, than we might assign males to marked status, females unmarked, which seems like essentially the reverse of the current tendency. She ends the essay with a simple summary conclusion.
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