Trademark

As I continue reading “Everything Bad Is Good For You”, Johnson keeps on surprising me on his arguments as to why my generation’s pop culture is so amazing. I thought that it was going to become repetitive, but I was wrong. He makes me think about what is going around in my generation, and how valuable some of those things are to my life, without me even realizing.

I just finished the chapter on “Film” and it was interesting how Johnson says that we also do cognitive work while watching films, even children films like Finding Nemo. When one is watching Finding Nemo one “has to keep track of almost twenty unique personalities….. as well as the different story arcs…and where the child’s mind is concerned he’s just watching a movie, but each viewing is training him or her to hold those multiple trends in consciousness, a kind of mental calisthenics.” (130)

This proves why when I leave the movie theater after watching a suspense movie, or an action movie, I always end up with a head ache because my mind was literally going around in circles. I was trying to find out who killed who, or who really is the bad guy. As I get older the type of movies I can watch start getting more complicated and analytical, but I am able to watch them because I have been “trained” with the easy movies, such as Finding Nemo.

I wonder which are the movies that are going to transend into the future. Just like we study Shakespears plays, people 300 years from now could be studying movies instead of books. Are there any hidden movies that one day are going to become trademarks of our time? 

Visual Vocabulary:

Psychometrics:

the science of measuring mental capacities and processes 

Fynn Effect:

The substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day.

Back In The 1980's

As mentioned in my previous blog: “Internet Connect”, internet has been a revolutionary resource that has broadened peoples connections all around the world, but most importantly it is the home of most of the information that exists, or has existed in our time. As I read, I thought about how internet can contain so much information. Internet becomes a colloquial tool, that I never thought about its significance, but now that I do it is mind blowing.

Internet was created around the 1980’s and now I am viewing internet as a teenager would in those times. It’s incredible. How is it possible that whatever I want to find is located in this place, that I can’t even touch, called the internet. Its another world. How can all the information be saved in one place, but at the same time we don’t see it? I don’t understand how people can speak badly of something so incredible and unreal. Now I understand why my grandmother sometimes can’t understand how google works. But now that I think about it neither can I. I know how to follow the steps to find the information, but I have no clue, how this thing called Google “which has fulfilled the original dream of digital machines becoming extensions of our memory” (124) can bring all the information related to a topic that I just type in the search bar. Who is doing the searching? This is just giving me a headache.

But what mostly gives me a headache is college applications. Just a half an hour ago I was with my father at the dinner table. We were having a discussion about how stressed I was due to the college applications. My father can’t seem to understand why I hate this time of the year. He thinks applying to college is really easy, that one doesn’t have to study for the SAT, and that the essay is just a paper you right in three hours instead of drafting it five times. He said that in his time of applying to college people weren’t as stressed about this process as now a days because they didn’t know as much about the colleges, or admittance rates. People just applied and that was it.

My father is right, it’s not that people now are smarter that makes getting into college so difficult, it’s that the amount of information on this process is so overwhelming that people don’t know what to do with it, so we all go crazy. Instead, if we were in the 80’s we’d probably be stressing about if our transcripts arrived to the colleges that we were applying to, because they were sent by boat.

Internet has brought amazing things to our world, I don’t know what I would be doing without it, but I do think that before things were simpler. Less stressful. I wish I was in the 80’s right now, before internet.

Visual Vocabulary:

Mesmerizing:

capture the complete attention of (someone); transfix.

Intricate:

very complicated or detailed.

The Power of Education

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VufWDM-geUQ

Internet Connect

As I continue to read “Everything Bad is Good For You” I have distinguished the pattern that Johnson finds a way to rebuttal every argument that is pressed down on resources that our popular culture uses, such as the ones that I have mentioned in my past blogs: TV and Videogames. This may sound dumb, because the title of the book is “Everything Bad is Good For You”, which is an indicator that Johnson will be taking the good out of everything, but still its really neat.

Anyway, Johnson has demonstrated that the resources such as TV and video games aren’t only to entertain us, they actually have a cognitive value. When I reached the chapter about internet, I was eager to find out what he had to say on this subject, given that it is the one I use the most.

Now in my generation, the internet is something common that brings “Google to be our culture’s principal of knowing about itself.”(121) I don’t know where I would be without Google. I guess I’d be stuck in a library for six hours trying to find information about how World War II affected the German economy, or something simple like definitions, or diets to lose weight in four days.

As I read I thought about how much I use the internet each day. I use it to find addresses, definitions, facts, pictures, blogs, go on Facebook, Whatsapp and probably more things that I don’t realize. Our generation is the one that gets everything fast. You can reserve a table at a restaurant, order food, clothes, and more in just a matter of seconds. We haven’t experienced what it is to wait, because most things that we want come to us right away. But not knowing how to wait is a negative aspect because when it comes to waiting I drive myself crazy. For instance, waiting for my SAT scores, or application decisions. These things take time and I have no control over it, which sucks.

Johnson says that the “rise of the internet has challenged our minds in three fundamental ways: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces, and by creating new channels of social interaction.” I couldn’t agree with him more. When there are new programs we are forced to learn them, for example the new IOS7. If we don’t learn how to manage these interfaces we will be left behind. Social networks are present all the time, and are used constantly. Facebook, Whatsapp, MSN, BBM, IM, Snapchat, and Circle are all used to communicate with people from all around the world. With just pressing the button “send” I can communicate with a friend in Abu Dabi. To us it seems crazy, but for some reason my grandmother can’t seem to understand this concept.

Although Internet may have its flaws such as “identity fraud”, all of its advancements opaque the negative aspects of it and makes us concentrate on the good things. Internet has been a revolutionary tool that the whole world uses, which has brought the world to connect.

Visual Vocabulary:

Sheaf: 

a bundle of grain stalks laid lengthwise and tied together after reaping

Xeroxed:

A copy producing process

Innocuous:

Not harmful or offensive

An Intelligent Show

As I read the chapter on television in "Everything Bad Is Good For You" I reflected on my childhood years. When I was around five years old, I discovered the magic of television. Barney, Teletubies, Mickey, Magic Dragons, The Cumfy Couch, were my best friends. If I was a "good girl" I would get the privilege of seeing them again and again, but when I wasnt, the severist and worst punishment of all would be to hear the words "te quedaste sin television." It was like a dagger in my chest, the pain never ended, until I was allowed to watch TV once more. 

Now that I am older I realize that my parents weren't bright in giving me that punishment. "Cristina without TV "meant that they had to deal with me all day. I was a very hiper kid growing up, so just telling me to go to my room didn't cut it. I would start screaming and probably hurt myself or break something. The only viable activities to keep me civilized were playing outside, or watching TV. But I couldn't go out and play without my mom, and many times she was busy or didn't feel like going out, so putting me infront of a TV was the perfect solution. 

When I was infront of that screen it was if I had summerged in the show and lived in another world. I didn't hear anything around me, it was just me and Barney. That is the power that television had on me, it made me another person. I could sit there for hours and I wouldn't get hungry. It was great for me and for everyone around me. 

As I read this chapter, Johnson says interesting things about how TV shows are managed and how there exists "two types".  He says that "some narratives force you to do work and make sense of them, while others just let you settle in the couch and zone out" (63) but I believe that already a show that makes you zone out is completely intelligent. It depends on the viewer. This might sound ridiculous, but Modern Family can easily compete with Homeland, although they are completely different shows beacuse they both have the same power to captivate the audience. One will do it by making them laugh and the other by making them crazy with all the twist and turns of the plot. As I continue reading Jhonson talks about "intelligent shows" and others that "dont cause any intellectual work", but the truth is is that they all do. I am doing cognitive work as I watch Modern family because I have to catch the jokes and think about what Cam is going to do next.  It's the same way that in Homeland I make inferences about who is the bad guy. 

So I conclude that an intelligent show can also be Barney, because it has the power of obtaining childrens attention, and allowing parents to take a breathe. 

Visual Vocabulary:

Cunning: 

Having or showing skill in achieving one's ends by deceit or evasion.

















Imminent:

About to happen.



















Amnesaic:

Person who suffers from partial or total loss of memory. 

 

The Masterminds of Video Games

I have never understood why my brother likes to play video games so much. Everything revolves around the game. Finishing his homework early, good behviour, good grades, are all basically done so that he can put on his ear phones, grab the remote and play. 

When Camilo starts playing, its like he has entered another world. There could  be an earthquake and he probably wouldn't  realize it because he's to busy stealing a car. I speak to him and I'm invisible.

 I always thought of video games as a distraction or just a pass time, but after reading what Steven Johnson has to say about playing video games, my perception has changed. My parents always worry that my brother is going to become stupid or develope a criminal mind because of playing Grand Theft Auto, but this wont be the case. As Johnson says, "playing video games is a congnitive challenge" (28)meaning that as Camilo is trying to steal the car, or kill a man, his mind is on a roll. He is analyzing all the possibilities and moves, that sometimes even brings him to do some research online so he can accomplish this mission. It's just like Johnson says, "Your ultimate goal is to rescue your sister. To do this, you must defeat the villain Ganon. To do this, you need to obtain legendary weapons. To locate the weapens you need the pearl of Din. To locate the pearl of Din, you need to cross the ocean." (50) This is an inmense list which demonstrates the analytical perception teens must have to accomplish the game's goal. They don't only have one mission, they have a lot, and in each mission a myriad of things can happen that will change the outcome of the game. 

So now I am actually proud that my brother has passed so many levels, and won games. He is a mastermind just like millions of other teens, that if our world would be a video game, they would take over it. But I still think that if my brother put as much dedication as he does to his video games to school, he could probably take over the school.

When Will Video Games Be "Good"

 As soon as I saw the red book on Mr. Tangen’s bookshelf titled “Everything Bad Is Good For You” I knew that that was the book that I wanted to read. “Bad” and “Good” are very broad terms, which everyone has different definitions for them. What may seem good to some may seem bad to others. So I guess that I grabbed this book because I was intrigued of what “good” and “bad” topics were going to be spoken about. What was it that Steven Johnson considered to be “good” and “bad”. All my life I have lived by the rules and values that my family has taught me, so I wanted to explore how these bad things that my parents taught me could be seen as good things.

As I started reading the first pages of the book I was immediately hooked. I have read books that have some controversial ideas, but this one is one that critiques a common stereotype of my generation. The common commentary towards my generation is that “the mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards” (6), meaning that each time we are getting dumber. But what Steven Johnson has to say about this is that it is the complete opposite, “the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less.” (9) For example, video games work as a “cognitive workout” (14) because children are being exposed to reality. People from older generations normally critique my generation to be the victims of “dropping our cultural senses” to only be thinking about violence and sex, but what Steven argues is that these are parts of reality in which we all must be aware. Not only the good things about life should be aired on TV, it should be life as a whole, which is what is being done, which will actually make us ready for reality.

My favourite part about what Johnsons says, is when he writes about how “old fashioned ways” are always seen as the best. Grandmothers, and parents normally suggest a kid to go and read a book instead of playing video games for three hours, that’s how its with my brother. But I had never asked myself why was it that they said this? It just came up to me as an obvious recommendation because I have heard it my entire life. But as Johnson says, just because reading has been on our world longer than video games, doesn’t mean that its better. I love it when he makes up the scenario that video games came before reading, and that older generations would be criticizing reading instead of video games. I guess that video games, TV, and the social networks are criticized because they are things that are undiscovered and that people have to get used to. People don’t like change. I wonder what will be in the future that will make video games seem good and the new creation bad?

Nurturing Crime

After reading the article “Crime and No Punishment” by Carlos Puig I couldn’t stop thinking about how Colombia’s security was twenty years ago. Puig speaks about how Mexico is getting more and more dangerous by the second, and specifically narrates the case of “Jan. 30, 2010, in the border city of Ciudad Juárez...A group of about a dozen barged in shooting and ended up killing 15 people and wounding 10 [at a birthday party].” But Puig’s main point isnt to talk about this event, he uses this case to back up his point of view that Mexico isnt doing much to improve the secutriy of Mexico, instead its making it worse. Similar to how our countries situation was in the 1990’s.

Violence is something that horrifies all people, good or bad. It causes fear which is what has allowed violence to obtain its power. Some people say that the braves ones are the ones that strike back, and others say its the opposite, but if you ask me I dont know. Unfortunatelly, Colombia has suffered a Civil War for more than fifty years, and it has all been due to violence. We have been used to see that violence is combated with more violence, and only a few times has it been able to stop by using words instead of guns.

Puig makes it clear that Mexicos government is having a hard time with the violence of the country, especially with “Ciudad Juarez which was the most violent city in the World” in 2010. Now Mexicans do not admire the government and many even hate their president, Felipe Calderon. The governments lack of imporance towards the homicides that are being held in Mexico is whats making this problema bigger each day. For instance, “earlier this month, the interior minister told the Senate that of more than 103,200 drug-related arrests during the Calderon administration, between 2006 and 2012, only 3,000 cases reached sentencing.” This is demonstrating that more than 100,000 cases were not sentenced, and that these people are going around the streets. Seeing these big numbers startle me because one would think that sentecing 3000 drug/murder cases is a big number, but when one compares it to the total amount of cases it blows my mind away.

Hopefully Mexico will find ways to combat these terrible cases without violence, because although I don’t know which is the best way to end violence, I do know that fighting violence with more violence, equals more violence. Mexico must try to fix its parliamentary budget to improve its security or else Mexico will be living the same thing Colombia experienced with Pablo Escobar.

NO Soup For You!

As I read chapter 20 I noticed techniques that screen writers use for their scripts to make them funny and interesting. Idioms, speak arounds, surprising endings, are all what make a good show, but as an audience we don’t realize it. We just receive these fantastic tricks and laugh them away. I never thought about how much work it takes to create a good comedy. There is a point in which I forget that actors are actors and I just think of them as funny people who always know what to say to make me laugh. But the truth is, is that making people laugh can be one of the hardest things to do, so I applaud those who make me do it.

Congratulations to Jerry Seinfeld, and all the people who help him make me laugh because they definitely do a great job. Making people laugh is one of the hardest things to do because it is something that most people should find funny. In Seinfeld they have to make the audience laugh every 30 seconds. How can they do that?

After I read chapter 20 I saw how things that Heinrichs said appeared on the show. I saw the episode of Seinfeld, called Soup Nazi. It’s about how Jerry and his friends all want to get a taste of the best soup in town, but the man that makes it has a terrible temper. With just one thing that a person says that he finds irritating, he’ll say “NO soup for you!” The episode revolves on how Elaine, the only person that didn’t get soup does everything to get it. She robs his recipes and blackmails him so that he will give her soup! As I watched the show I realized how Seinfeld uses speak arounds by saying “soup Nazi.” It’s a made up combination of words, that at the end have a humorous meaning as well as his use of repetition, when the chef says “NO soup for you!”.

There is much more than just having good actors on a TV show to make it funny. It takes good writers, with the sufficient amount of skills to make the audience laugh. Some of the techniques, as I learned earlier, y are easy to identify, but difficult to create. Bravo Seinfeld! 

Seeing It In Real Life

After reading chapters 15 and 16 of Thank You For Arguing, I discovered that what Heinrich’s says is true, and most importantly it is seen through out every day lives, we just don’t realize it.

Heinrich’s states, just like his old friend Aristotle, that the best way to win an argument, or better yet persuade others is to use the deliberative argument, or the future tense. But just using a deliberative argument doesn’t make you win, it’s a whole set of things. For example, using logos, ethos and fallacies such as the fallacy of power, help get the job done.

As I was watching the video of “Bill O Reilly vs. Jon Stewart Over Muslim Terrorism” I realized that just in the first thirty seconds these two men were using the tips that Heinrichs made. Bill O Reilly uses logos when Stewart gives the scenario of the one Muslim attack, which makes Stewart speechless. He couldn’t argue, because as Heinrichs says, he would be  “arguing the unarguable” and you cant do that. Facts are facts. Bill O Reilly made Stewart seem stupid because he was using a dumb argument. O Reilly says “I’m just doing the math here.” But later Stewart uses his future tense, that he is going to go on a mission to the Middle East, and that he is going to do good work there, so O Reilly can’t say much because he has no logos to use against Stewart. So since both of these men used rhetoric in a strategic way there wasn’t really a winner or a loser, instead it just ended in laughs, but they both were able to say their arguments.

Many times there will be people who know the same arguing techniques as you, but that just makes it more interesting because one has to strategically chose what tactic it is that one is going to use. Or one will be lucky and have an opponent who doesn’t know much about arguing and one will win. Either way one must always be prepared, and that is why I will continue to read Thank You For Arguing.

Brighter Isn't Better

I’ve never been the most intelligent kid in my class. I have to work hard to get good grades. I’m not Einstein. Answers and formulas don’t simply pop up in my head, nor do I always know what I’m doing. But after reading chapter 7 of Thank You For Arguing I now  know that it’s not a problem. I just have to pretend that I know what I’m doing.

In my high school there are many different types of students, those that are geniuses, goof balls, dedicated, or ones that always slack off. But something that I have seen is that its not only the geniuses that succeed in life, many that succeed are the ones that slack off because they have that special something. That something that is able to convince people, and after reading this book I understand that persuading others is what’s most important. Of course I know that being able to do calculations and knowing important figures and dates is a great advantage, but if a person doesn’t have practical wisdom or as Aristotle says, phronesis, they will have a tougher time succeeding.

Unfortunately not everyone has practical wisdom. They don’t have the power of making others believe “that they know how to solve the problem at hand,” (67) and this can be a problem for them. My Dad’s best friend is one of the brightest people I know. He was always the best of his school, as well as in college, but he had no people skills. He wasn’t able to sell himself as a confident person, and if one does not seem confident others will not follow. With his professors he felt comfortable, but when he got into the real world he wasn’t able to demonstrate how intelligent he was. He wasn’t able to sell himself. Instead everyone saw him as a shy, small and dumb person. He studied marine biology and has an MBA from El Inalde. One would think that he is more than ready to get a good job, but instead he packs a truck with potatoes of Frito Lay. Jose didn’t have the power of making people believe in him. He relied only on what his diplomas said, but he never relied on himself.

This proves to me that what Thank You For Arguing says is true. Of course there have been geniuses who do not have practical wisdom and are successful, but there are few. And also to the ones that aren’t valedictorian, don’t worry we still have a shot. We just need to work on our decorum and practical wisdom. It sounds easy which worries me, and it probably isn’t. But its probably easier than changing how our brains function. 

Prestigious Kate Middleton?

In chapter five of “Thank You For Arguing” Heinricks touches a very interesting topic of rhetoric and social power: Decorum. After I read what decorum was and how it is used I realized how much public figures use decorum to appeal their audience.

In this chapter Henricks gives a very interesting example of how Eminem’s success is related to his use of decorum. Normally rappers are balck, and Eminem is white which made him lose respect. But he used decorum to make him gain respect of the dance club crowd, and make them forget his skin color. By using “proper attire:  a stupid skull cap, clothes a few too big and as much blings as he can afford,” he made people treat him equally. If he hadn’t used decorum, he probably woudnt have been the person that he is today.

Decorum is what people use to “match the audience’s expectations for a leader’s tone, appearance, and manners,” (46) and this reminds me what Kate Middleton has done to appeal to the public. When she arrived to the royal family, many didn’t like her because she wasn’t pure blue blood. But this didn’t make Kate quit. She used decorum to appeal to the audience by dressing appropriately and conservatively. Also, she was always very nice and worked with the community, and doing so made her one of the most loved by the public of the Royal family. By her decorum, she was able to make people set aside her background, and instead focus on her as a person.

If Kate hadn’t used deocurm appropriately she woudnt have gained the love of the public. She wouldn’t have been able to persuade the public that she was capable of her role. If it hadn’t been for decorum, she wouldn’t be the prestigious Kate Middleton we  know today. 

The Feeling

As I advance Joan Didion’s memoir I communicate with her. Her writing isn’t trying to prove that she is all that, instead she speaks about her weaknesses as she experienced a moment in her life that marked her forever. As I was reading, something that impacted me was how she believed that she could “bring him back.” (37) All I kept saying to myself was that this couldn’t happen, it isn’t fiction. He’s dead. But I couldn’t stop to think that this is something common in most grieves, and I have presenced it.

Although death is a part of life, it will always be something that we don’t want to accept, or at least that’s what I believe. Questions that will always be on my mind are: what does it feel to die? When are we ready to die? Is there a chance that we know when we are going to die? Joan Didion demonstrates that we do wonder about these things when she talks about how weeks before he died, he gave all his ideas to Joan so that she would write about them. He knew that he wasn’t going to write another book. I do not know if these are just things that we start paying attention to because we analyze the events before the tragedy. But it is definitely something that made me think about the power of knowing or controlling death. For instance when my grandfather was dying he only died after my aunt arrived from the states. He was able to hold on for a little longer. How powerful are we as human beings?

Grief is the worst part about death. The people that are left behind are the ones that miss that person most, and never want to let them go. It is until we let them go, that we can start recovering, because as Joan said, grief is an illness. When Joan says that she didn’t want to give Johns shoes away because “he would need his shoes if he were to return” (37) demonstrated how Joan was in denial when her husband died. This was the same case with my grandfather’s death. My mother was in denial. When her friends called her to see how she was doing she always seemed fine, she didn’t understand why they would need to give her father’s clothes away. There were even times when she called him automatically. But it was an year later when she realized he was gone, got sad, but was able to let go.

I admire how Joan Didion published this memoir. She talks about her difficulties not only with her husband’s death, but as well dealing with her daughter’s illness. She doesn’t make herself seem heroic, instead she expresses what she was feeling, and slow and unconsciously she lets go. 

Ordinary Instant

After reading the first couple of pages of Joan Didion’s “Magical Thinking” I felt kind of light headed. She narrated everything with great detail that made me feel as if I was with her precensing her husband’s death.  As I was reading how her husband had died I couldn’t stop to think about the things that have happened in my life that have come to me as a shock. As it did for her.

Joan Didion was having an ordinary dinner with her husband and in an “ordinary instant… he was gone.”(4) Joan Didion expressed John’s death in an honest and detailed way that reminded me to those “ordinary instants” that have changed the lives of people I know. Recently, one of my good friends was riding his motorcycle in the track. It was an “ordinary” activity he did on weekends, and a fall turned into one that changed his life in an “ordinary instant.” Now he isn’t able to walk, and his life transformed in a matter of seconds. When I was told about this tragedy I didn’t believe it, or at least I didn’t want to. It came to me as a shock, as it did for Joan Didion. Although I wasn’t there to presence it, I presenced the outcome later on, and never had I experienced something so unreal but real at the same time. At first I couldn’t accept the fact of my friends reality. Neither could Joan. But as time has passed, and we have all faced his reality I can process easier this tragedy.

What I have learned from my own experience as well as from others, is that there are many different types of pain, grief and also different ways to approach it. I know of many people that ignore the new reality that they are living as a mechanism of defense so that they don’t suffer. Others are very open about it, do some sort of activity, or others write about it like in Joan Didion’s case. And that is what has made me reflect about how I’ve dealt with the hard things in life. I realized that many times I have written down my frustrations, pain and grief. It is a way to let out what I am feeling without others realizing it, as I am doing now. This doesn’t mean I don’t talk about what I feel, but I can understand why Joan Didion sometimes goes around in circles and includes so many details. It’s a therapy.

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” –Joan Didion

Not Anymore Dad

After reading chapters one and two of Thank You for Arguing I realized how much rhetoric is in my life and how much I can learn from this book to implement it better. Jay Heinricks begins his first chapter by narrating a time where he argued with his son, and used rhetoric to win the argument without his son actually knowing. After I read this part I couldn’t stop thinking how my father does this to me every time.

My father is one of the most forgetful people I know, or at least he pretends to be. Every time he is going for work he forgets his car keys and its so irritating because he always asks me to go to the parking lot and give them to him. When I am getting ready for school, and my Dad shuts the door its only a matter of seconds to receive a phone call instructing me to go to his closet, open the drawer and take his car keys. It doesn’t only frustrate me that he does this almost everyday, but also that he keeps on promising that he wont do it again.  He is very  

When my cell phone rings around 6:10 I always do the same thing. I speak with an irritated voice to my Dad and he manipulates the situation so that I seem as if I were the bad guy. He uses the future tense, which as Aristotle says is what guarantees peace. He always says “I’m sorry honey, it wont happen again I promise, its just that I have a lot of things on my mind”. This makes me feel sorry for him, so I leave my frustration aside and give him his keys with a smile. But next time it won’t be the same. I’m not sure how it is that I will respond, but Ill keep on reading this book so I know how to win the argument. I’m tired of starting my day by going to the parking lot. 

Life Skills Video

To Live or Not to Live?

After reading Frederick Douglas’s narrative, I was left with one main question: until what extent does human nature drive us to survive? Frederick Douglas was living in hell before he escaped north. He “suffered from hunger and cold… was kept almost naked” and “had no bed”. (39) Not only did he live in this inhumane environment, but he was treated as an animal, he was whipped whenever his masters felt like doing so, and most importantly, he was isolated from knowledge. So what was it that kept Douglas wanting to survive? Was it knowledge? But how could it be knowledge, if after each piece of knowledge he obtained, he just realized more and more how horrifying his reality was? What was it that kept him going?

As I was reading Douglas’s narrative I tried to pretend as if I were him. I thought that I couldn’t ever resist the pain of one whip, or of hunger, and cold, but I think that there is something inside of us that makes us stronger. It’s a kind of us that we didn’t know it existed, until we reach the circumstances that this other us is unleashed. I cannot conclude that what I am saying is true: that human kind will always fight to survive, but I do believe that for one to give up on life is very rare, and Douglas does a great job in demonstrating so.

Thankfully, I have never been in the position of Douglas, but I do know people close to me that have experienced very hard and inhumane situations that sometimes they could have wondered if living was worth it or not. Unfortunately, one of my mother’s best friends was kidnapped in 2000 by the FARC for two years. She says that sometimes these men would treat her very badly, although she wouldn’t suffer from hunger like Douglas did, she was sometimes forced to sleep in cages so that the men would make fun of her, or they would get snakes and put them on her while she was sleeping. Although Douglas’s and Luisa’s situation are very different they do share one very important thing: both of them didn’t have freedom. They were prisoners.

Luisa told me that one time the FARC told her that she was finally going to be set free because her family had paid. She had to walk for about 15 hours and when she got to the supposed place where her family were supposedly waiting for her, there were a bunch of FARC men just making fun of her because she had fallen for their prank. At that moment Luisa wanted to die, but there was something inside of her that told her to keep on going. Although she suffered so much, everyday for two years she had hope inside of her that one day she would be set free. And I believe that that is what happened to Douglas. He had hope that his reality was going to change, and because he believed it so deeply, his reality did change. It doesn’t matter how bad our situation is, there is always that little spark inside of us saying that everything is going to be okay, and we want to live to see when it will be okay. It is hope that keeps us and kept Douglas and Luisa going. But then again, if these two people who lived terrible lives wanted to keep on going, until what extent do we have to arrive to, to want to die?

The Power of Curiosity

While I was reading the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, I realized that Douglass and I have something in common which is curiosity. Reading chapters five through seven made me realized that Douglass was able to read out of his desire to know the unknown.

I can infer that since Douglas was little he would see people staring attentively at a piece of paper, not knowing why they did that, which made him question what it was. That got him into questioning what it was that they were doing, thus this curiosity started motivating him to learn to look at a piece of paper attentively and gain some sort of information. This is what drove Douglass to read. This reminds me of when I was around nine years old, which is the age where I started to question everything that my parents were talking about or certain things that they did. Now they couldn’t start whispering and giving weird looks while I was around because they knew that my curiosity of the unknown would drive me to finding out just like Douglass. Curiosity drove me crazy, whenever I entered my parent’s bedroom and they quickly changed the channel made me question, why did they do this? What was so terrible or inappropriate that I couldn’t know about? So that’s what made me go to another room, put on the channel that they were on and watch what they were watching. This was all do to my curiosity just like Douglas, wanting to learn how to write.

When Douglass was a slave it was “prohibited” to teach a slave how to read and write because it was “unlawful, and unsafe”. When Douglass heard these words it made him desire even more to learn how to read and write. This was the same as when my mother told my father that I couldn’t watch “Friends” of the “OC”. I would hide like Douglass in a separate room, watch these types of shows, just as he read the newspaper. Reading the newspaper, and watching “Friends” gave both of us the chance to see the unknown parts of life that society was hiding from us. My parents wanted to protect me, from the “inappropriate” things that the world had, whereas the Whites took these measure to protect themselves from the Slaves. Maybe my parents did this also to protect themselves, so I wouldn’t try to imitate all the “inappropriate” things that the cast of “Friends” or the “OC” did, especially for a nine year old.

Douglass says that “the more he read, the more he was lead to anohr and detest his enslavers”.  That sometimes he felt that “learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing” and that “in moments of agony he envied his fellow classmates for their stupidity.” (51) Sometimes it was best to be ignorant so he didn’t have to worry about what his masters were doing, or how they were violating the slaves’ human rights. This is like when top-secret information from the government is released and we know things that we weren’t meant to know. A hypothetical example would be if the United States government knew that aliens were in the world and no one else was supposed to know because people would panic and the world would turn out to be a disaster. Douglass felt that sometimes it would be nice not to know everything because this generates frustration, just like I have also felt that it would be nice to not know how real life works and pretend that everything is sunny, but just like Douglass the curiosity beats the desire of wanting to feel comfortable with reality. Is it sometimes better to be ignorant?

Its All about Emotion

After reading chapters three and four of a "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas an American Slave" I realized that Douglas uses a lot of ethos and pathos and not much logos. Since this is a memoir, and it touches the horrific subject of slavery, he does not have to put much logic into it because what he wants us to know is how he felt while he was living this nightmare. It’s all about sentiment and imagining what was going on. 

Douglas uses ethos throughout the whole memoir. From the beginning, even before one starts reading, ethos is already present. The words slave and slaveholder, or black and white at that time already had a meaning, sort of character in society, and that is what ethos is. Unfortunately, at the time whites had an ethos of superiority towards blacks, a sort of power. Colored people were seen more as animals than human beings, and they were oppressed by society. This is seen throughout the whole book, but especially at times when Douglas starts describing for instance, the personality of a white man towards the slaves. For example, how “Mr. Gore spoke to command and commanded to be obeyed… When he whipped he seemed to do so from a sense of duty, and feared no consequences… He was a man of the most inflexible firmness and stone-like coolness. His savage barbarity was equaled only by the consummate coolness with which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves under his charge. (35) With that description of Mr. Grose’s character, the reader can picture how cruel and inhumane this man was towards the slaves, and how terrified the slaves must of felt with his presence. Or how Colonel Loyd was “known to own thousands of slaves” which makes the reader picture how white men were rich whereas the slaves had nothing. The feelings that both races had towards each other were all about ethos because those feelings were the reactions that they had towards their presence.

When someone is talking about slavery, normally a person's reaction is all about pathos, nothing else comes to mind. It was an event in history that is heart breaking and savage. It makes me feel sad and sick at the same time, there isn't much logic into it, it's all emotion. For instance when Douglas is talking about how “Mrs. Hicks… seized an oak stick of wood by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl’s nose and breastbone, and thus ended her life.” (37) Douglas wrote about this event so that the reader has a horrific perception of Mrs. Hicks, and the savage treatment that slaves received for just doing minor things like falling asleep. Douglas made it clear that white men and women were inhumane against colored people. With this passage Douglas accomplishes his goal of making the reader very sensible towards the slaves, and mad against the slaveholders.

Douglas uses a mixture of pathos and logos throughout the book. The examples stated above contain both of these rhetorical characteristics, and Douglas does this on purpose to make his memories come alive in our minds. So that we can picture and feel somewhat what he felt while he lived through this misery. After reading these two chapters, due to Douglas’s powerful descriptions I feel down with water in my eyes. 

It's Not Fiction

Slavery has always been a historical fact that has impacted me, and makes me think about how crazy humanity can be. I look at slavery as if it was fiction but what is sad about it is that it was real. After reading the first two chapters of the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas an American Slave" I remembered how sick slavery made me feel due to its inhumane acts.

Something that I cant stand is torture, it makes me feel sick, and when I was reading the part of how Douglas's first master, Captain Anthony whipped his aunt "till she was literally covered in blood... the louder she screamed, the harder he whipped", (p21)  I felt as if my blood was boiling with anger. How could this have been possible? How was a person able to do such a mad act? That's when I remembered the time when I was around 10 years old, entering my grandmother's room and she was watching "La Esclava Isaura". The moment I walked in, I saw the master of Isaura whipping her so hard that she screamed louder and louder and her back, as Douglas said was covered with blood. I hated watching this scene but there was something that made me continue watching, it was something so out of the ordinary, so cruel and horrifying that it got me hooked. And from that moment on, although slavery is one of the things I hate most about the history of man kind it interests me because I cant understand how human kind was able to do this.  But what interests me the most is to know the slaves perspective during this time, so I am very lucky that with this narrative I will be able to learn more about it!

Half a Life

Its Colombia Not Columbia

After reading Wickman's article "This is a blog post. It is not a blog", I realized how these common mistakes make us sound as Wickman said "stupid". I am sure that I too have been one of the ignorant ones that have confused "blog post" and "blog", but unfortunatelly many of us make this same error because we are all equally ignorant due to the lack of curiosity that we have. We think that we know everything but we don't... and that's when these mistakes happen. It is very akward and embarrassing when one makes a dumb error like this one because it proves that we just dont take the time to be 100% sure of what we say.

These kind of mistakes remind me of when people miss spell "Colombia" for "Columbia". When I notice that people make this error I feel irritated just like Wickman, because this mistake could be disappeared  easily if people took the time to make sure that the knowledge that they have is correct. Although these two mistakes are very different they share that they are common mistakes that with Wickmans type of articles people will stop committing them and correct them.