I’ve never had the most fun with group projects, but this one wasn’t bad. I liked being able to choose our own topic, although some more direction would have been nice. Not like telling us what to do, but something like examples. What counts as a “forbidden text?” How far can we push the boundaries of that? I think there should be a tad more direction but students should be allowed to choose what they want. Doing Scientology was fun and interesting, it wasn’t something I’d done much research into before. I like the idea of taking a topic like that and doing more research on it. It encourages research into something the students are passionate about, not something they just had to do because there was nothing else. I think it makes the presentations more interesting as the students are happier doing research on something that interests them. Think about the different projects we had this year: the Story of O, Lolita, Scientology, etc. Having a bunch of different topics makes it more interesting for those watching as well.
In that sense I think the group project should be a lot like the final project: not a whole lot of direction and the freedom to basically do what you want. All that’s different is the caveat of working with a group of people. With little in the way of true requirements in order to make a good project the group needs to work well together. Plus, it helps students get to know each other better. I would give more direction on the essay, though. I know it depends a lot on what the topic is, but give some basic elements that the group should include if they’re applicable. Also, if a lot of high schoolers were like me, five pages is still the longest essay they’ve written, at least until the final comes around.
Category: All Posts
Reading these magazines was a strange experience because they look a lot like the magazines we have here, just without the adds. Once you read the articles and see the pictures you realize that they’re nothing like ours, but the general format is the same. I think that compared to everything else we’ve read this is the one that was most relevant. Obviously because ISIS, but more because it was the most modern text. For one it was a magazine rather than a straight text, which gave us as many visuals as articles. But with all the other texts it was just text. This is almost pop-culture-y, which is odd when it contrasts with what the magazine was used for.
In regards to the actual writing it was hard to get through for the sole reason that it was so full of words I didn’t understand. I guess most of them relate to Islam as a religion, but it took a lot of googling to know what exactly was being said. Given that, I was probably not the intended target of the magazine, it was meant to appeal to Muslims who may want to join ISIS. Although I find it highly unlikely that many, if any, would agree with what they were saying. I actually don’t think the magazines were meant to try to change anyone’s ideals, only reach those who had the same ones as them. Most would look at the pictures alone and turn away.
But the writing in the articles gives some insight into their beliefs. When they execute people for what we would consider a silly reason it’s like an accomplishment. But when the US bombs them to get them to stop, they’re killing innocents. It’s a total double standard, but that’s what they actually believe. It’s scary the lengths these people will go to in order to further their cause.
Nearly from the opening this movie reminded me of Monty Python, probably because of their humorous approach to criticizing Christianity. But while Monty Python was mostly a lot of weird (and dirty) humor, Dogma had some actual points to make. There are some legitimate things wrong with religion as we know it today, and Dogma pointed them out bluntly, but often more gently than Monty Python did. They pointed out some of the faults of Christianity that we just accept, like the fact that Jesus was probably not white, and that there’s probably a lot left out of the Bible. I found it a fun and enjoyable movie to watch while also being thought-provoking, which is a rare find these days. It also wasn’t above a bit of dirty humor. Okay, a lot of dirty humor.
However, it is easy to see why die-hard Christians don’t like it. Even though the movie brings up some legitimate points, some people simply don’t want to hear anything that contradicts the religion that they know. So anything that even questions the Christianity we know today is obviously evil and wrong and we gotta condemn it. This mentality is a problem, because these people don’t acknowledge the implicit bias that comes with religion. Pretty much any holy text you’ll read has been translated several times and, in the case of the Bible, is incomplete (because of the Council at Nicaea, plus the general implicit biases of the writers, plus whatever was intentionally left out). No matter how you read the Bible, there will always be information missing. You could look at it from a faith point of view that says that God intended for the Bible to be as it is today, but that still doesn’t account for people’s translations and just plain changing it. I know I look at all of this from a more scholarly and logical point of view, but I don’t think we can completely ignore all the human biases that make their way into holy texts.
At first glance the European Declaration of Independence is a rather stupid text. Most of it is plagiarized, it reflects an old and tired vision of the world, and the speaker only cares about one person. Or rather, one group of people. Breivik only cared about the people who were like him: straight, male, white, and Christian. Everyone else were lesser, and everything he wrote (or copied) reflected these views. What we see here is clearly someone who believes that he and his people are obviously superior, and giving anyone else rights would undermine that. This, to me and to many others, is preposterous.
But somehow these ideas stuck with him and caused him to commit his greatest atrocity: the bomb that killed eight and the subsequent murder of 69 young people at the Workers Youth League camp. It’s one thing to believe in these ridiculous ideals but another to kill 77 people. I’m sure there are plenty of people in the US who think that women belong in the house raising kids or that all Muslims are terrorists who want to take over all of Western society, or any number of stupid things, but I don’t think many of them would go and shoot 77 people. While his extremist beliefs contributed to this “kill people” mentality, there’s clearly something else going on in his head. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, and said he was psychotic while committing the crimes. It was a combination of these two things, the beliefs and schizophrenia, that made him think it was a good idea to kill a lot of people. Neither of which excuse what he did, but they do explain it. These kinds of beliefs are dangerous, especially when people like Breivik get ahold of them.
When I first started reading this I honestly did not know it was fiction. Even with the inclusion of things like the Cohen Act it took me a few entries to realize that it was fake, and I still had to google it. I don’t know what got in my head to think that it was real, or why I didn’t realize after they blatantly described things that didn’t and would never happen in this country. Even though it’s a work of fiction I can definitely see why it’s so influential. It’s completely fear-mongering, making people believe the government (or “System”) is after your guns and there’s no way to stop them except this noble revolution. It both shows the issue the author wants you to be concerned about (gun control) and gives a “heroic” account of a fighter going down in a blaze of glory to defend his beliefs. I can see how to the right minds that can be very persuasive. It’s a dangerous kind of persuasive too, for people who see their worst fears in the text without considering that it could never logically come to pass.
My main problem with it (aside from the obvious) is that I can’t relate to anyone. Not surprising given the fact that I am an 18 year-old highly liberal girl in college, but I still think there’s a problem with morality here. Like, the characters think absolutely nothing of murdering innocent people to further their cause. I understand fighting for what you believe in (even if it’s a conventionally bad belief) but I do draw the line somewhere. They steal, murder, and set off a goddamn nuke and even if I kinda empathized with their cause I couldn’t get behind that. These people are advocating for race wars, genocide, casual murder, and so many other bad things I don’t think I could ever trust someone who honestly, unironically likes and agrees with this book.
The manifesto of the famous Unabomber was certainly an interesting, if stagnant, reading. While Kazinsky brings up some good points, his writing isn’t very cohesive and is very preachy. I admit I didn’t fully read everything, I more skimmed the text. But from what I understood he is proposing almost a sort of anarchy. His belief system is that technology has caused us all to lose our way, and that the only solution is to get rid of technology completely. What I found interesting was that he seemed to think of science as a “surrogate activity,” or one people do simply for pleasure. Obviously there is a certain amount of pleasure in exploring any field of science, but there is value in it too. With his Luddite mentality Kazinsky seems to want everyone to only work for what they need and nothing else. Well… what else does he expect us to do? Even in the middle ages when people had to farm and work to barely get by there was still time for recreation. People played music, danced, performed plays, and most likely experimented with science. Except for the truly early days of civilization I doubt there was ever a time where all people did was fight for survival. It’s a natural human response to want to improve our lives, whether through science or the arts. By ignoring this Kazinsky ignores a big part of being human. And while the Industrial Revolution has brought about it’s share of bad things, it did ultimately help us. Nowadays we have good medicine, technology to help our daily lives, advanced science, and more people creating art than ever. Sure life is much more fast-paced and in-your-face than it ever was, but it can be argued that this was an ultimately good change. I don’t know what kind of life Kazinsky was envisioning, but I don’t think it would be a very good one.
This read like an angry woman ranting about men with no real thought put into it. Solanas talks about all these bad things men have done, and gives unreasonable expectations for life without men. The way to get this, of course, is by the elimination of all men and, by extension, money, working, wars, disease, and dying.
She jumps to a lot of conclusions.
Obviously a lot of what she said was completely unreasonable. Making all jobs automated is a huge generalization (what about teachers? Or therapists?) and certainly not feasible in the sixties. Eliminating the system of currency all at once would probably do more harm than good. That’s not mentioning the fact that she wanted to kill basically all men. Literally one half of the world’s population. We kind of glanced over this in our discussions, but that would be like the Holocaust on steroids. What would it theoretically take to kill that many people in a presumably pretty short amount of time? It’s completely unprecedented.
I do actually think you can compare a lot of Solanas’ beliefs to those expressed in Mein Kampf. She treated men as bad, if not worse, than Hitler treated Jews. There was the repeated idea that by making a group of people seem like less than people (subhuman), then that gives “legitimate” grounds for killing them en mass. The difference is, in Mein Kampf Hitler never argued for the complete extermination of Jews. Solanas does. Both are disorganized and more ranting than anything, but Solanas doesn’t present a reasonable argument by any means. I’m not saying that Hitler does, because his ideas are completely bonkers, but by some people it could be taken as semi-coherent. The SCUM Manifesto cannot. There’s too many logical errors, too many jumps, and she doesn’t explain how any of this is going to work. It’s rambling.