Christmas

Christmas is in two days and my familyand I, despite not having entered a church in over five years, will once again celebrate the birth of Jesus. There will be a tree (once we get around to getting one); there will be nice meals; there will be lots of lights, decorations, and a trainset. There will also be cleaning, so as to make the house spotless for when our relatives arrive tomorrow. All together, the amount of time we will spend on celebrating (and preparing for the celebration of) the birth of someone we could, in all honesty, care less about will probably be more time than I've spent in English class this month.
My question for all of you is, why? Why do we continue to do something so stressful and time consuming? Is it simply for the sake of tradition? Or do we enjoy it enough that all the work is worth it? Or is there another factor at play? Thoughts?

Global vs. National

Today one of the topics that came up in class was global culture vs. national culture. It reminded me of how we talked about Voltaire in European History. Voltaire believed the world was like a zero sum game in which one country's loss was another country's gain: "that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors." Voltaire advocated being a global citizen rather than a national citizen. I don't think the zero-sum game applies to the world anymore, because that concept was the basis of mercantilism and mercantilism definitely doesn't apply now. But I agree that being a world citizen is more important than being a national citizen.

Voltaire was also skeptical about the whole patriotism idea, which I mentioned as a topic today. He believed that people didn't feel passion for their fatherland, because one's fatherland could be defined as so many different things: your oven, your house, your village. Dr. B elaborated, asking the class rhetorically, do we really cared about the people in Detroit and do they really care about us here in Moorestown? The argument about whether patriotism/nationalism/unity exists could definitely be made.

-- tori

Is uselessness worse than unhealthyness?

Yesterday I was talking to my mom about one of her patients (she's a homecare dietitian). He is a 20 year old guy, and wants nothing more in the world than to be an auto mechanic and inherit his grandfather's limo business. Unfortunately, he has severe diabetes and epilepsy, so he had to drop out of the auto mechanic school he was going to because his seizures were so bad. My mom was telling me how he resents his unablilty to get a job because of his health more than his health itself. I believe this is the case with many unhealthy or disabled people. Their unablity to be useful hurts them more psychologically than their diseases do physically.

This reminded me of back in September when I broke my finger, and had to wear a splint on it. I was supposed to keep the splint on for two or three weeks, but I ended up taking it off after two days because I couldn't stand the fact that I couldn't do anything with my right hand. It doesn't matter to me that my finger is now crooked, because my right hand would have been useless during those two weeks if I hadn't taken it off.

So, do you all think that being useful is worth a blow to a person's health?

-Audrey

Pointless?

The conversation today about the Hopi vases in To Be of Use reminded me of something in my life. In my own little world, I have something that I think I want turned into an artifact in a museum later, or at least a book on the shelves of a library. I started a personal journal when I was in 4th grade and have kept it up consistently since then. I occasionally would think about the purpose and use of my journal. It has always served as a stress reliever and a sort of confidante who can't talk back, helping me emotionally stabilize myself. But then I'd wonder if I meant for the journal to serve other, different purposes after enough time has passed for it to be substantial. It would certainly be a memory aid for when I grow up to help me remember things I had forgotten. But then, if it survives long enough, it could serve as a historical insight into the life of this person living in this time period, experiencing these certain world events, living with this technology, and using language in this way. (Or I'm being naive and the journal won't help at all... who cares that much about me, really?) That's why I try to write at least a little bit on historical events and slang and iPods and such. I'm not sure if the people who used the Hopi vases and Greek amorphas thought like this and intended for their objects to become artifacts in museums later, but this all just comments on how everything has some uses, then different uses, and context definitely impacts the use.

I'm going to make an absolute statement. And please, offer any contradictions to it, because of course nothing is absolute because Toulmin said so, but as of yet I can't think of anything. So, I think that everything in this world has a use. People, places, animals, ideas. That use might not be the person's intended use, but the object has a use all the same. That desk was intended for writing and sitting, but might be used as a murder weapon aimed at Tara's head. Even things that are seemingly pointless maybe were made for the purpose of being pointless. Any exceptions to this statement?

-- tori

P.S. I'm sorry it's so long! I tend to ramble...

Being Useful and Seeking Work

The other day, Tara and I were joking about having a monster "to-do" list with every activity we want to do in our lives on it. So we would always feel like we had something to look forward to, we would have to keep putting things to do on our list. In relation to what we were talking about in class, this way you would ALWAYS be useful. I think it's almost a fear of people to have absolutely nothing to do. At least for me, while I do enjoy relaxing and doing virtually nothing from time to time, I wouldn't want to spend, say, my entire retirement sitting in a chair with nothing to do. I would go crazy. Because humans have the ability to think and reason, we also have the ability to be bored. My dog can sit in one spot all day, content. Most people cannot say the same.
People don't want to spend time thinking about what they have done in the past, they want to keep moving forward. I think, for the most part, people don't seek work because they want to feel useful, but because they are afraid of having nothing to do. Thoughts?

-Alexa

More on Being "Useful"

After some of our discussion in class today, I can't seem to get a certain story out of my head. I'm not sure exactly where I heard this (possibly it was referred to in another work?), or what book it refers to, but I remember hearing a summary of a dystopian novel which relates to the idea of "usefulness." The summary, as I remember it, dealt with a society which had recently undergone some sort of natural disaster, and so had limited natural resources and food supplies. Not all of the survivors of the natural disaster would be able to subsist on the resources left, so the quandry presented is the decision over what types of people would be more of use to the new society. Lawyers or professional football players? Doctors or electricians? This moral dilemma certainly lends itself to being applied to Piercy's poem. What exactly is work? Who exactly is of use? Any other thoughts on this?

-Tara Burns

Politics and Confidence

I was thinking about the Refugee Ship poem and how parents choose the culture a child grows up in. How much right does a parent have over their child? Parents have the right to choose the language their child grows up with, but the child may have wanted to grow up with a different language. They have the right to name him/her, but he/she may not like his/her name. These are things the child may resent, but have the possibility to change. But what about parents genetically modifying the embryo? Abortion? This is entering politics but I was wondering what opinions were out there on the rights parents have over other people's lives. People in opposition to gay rights and aren't gay themselves. Audrey and I were discussing this after class today. Politicians can say they believe in gay marriage and they can say they don't - that's a lot of influence on a given individual's life. But that's how representative government works, I suppose.

And I forgot to mention today in our discussion of Barbie Doll that I think an individual would change the way he/she looks all because of self-confidence. Everything boils down to self-confidence. A person will succumb to the image of the media if he/she isn't confident in herself. A person will give into the peer pressure of becoming anorexic if his/her friends are doing it and he/she isn't confident enough to say no. A person will get a nose job because he/she isn't confident in his/her natural uniqueness. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think that happiness comes from confidence. If that confidence comes from being plastic or being natural, so be it.

-- tori

I am half Italian, so when I went to Italy over the summer I thought I would feel a very strong connection to the country because it's "in my blood." I did love the landscape and enjoyed every city I went to, but I found the only connections I had to the places were realizing that my cousin had spent an entire semester abroad during college at an apartment building we walked by, and discovering that my sister had taken a tour of the same glass-blowing factory that I did when she went to Italy years ago with her school. If I had not known I was Italian, I would not have thought that I should feel any special connection with the country, and maybe then I wouldn't have been so disappointed. I feel as though my heritage has more to do with the traditions and time I spend with my family than with the actual country my great-grandparents were from. If I had been adopted into a family with an entirely different culture, I don't think I would feel out of place. I think I would feel more connected to the culture I was submersed in than the one that is technically in my blood.
Furthermore, although I am equally as Polish as I am Italian, I feel much more connected to the latter part of my roots. I think this is because I spend much more time with the Italian side of my family than the Polish side, and the Italian side is much bigger. This just reinforces the thought that if I was to spend a great deal of time with a culture that I was in no way blood connected to, I would end up feeling as close to it as I do to my real roots. Is there anyone else who feels this way?

-Alexa

Double Standards

Our discussion in class Friday had me thinking about the double standards that still live on in society today. The commonly known double standard of a man who flirts with many women being a "lady's man" while a woman who reciprocates the same behavior being "sexually promiscuous," is quite debasing for women and very excusable for men. On the flip side, the double standard of a man who is unemployed or a stay-at-home dad being a "bum" as opposed to an unemployed or stay-at-home mom being "suitable" certainly doesn't do justice to a man.

Though such double standards are unfair to one or both sexes, they are still rather common today. I always thought double standards derived from past events that led people to view men and women as such. The past behaviors of men and women under certain circumstances must have produced the double standards. My question, however, is why double standards still exist even today? Perhaps certain double standards are true in very specific cases nowadays, allowing said double standard to linger on?

-Chloe Martianou

A few years ago, a relative of mine and her husband adopted a baby from Guatemala. They named him Giovanni, a very Italian name. I found this a little odd since he's not Italian. The parents are Italian, but not directly from Italy. They are either the children, or grand-children of Italian immigrants (I'm not sure which). This certainly gives the baby a wide variety of ethniticities, being Guatemala but raised American with an Italian name. I wonder what he thinks of this combination and what he associates himself with. How connected can he feel to his adopted parents Italian roots since they are not his, despite the name? Does he ever feel like it doesn't fit him, since he is not Italian? Or does he simply accept the entire culture of his adopted parents as his own? In which case, does he forsake the Guatemalan? I haven't seen him since, so I don't know, but our discussion made me think of him.

~Becca

sexist jokes

Coincidentally, in my class right after English yesterday, some of my guy friends were making sexist jokes. It started with a joke about women in the kitchen, and then turned into them jokingly telling me to make them sandwiches and asking me why I wasn't in the kitchen. They were obviously just kidding and we were all having fun, but I think it shows that gender stereotypes are still pretty pronounced today. These guys aren't truly sexist, but they still have been exposed and somewhat influenced by common stereotypes against women. Historically, women have been confined to a certain role, and while we are progressing away from that, I don't think we will ever shed that idea completely. People will always feel more comfortable with the idea of the man working and the woman taking care of the kids and the house, despite how accepting we may become of alternate roles. What do you guys think?

~elizabeth

Refugee Ship

Joanne Park

Personally, I don't have trouble identifying myself as either 100% Korean of Korean-American in the US because I don't feel the need to draw the distinct line between those two cultures and it is easier for me to think that I have both of the cultures, not one or the other.

It is easier fot me to decide which culture or the background of my identity is more dominating in the US than in Korea. In America, where people are more opened to diversity, it is easy for me to say that I have both Korean and American identity. However, it is more difficult for me to define my identity in Korea, where it isn't so diverse, because I'm not the "typical" Korean; I'm the Americanized Korean. So referring back to Refugee Ship, it is possible for me to describe myself as the ship that never docks since I'm stuck in the middle too. But unlike the author, I have a sense of belonging.

I certainly agree that the way one grows affects his understanding of himself. Even though the author was grown up in America, she could have had Hispanic cultures within herself if she were exposed to her parents' culture while she was growing up. I see myself as both Korean and American because I grew up being taught that it is important to accept both of the cultures that were exposed to me, not one or the other.