Jacobson lecture

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Going into the lecture I didn't really know what to expect because I had him as a statistics teacher last semester so I really wasn't sure what he was going to talk about. But I wasn't surprised when he tried to make a ridiculous connection between math and order and chaos. The lecture itself I thought was boring, I'm sure it would have been interesting to a math major or a mathematician but everyone else was clueless, not to mention we couldn't even follow along because we didn't have a calculator and half the stuff he was saying was over my head. But I do believe that other people would have found it more interesting than me since I'm not really big into math in the first place.

Final Blog

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Group is a word that can be used to define order in Mill's "Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual." He quotes that, "Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protections of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders in indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest" (CR 69). This quote just reminds people that living in a society that protects you should not be taken for granted. The people that are living in a protected society need to give back to the people that protect them. In the beginning of the year, this is not really what I thought the definition of order truly was, but the more we read articles like this I soon began to change my opinion to believe that order was what society makes of it. If the individuals who are protected by the rest of society don't give back and help society thrive, there good be chaos. These people could even be considered disobedient to the group or to society. In "The Burial at Thebes" Polyneices, one of Antigone's brother had been killed in the war but he was considered a traitor and was not granted a proper burial like his other brother Eteocles, so Antigone tried to bury her brother against the king's will. Both Antigone and her brother Polyneices were considered disobedient. A quote from King Creon justifies this, "Enough. Don't anger me. Your age, my friend, Still doesn't give you the rights to talk such rubbish. The gods, you think, are going to attend to this particular corpse? Preposterous. Did they hide him under clay for his religion? For coming to burn their colonnaded temples? For attacking a city under their protection? The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him?..." ( Heaney 21). This quote is talking about Antigone's brother who was considered a traitor and how he was so disobedient that even the gods would probably not save his soul. In the start of the class, I agreed that the word disobedient/disobey/disobedience described what i though chaos meant, and my opinion of this did not change.

I must admit that in the beginning of this class I was a bit naive in believing that religion was a source of order, I guess i believed it to be more of a source of order than chaos. However, after reading a bit more about religion, writing my ten page paper about religious conflicts, and doing outside readings, I have found that religion may cause more problems that it prevents. Yes, religion may keep a person "sane" but it can also make them insane. In one of the readings from writing class, Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire wrote about religious fanaticism and religious killings. He wrote about these people that were so into their own religions that they would kill anyone who opposed them. I'm not saying that all religions are like this, but I'm saying that religion can cause quite the uproar. In "The Book of Job" an accuser comes to God and tells him that his beloved servant Job only loves him because God has given Job great things. So to prove his point, the accuser and God destroy everything and anything that Job has ever loved. This included all of his children and his farm and animals. This created chaos in Job's mind because God as destroying everything that he loved for no reason. Job exclaimed, ''God damn the day I was born and the night that forced me from the womb. On that day-let there be darkness; let it never have been created; let it sink back into the void" (Mitchell 13). In this sense, religion had made Job want to die, it had made him wish that he had never been born in to a world so cruel. However, at the end of the book, after God has put Job through the worst times of his life, he replenished Job with all of his possessions as well as the rest of his family. Even though God had made Job somewhat insane earlier in the book, religion had made him sane again, which brought order back to his life. After Job had his life "renewed" ''Job said to the unnamable, I had heard you with my ears; but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust" (Mitchell 88). In this quote, Job speaks to God and says that he has seen the power he has, he still loves Him even after what He has done. In this book it is evident that religion can cause both chaos, making a man insane, and order, making a man sane again.

In "The Case Against Perfection" by Michael J. Sandel, he asks a very unsettling question, "Everyone would be welcome a gene therapy to alleviate muscular dystrophy and to reverse the debilitating muscle loss that comes with old age. But what if the same therapy were used to improve athletic performance?" (CR 233). In this case, I find that perfection can create chaos. Sandel suggested that if everyone were allowed access to gene therapy would it be acceptable for a disobedient thletes to use it to enhance their performance?-ideally making them perfect. Steroids are an example of this argument, athletes use steroids because they strive to be the best, to be perfect at their sport. In turn, this creates chaos through the media, the professional leagues, and through the fans. Although steroids are a banned substance, these athletes choose to be defiant, causing mass chaos. This can also relate back to being disobedient and not following what society deems as "acceptable." Early in the term, if someone asked me if I thought that perfection was chaotic I would have quickly and confidently said no. However, after reading "1984" and reading several articles on perfection, or at least attempting to be perfect, I have realized that in the struggle to perfection, chaos is unavoidable. So over the past few months, that in striving for perfection, chaos can be expected to be lingering near.

Professor Kjar's Lecture

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In this lecture, professor Kjar presented the ideas of evolution and natural selection. Although most people know that Darwin's theory of evolution is associated with "survival of the fittest" there was actually more to the theory than just the best will survive. There are many different relationships in nature than help several different organisms thrive, and without those relationships many of those organisms will not be able to survive.

One of the biggest controversies about evolution is the education system. Schools have a hard time distinguishing the balance between the creation theory and evolution. Most public schools now either teach evolution or neither creation theories. The church believes strictly in creation and nothing else, therefore it is hard to balance everyone's beliefs with science.

Dr. Jesse Kabwila Kapasula's lecture

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I thought that the lecture we attended was very interesting and insightful, although it was not apart of our curriculum, I believe that it was good to listen to and understand the points she was trying to convey. Yes, Beyonce is a great artist and creates pop songs that sell millions of albums, however, in the song "single ladies" she contradicts herself. In today's society women have had more power and more rights than ever before in history, and then Beyonce comes out with this song that sets back women's civil rights a couple decade. She objectifies women and conveys that women are a trophy, or crudely a piece of meat for men. Yes, this song was catchy and probably helped sell a few thousand records, but the lyrics of the song are a little out of place. Women in today's society are still fighting for more and more rights, more equality, and more power; then we have artists creating lyrics as seen in "single ladies." I agree with Dr. Kapasula in the fact that Beyonce was objectifying herself as well as all women, she clearly does not appreciate her place in society as much as she should. I also thought that Dr. Kapasula did a great jobof keeping the lecture entertaining.

Professor Lemak's Lecture

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Professor Lemak gave a lecture last Friday on Rock and Roll music along with the relationship with power and its correlation to Burial at Thebes. The Rock and Roll aspect of the lecture was just to show different ways that people rebel against the government without doing major harm, both physical and mental. Much of the music he talked about rebelled against the government and unjust laws. During the lecture, Lemak touched on how in the Burial of Thebes the characters struggled with the balance of social justice with moral authority and just and unjust laws. The social justice in Burial at Thebes was the dilemma in which Antigone was not allowed by law to bury her brother who happened to be a traitor. King Creon made it known that anyone who even threw dirt on his body would be persecuted. It would have been the moral thing to do to let Antigone bury her own brother even if he was a traitor, simply for the fact that he was family, and that is what family is for. It was unjust of King Creon to make such an outlandish "law." The balance between social justice and moral authority as well as just and unjust laws is an issue that many societies will have to deal with, and societies will also have to learn to find the balance between them. There is only so much that the people can do in certain societies; however, democratic societies have more say in what laws are just and which are not. This is because in a democratic nation, the people make the decisions, and if there is an unjust law, the people can vote against it, or elect officials to do so.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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Self Questions:

What forces shape our sense of self?
-The forces that shape our sense of self are our relationships that we form with individuals, are feelings and emotions, our behaviors and experiences. The most obvious force in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind however was the relationships that are formed and how much they actually influence the shaping of the "self." It was evident that both Joel and Clementine's self was shaped by each other so drastically that they had parts of their memories erased so their "self" would go back to how it was prior to knowing each other.

Compare a sense of the self as being an ordered, rational being with ideas of the self as fluid, changing, unfixed, unmoored.
-Without going into a lot of detail, the easiest way to look at comparing these two different kinds of "self" is to look at the difference between Joel (Jim Carey's Character) and Clementine (Kate Winslet's Character). Joel was a predictable, orderly, and easy going character, while Clementine was unpredictable, irrational, and changed quite frequently. This may be due to different personality characteristics or the fact that she never wanted to be bored.

Film Critique questions:

How does the film begin?
-The film beings on 2/14/04, Joel wakes up and gets out of bed, goes outside to his car to find that it was been damaged. He goes to work and decides to get on a different train and skip work that day. He took the train and went to the beach, although it happened to be snowing that day, and he is not sure what brought him to the beach. However, at this beach he sees a girl there who happens to be Clementine (they had not met yet at this point). He goes to a cafe where Clementine also is, but he is too hesitant and shy to introduce himself to her, while he is at the cafe he draws a picture of her from afar. However, on the train ride back Clementine introduces herself to Joel on the train for the first time.

Describe the most critical scene. What made this scene so important? What overarching message/principle does the scene convey? What were the cinematic techniques that made it work well?
-I think that the most important scene is the first scene which is described above. It was so important because it turns out that he meets Clementine in this scene, after all Joel had his memories of Clementine erased from his brain the night before, and Clementine had her memories of Joel erased prior to this as well. I thought that the overarching message in this scene was that it was fate that the two of them met, and even if they had their memories erased they were meant to be together after all that they had been through.

Song

This song is called "I'm a bitch I'm a lover" by Meredith Brooks, this song can relate to the "self" because Brooks is describing herself in the lyrics of the song.


Brooks, Meredith. "'I'm a bitch I'm a lover." Blurring the Edges.Capitol . 1997
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCOsFq4xprc