Of the options given in the Final Q; I would classify time, the number three, patriotism, god, morality, science, market capitalism, and war as entirely human constructions. I decided to put these all in this category because I believe them all to be purely human constructed ideas. Only humans have the ideals of time, morality, god, market capitalism and patriotism, and only humans use the number three and science to delineate amounts and describe things. Finally war is a purely human creation because no other species engages in war as we use it. They will defend their territory against invaders but they will not turn invaders themselves as humans do.

Those things only partly humanly constructed would be in my eyes music, the color red, the electron and apples. Personally I think that music is mostly not a human construction because it is there in the world and we merely define what’s there and create our own at times. Red is not something we created we just named it when we started the concept of named colors; therefore it is only vaguely a human construct. The same is true with electrons and apples. These things existed before we discovered and named them. We have since manipulated them to our uses but we did not create them.

This leaves nothing in the entirely not human constructions category. This does make a measure of sense to me because in a manner everything is at least somewhat a human construction because we have defined and named all those things which we interact with in our lives even if we did not actually create them.

Music

As the article assigned states there is much argument surrounding what constitutes music over the years. Personally I go with the idea of the types of music musica universalis, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis. I think there are different levels of music. That produced by the world around us or musica universalis from birds, wind, running water or manmade things, that produced by humans or musica humana either by humming, clapping or singing, and finally musica intrumentalis or that produced by instruments such as piano, violin, etc.
Personally I enjoy all these to varying degrees. I think they are all parts of what music is in our world. I don’t think music necessarily needs a rhythm to be music. Some things are more pleasing to the ear than other but pretty much every sound in this world is part of the music of life. From the ticks of the clock to the solos of a saxophone in a jazz club to the sounds generated by the various fauna of our earth some of which can be very bizarre.

Patriotism

I found the thoughts of Robert Jensen very interesting.
He boils down one definition of patriotism to "We were attacked. We must defend ourselves. The only real way to defend ourselves is by military force. If you want to be patriotic, you should -- you must -- support the war."
my reaction to this definition was refusal. i think that people should be allowed to voice their opinions and not get harassed as 'unpatriotic'. i don't think that force is always the response needed. don't get me wrong i support our troops and wish them all good health. but i also wish them a safe and quick return home. i don't claim to keep close tabs on the situation but i think that surely there could have been more done before we got into the situation we are now in. it relates back to Jensen because he talked at length about how the United States of America needs to accept the things we have done. we cannont be on a pedestal. we are not better than other humans on this planet. we have caused much mischief all over the world which we need to call ourselves to task for.
He also shared this quote by Emma Goldman: "Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."
i think that the US is perhaps the most guilty of this form of pratriotism i do not pretend to be at all an expert on american or world history but our country has done some inexcusable things in my opinion and tried to suppress disagreement with the threat that we are not patriotic if we argue. this is rubbish. if we have to use the word patriotic i do not think this is the right way and that we need to rethink how we view the concept drastically.
America needs to revise it's view of itself in relation to other societies.
he sums it up well when he says:
"I believe there is a light shining out of September 11, out of all that darkness. It is a light that I believe we Americans can follow to our own salvation. That light is contained in a simple truth that is obvious, but which Americans have never really taken to heart: We are part of the world. We cannot any longer hide from that world. We cannot allow our politicians, and generals, and corporate executives to do their dirty business around the world while we hide from the truths about just how dirty that business really is. We can no longer hide from the coups they plan, the wars they start, the sweatshops they run."

Relevant Article

This is an article which was in the USA Today newspaper today march 10th. I think it quite coincidental that it should appear while we are currently engaged in a discussion religion in class.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20080310/cm_usatoday/americanfaithaworkinprogress?loc=interstitialskip

Agnosticism and Atheism

The readings this weekend have caused me to give some thought as to where I fall in the spectrum of faith. Having been raised in the Episcopal Church I would say I have ingrained in my upbringing a certain level of faith in the existance of God. However I have never been an extremely devout Episcopalian. I have a frivolous liking for certain seasons in the church season over others based merely on the hymns sung then. This is one reason i'm not sad to have been here at school during the lenten season which always depresses me hymn-wise and also why i'm glad that the Easter season falls over spring break as that is one of my favorite times in that regaurd.
I think the reason my favorite part of church is the hymns is because I associate good memories with many of them. On the lake where I spend my summers we hold something called hymn sing on sunday nights in August. It is quite informal with only a few set memorial hymns sung at the beginning and a few closing ones reserved for the end. Otherwise people can call out whichever they wish to sing. It is here where I truly feel the closest to God. Surrounded by the mountains and lakes, with the hymn punctuated by the occasional loon call. The community spirit that encompasses the gathering never gets old and a good time is had by all as we move through the church season in whatever order occurs. They are all given attention with the younger kids enjoying christmas and easter while the adults provide selections from other sections of the hymnal. Hymn sing is one of my fondest memories and I always look forward to summers spent with friends and neighbors singing for the joy of it. Many hymns are memorized now because they have been part of the tradition since before I was born, while occasionally a visitor will present a new option to the group which is sung with the same amount of gusto and the beloved favorites.
I seem to have rambled some. My main point is that people exercise their faith in different ways and on different levels. Personally I have always felt that there is a God even if I have not always been the strongest believer. If I feel closer to that God when I am at Hymn sing in the summer than church during the year than that is just the way I happen to live my faith. Others may get more out of elaborate services and prolonged readings of sacred texts, that is ok too. Everyone is entitled to their own faith and level of it, be it prodigious or minimal.

passing of time.

the old saying "time flies when you're having fun" holds alot of truth for me. i often find that time does go by very fast when i'm doing somthing that takes up all my attention i pay very little attention to time and the next time i look up it's hours later.

a prime example of this is when i am at the lake where my grandparents live in the summer. when i'm there i totally lose track of what day it is and what time. the days pass in a blur of swimming, sailing, etc before i know it te summer is past and it is back ot the set and clock regulated life of school. i wrote a short story about how much time in my life has been devoted to time at the lake and it always seems like not enough.

we percieve the passage of time in different ways depending on our environment and how we track time. also there is almost always some discrepency in clocks in different places. this affects how we know where we are supposed to be an when. my old highschool recently fixed the spazzing clocks so now people will have to pay more attention instead of depending on not being late to class because the clock on the other side of the building was earlier.

overall time is a matter of point of view. different people follow time in different manners . some are strictly by the clock, some are more laid back. it's a pretty fluid thing.

One question that I had in relation to the perception of time is how do those who have lostthe sense of sight percieve time? They cannot see the physical representation in clocks, sundials, the position of the sun, time of day, etc. Do they have a sharper sense of internal time?
Also why is it that some peoples internal sense of time appears to be sharper than other peoples? I cannot think of any concrete reason for the phenomena.

Religious stories

I my world religions class we are reading a book called Jesus a Revolutionary Biography. i'm finding it very interesting because it talks mainly about not the bible or scripture but who Jesus was and how alot of the writings about him (currently talking about the cannonical gospels) are stories written many many years after his death. the author John D. Crossan spends alot of time talking about the symbolic relations between Jesus and prior figures like Moses and John the baptist. the entire thing is very interesting and is opening up alot of the symbolism and the fiction that i was unaware of in relation to the Bible.

connections between Locke and Sherlock Holmes

In the Phillips article it states “The mind (or "the understanding") is described in Locke's writings in very passive terms--the mind is a receptacle (an empty cabinet, a wax tablet, a piece of blotting paper) for storing whatever ideas come from experience.” This caught my eye having recently read the Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in which the detective Sherlock Holmes states "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." The connection was pretty immediate do the time periods line up for Doyle to have been influenced by Locke?

(CR) actor vs. spectator

The following quotes from the article on constructivism by D.C. Phillips were interestingt ome for reasons i'll explain later:

"When one applies constructivism to the issue of teaching, one must reject the assumption that one can simply pass on information to a set of learners and expect that understanding will result. Communication is a far more complex process than this. When teaching concepts, as a form of communication, the teacher must form an adequate model of the student's ways of viewing an idea and s/he then must assist the student in restructuring those views to be more adequate from the student's and from the teacher's perspective. Constructivism not only emphasizes the essential role of the constructive process, it also allows one to emphasize that we are at least partially able to be aware of those constructions and then to modify them through our conscious reflection on that constructive process."(Confrey, 1990, p. 109)

"Starting from the constructivist position that the knower is an "actor" rather than a "spectator," Dewey staunchly advocated the use of activity methods in the
schoolroom--for students are potential knowers, yet traditional schooling forces students into the mold of passive receptacles waiting to have information instilled, instead of allowing them to move about, discuss, experiment, work on communal projects, pursue research outdoors in the
fields and indoors in the library and laboratory, and so forth."

These quotes interested me because they seem to relate to my experience going to a charter school from 7th-12th grade. The quotes, specifically the second one, remind me strongly of how the classrooms at Parker functioned. At Parker we more often than not were 'actors' engaging in activities and discussions instead of sitting and listening to the teacher lecture on any given subject. I always enjoyed this way of learning. I'm a hands-on learner so i always enjoyed doing activities and discussions and being the 'actor' rather than a 'spectator'. It was always more engaging an I alwayas thought i learned more and remembered better when we worked actively instead of passively.

Thus begins a new semester

Welcome to the reality of a new semester!. This blog previously devoted to Intro to Honors last semester will now serve for Constructing Reality this semester.
I look forward to learning about different views of reality in our and other cultures. I hope that this class is as interesting as last semester was.

views on zoos

i have really enjoyed the discussions that the class has had surroundsing the article about zoos and pornography. personally i don't think that zoos are pornographic but i do agree that they are not the ideal way to treat and interact with animals. i hope that in the future humans can come up with a better way for humans to interact with animals without them being contained in too small cages where they are not truly comfortable. i think that the point that zoos are not as educational as some might say is valid, because while there are those plaques all over with information on the animals the percentage of people who actually read them is probably smaller than expected. personally i like parts where people get in a truck or somthing similar because the animals are less contained (at least seemingly). the experience is realer because the animals can be viewed from afar or from closer up depending on where the animals want to be. i hope that we can improve upon this idea in the future. or, better yet humans should stop destroying the animals natural habitat so they can live in the wild with some way of seeing them devised so that we'll be safe but still getting a chance to view and admire them.

appreciation

i would just like to muse on the fact that we never truly appreciate something or someone till they are taken away from us for some period of time. my main example being high school friends. it was driven home to be over this past break that it had really been about 4 months since i had seen many of the people i was able to hang out with over break and i had really missed all their colorful personalities mixing with each others and my own basically everyday of my life for the past 6 years in high school. some have moved on to college alongside me and some are just beginning that process but they are all of great value to me and i did miss them but it was only when i was able to interact with them again over break that i really appreciated how much joy they all bring into my life. they make me laugh until my sides hurt and i feel very comfortable among them knowing i am loved in return for my own colorful personality which is who i am. this also applies within my family it was so great to see my parents and siblings even though i had seen most of them much more recently, still i had missed them. i appreciated greatly the atmosphere of safety and love that enveloped my whole break. we miss people we love and realize only when we get to spend time with them how much we truly did miss them.

Honors

i just wanted to mention how interesting i found the discussion in class today about what makes an honors student. the fact that many of the different things we said related to each other was not surprising and infact made alot of sense because many of the characteristics are commonly found together with many of the other ones we noted. i wanted to add that i think honors students need to be adventurous which kind of related to some of those mentioned but was not even mentioned on its own. honors students need to be willing to look at things that might not normally be looked at and to discuss them rationally and critically. they must be willing to think outside the box on issues which have been long debated, maybe they will see somthing new that has not been thought of before. over all i think we did a pretty good job of describing what hte ideal qualities of an honors student are.

a side note being i also enjoyed Professor Sillimans sense of humor and straighforward answers to the classes questions. i'm pleased that i got to interact with him some as i'm going to be taking a course with him next semester and i had never met him.

Negative imagery

today in class we watched most of a movie called faces of the enemy. i just wanted to point out a few things that i thought very interesting.

• The murderer was talking about how the country did not get the way it was without someone working toward it. does anyone think that is one of the parts which relates to the current day?
• the notion of all the artists studying at the same school of art makes some sense in that they are all thinking along the same lines of dehumanizing the enemy. plus they all see each others images and are probably affected by them in terms of their art.
• the idea that the images make it really hard to pull back and try for peace makes sense because each side by that point veiws the other by the images they have produced and not as humans.

these are just a few things i wanted to comment on that the movie mentions.

educational movie

last friday in class we watched some of a very disturbing movie. owever at the same time i found it quite educational. i think it to be very important that we be exposed to visual education like that movie. as we discussed in class today somtimes the shock of being visually exposed to such things is much more effective than reading about somthing. a perfect example being the anti smoking commercial that has been on tv about how smoking is bad for children which shows small kids with smoke coming out of their noses and mouths. the commercial is especially effective because we can picture our younger siblings, cousins, etc as the child in the commercial. i totally understand the negative reaction that many of my classmates had to some parts of the movie. it relates back to the commercial. we all sat there imagining the horro of our cats and dogs being treated as those in the movie were. that is called shock value and it is somtimes the most effective way to get information across.
personally i would be interested in seeing the rest of the movie. i think it is quite well done withthe intent of educating people about what is going on in the world. it is most definatly disturbing at parts but as i've said perhaps that is what it takes to get through to people the horrific things that humans do to animals all over the world in the name of sport, religion, and tradition.

Animal Morals?

today in class we had a long and very interesting talk about if animals have morals as we think of them. I'm inclined to think that they don't, at least not as we think of morals. i was pleased with the different levels of cognition that professor Johnson was explaining. i do think that animals have cognition in that they can feel and react and respond to things. however i don't really think they have much of the meta-cognition he spoke of or the moral reflection which falls along the same lines. i believe that for example when we are sick and our pets seem to get closer and be 'comforting' us is mainly the natural animal instinct to protect their own from what ever may be bugging them. when we have pets for example dogs, we become part of their 'pack' and the natural instinct of dogs as with their relatives the wolves is to protect and care for their pack members to the best of their abilities. if that means sharing warmth when we have the chills or in some cases hunting for food if we are incapacitated then that's what they do. i don't really think they spend a lot of time thinking about why they do things for us beyond perhaps 'this will get be a biscuit' or 'this will get me thrown out in the yard'.
over all i think there is potential especially in dolphins, elephants and the great apes say. there may come a time when we know more about how the brains of these animals work and if they really are capable of higher thoughts than we think they are. until then I will continue to appreciate the love and affection they give us and not question it.

Naturalism and Supernaturalism

Can the coexist peacefully?
as i stated in my q&a 3 answer i think that they could if people were willing to think about what they say and how they say it before they actually say anything. i was quite intrigued by the conversation we had in class Monday. i thought a lot of good points were made. one huge one that was made involved the idea of even the factions of supernaturalism needing to work on getting along better within that group never mind getting along with followers of naturalism. what would it take for that to happen when there are so many differences within the group of suernaturalism itself?

THEME FOR ENGLISH B
By Langston Hughes
The instructor said,
Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you--- Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York too.) Me---who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white--- yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American. Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true! As I learn from you,I guess you learn from me--- although you're older---and white--- and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.

I found this poem very interesting not only because it speaks of an experience that is universal for us all the writing of a paper but also because i think it relates to our topic because it is about Hughes trying to find out the nature of himself. How often is this the process used to discover things about the human race and the nature of our existence?