I really enjoyed reading the majority of texts we were assigned; it barely felt like work, but more of just an exciting challenge for my brain. I feel like it was much easier to make connections between these pieces than the three we read over the summer as they all covered the same topic, and it definitely helped that I had prior knowledge about some of these. I feel like I used the way we broke apart the readings in class while reading these, and using them helped me to understand the more complicated bits of these on my first time through. I really looked for what it was trying to say and how it was saying it, both with the words and literary techniques. It was more difficult to see connections to the concepts in the summer readings that we have discussed in class, but I feel like there could be an argument made that these stories tell of the self-fashioning of the Earth itself. God as the authority, and the Chaos and Satan as the aliens, and the world as the self being fashioned or created. I thought it was interesting how, generally, the different authors were explaining the creation of Earth and all things on it and in it, especially humans, but they all used very different writing techniques. It was interesting to me that I could not understand one author more than the rest, instead, other than the section in Genesis, I sort of understood all of them, and when I put them all together, I could see the entire picture. It was fun and challenging to make connections in my head to things I know from Genesis and how everything lined up. It was very interesting to me to re-read Genesis from a literary/ more analytical context and see how it connected to the concepts that we have been talking about in class this year so far. I am hoping that the class remains as respectful as it has been, but stepping out of looking at it from a religious point of view, I am interested to look at it with a more critical eye and see its importance as a piece of literature and how it has affected the world’s, as well as my classmates’, knowledge and beliefs. I wonder if there is a version of this story, the story of how the living things on the earth came to be, whether it is one of the ones we read or another, that is considered the first version. It is so interesting to me that there are so many different versions, each at least a little bit different. Since I have read Genesis before and had discussions on it in church, I feel like I had a leg up, especially in that reading, as I knew the story pretty well. In some of the other readings, I was able to pick out some of the stories I already knew and it made it much less confusing for me.
Summer reading: Reflection Three
In this book by Stephen Greenblatt, he talks about looking at his writing and splitting it into thoughts that represent himself and thoughts that represent the routines and rules in his self and his community. He says that you cannot just see all of the thoughts in one or these categories, because it will make the piece just a biography or separate you from the art. This goes back to what he talked about in the first section of summer reading. What determines what we like or dislike, so that we can figure out what an author felt when they made a certain piece and how their choice in aesthetics affects the piece. Greenblatt says that this part of our personalities is probably mostly determined by God, but if you take him out of the situation (because it is unlikely to be the only factor) it is likely that ‘culture’ is the major factor. Greenblatt describes culture as “plans, recipes, rules, and instruction (pg.___). In other words, your routines and the way you are taught or shown how to live your life day to day affect how you feel about the world, and ultimately, the way you write. This is probably why, in school, we learn about authors before reading their work, so that we can see why they may have written the way that they did. You could also go the opposite way, as Greenblatt says he attempts to, and analyze works of literature to try and figure out about the author’s personality and their ‘culture’ based on their writing style and the words they use. He notes that he thinks that it is obvious, at least for him, to speak these points in his own writing, and to see them when he reads his own work.
Greenblatt talks about making connections. He shows various points in history that start out completely different; different etiquette, different customs, etc., but by the end, they all have a common thread of chaos. In some of the stories he tells, he talks about unhinged writers and mad artists, pulling on the popular phrase, ‘If you aren’t unhappy, you won’t be a good artist.” This has become prevalent recently with the trend known as the ‘Emo Phase,’ and people writing dark poetry and embracing the sadness in their lives, like Raleigh in Greenblatt’s writing. In other stories, he says that we can reinvent ourselves, at least in literature. If we want to reinvent ourselves in real life, we have to start by realizing that the institutions around us are putting us into boxes, and we must force our way out of their grip to get out. You have to rise up and break free of their rules. There are so many examples of this in the history of the world, not just in the examples he shows, such as the French Revolution and the Tzars being overthrown by Communism. Both the crazed artist and the controlling institutions show a sense of chaos and being out of control, which pulls together these seemingly unrelated events.
Summer reading: Reflection Two
This section relates well to my Girl Scout Gold Award project. If you don’t know what a Girl Scout Gold Award is, it is the highest award you can earn in Girl Scouts. Just as an Eagle Scout project aims to showcase the skills that a boy has earned over his scouting career, the Gold Award attempts to show what the Girl Scout has learned in their time (in my case 13 years) of scouting. In Girl Scouting, we focus on leadership and community service. Rather than build a bench, pews for the church or a wilderness trail, we are charged with finding an issue that matters to us and finding the root causes that lead to that issue, then crafting a project around those root causes.
The issue I choose was sex trafficking. I saw the issue being spotlighted in a popular television show and realized I wanted to be a part of the solution. Initially, I wanted to help rescue individual girls, but I realized that not only would that be dangerous, it would take a long time and would be hard for me, a teenage girl, to do much at that stage compared to a professional. I decided to start digging into this sensitive topic and find the root causes. I came up with a bunch of “why” questions in this stage, such as, why do girls fall into situations where they are trafficked and taken advantage of, and, why do they stay in these situations and not try to leave? After a bit of research, I found that most of these situations start off with girls in unhealthy relationships that escalate over time. The girl falls in love, and uses this as a reason to defend their abusive partner, especially as most of the time the abusers are good at occasionally acting very sweet and loving, making the victim feel like it is her fault or that she is overreacting. Next, what ifs- What if someone (me!) could teach girls to get out of these relationships before they are physically or sexually abused? Now that I had found the problem and a possible solution, I needed to find a concrete way to reach the solution. To do this, I asked how- How do we show them what good relationships versus bad relationships look like? I answered this question with a seminar that includes videos, games, and a presentation. It sounds easy, but as the guy in our reading said, each of your big questions have a bunch of small questions to answer and tackle first, and that was definitely the case for this project.
I feel that this process, the idea of questioning, is how the world has to work to improve. Why does this work like that? What if it worked like this? How can we make that a reality? If we don’t question and follow this system, we will be content with what we have and never seek to improve our way of life.
Summer reading: Reflection One
Why do I like what I like? Why don’t we all like the same things? For example, my favorite band, BTS. I love this band with a passion, but most kids at Galloway dislike them. Why? I love them because I think that they are pretty, make nice music, are relatable people, funny, and talented. Others may not agree. Also, even within the same genre of music, some people like Got7 instead, claiming that they like them for the same reasons. Why dislike BTS? They like them for the same reasons, seemingly, but they don’t think BTS members are pretty, funny, or relatable and don’t like their music or think they are talented. What determines this? Why is what I like different from what you like?
Is it our personalities that make us gravitate towards one group or the other? But our personalities, the things that make us unique, are made up of what we like and dislike and why we like them. I like Kpop, I think that the music is really good. Also, the lyrics are more relatable to me than English pop songs which seem to be predominately about sex and drugs. I also like that the same band produces both pop and ballads, giving me a different music vibes for different moods.
So if it isn’t our personalities, is it perhaps brain chemistry? Or how we were raised? The environment in which we are raised? If that were the case, how do you explain my brother’s love of rap instead of the far superior Kpop? It feels like anything you could argue on this point is just that, an argument or an opinion. There seems to be no difference in brain chemistry, and some people resent how they were raised...my mother will never sell me on bluegrass! I am much more likely to enjoy my father’s AC/DC or my uncle’s Creedence Clearwater Revival. People strong in their beliefs will often not change their beliefs based on the atmosphere (I am not likely to turn into a Republican just because I am hanging out with my Indiana relatives).
So what is left? I feel like this is where religion and spirituality come in. Belief that someone or something more powerful than humans designed us to be different and have different opinions about things such as art. There is even distention about what classifies as art, and once that question is settled between two people: what, then, is good art verses bad? Some people like only representational art like the work of Kelly Reemtsen, others preferring the monochrome colors of Yves Klein or the abstract art of Jason Pollack. When personal taste can vary so much, how does one describe or critique art? I believe this must be at least partially determined before we are born, as our preferences begin to show themselves even as a baby. The red block goes in my mouth, while the green block is ignored. I squirm and pout when having to wear pants, but twirl and giggle when a dress is the outfit for the day.