Alright so before i begin, i just wrote this whole blog out, and thought i had saved and published the post, but it didn't, i pressed the wrong button or something, so now i'm a little pissed but here goes. I will attempt to recreate what i just said:
Ok, so i pleasantly surprised with how this essay turned out. Judging from the title i figured it was going to be a long rant about how hard it's been to be an Indian since the white man showed up. I should have known by now that whenever i think that about something in this book, i'm almost always surprised to be looking at something in a way i had never thought of before (although in my defense i had heard a quote once about how if you always plan on the worst, your life will always be full of happy surprises). It's not that i don't feel bad for the indians, because i do feel that they were mistreated, it's just that i wanted to hear something different and different was definitely what we got.
We were told in the preface that this was less of an essay about indians than a "behind-the-scenes" look at this woman compiling "evidence" about what she was going to write about, which happened to be the american indians. She starts it off by giving an anecdote which outlines the difference between an ideal of something and the reality of something. For modern americans, we romanticize the indian and what it meant to be one. This part reminded me of "the loss of the creature", when we see indians we want to see our ideal of what they should be, based on movies, etc. We want to experience "it", the authentic feel of what we think it is to be indian.
She goes on after this to explain that she is writing a paper and gathering all the facts she can get about the indians and the relations they had with early settlers until present. what she ended up getting was a problem that arises when none of the "facts" seem to fit very well with each other. She attempts to circumvent this problem by going to other sources, and then first hand accounts, and yet what she finds is an intense degree of perspectivism. Every has an influence acting upon how they see and feel and event, therefore everyone roughly sees in essence, a different reality of the same event. we see things as we are taught to and how we feel we should. some people have bad experiences with a group of people and search out (i believe unconsciously) for anything that backs up what they felt or thought when having the experience. Same goes for the people who had the good experience. What does that mean? truth is subject to perspectivism and is intrinsically relativistic?
This is an interesting dilemma and she ends by saying:
"The moral problem that confronts me now is not that i can never have any facts to go on, but that the work i do is not directed toward solving the kinds of problems that studying the history of European-Indian relations has awakened me to."
Basically, her search for answers led her to more questions. By addressing the problem of truth, she is doing what many others have done, ignore what it is we should be focusing on in order not to repeat it, but how does one do that without all the facts?
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Panopticism
Scariest thing ever. i honestly got a little bit of the chills reading this although i thought it would make for a really cool /creepy movie, with people living out their lives in this state, millions of people constantly monitered, like a big brother type thing but even more intense.
Extremely difficult to get through. kept finding myself lost in a daydream where i was one of the guards watching the prisoners, and i felt sick at being there. i wanted to help but my fear of getting caught and being put into a cell was too overwhelming for me to try anything.
I liked the use of plague to demostrate at what point people will give up all freedom in order to have security. For all that we talk about freedom, it really doesn't take too much for people to surrender all of it in the hopes that someday they will get it back, at least partially; along with their lives. The scary thing to me is that once someone has that much power over another, it can sometimes be hard to let them go completely free again, or at least without some sort of tag attached. From that point on you will be in perpetual debt to the person that not only saved your life, but set you free afterwords. You will never quite be free from their clutches because power is a funny thing and once men have it over another man, it can be hard to get it out of that man's head. He will want compensation for freeing you, even if it's what he promised to do in the first place.
Of course i don't mean all men are like this but you never can really be sure i suppose who is or isn't which is what scares me about the whole concept of control.
Extremely difficult to get through. kept finding myself lost in a daydream where i was one of the guards watching the prisoners, and i felt sick at being there. i wanted to help but my fear of getting caught and being put into a cell was too overwhelming for me to try anything.
I liked the use of plague to demostrate at what point people will give up all freedom in order to have security. For all that we talk about freedom, it really doesn't take too much for people to surrender all of it in the hopes that someday they will get it back, at least partially; along with their lives. The scary thing to me is that once someone has that much power over another, it can sometimes be hard to let them go completely free again, or at least without some sort of tag attached. From that point on you will be in perpetual debt to the person that not only saved your life, but set you free afterwords. You will never quite be free from their clutches because power is a funny thing and once men have it over another man, it can be hard to get it out of that man's head. He will want compensation for freeing you, even if it's what he promised to do in the first place.
Of course i don't mean all men are like this but you never can really be sure i suppose who is or isn't which is what scares me about the whole concept of control.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Utopia Achieved
Oh man, where to begin with this one, it really wasn't fair making us read this one, because it made me feel outraged, ashamed, proud (in a strangely abstract way), and slightly sickened. i was forced into many mental tangents which forced me to take much longer to read this normally.
i noticed every compliment he gave to America managed to be an unapologetic back handed compliment, juxtaposed with a put down on Europe that made it out to be a tragic hero, led down a dark path in a desperate imitation of America, because of what America has that Europe will just never quite attain. It's funny how biased a person can be but at the same time speak alot of truth (although right here i'm simply speaking on my own behalf).
i have often lamented the non culture that makes up American identity (or non-identity). this is what causes me to hold our founding fathers in such high esteem and completely reject christianity. christianity to me is a transference of values that are alien to me, and should seem alien to anyone who can think for themselves and has a culture that pre dates it's suppressive take over (again i'm talking for myself).
this essay also reminds me of one i began to write in 101 about why we shouldn't strive to be perfect, because utopia is a false ideal that makes you inhuman by definition. Baudrillard seems to be making the same point in a way, but his attack (or critique) is on the American way of life and how it compares with the European way (or what he considers the European way). i did agree with him on certain points though and at one point i was seriously called into question about my case for freedom. i agreed that we have too much space for our own good. we can't appreciate what we take for granted. suburban sprawl is about the most disgusting thing i've ever seen. an example of this is when i lived in las vegas, it took me ten minutes to get to my nearest friend's house. the speed limit was 45 mph the whole way there and i usually went 55 but it still took about ten minutes. sometimes more and never less. why? we both lived in the suburbs, and there was endless expanses of unused desert land in between our houses and gigantic, black, ugly parking lots that were precursors for ugly utilitarian buildings with subway and vons labels on them. convenient? maybe, my values don't particularly fall in the convenient category. i'd rather pay extra for something nicer. this is fucking America, the richest country in the world (or was) and yet we have a wal mart and mcdonalds on every corner. i'm not attacking these businesses, this is a free market society and WE determine what exists and what doesn't based on what WE want, and WE want dirt cheap products any way that WE can get them.
i'm a big supporter of freedom though and the right to choose, letting the invisible hand guide our lives, but while reading this i definitely began to question my libertarian values, since that's what America was founded on but it doesn't seem that we can hold on to them. when we're free, we're bored. we don't just follow the program, we want to write everyones program and get into everyone's business. unfortunately, when you're free and rich, you lack meaning, and therefore must "save the world" to make yourself feel valid. maybe suffering is a good thing. maybe it's what teaches us appreciation. maybe we shouldn't be so free? now i'm not arguing for hobbes or bentham but maybe social injustice actually does us good? maybe meaning is really only gained through struggle? but struggle for what? freedom? equality? if it's good to have these things (if only to struggle to free ourselves of them) then what happens when we actualize our goals? America? where we claim to actualize but have really have only supressed the knowledge of these things? hmmm. good read.
i noticed every compliment he gave to America managed to be an unapologetic back handed compliment, juxtaposed with a put down on Europe that made it out to be a tragic hero, led down a dark path in a desperate imitation of America, because of what America has that Europe will just never quite attain. It's funny how biased a person can be but at the same time speak alot of truth (although right here i'm simply speaking on my own behalf).
i have often lamented the non culture that makes up American identity (or non-identity). this is what causes me to hold our founding fathers in such high esteem and completely reject christianity. christianity to me is a transference of values that are alien to me, and should seem alien to anyone who can think for themselves and has a culture that pre dates it's suppressive take over (again i'm talking for myself).
this essay also reminds me of one i began to write in 101 about why we shouldn't strive to be perfect, because utopia is a false ideal that makes you inhuman by definition. Baudrillard seems to be making the same point in a way, but his attack (or critique) is on the American way of life and how it compares with the European way (or what he considers the European way). i did agree with him on certain points though and at one point i was seriously called into question about my case for freedom. i agreed that we have too much space for our own good. we can't appreciate what we take for granted. suburban sprawl is about the most disgusting thing i've ever seen. an example of this is when i lived in las vegas, it took me ten minutes to get to my nearest friend's house. the speed limit was 45 mph the whole way there and i usually went 55 but it still took about ten minutes. sometimes more and never less. why? we both lived in the suburbs, and there was endless expanses of unused desert land in between our houses and gigantic, black, ugly parking lots that were precursors for ugly utilitarian buildings with subway and vons labels on them. convenient? maybe, my values don't particularly fall in the convenient category. i'd rather pay extra for something nicer. this is fucking America, the richest country in the world (or was) and yet we have a wal mart and mcdonalds on every corner. i'm not attacking these businesses, this is a free market society and WE determine what exists and what doesn't based on what WE want, and WE want dirt cheap products any way that WE can get them.
i'm a big supporter of freedom though and the right to choose, letting the invisible hand guide our lives, but while reading this i definitely began to question my libertarian values, since that's what America was founded on but it doesn't seem that we can hold on to them. when we're free, we're bored. we don't just follow the program, we want to write everyones program and get into everyone's business. unfortunately, when you're free and rich, you lack meaning, and therefore must "save the world" to make yourself feel valid. maybe suffering is a good thing. maybe it's what teaches us appreciation. maybe we shouldn't be so free? now i'm not arguing for hobbes or bentham but maybe social injustice actually does us good? maybe meaning is really only gained through struggle? but struggle for what? freedom? equality? if it's good to have these things (if only to struggle to free ourselves of them) then what happens when we actualize our goals? America? where we claim to actualize but have really have only supressed the knowledge of these things? hmmm. good read.
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