the things they carried

In the things they carried, I think the main theme to get across is the horrors of war, not only the physical hardships it causes such as the men blown up by mines, or the harsh environment of the Vietemese jungle but also the psychological horrors it causes. Throughout the stories, it becomes clear that war just blurs and confuses everything, from your beliefs, the truth, and even perception.

For example in friends and enemies, we see how much the war has changed these two boys’ views of the world. In such an uncertain environment one lost sight of who "the enemy" really was. This makes you question not only what the psychological impact of war is on the common soldier but also whether they even knew what they were fighting for. They didn’t even know who their enemy was.

This actually brings me to a weird observation I’ve had. At least in the stories I’ve read so far there doesn’t seem to be so many encounters with enemy forces as there are just mines to disarm and skirmishes within the army to take care of. It kind of seems like this is done to take away from the conventional horrors you think of when you picture war such as bloody battles with gunfire and bombs. It makes you focus more on the soldiers themselves and how they’re being affected by everything.

The Vietnam War also greatly blurred the lines of truth. In one story Tim O’brian states how it doesn’t matter if seeing an orchestra in the forest really happened or not how it was all true. This shows how distorted their reality has become in the jungle. They are seeing things that are obviously not true and yet they accept them just as they accept the gruesome deaths of their comrades. I think this can tie into the larger blurring of truth that occurred with the Vietnam war, such as the government blurring the exact number of enemy and American casualties.

That’s all I’ve got so far. sooo yeah

Postmodernism??

Okay well we've been talking about postmodernism this whole semester so you'd think finally defining it would be easy. But, if anything I think Postmodernism for Beginners should have taught us how difficult a concept it is to grasp. After all, the entire book is 300 pages of questions just about trying to understand postmodernism. Of course, I can't put just that for my blog so I’ll try my best to summarize it in a long rant of random thoughts.

I think the central concept of postmodernism, if anything is about how society really has no central point. In our lifetime, we have seen huge leaps in technology that now make information from all over the globe available within seconds. Through all this information, we have been introduced to ideas and cultures very different from our own. We have been forced to admit that while our way may be right to us it is not the only way, and nor can we prove anyone’s belief is wrong. Maybe the moon is just a big celestial rock or maybe a Native American god vomited it. We have learned to accept all ways and open our minds to every culture and idea not just focus on one central truth. I believe this is the key concept in Postmodernism.

Im really not sure what else to say. To me that is pretty much what postmodernism is all about, abandoning the central ideas of the past and opening are minds o accept other influeneces from around the world. We no longer had a central them to our life but many small metanarratives. That is postmodernism is a nutshell

It Means People Are Dumb

okay so for this blog im mostly focusing on the video we watched in class friday and the random thoughts that popped into my head so, here comes the rant.

The main thing that stuck out to me was the fact that we watched this entire video about the huge excess of data and knowledge we have that is constantly becoming obsolete (which makes it seem like most of it was meaningless facts) and at the very end of the video the only conclusion there is is the question "what does it mean?". So even the video itself was a five min long presentation of facts and statistics and analogies with no conclusive meaning. Its great that we're in an age where so much knowledge is at hand but i think the big problem is that we've gone overboard and created insubstantial facts that naturally fall out of date in years.

Following this thought it seems like this is just another phase of humanity looking for something to base society off of. For example for along time we based society off religion. We managed to go overboard with this however with such atrocities as witch-burning and the countless crusades. When this overload of religion failed us we turned to science. As we've already discussed there was a lot of hope that science would lead us to a utopia. But, even science failed because again, we could not control ourselves and made horrible creations such as the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb.

So, after science failed us we entered a phrase of postmodernism, this involved such activities as de-centering which, as we discussed in class, can take any text and give it countless meanings . While this was good at first because it opened our minds to new possibilities we again took it too far. Literature was de-centered to the point where it could not reach any conclusion and no firm foundation could be made for an argument. This led into post-post modernism, which is essentially just an overboard exaggeration of postmodernism. Now, in pseudo modernism there is no meaning but that which the perceiver gives something and, unfortunately it leans toward meaningless and shallowness. Hence the huge quantity of information that someone somewhere deemed necessary but ultimately proved insignificant.

So, moral of the story, people always search for something to base their lives on, after finding it they take it too far ,whether it be religion, science, de-centering, or knowledge, and make that center of their lives unreliable.

Brave New World Essay

This essay is already sressing me out and its not even due for another week! I still am not quite sure what im writing about so this is pretty much rambling

I was reading through alot of peoples's blogs and I think one the more interesting views on this book is that people believe the society is absolutely opposite from ours. Im kinda realizing our society is really similiar to BNW in alot of ways. For example, we all think its horrible the people are conditioned to just buy and buy but our own society is very much based on commercialism. Look at how many people have gaming systems like playstation and x-box and whatnot. They're constantly coming out with new systems and new games so instead of buying one and just enjoying it we buy the new system the moment we can. Ipods are even worse! They're coming out with a new ipod semi-annually now and apple stops selling anything but the newest generation. The same thing goes for cloths. How many people actually know how to sew and will mend a ripped shirt? Most people just toss it and replace it with a new one. Granted we're not nearly as conditioned as the people in BNW but we're still constantly bombarded with advertisements pushing us to buy. Open any magazine and theres ads for clothes, hair, make-up, shoes perfume, anything. Even reading through most magazines one just learns about the latest fashion trends and the must have pieces for fall. Face it, we're just as commercialistic as BNW.

Thats just something i noticed, maybe i'll put it in my essay, if i figure out what it's gonna be about

Brave New World Thesis

So I am not quite sure what I want my thesis to be for Brave New World and I really do not know how I am going to reach 300 words so I apologize for the pointless rambling that is my blog.

I’m thinking the main point of any essay I write on Brave New World would have to involve drawing parallels between our world and Huxley’s because I really do believe Huxley’s ultimate goal for writing this book was to show how our society could easily turn into a totalitarian (but pretty cool) society. If I were to go with this idea I also think it would be good to compare the Brave New World society to the one in 1984 because really both societies are under the influence of the same evils. Both societies are rigorously controlled by their governments through the use of propaganda (big brother is watching you and hypnaedia) and manipulation of reality ( ministry of truth and conditioning). The only difference is 1984 made fear and hatred the primary emotion of all its inhabitants while Brave New World makes everyone happy, whether they like it or not. I guess another difference would also be that 1984 keeps a stable economy and society through the use of constant warfare to continually consume products while Brave New World promotes the epitome of consumerism.

Ahh I’m off topic. Okay so as far as drawing parallels between Brave New World and reality I think we are most like that world in that we also heavily promote consumerism. Granted it’s not our government promoting it its businesses and corporations but it’s still a huge similarity. Another parallel would be Fordism and Christianity, they’re both the primary religions, they’re both meant to make people feel like they’re a part of something bigger whether it be an omnipotent, omniscient being or the economy, and they’re both used to instill a set of beliefs that followers must live by if they don’t wish to be sent to an island, or in Christianity’s case, hell. I can’t think of any others but I will later

Sooo I never really stated my thesis but this got me thinking about the essay at least. And yay! I’m at 375 words.

Brave New World's Religion

I don't fully understand Postmodernism for Beginners but it seems like Lyotard's explanation of science relying upon narrative pretty accurately describes the Ford based religion seen in Brave New World.

In Postmodernism Lyotard points out that sciences main problem is it, "cannot legitimize its own activity", it relies upon political and philosophical narratives to explain the need for science at all. This is seen in the enlightenment ideals that science will bring knowledge to each individual and with this knowledge and progress we will bring happiness, to them," happiness means political freedom." However our society changed these ideals in the 20th century when science brought us World War II and The Holocaust. This disillusioned most people to the wonders of science and forced science to legitimize itself with efficiency for efficiency's sake.

However in Brave New World they have devised a system which allows science to be legitimate all in itself with a religious narrative. Through their worship of Ford the society in BNW has a narrative which,"legitimizes [itself]... just in the telling and at the same time [it] legitimizes the society in which [it] is told" but can also be proven on the basis of fact. We only really first see this religion in chapter 5 when Bernard attends a Solidarity Group. The ceremony this group performs is extremely similar to most church ceremonies, except for the drugs and sex obviously. Looking past the soma and huge orgy this ceremony's main purpose is to make the group feel like they are a part of a larger being. As Bernard observed it was ,"twelve of them ready to be made one, waiting to come together, to be fused, to lose their twelve separate identities in a larger being". This is essentially the point of any mass at Church, to make the church goers feel as though they are a part of their god's creation and plan as well as the church's orthodoxy. The only difference in the BNW religion is that because it is based upon Ford and the assembly line it holds up to scientific progress and actually encourages it. Without this religion their society is similar to the postmodern condition described by Lyotard in which Science is only concerned with performativity, or efficiency for efficiency's sake.

It's basically just another way Huxley has come up with a horribly perfect way to keep the BNW society running, by combining Lyotard's concepts of myths and science.

Oh and I know i didnt really bring up grand narratives at all but i dont quite understand them fully yet and what i do understand i don't necessarily agree with.

Brave New World-The Perfect Society

Like it or not i think in Brave New World Aldous Huxley has come up with the perfect society. I think this is just hard to see because it is so backwards from our perception of what a "utopia" should be. Their morals seem almost the complete opposite of ours. But this is how they achieve the perfect society; Rather than following in our example of morals that better the individual they have structured their beliefs around bettering society as a whole.

For example, The caste system, and conditioning in BNW makes for the perfect stable society in which all its citizens are happy and content, albeit mindless drones of a machine. In our society we are not grown in bottles and conditioned, inhumanly, to like our surroundings. We have parents who love us and as we grow we decided whether we like our life or not. If we aren't satisfied with our way of living we can change it through several means. However this causes Alot of stress. For one, parents can be a huge source of stress, especially around our teen years. And yes we are also a constant source of stress for them for years and years. Second, being dissatisfied with our social position can lead to a life-long struggle for promotions and money. Our society keeps this because we believe the reward to the individual, loving relationships and higher earnings, is worth the social disorder.

Another example of this can be seen in how they spend their free time. No one is ever supposed to be alone. In fact they've been conditioned to absolutely hate any solidarity they find. This is different from our society which requires solidarity for several educational reasons. Aside from obvious people like philosophers and writers who benefit from alone time even high school students need quiet to get homework done so, basically the main benefit people derive from solidarity is time for reflection and learning. To a society like ours, which wants individuals to better themselves, this alone time is beneficial. But to a perfect society it can be deadly. Solidarity will lead to reflection which may cause some people to realize their unhappy and even soma can't stop that. So, for a perfect society to exist all it;s citizens must be kept in a constant state of happy, active bliss.

So as long as we keep placing the individual above society we will never achieve a peaceful, productive utopia such as the one found in Brave New World.