the gulags of north korea and the weakness of family

in the gulags of north korea shin was tortured into hating his own mother and now in some ways finds  a life of freedom more difficult. what was most shocking was his hate for his mother and his mothers abandonement of him, how authority can destroy the mother and son bond and eradicate love. in those sitautions you discover the darkness of humanity how a group of people or one person can dominate its people in evil ways for their own greed and how when pushed those being controled dont really seem to bond together to cope with or fight oppression, how love and morals dissolve and they just fight to survive. you some times here those idealistic tales how people who stood together and form bonds stronger than the iron fist that rules them to survive or escape but here we learn that freedom comes from sacraficing friendships and friends aswell and it really is a bittersweet victory.

a variety of truths (just pick one that works)

Truth is malleable as there is no real objective truth. So leaders and even everyday people  can just pick one that works, depending on our intentions. Leaders can fabricate truth by propoganda, scare tactics, like in 1984 the party used propoganda like the big brother brother posters annd eventually tortured Winston to believe 2+2=5 and to love the party. But this difficult to maintain, so these authoriatarian leaders have to keep forieng ideas from conflicting with this truth and they often exploit the youth (like the junior spies in 1984, hitlers nazi youth, and mao tse tongs red guards) to help maintain their truth their power. That control of truth is a little extreme so most politicians control the perceived truth through language. They might downplay something horrific using that political language. They call children who fled their home and families to escape the jaws of war, displaced peoples or something. Scientists use whatever truth can be backed up by rationality, truth that they can argue so they run tests gather evidence for their idea and even when their idea gains credibility it still is just a theory not an objective truth. Everyday people can sort of craft their own truth but its usually just the practical truth the one that would suit their lifestyle their society often its just the truth their told. Like in the world of small children who celebrate Christmas, there is the truth that santa claus exhists because their parents tell them he does, every Christmas they find presents that magically appear under the tree and find and empty plate and glass which were previously filled with milk and cookies .  There are exceptions of course but a majority of people are convinced of the ideals and truths of their society.  

Reflection on language activity

Last class we rewrote speeches of politicians by following Orwells rules and then doing the exact oposite. when following his rules i found out how difficult they were to follow, it was always easy to write in simple language, but keeping it specific was sometimes was difficult. it was also hard to write simply and still write well. trying to follow orwells rules i sometimes ended up just sounding like a second grader trying to write a speech, not a poet. i think orwells rules can produce good speeches if your a writer with the caliber to follow them, but if you cant they can just be dull and unconvincing, theyre not practical for all of  us. also during the activity i learned how language can manipulate the percieved "truth" in political speeches, how faults of the party can be downplayed and danger can be played up. like how bush used the word "regime" to describe certian countries. regime has dark connotations, to me it seems like a mysterious powerful government made up of sly barbaric leaders. he does this to create a fear of these regimes justifying americas attack of them.

Politcal writing- dry but still powerful and necesary

My reaction to george orwells politics and the english language was mixed. I agree that we need to write more efficiently and that using trite phrases weaken our writing. But I am not entirely opposed to moderate use of pretentious words, if we dont use new words how will our language ever expand how will we ever learn new words, however our sentances should never sound like the every word was plugged into a theasarus?  I was skeptical of  his argument but when he juxtaposed the old English and modern English passages, the old English was  by far better. Although  Political  writings are drier and less clear, I admire their ability  to manipulate language to express their ideas in a way that benefit their cuase. He also mentioned that the only political writings that aren’t written dully were those of the revolutionaries. Those for an orthodox party talk with a voice of conformity. Our  widespread use of this stale political language shows our need to conform. Political language is its own form of propaganda, it can bend the truth and sound educated enough that people eat it up. While Orwell presents this language in a negative light, I think he fails to highlight that its effective that we are all believing it and copying it.

in response..

We is an inversion of the idea of breaking from forest to create civilization. Like the Giants the people of the one state are naïve in their admiration of the benefactor, the way I child might view its parents in their early years. Yet i330 begins  to see the world outside and no longer views the benefactor in that way. I think partly the reason why 1330 is a teenager is because that’s the age when children rebel against their parents, it’s a normal natural and necessary thing to rebel as a teen so ithink that suggests that the same applies to societys and revolutions as well. But they live in a world of rationality and "ominiscience" and yet they want to go back to thier natural roots oposite of the forest article.

In response to samanthas comment on conformity

I think conformity is more of a reaction society and its realities. When we were young we all wanted to be astrounauts, fire fighters, or ballerinas things of that sort based purely off fantasy and desire, we never wanted to be real estate or insurance agents, or work in 9-5 office jobs, or have a house in the suburbs, the practical more realistic futures. But in youth we had very little responsibility we didn’t think about how hard we had to work to become what we wanted or how we would have to pay the bills. Because we had no responsibility and only dreams we didn’t want to conform. But as our responsibilities increased we learned that life was difficult and everything took work and practicality became more important than dreams. I think also school increases these notions especially in highschool when we have to be thinking about college. for me  At the end of eigth grade the teachers basically scared us into doing well, they said how everything counted for college and if you screw up to much your future was in jeopardy. They encouraged you to do the right thing the conforming thing, study and do lots of clubs for your transcript, be well rounded and all that. But this discouraged us from taking risks we felt like we could be penalized for mistakes so we don’t try a lot of new things we have less expierence, we know ourselves less we don’t really know our dreams, out of uncertainty we decide to to the practical thing conform.

forests

First the forests describes human development and illustrates our complex relationship with the trees and fascination with the sky through Vico's giants.

The giants are primate like humans that live in dense forest they have conscience

 Or consciousness, the dense canopy above them inhibits them from seeing the sky. However they are frightened when lightning strikes and they take it as assign from the skies to have morals and religion as well as science and rationality. I think this primal forest dwelling race represents the id of human psyche. The part of us driven by desire and survival our human instincts. But when lightning strikes we develop our super ego our society groomed side that keeps the id in check. Although the giants are primitive at the forest stage they aren’t necessarily portrayed as violent or unhappy just ignorant mostly. So we must ask are violence and emotional conflicts part of human nature or are these traits that we developed as we saw the sky? Was corruption from the same cradle as morality and rationality?

Additionally the breaking from the forest could possibly be compared to growing up. You begin ignorant survival and desire oriented sheltered from the world in the arms of your parents, (forest). But as you grow eventually you will be struck by real world (lightning) leading to confusion and eventually you will learn of the world beyond child’s play and begin to break from your parents, you will start to cut down trees until eventually you leave home in search of your own life, you build a civilization. However even though you left the forest you start your civilization near a forest kind of like how in your adult life you want to have a relationship with your parents but you dont want to be clinging to your mother's apron strings.  

There is also a distinct correlation between the life cycle and the cycle of civilization. You start small and weak you progress and you decline until you are old and weak and die. The same applies to civilization. So when will the society’s of today go back to the forest? Will they go back for the same reason they left, fear?

INDIVIDUALS

Mario llosa believes that Peru has not yet come to that place where the individual can set himself apart from his society. he believes that a nation that gets to that point will conquer all. “the first to break up the masses into individual beings who with time gained the right to think and act for them selves would become thanks to that unknown exercise freedom, the most powerful civilization in the world.” However the author of freedom and democracy argues that this will never be possible even with freedom because humans arent able to shape their identities themselves so they conform. “the modern man is under the illusion that he knows what he wants but he wants what hes supposed to want.”Even though the state or church isnt controling our thoughts our desires our directions society still does. We may have the ability to act on what we want but the root all of our desire is conformity.