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The Ways We All Lie

In Stephanie Ericsson’s piece “The Ways We Lie”, acknowledgement is made that she herself routinely lies. In fact, the first two paragraphs are pretty much exclusively about her lying. Which makes her shift in tone as she moves from paragraphs six to seven to eight all the more interesting. At first, she seems to be making light of all the lying she’s doing in her day to day life, going so far as to say “We lie. We all do” (Ericsson 120). As she begins to break down the different types of lies, her dismissive attitude towards lying begins to become a tad more judgemental, and her definitions of liars and lying more all-encompassing. As she moves away from examples of her own shortcomings with honesty, it becomes easier to be condescending towards the well-intending white liar, or the misinformed stereo-typist (Ericsson 122, 125).  While I’m not one to defend liars, she can’t fault other people for falling victim to the same social pressures that cause her to tell her clients that “traffic was bad”(Ericsson 120).

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A Modest Insult

Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” was without a doubt the most entertaining and thought provoking piece of literature that I’ve read since being introduced to the Great Gatsby in high-school. Throughout the essay, I was laughing out loud at the sarcasm that could be seen dripping off of the page. One line in particular that really gave me a good chuckle was when he said “This would be a great Inducement to Marriage, which all wise Nations have either encouraged by Rewards, or enforced by Laws and Penalties” (Swift par. 26).

While this may seem like a less important line in the paper, the key phrase in this sentence is “all wise nations”. England, only a few years previous to this letter, had broken away from the Catholic church, for almost the sole purpose that their King Henry VIII could legally divorce his wife (and the next one, and the next one...). This move was incredibly unpopular among the Irish, as they were a majority Catholic nation. Swift is an Irish Catholic, a people who have been historically ruled and repressed by the English. So when he says that “all wise nations” encourage and support the tradition of eternal marriage between one man and one woman, he is excluding England from the “wise” nations of the world, and essentially calling its governing officials idiots. Oh, Swift, you sarcastic silver-tongue, how sneaky!

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Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates explains to his student Glaucus through the story of prisoner trapped in a cave, the nature of reality and perception. Prisoners chained in such a way that their only sensation comes from shadows cast upon a wall, have no frame of reference for anything else. So, if one escaped and became aware of the reality, the other two would consider him mad, and laugh at his descriptions of a 3-D, colorful world, simply because they have never been aware of anything similar, and have no concepts in their heads to compare such a situation to.

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“Some people have to go to work”

George Carlin, in parody of an already famous quote, once told an audience “Some people see things that are, and ask ‘why?’. Some people dream of things that never were, and ask ‘why not?’. And some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.” He might have been joking, but that statement summarizes with some accuracy how the first half of my semester has been going. I try to schedule time to study, to focus my creativity on my writing projects, to get ahead (or these days, play catch-up), but at the end of the day, I’ve still got bills to pay. Fortunately, my student aid appeal was approved, so hopefully I will be able to drop a shift or two from my weekly schedule. For now, I’ve got to go to work, but I can’t wait for the day (hopefully, in the near future), when I have time to ask “why” and “why not” again

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Prom, InsAllah

Haroon Moghul’s “Prom, InsAllah”, is about a lot of things. It’s about living in a place that doesn’t share your culture. It’s about balancing your beliefs with the beliefs of your parents, and the beliefs of those around you. Possibly, it could be said that “Prom” is about first love. However, I was so distracted and conflicted by one particular line that I couldn’t truly absorb the rest of what it was about.

“Not only did my mom and dad never talk to me about girls, but they also made sure no one else did” (Moghul par. 5). While I didn’t grow up Muslim, I did grow up in a religious household, who almost withheld me from sex ed as well. Sex Ed is an issue that sits between a societal solution and a social more for a lot of people. It doubtlessly has benefits to both the students and the community around them, but do those benefits supercede the traditions and beliefs of individuals? It’s not my place to say, but Moghul might not have been so obsessive about the opposite sex had his parents not maintained females as an untouchable mystery.

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My Brain on Video Games

As a gamer, I have never really bought the idea that video games were harmful to brain development. In Highschool, video games consumed a good chunk of my time, but I never struggled to keep good grades. After reading “Your Brain on Video Games” by Steven Johnson, I feel better about my mild game addiction than ever before!

I’ve always been particularly drawn to resource management games, whether survival or city building. I enjoy the challenges of balancing income generation and spending, and finding new tricks and tools to make me a more effective player. In fact, it was during a break from playing “Ark: Survival Evolved”, that I read through Johnson’s piece. So when he said “successful gamers must focus, have patience, develop a willingness to delay gratification, and prioritize scarce resources”, it really jumped off the page at me (Johnson par. 5). I had never thought about it, but is managing the collection rate of wood and stone on a screen, really that different than managing money and resource consumtion in real life? Over the few hours spent in the last week playing, I had been slowly gathering berries in preparation to tame a triceratops. As I put down Johnson’s paper, I returned to my monotonous berry picking, reinvigorated by the thought of the tame triceratops, and the added bonus of some real life management skills.

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Kimmel’s “‘Bro’s Before Hoes’: The Guy Code”

In his piece “‘Bro’s Before Hoes’: The Guy Code”, Kimmel presents a vision of manliness that seems simultaneously familiar and foreign. As a man, I had long been privy to “the Guy Code” but never felt that it applied to me, or most other men on a large scale. After our discussion in class, however, I realized that my feelings on masculinity might be more of the exception than the rule.

Perhaps the most shocking piece of this article for me, as well as Kimmel, was that “men subscribe to these ideals, not because they want to impress women... They do it because they want to be positively evaluated by other men” (Kimmel 611). As a man, I will admit to occasionally caving to the social pressures of masculinity in the pursuit of a woman, but the idea of jumping through these hoops to impress a bunch of other guys is absurd. If Kimmel’s evaluation of the cause of masculine identity crises is correct, then the majority of American men live in an emotional prison that is partially self-constructed, and partially passed down from previous generations. Fortunately, if that’s the case, all it takes to escape, is deciding you don’t want to be there anymore.