If Life Was Only a Spectacle

Humans live so earnestly everyday. We all know there will be a last night. Someday we will "flutter to the bottom of [our] windowpane[s]." Death is inevitable and because of that people choose to live life to the fullest while the light lasts. As we look through our windowpanes, some days we close our eyes and smile with the sun rays on our faces, as if all our worries have vanished; some days we stand still and hear our heartbeats to the rain pattering and feel vulnerable to the violent lightning bolts. Time stops during those moments. Experiencing those momentary emotions are how people know they are truly living.
Why do humans exist? This universe is so massive and humans are almost insignificant. For all we know, we may only be the chest pieces on the board of some superior being. The undefined "One" in The Death of the Moth gave light to this idea. A name wasn't given to this being, and for a great portion of the piece One was merely pitying and looking down at a dying moth which was identified with the humanistic term "he." One was observing the moth struggling during his last moments and his stiff body as death had taken him away. A wave of strangeness overcame the observer. The strangeness as the life bar diminishes, and the strangeness of the empty Game Over feeling. Life may only be a game for an observer. However, despite this fact, humans will continue to believe that life is their own.

The reason why One kept looking at the moth was because of how interesting and unique the scene was. Windows come in different shapes and sizes and are built with different materials. Humans construct their own type of window and look through the pane in different lenses. People make the decision on how they take on life. Death shouldn't be an overbearing existence. The windowpane should not be feared. Humans should embrace the windowpane as their own and appreciate how life is always in view.

Microaggression

Microaggression is prominent in society today. There will always be judgment and criticism due to human nature. Some naive people also known as the word police believe altering language is a key making change in our ways. They believe neutralizing language and using non offensive language is will slowly begin to unify. However, this is further dividing the people because there will be a clash in how they would want to express themselves. This form of unified language would most likely result in a depreciation in freedom of expression. At that point people would be conversing for the sake of needing to talk and discuss, not for the sake of expressing creatively to portray individuality. Books, poetry, and magazines would start to lose its purpose as the lack of expression continues to take over our society. School textbooks, documentaries, and encyclopedias will be the center of attention with regard to the limited speech. The "womyn" in our society will come to find using "ovarimony" less offensive and more relevant in comparison to "testimony." Little words and phrases will slowly reach the mechanical and robotic part of the spectrum. Appoint a Big Brother of our own  and we would have a dystopian world of our own.

Adjusting to a neutral or euphemistic type of language may appease the haters for the time being. The "fat," "stupid," and "poor" wouldn't have to worry about being subjected to microaggression. However, shifting our language wouldn't create a positive shift for those people. The "underhoused"  or "big-boned" people wouldn't magically change to a more preferable being. The root of this problem -- microaggression -- would not be solved. Our society would only digress farther from solving this issue.

Save our Language, Screw the Racism, Sexism, Prejudice

I'm just gonna put it out there to start off: humans are an ignorant species. Whether you agree or not, it's up to you. And I guess, in order to read on you'd need some level of open-mindedness. 

People always say "I'm fighting for a cause." How many of those people are actually helping to make change? Buying some tshirt that prints "I <3 Animals" or retweeting some post that says "Keep Calm and Save the Rainforests" are usually acts done to join the crowd or to pretend to be making a difference. You could probably wear it and post on Instagram to get couple likes and also get some likes for your retweet. Anything done otherwise to support this cause would be "uncool." Besides these bursts of social media, people refuse to take part and actually care for our Nature, our society, our world.

Save our Language, Screw the Racism, Sexism, Prejudice

Kakutani's piece does a great job in portraying another aspect of human ignorance. Racism has always been a center of debate -- before slavery was abolished and after. "Marked" woman are judged even more today than ever. Minority groups are silenced by the gratitude of minimal opportunity. What do we do to solve these crises? Oh sweet! "Superman(Superperson?) is reincarnated into four ethnically diverse clones"! People can now buy African-American ones, Asian ones, Caucasian ones, and Latino ones. Even Superman isn't discriminating anymore. That sure contributes to this dire issue of racism. Maybe the businesses should officially change the name to Superperson while they're at it. That would solve the problem of sexism too! People are so caught up in being"politically correct" and avoiding any offensive language. Euphemistic terms are thrown around to replace the once non P.C. language. Even a word police needs to keep us in check. Cause patrolling our language is as equally crucial as catching a murderer or tracking a thief. This overly zealous worshiping of the "talismanic power of words" is almost laughable. I can't say I'm not guilty of these acts at times because I am also human. I guess I'm more aware of the major ignorance levels in not only teens but the great population. I'm not sure of a good call to action, but at least spreading some awareness is better than nothing. 

Unmarked Territory

We had quite an interesting discussion in class about the "There is No Unmarked Woman" piece. One of the questions that were raised was whether or not Tannen's essay and topic is outdated. With society opening up to having more strong women and granting more equal opportunities for women, you would think that they are being treated on equal grounds in all aspects, that this controversial topic is no longer a major issue. However, this problem is actually more relevant today. Women have been and still are being subjected to judgment on a daily basis. Let's take the surname example. It is "traditional" to have the wife adopt her husband's surname. At the same time, some see it as the wife being "less herself" and more reliant on her husband's identity. On the other hand, there are cases where the husband adopts his wife's surname, possibly due to mutual agreement or because the wife comes from a more well-known family line. In these situations, the couple is likely to receive a lot of judgment. Because the woman didn't follow the "norm" she has people talking behind her back. "Oh, how disrespectful." "She's too ambitious for her own good." "Did she possibly marry someone less capable?" Due to the deviation from traditional standards and the change in status of women, it is more common to see a couple take the woman's surname instead of the man's. That doesn't mean society has readily accepted these changes and become open-minded as a whole. Women are slandered for trying to advance, for trying to live as an equal to the male sex, for trying to make their own statements. If a woman changes her surname she's viewed as weak and submissive. If a woman doesn't change her surname she's viewed as overly ambitious and disrespectful. Isn't this a lose-lose situation? Women will always be seen and treated as the marked gender. There is no unmarked territory for women. Women don't have the freedom to walk out without immediate judgment. For the men out there, if you acknowledge the fact that you are fortunate to be able to live unmarked by choice then alright. If not, then you need to open your eyes and be even more observant of the judgment directed at women that goes around because you may be judging all the time without even knowing it. Unfortunately, there is no unmarked woman. 

Weighing the Differences

There was a time when I made the decision to drop in the school weight room. A friend of mine had created a new workout routine, and I wanted to try it out (cuz working out after school is obviously more worthy than taking a nap and watching Netflix). Anyways, as I walked in that day, I immediately got stares from all corners of the room as if I stepped into wrong territory. Nonetheless, I followed through with most of the routine. However, I found myself staying away from the actual weight machines and making do with the dumbbells and elliptical. The boys were all "solid piles of rocks" as they huffed and puffed, all benching 100+. That experience was eye-opening for me. Looking back I now wonder why and how the weight room became such a gendered spot. Is it because girls simply don't prefer going to the weight room? Or is it because girls feel pressured not to go to a weight room due to its "masculinity"? It is evident that there are different parts of the body that are seemingly more important to each gender. For men, they should focus on a six-pack, biceps, and overall triangular body shape. While girls look mainly at their chest, butt, waist, and overall hourglass figure. This is probably why you hardly ever see girls at a  weight room because a yoga mat at home can do the job. It is nonsensical to have these standards placed on men and women. It only seems right that men build muscle and girls keep slim. However, men and women can have similar fitness goals. There is no set routine or machines more suitable for either gender. Society tends to deflect that subject by pointing out the physical differences between the sexes. Since people help push for this standard, there is a loss of individualism. Men and women are so fixed on achieving the perfect body and living up to societal standards in general. People don't even question why that ideal is ideal. We live in such a diverse world, but it'd be nice if we could actually see the variety in people: externally and internally.

Let's Think a Little

As we are nearing the end of our satire unit in class, I've come to learn how much of an impact satirical writing has on exposing issues that are already widely known or issues people haven't given much thought to. Satirical writing is able to take hold of an enduring problem and slap on some good humor to grab the audience's attention, as well as exemplify the issue by contrasting the seriousness.

In Joan Didion's "Marrying Absurd", she mocked how the people in Vegas were way too caught up in the moment, marrying "one bride out, another in, and again." The fact that people were willing to get married in these short, informal fashions that only cost couple bucks is one thing. But the fact that there are businesses that aid them in doing so is absolutely preposterous. Those that go as far as to create these type of weddings are diminishing a prominent symbol of love. This kind of business is the epitome of America's consumerist culture.  The people that embrace this country's consumerism take such a memorable moment in a person's life and not only markets it, but also markets it based on convenience with "show girls and baby Crosbys". America's consumerist culture is also visible in Jennifer Price's "The Plastic Pink Flamingo". Dating back to the early 1900s, America has already been working towards building the consumerism that is present today. America was able to manipulate and raise the popularity of a simple, pink bird and label it as "The Plastic Pink Flamingo" just to satisfy the consumerist needs. From there, America was able to create plastic souvenirs, pink souvenirs, and flamingo souvenirs. How convenient is that, am I right? As businesses are getting more greedy and citizens are getting more drawn to follow bandwagons, this consumerist culture will continue to plague our country. It is evident America circles around this consumerism and it's been a large part of our culture for a while, but this materialistic culture has gotten to a point where people no longer focus on the "Natural" but just the "plastic". 

America needs to open it's eyes to the real world and start thinking about subjects that actually matter.

Eat A Cake

After reading Horace Miner's piece Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, I was enlightened by an idea I never really gave much thought to. He writes about the barbaric practices of the primitive Native Americans. He discusses how the people follow these rituals of the Nacirema without much reason. Their "unique" mouth-rites are just "daily body ritual[s]" performed by everyone. Miner also points out their obsession over their shrines. This is parallel to the various day-to-day "rituals" we Americans practice today. In fact, Nacirema is just American spelled backwards. From there, it can be concluded that Miner's purpose was to mock the hygiene, medical, and daily life practices in our American culture today. 

Humans spend hours a week in their shrines, or bathrooms, to clean up in their "holy water," brush their teeth with "certain magical powders" on a "small bundle of hog hairs." The significance of teeth hygiene is crazy in our society. We have rows after rows of different types of toothpaste(fluoride toothpaste, anti-calculus toothpaste, whitening toothpaste, anti-plaque toothpaste, etc.) sold in our stores. We go to our dentists routinely for mere check-ups. Also we blindly accept our medicine and prescriptions from our "medicine men." There's so much medicine that we just use because it's prescribed. This exemplifies how we humans are oblivious to our surroundings and just follow through because those acts are commonly practiced. 

Even though we appear to be much more civilized than the Nacirema, the practices we follow have the same foundation. People should stop being so stressed about looking good and maybe pay a little more attention to the "why's" or other enjoyable highlights in life, like eating desserts :)) (I tried)