Journal 6 Already???

September 24th, 2020

9:40am

Today was the quiz on Philoctetes and I have to say that it completely kicked my tail time wise. Usually I can fly through those quizzes and be confident in my answers but for this quiz I was moving slower than a sloth. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before so I guess my brain was just foggy so I wasn’t super confident about my answers however when it came time to go over the quiz I didn’t miss too many! Being pleasantly surprised is always a wonderful thing, plus a lot of my classmates were moving at a slower pace this morning as well so I didn’t feel like I was holding everyone back.

After the quiz we were discussing political systems and dehumanization within them. This topic brought back to mind the book suggestion that Professor Sandridge had given us last class which was Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. This book guided the rest of the class discussion up until the end at 11:00am. We discussed Wilkerson’s concept of the 8 pillars of a Caste system because as Professor Sandridge stated, “you can’t really smash the system if you don’t understand how it works.”

The 8 pillars are as listed:

1. Divine Will & Laws of Nature -religion and nature
2. Heritability -born into levels of society
3. Endogamy & The Control of Marriage -no interracial marriages, no same sex marriages
4. Purity vs. Pollution -segregation to keep areas “pure”
5. Occupational Hierarchy -different classes get different roles in society
6. Dehumanization & Stigma -looked down upon by those above you
7. Terror as Enforcement -cruelty=control, ex: police brutality
8. Inherent Superiority vs Inherent Inferiority -seeing those below or above you

In addition to discussing the Caste system, Professor Sandridge put us into breakout rooms to come up with groups of people that have been dehumanize in our society in various categories. For my group we discussed the economic category. Homeless people are viewed as physically disgusting due to their lack of health resources such as healthcare, showers, clean clothes and shelter. They are also looked down upon and treated as outsiders because they are not like those with money and may not have lived the easiest lives or made the best decisions. Opportunities that we have to change this would be providing a place for free public showers dedicated to the homeless, government mandated clothing and food drives by companies that can afford to give and fundraisers to help build homeless shelters. Leadership qualities one would need to have to accomplish these things would be creativity, organization and reputation/network.

Lastly, as a parting detail and tidbit of information from class based on the importance of human interaction and how one views the importance of getting to know people, in 1619 possessions were more important than bonds between humans thus showing how much people cared about one another. Some may even argue that this still occurs today and to that I would say that they aren’t entirely wrong.

Sept. 27th, 2020

8:15pm

El Muerto reading assignment

Part 2: Questions while reading Borges

1. Who is the narrator? Can I trust what their saying is true? I’m not completely sure who the
2. Why does Borges mention a street, city or neighborhood in his work?
3. What seems to be the purpose in this work by Borges?

Sept. 29th, 2020

9:40am

It’s a Tuesday! That means no quiz today whoop whoop! I love this class on Tuesdays because I don’t have to stress out about quizzes and the whole class gets to be one big discussion.

Today in class we broke off into groups to compare the characters in El Muerto to previous characters that we have read about. In my group was Lettirose, Jalah and I. We decided to focus on Benjamin and Bandeira for our comparisons and said that Benjamin could relate to Binti and Odysseus while Bandeira related to Odysseus as well. Benjamin and Binti can be compared because they both were considered outsiders. In the beginning of the story, Benjamin flat out stated that he felt like and outsider while in the story of Binti, she was an outsider to her community by leaving to go to Oomza University and an outsider to her fellow students by being the only person of her ethnicity to be at the University. They can also be compared because in section 7 of the El Muerto translation, Benjamin says that he is upset at himself for not missing home more and for Binti she wasn’t missing home very much either once she left because she was following her dreams. As for the comparison to Odysseus, their narcissistic and deceitful mindsets are where they would get along perfectly. Benjamin was full of himself and deceived those he was supposed to be leading while Odysseus followed the same suit. Bandeira can also be compared to Odysseus because they were both widely feared leaders in their areas of authority.

After our group discussions, we came back to the main classroom and tried to come up with undiscussed comparisons and one that Professor Sandridge made was fairly interesting. He compared the Red Headed Woman to Penelope in the Odyssey. They were both women that were used as a tool to assert male dominance, which was something I hadn’t thought about connecting before.

Notes from class discussion:

• Psychopaths think about how to cause people pain in order to get what they want. (Much like Benjamin and Odysseus)
• Lying is a form of manipulation so does it make sense and count as leadership if the government lies to the public in order to protect them? Does motivation behind the lying matter? Was lying the best choice? — I believe that lying can be used as a tool for the greater good of the public however when it is something as serious as a global pandemic, I believe complete honesty and clarity is necessary in order to be a good leader that cares for his people.