You can post your responses here. Feel free to respond to someone else's post if you think it's the best way to do so. Remember:
- put your name on the post so I know who gets credit.
- a response needs to be more than 3 sentences to be substantial enough to get credit.
Alternately, you may turn them in during class tomorrow.
Thanks!
Response to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
ReplyDeleteSo for me the citizens represent the wealthier countries of the world, while the "problem child" represents the third world countries. The wealthier countries "lock" the poorer ones in the closet and go about life pretending like they don't exist. Every once in awhile they may open the door and take a look, but thats all they really do. They don't really help in any substantial or lasting way. Much in the way we have all of these ad campaigns to help after disasters but are quickly forgotten. -Trevor Stewart
Response to Robbins Ch. 3
ReplyDeleteThe section that caught my attention was the part about the “Birth of Finance and the Tulip Bubble of 1636/37.” The reason for this was because it explained how futures work which is where someone buys the rights to sell something at a given price, but it’s possible to not even have the item but just expect to sell the right to it before you have to deliver it. I never would have thought that tulip bulbs could have such a huge impact and who would have thought that someone would pay 5,500 guilders when the average yearly income was 200-400 guilders. It just goes to show you that people will buy things that they don’t need.
-Garfield Anderson
Some interesting information I gleaned from this week's readings is information about how money has a mind of it’s own, or at least somewhat. Also the idea that nation states are somewhat a 19th century construct! Money, once it was determined that it must produce interest, became a creator of money more than anything else. Maybe initially the 3rd world countries came knocking for money, but money itself needed those same countries in order to grow and give a return greater than the interest being paid on the deposit.
ReplyDeleteIt also is interesting to think of nationalism being generated by the governments of europe instead of coming up from the citizens. Especially in France to think that most people didn’t even speak French and didn’t even think of themselves as French until educated! Both the idea of money and the idea of how nationalism began, are perspectives that are not normally addressed in the history books that I read in school or even in my world civ classes back in the day.
Michael Carpenter
Response to "The ones who walk away from Omelas"
ReplyDeleteThe "happy" people represent some wealthy country, while they lone child in the closet represents some third world country. Sometimes a wealthy country goes and conquers or at least goes to war with a third world country, leaving it in a worse state than what they were. The people that leave Omelas represent those who realize that something needs to be done for those third world countries, but always try and change it on their own by their own different ways, they never return to their old life in the wealthy country. Jose L. Garcia
Response to Robbins Ch. 3
ReplyDeleteThe "Second Great Contraction" section is what got my attention as it has obviously had a huge impact on our lives today. Robbins explains what was going on with the housing bubble well and compares the crisis to similar banking crisis' talked about in the chapter like the dutch tulip example. The data in table 3.4 is quite eye opening, the sector with the least amount of debt, state and local still has over $7K debt per person and this was taken 3 years ago, it would be interesting to see what the figures look like today. The book also does a good job explaining how wealthier countries have trouble sustaining economic growth which makes sense, it is much easier to improve when your base is comparatively small.
-Mark Peterman
A response to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a world in which many have to suffer for others to prosper. Ursula narrative makes people face the elephant in the room. As we face this elephant we are stuck in the same paradox that the people of Omelas were. Some of us try to help; others just try to forget it even exists, but the child will still be there. Humans are fallible, and Ursula sums up the major mistake that has taken place on Earth.
-Greg Haste
At first when I read this article I thought that the author was trying to describe a real place they had gone. I was half way through the article when it struck me that this was a metaphor for the way we live in the United States. I liked when Guin says “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy?” To be honest I couldn’t accept any of it because something wasn’t right. When she describes the boy in the closet it made a lot more sense to me. For some reason as long as at least one person is suffering the happiness isn’t that ludicrous. I can’t explain why the world works that way or why human nature requires someone to be suffering in order for things to make sense but the fact is that some must suffer for others to prosper.
ReplyDeleteA response to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading the article reprints, I found it interesting an actually a “fun read” as you had mentioned in class, however I didn’t really find it relevant to anything we’ve talked about in class. I say this because in class we have not talked about a utopia, which I believe this is describing. We have mentioned slaves and mistreatment and racism, but no utopia.
I find this article interesting, however I cannot say I understand it. I do understand the fact that it is about a perfect place, but then it throws you off by saying that there is something locked up and anytime someone sees it, which is not very often but yet everyone knows of it, they are frightened and it begs for people to let it out. I just don’t understand what it is and has to do with the story and what this article has to do with class because we do not live in a perfect world, nor will we ever.
-Heidi Schultz
This article was not describing a perfect place or utopia as you mentioned above, but the way we view our own society. Many people within our society live day to day ignorant to its own evils. Although many of these people are young and innocent, most realize that our own happiness is a result of somebody else's misery. The article describes a joyous city with out guilt, where its inhabitants live life without worries and evils. Yet when each citizen reaches the age old enough to understand the parasitic nature between society's happiness and misery, the "utopia" becomes a different place. This article metaphorically describes the way we choose to ignore our neighbors suffering in order to better our own living conditions. Within the article a few inhabitants decide to leave Omelas and walk into the darkness and unknown. This represents the few people of our own society who destroy the paradox of good and evil, leave a "happy" utopian lifestyle, and search for a way to rid the world of suffering. This very much relates to both our own lifestyle and Anth 366.
Delete-Kelsi Swenson