Thursday, October 25, 2012

myth and diversity

In my school I saw a presentation on diversity. The presentation was very enritching. There was a pannelle of  people who grew up with hard times because of there culture. They shared there experiences and stories. Each and everyone was different and unique. However, every single person had something in common with the person next to them. Understanding, emotion, a need to be themselves, a need to not be judged. This is like mythology. Each and every story has there own twist because of the culture they originated from, but even though the cultures are different they still have similarities as well. People from different countries grow up telling there children horror stories that can end up being myths. for example the lochness monster. It was labled a myth because it has not been proven incorrect or correct. They still tell the story in there culture to scare people. every culture has something different they use to scare. different fears for different people. Yet we are all connected by that fear. though it is a fear of different things, the feeling of fear is no different.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

dreams and myth part 2

when you dream you are thinking of your inner most fears and your inner most desires. For example when you have a boyfriend/girlfriend and you dream of them breaking up with you, it's because you are scared of losing him/her. Or if you dream of a pony you might want a pony. <-- that was a joke. But seriously, your dreams are filled with unconscious thoughts, things you might never think of when you are awake. Myth had to have started somewhere. that somewhere is from stories that probably turned into beliefs. When you come up with stories that is your unconscious side coming out. All humans can have hidden desires. alot of the time humans have common desires. humans have an unconcious need to have something to believe in, a reason why things are here. myths explain things like how the sun appears everyday, or why winter comes. so cultures all around the world came up with similar ideas because of those secret needs.

Friday, October 12, 2012

prolouge: myth and dream

I started reading the book "the hero with a thousand faces". What I got from the first part in the prolouge is that mythology can posibly be sub-conscious. Joseph Campbell started off talking about a dream an American youth had. Basically, the dream had to do with him accidently killing his dad, and his mom consoling him with kisses. Then Cambell countinued to talk about how a mother and child have a special psycollogically and also physical relationship. If you didn't know alot of myths deal with mothers having children with their son and fathers having children with their daughters. This could be a result of the special physical and pycollogical bond between child and parent. The portion of the book basically tells that humans have hidden desires or have dreams that make all humans think in generally similar ways. Their for the dreams/disires could be how all different cultures came up with similar ideas

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

outliers reflection

The book outliers talks about how it is easier for the chinese people to do math because of the Chinese characters. I am not Chinese, but I am good at math.  I don't think the characters have anything to do with it. If we work harder for it, we could be just as good as any other culture. Plus, as some of my classmates that know chinese Americans said, they still count in the American language. It might also have alot to do with the circumstances in our life. how hard our parents push us and what life style we were born in.

In the book it also talks about kipp school. The school isn't in a good neighborhood and there are alot of students in every classroom. Apperently, the best learning situation is a class with less kids. So, really kipp school was kind of a test. The kids were choosen by a lotery pick. They are in school by 7:30 and school ends at 5. they have alot of after school activities. they are all required to be in the orchestra, which is said to make you think better. So inspite of the situation, the kids are getting a good education. this is where I go against what I said earlier about situations influencing your abitlitiy. Even though the students weren't in the best environment, they all worked hard and got good grades. As a public school student, I feel like my school time is to short. We only get fifty minutes to learn a certain topic everyday, and only get 45 minutes of homework. I like the amount of homework, but I don't feel like I have enough time to get our questions out. There has been so many classes where my teachers were in the middle of explaining something, but then the bell rings. Then we have to waste more time the next day to finish explaining something we were supposed to finish the day before.

The ethnic theory of plane crashes is a chapter in the book that is explained greatly. The chapter starts off talking about a captian of a korean air fight. He died in a huge plane crash. There are only .27 per million departures that fail in american airlines. For korean air in 1988 to 1998 4.74 per million departures failed which is more then 17 times higher. The reason for this is because of cultural differences. the koreans where tought that telling the authorities that they did something wrong was disrespectful, so they didn't report problems. Americans weren't tought that way. When there is a problem they went to whoever was in charge and told them exactly what the problem was and that they wanted it fixed. This is interesting to me because i like knowing how different cultures do things differently.

Friday, October 5, 2012

new book chioce

Alright, I know that I haven't written lately. I apologize for that. I came to realize that reading an encyclopidia is very dry, and very boring. I couldn't get interested in it enough to continue reading it and continue researching. So I decided to change my book! My critical thinking teacher, Mr. Leathum, reccommended the book the hero with a thousand faces. I think this book will give me more information on why all kinds of cultures from around the world came up with similar theories of gods and our world. Plus, I'm sure it will be alot more interesting than the encyclopidia!