Remember the Blogs

Bluemem#10- My blogging world

            Well I spent a whole semester blogging about memories that I have had that started off as good memories but ending up leaving a sour taste in my mouth. Memories in blue symbolized memories that were beautiful to me at first glance. Below the blue rose displayed that in reality nothing is ever perfect and almost always sticks you with a thorn or two. I enjoyed writing about my memories.                                        

            When I first started this blog, I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it actually turned out to be to connect my memories with readings we had done in class. The first blog, I must admit was my most difficult connection. The big idea in our first reading was society and the public sphere and  I really struggled with trying to make a  connection with some event in my life. Once I got over the hurdle of the first blog however, the others seemed to flow a little better into each of my memories as I was writing. 

      I would like to use this blog entry to reminisce on what I readings I enjoyed the most in class. Okay so Putnam, I enjoyed her reading because I felt like there was a lot of truth to the things that she suggested. I personally agree with her claim about how successful one is in life is often based off of who they have as connections.  I also enjoyed both of Turkle’s readings. “The Nostalgia of the Young” and “Growing up Tethered”  both opened up my eyes to ideas I had never considered about my connection to social networks such as Facebook.  Sherry Turkle was definitely my favorite theorist this semester. Overall my blogging experience for the semester was a good one. 

Saving Me

Bluemem#9-The burden of "Paying it forward"

                 So in my english class we watched a video clip from the movie Paying it Forward. In this movie, “paying it forward” means helping any three people in the world without accepting any kind of reward for your good deed. When someone helps three people, those three people helped are each suppose to “pay it forward” to three other people and so forth. This movie suggests that if everyone did their part and “payed it forward” then the world as a whole would be a better place. When I first heard of this concept I  absolutely agreed with it, but then I thought back to a music video of my of my favorite music groups Nickleback.   

                When the music group Nickleback came out with their song “saving me,” I remember how in love I was with both the song and the video. This video starts off with a man being so distracted by his phone as he crosses the street, that he doesn’t realize an approaching car is about to hit him. Right before the car hits him a stranger comes and drags him out of the way. Right when the stranger drags the man out of the street, the man then starts to see numbers above the head of every person he sees.These numbers are approaching zero and they symbolize how much time a person has to live. So essentially anyone who has the power to see the numbers above someone’s head can try and prevent another person from dyeing if they see an opportunity to do so (this is not always possible like the elderly women entering into the ambulance in the video). BUT then the power to see the numbers above someone’s head is then transferred to  next person who is saved.   

                When I first seen this video, I knew that seeing the numbers is not something I would ever want to live with. It would just depress me to constantly see the numbers over the heads of family and friends get closer and closer to 0. I also know that if I was in this video I would try and save someone’s life if I had the opportunity to do so, but then I would feel bad about the burden I placed on them. (The burden of seeing everyone’s expiration date). I guess this is one example where paying it forward doesn’t always have to leave that satisfying feeling. 

Out of this world

Bluemem #8-There’s no I in team

                As a result of growing up in New York City, it is very easy and almost unavoidable to develop a very “stick to your self” kind of attitude. Everyone always view the people of new york city as mean, grumpy, and selfish, but I look at the people in my city as very busy people who work a lot more than they should and are always fighting through crowds of people to get to work. I mean who wouldn’t get grumpy every once in a while with those kind of conditions. But back to my point about sticking to yourself, in American society, people tend to have an individualistic attitude about work ethic and success. If you work hard and avoid having to depend on people for help, then you will be very successful in life. I must admit that this mentality was my way of life up until I went to High school.

               In high school, one of the clubs that I was really involved in called buildOn, encouraged students to play active roles in their community by engaging in community service and helping out those less fortunate than us whenever possible. They also encouraged us to do a lot of fundraising because the money from our fundraising would go towards building a school in a developing country. Well, during my junior year in High school I was one of eleven students chosen to travel to a developing country in West Africa to build a school. When we arrived and starting building the school, it was clear that trying to do any task on the school site would not be an easy task to do alone. The natives to the village where we stayed however new this and always stopped what they were doing to come and help out someone who needed it. For the two weeks that I spent in in Mali, West Africa, proved to me that society functions a lot better when everyone is willing to do their part. 

                       In my English course, we discussed the ideas of Robert D. Putnam in his piece Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival American Community. In this piece Putnam suggests that in the past societies ran because of civic virtue. People use to believe  that it was their duty and social obligation to keep society going so they we active members of society. People did things not because they wanted money, but because they wanted to impact the greater community. Well my time spent in Africa definitely illustrates civic virtue at its finest. Even though the people in the small village where I stayed did not have many of the luxuries that I am guaranteed as an American citizen, such as free education, their society was able to run much more efficiently and the people seemed a lot more happy than many of the people that I run into at home. I believe that the reason for this is because everyone within their society did their part. As a result of everyone choosing to do their fair share more things are accomplished and the greater society can reap the benefits of everyone’s hard work.