ENG216 - Cultivating Curiosity

The making of this project was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. While all of the other topics we've studied with the other groups have been very interesting and incredibly important to discuss, "Guns in America" was the only one that I felt I've been directly affected by or that I could relate to most. Watching the After Parkland documentary in class genuinely brought tears to my eyes and doing the research for our slides really just made it all feel so much more real. Gun violence is a virus that plagues America. We see it in every state, dozens of cities, multiple shootings every single day, many of which don't even get media coverage. It's an obvious problem that affects each and every one of us, so why hasn't it been stopped? I won't go into too much detail since we already did that in our presentation but I do firmly believe this country needs stricter gun control laws or even to just ban guns altogether (though I do realize this is no easy ...

 Video link:  Homosexuality: It's about survival - not sex | James O'Keefe | TEDxTallaght This video put a completely different spin on the discussion regarding homosexuality and I found it incredibly fascinating. While a lot of arguments defending LGBTQ+ identities are more philosophical and focus on morals and ethics (though there's nothing wrong with this and these arguments are just as valid as others), this one dove into the science behind homosexuality and what in our DNA actually causes it. James O'Keefe took a completely different approach than what I'm familiar with and I admire him for it. This video also prompted me to reflect on myself. I'm nonbinary and biromantic (there are a few other labels that I identify with as well but we're going to keep it simple) and O'Keefe's claims have made me wonder what the hell is going on in my DNA and my genes that made me this way. I have no doubt that I was born like this but I usually shy away from c...

Up until this point, I have been grouping my blog posts together (in the sense that a whole week's worth of videos would be in one post, a group video would be in another, and all of a group's articles would be in the third). After a discussion with Professor Foulds and the rest of the class, I realize that this isn't quite adequate. From now on, I'm going to do a different post for each individual article and video, but I'm not going to redo my previous posts because I don't want to delete the comments that are already there.

 Video link:  The Feminist Paradox | Thisari Randunu | TEDxYouth@TWSDubaiWomen I'm not really sure where I stand with this video. The thing is, I think I agree with a lot of her points and I will admit I learned a lot about the concept of a "feminist paradox" (a concept I was not previously familiar with), but I also think her argument was immensely shallow and way too black-and-white. Especially the line where she said "you're either human or you're sexist." That line really bothered me because it feels like she's straight-up dehumanizing anyone who disagrees with her. That being said, I'm incredibly bothered by the video's comment section as well. Thisari Randunu did her best to explain her argument yet the comments are filled with such an immense amount of ignorance and many, many men attempting to justify their sexism. Whether or not Randunu's argument was well-structured, it's obvious that these people didn't even bother open...

 Article link: A dive into the degrading world of fetishization Latina live in I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article. Not only did I learn something from it but I also found it actually quite inspiring. I really liked the end of the article where Sotelo stands her ground and defends herself. It fills me with my own sense of determination. Additionally, I liked how she mentioned Latina body standards and how the media perpetuates how the ideal Latina should look. This is an issue I'm really bothered by and the fact that it's practically everywhere doesn't make me any more fond of it. As Halloween rolls around the corner, I'm already preparing myself for a tsunami of skimpy Día de los Muertos costumes. Article link: What Is Fetishization And How Does It Contribute To Racism? I learned so much from this article. I thought I had a solid understanding of the concept of fetishization and how harmful it is but this article truly opened my eyes. While I knew that fetishizat...

 Video: "Western Eyes" My main takeaway from this film is that it actually made me feel really sad. Seeing how these Asian women felt so ostracized because of their natural features and the fact that they didn't look very western is really heartbreaking. Additionally, it's terrible to see just how early in childhood that all of this starts, from the discrimination that they face to the insecurities and self-hatred that result from it. I'm especially disturbed by how Sharon's mom pressured her into going through with the surgery. You would think that a mother is supposed to be the supportive and encouraging one so the fact that Sharon's mother is perpetuating her self-hatred is really unfortunate. Sharon said she felt better after the surgery but to me she seemed even more sad. Overall, we can conclude that these western beauty standards are incredibly harmful. It's truly heart-wrenching to see just how depressed and insecure these women feel and how im...

 Video link: Gender identity: 'How colonialism killed my culture's fluidity' - BBC World Service I thought it was really interesting to learn about how various cultures were so accepting of certain gender identities and even embraced them within their belief systems and their ways of life. It would be nice if our current society was as accepting as this and it kind of saddens me to see just how much these cultures have been ruined by colonization and eurocentrism. This discrimination that has been brought by colonization was even prevalent in the comments of this video. I saw multiple comments mentioning how 'disgusting' or 'abnormal' these cultural gender identities are or berating their gender-related traditions. I find it hypocritical how so many people expect other cultures to conform to eurocentric ideals and yet won't even open their minds to the beliefs and traditions of other cultures. Video link: A Little More Blue - A film on Gender Identity Th...

 Article link: Does Free Will Exist? I was surprised to find that this article (or rather, another video, technically) featured one of the same philosophers as this group's video choice, but I was disappointed to find that it was Alfred Mele who I personally found to be the least interesting (a somewhat kinder way of saying "most boring") of the group. Additionally, he pretty much discusses in this article all the same exact stuff he discussed in the video so I don't think I really learned anything new. Article link: There's No Such Thing as Free Will I find this article significantly more interesting because it argues the opposite of what everyone so desperately wants to be true. Not only that, but even seems to use the exact same evidence as those who believe free will does  exist except to prove that it doesn't exist. For example, Alfred Mele discussed Benjamin Libet's experiment in both the previous article and the group video. He used it to support th...

To start off, I've never been very philosophy-minded nor have I ever been very interested in learning about philosophy (it hurts my brain). That being said, it was somewhat difficult for me to pay attention to the video due to my disinterest in philosophy and I'm not sure if I'll be able to put my thoughts into words very well but I'll try my best. I think the most difficult thing about about understanding the concept of free will is that we don't really even have a concrete definition of it in the first place. One argument that was mentioned in the video is that the brain makes unconscious decisions and that any action driven by an unconscious decision is not a free action. Additionally, the brain generates a "feeling of agency" which may just be fooling us into thinking we have free will. But even so, whether our decisions are conscious or unconscious and whether or not we truly have "free will," we do have the ability to make choices based on ...

 Video link: Identity SHORT FILM (Award Winning Inspirational Short) The use of symbolism in this film is absolutely incredible. Here are a few scenes that stood out to me. First is the scene where there's a poster on the wall that read "quote" with an image of a girl with the yellow mask. When the camera pans out, we see that all the people standing around the poster are also girls with yellow masks. This symbolizes the harsh beauty standards that are set on young women and how many young women's identities begin to revolve around the concept of beauty and how their beauty and appearances are perceived by other people. Next is the scene in which a person is originally wearing one mask but then takes off the mask to reveal a completely different mask underneath before they approach a group of people and begin conversing with them. I believe this scene is meant to symbolize the way that many people believe they need to change who they are in order to be accepted by oth...