A historical American documentary film called, 13th, directed by director Ava DuVernay is an eye opening and emotional film. I believe that everyone should watch this film due to its educational benefits. The film is focus in the United States criminal justice system. The title of the film comes from the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery. Since slavery has been outlawed in the United States, it is unlawful to practice slavery in the United States. However, there are loopholes in the 13th constitution. For example, there are more African Americans under surveillance than there were during slavery era. In addition to that, the Thirteenth Amendment reads as follows; “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (13th). It tells us that slavery still exists in the United States, but we just don’t know it. As the film shows us, there are even more slaves in the United States than there were during slavery era.

There is a very interesting fact that the film brings to our attention, from our presidents Nixon to Bush that so many black Americans are criminals. Even though this is a very long film, but the time is very worth spending. The film opens the public mind that slavery still exists in our societies. The film brings the public attention to the loopholes of the 13th Amendment. There are still much more works needed to be done in order to truly abolished slavery in our society.

By visited the Moma museum, when i saw this photograph, it caught my attention. In the first moment I saw this photo, the box in the middle made me confused, it is hard to tell me is it was throwing up or it was falling down. This photograph was by Japanese photographer Ryoji Akiyama who born in 1942. This photograph named “Empty Box in its Way Down to a Reclamation Area” and it took in Tokyo, 1969. In bottom of the photo, there showed a lot of paper boxes, some buckets and many other sundries besides the river. By looking this photo, thinking of the reclamation, reclamation meaning “the recovery of useful substances from waste products”. Look at the photo, we cannot count exactly how many sundries inside. In daily life, people made the immeasurable waste every day, so where these waste going to? Reclamation is a better way to save energy and protect environment, this can prevent human produces excessive consumption garbage on the earth. On the earth, the human is not the only animals, and there are many other creatures. They live in the nature like humans, and the extinction of any one species will affect the balance of the whole food chain. Conservation of biological diversity, is also protect human. So reclamation not only protect our environment, it also good for the whole nature. I like this photograph, it reminds people should think about the reclamation, people should protect the nature together and we should begin with reuse the reusable waste.

By reading Sigmund Freud’s Family Romances, he pointed out “The liberation of an individual, as he grows up, from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary though one of the most painful results brought about by the course of his development”, and “But as intellectual growth increases, the child cannot help discovering by degrees the category to which his parents belong. He gets to know other parents and compares them with his own, and so acquires the right to doubt the incomparable and unique quality which he had attributed to them”. Faulkner’s story made a pretty perfect example of Freud’s theory and illustrates Freud’s understanding of family, conflict, and maturation. In Faulkner’s Barn Burning, Faulkner through a child’s perspective of a child in the face of fair justice, family origin, other inner conflict and difficult choices. The father Abner Snopes temper, use stable burning way to solve the contradiction between with employers and neighbors. When the father had conflict with Mr. Harris, he hired people burned Harris’s stable, and therefore defendant to court. Satoris, his youngest son in the family, don’t want his father to be punished, looked at his father had to perjury. But in the heart of Satoris, this is contradictory. Know that his father’s approach is to violate laws and regulations, no moral, but struggled in the loyal family lineage and adhere to the suffering of justice. In the end, Satoris finally made a decision that escaped his family and told the true to the owner, but this cause his father Snopes’ death.

It is 10am in the morning, the alarm rang. Yan opened her eyes slowly and stopped the alarm. “Uh, I need to wake up and eat breakfast before going to school”, She said. After she managed to get off the bed, she told herself she must to have the breakfast before class because she remember she has promised her best friend that she would take good care of herself. Yan opened the window and went to wash. Then she went to kitchen and put the bagel into the oven. 2 minutes late she picked the bagel up and put some cream cheese on it. She bite it and thought “Uh~ it is yummy, this is a perfect breakfast for the day”. After finished the breakfast, Yan went back to her room and got changed. Choosing what clothes to dress is a big question for Yan everyday. “Di. Di..DiDiDi….” Yan’s phone was singing. She picked up her phone and saw Tom texted her “Are you ready to go to school? You must catch the next train”. “I’m changing clothes now, I will go out 10 minutes later”, Yan replied. Tom is her best friend and always urges her keep doing things on time.
Yan locked the door and went downstair. The sun was shining and she thought “Today is a beginning and I must make it good”. She walked to the N subway station and swiped the metrocard. There was a lot of people in the station. “Now I’m waiting the subway“, Yan texted to Tom and then she saw there were many people playing with their phone too. About 10 minutes later the subway came and Yan got on the subway. Thankgod, there was not that much people in this compartment so that Yan got a sit. When she sit down she saw she got a new message, “Ok, text me when you arrived. Be safe”-Tom. She put down her phone and thought of her message, how pleasure God has given her this good friend? Additionally, Yan asked herself how valuable this friendship is to Yan since they met. “I have to treat him as good as he treats me”, concluded Yan. The way of Yan go to school was far, she was thinking whether or not to take a nap . She looked at the map and showing it has ten more stops, then she decided to take a nap. Twenty minutes later the subway stopped at 23rd street and Yan got off the subway. She walked out the station and walked to baruch college.

After reading the article in the New York Times that described a helpless colored slavery woman in the movie called, “The Birth of a Nation”. The main theme of the movie is a black woman whose name is Esther was the subject to be raped. Her emotions were so silent but her facial expression shows a lot about her feeling in that situation, painful, helpless, and hopeless. This tells us that most women slaves often suffer the worst tortures from their slavery owners, but they cannot do or say anything about that. This connects to Fredrick Douglass ‘s narrative, in his narrative’s beginning, Douglass shows us how her aunt, Hester, suffered tortures from her slavery owner, Mr. Plummer. There is an image about her aunt who was stripped her clothes and beaten by the anger man. Douglass also shows us that some of the slave masters even let other men raped their women slaves in order to earn money.  Esther and Hester, woman slaves had suffered unimaginable violence and abuse continuously, they were unable to fight back or do anything to against their master in that era. They had suffered not only physiologically, but also physically. Women of colored had been treated very unfairly in that era around the world.  After Douglass witnessed the helpless, painful, and hopeless of woman slaves, his feeling has been abused. In addition to that, witnessing what his aunt had been through and all other sufferings of the slavery system have made him hate the slavery. Those experiences have led him to become a leader of the movement of abolition.

How does it feel when looking at this picture? It feels like a beautiful day with such nice and warm sunshine. There is this small round sun shining above us all, even the clouds surrounding looked bigger. Looked closer, there is also a flying helicopter, so small that we wouldn’t notice without close attention. I am sublimed by this picture that it makes me feel both beauty and terror of our human eyes. Looking at that flying helicopter, it is as small as an ant; but in fact, the helicopter is huge comparing to humans. The sun looks even smaller than the clouds. However, the sun is a lot bigger than the earth. we , humans, are just like the dust in this universe. It is so true that we often are being deceived by our own eyes. What we see and believe might not be true. Additionally, there is another dark side about the sky, which is weather that it brings us everyday or every moment, such that it could be shiny in this moment and rainy the very next moment; not to mention other terrified event, such as flooding, typhoon that are so destructive. No matter how technologically advanced we are, we can never control weather; that is why God existed. The power of nature is Incalculable and indescribable, we can only keep searching for new ideas and ways to better predict and deal with weathers.

Long time ago, computer was a fiction, automobile was a fiction, and many other things were fiction before. Fiction and imagination are correlated. Imagination and thinking are correlation. We are encouraged to imagine wildly and freely because only that could move our world forward. Knowledge is the foundation of the building our life and societies. It is the most important things in our life. For example, why are we required to learn history in our early age? Because histories are knowledge, histories teach us knowledge about the past, about why and how world war 1 and world war 2 happened, so hopefully that we would not have war again. Histories are nonfiction knowledge, while imaginations are fiction knowledge. How? Because fiction allows to imagine hypothetical situations, allows us to prepare for the foreseeable future. Afterward, we can learn and gain knowledge about improve ourselves when similar situations surface.

According to “Maybe imagining and naming is a form (and a part of) controlling or taming things unknown.” in Hasif Amini’s “Story”, I think that maybe knowledge was created by people’s fiction. I believe when unknown things happened, people use their imagination to understand it. Time to time, people wrote stories to tell others about their experiences in life, it could be fiction or nonfiction, but it still would make others think. In addition, according to the reading, “Tell a story, so that we understand why and how this world was created, who our ancestors were and where they came from, so that we understand where we are and where we may be going.” The story tells us about knowledge, but these stories are come from the fiction. Fiction makes people think and imagine, from thinking and imagination, knowledge is created.

During Enlightenment, people started to think critically about the meaning of being human. Enlightenment doesn’t happen to everyone, it only happens to those who began to think, to doubt, and to question about the truth instead of blindly following it. In the period of Enlightenment, with thinking, questioning, fighting, struggling, women have claimed more rights for themselves. The Enlightenment process changes the way people thought and helps moving our society forward.

The importance of Rene Descartes’s idea of Cogito Ergo Sum is that he proposed the idea that thinking is the only thing that makes a human existed. We should doubt not only our beliefs, but others too, because doubt makes us think critically. From there, we hope to find a better solution or a better truth. Everything happens for a reason, we should be thinking constantly about those happenings as an effort to figure the reason. Additionally, nothing is perfect in this world, its perfectness depends on the power of God. God makes us imperfect, so that we could try our best to perfect ourselves in our lifetime. For example, “For, in the first place, what I took just now as a rule, namely that whatever we conceive very vividly and clearly is true, is assured only because God exists and is a perfect being, and because everything in us comes from him”. As this sentence implies, “God” is the creator, every existence in this world comes from God. The phrase, “Cogito Ergo Sum” translates into “I think, therefore I exist.” I agree with this statement, because our brains are functioning even when we sleep, so that we are thinking constantly when we are alive.