Author Archives: Alexander Goetzfried
Posts: 10 (archived below)
Comments: 7
Digital Essay
This is the video for my digital essay. The essay was on the song “War”, by Bob Marley and the Wailers. I used a song by Bob’s son Damian and footage from WWII, till present day war footage in Iraq, finishing with images of peaceful leaders of our time who were able to make change without violence. The thesis of this essay is that nothing has changed over the last 100 years. We still have wars, and corruption. But the lesson to keep in mind is that there have been people who have made big changes through peace, and if we want to evoke change now, everyone needs to wake up, stop fighting and clean up their own little area of the globe. Anarchy media did not recognize my vimeo URL so that is why there is no thumb nail.
Digital Essay
Well, I am pretty sure that I am going to do the song “War” by Bob Marley and the Wailers, and use the speech made by Haille Selasse I to the United Nations which the song was adapted from as my source. The video will be the song playing in the background, most likely a live version I have which goes into “No More Trouble”, with different news clippings about race relations, the function of the United Nations, then and now, global war and its effect on foreign policy, as well as some video from NYC, all edited together in a sort of collage.
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Video Project Ideas
Well I don’t know too much about poetry, and I have been looking at poems online by authors that I like but I have not found anything that interests me enough to make a video on. The hard part is finding a poem which is video worthy. One idea I had was doing a Bob Marley song, either War because it is an adaptation of a speech by Haille Selassie I to the UN about the horribleness of war, but is difficult to link to happiness. I think I am leaning towards a song, not a poem, but if anyone is interested in collaborating and has similar ideas let me know. One Love, Three Little Birds, and a few Springsteen songs are others that I was looking at.
The Mission
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Charlotte Iserbyt was Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Department of Education during the first Reagan administration.
Creativity and critical thinking are very important. Kids are being conditioned to be workers, who follow orders and the methods of teaching in elementary and high school show this. There is a lack of creative and critical thinking in schools today, as well as a lack of traditional education of the founding fathers, Constitutional Law, classic literature, and basically all of the educational tools which this country was originally founded upon. To create separate class structures, the majority of the population, the bottom poorer part, is taught this workforce training version of education, where creativity is looked down upon. The advances in technology are also to blame for this, there is no more privacy, a student cannot formulate his own creative view or opinion because they are so inundated with what to think and when from all outside forces including and not limited to the tv, internet, social networking, advertising, corporate run media, and every other outside stimulus imaginable.
This is an excerpt from Jim Marrs’ book “The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy” where he quotes Beverly Eakman a former educator, government speech writer, and author of “Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks”: “Rugged individualism encompassed a range of characteristics — independence, self-sufficiency, thinking for oneself. In the 1970’s the axe was laid to all three. Negative terminologies like “loner” and “misfit” redefined the individualist. Independence was scrapped for interdependency, self-sufficiency for redistribution, and thinking for oneself was equated with intolerance. Today any close reading of the newspaper reminds us daily that the loner requires psychiatric intervention, and maybe drugs as well….”
I believe that we need to have children learn the basics, about english, math, and history, but achieving a higher level and mastery of all three, while reinforcing creativity and individual thinking. To be creative is not enough, and a creative mind easily falls into the world of getting a gold star and a pat on the back, without attaining a level of intelligence needed to be a driving and positive force in the world.
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The Marley kids know, in order to pull ourselves up, and not become the downtrodden victims of class warfare, we must educate ourselves and the youths with creativity, knowledge, science, research, math, true history, language, and all of the other foundations of intelligence. The other option is to be a worker who’s back is used to get someone else rich. Anyone reading this who thinks that they may come from an upper class family with money and this doesn’t apply to them. You don’t, we are talking about the global top 1%, and none of us are apart of it!
The deliberate dumbing down of America
The stuff I talked about in class today I had read in a number of Jim Marrs books, and it is talked about a lot by Alex Jones on his radio show. I found this video today on Jesse Ventura’s facebook page, thought it was interesting.
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Group 5: Dependent Independence
Dependent Independence:
Preserving ones individuality, while simultaneously accepting help from others when needed. Knowing where you are and where you are going but allowing networking and technology to help you get there. Everyone can follow their own path, but at the same time everyone needs a little bit of help to get there. That’s dependent independence! You can’t be susceptible to outside forces that conflict with your own ideals. Bend but don’t break, be flexible and adaptible. There are certain ideals you must not give up, but you do need to conform a little bit in order to work with others.
Response Paper 3
Raymond Carver is right about tension being an integral part of a story. That goes for any story, even parts of a story. One scene from a movie won’t work if there isn’t tension in it. Tension, menace, whatever you wanna call it is the tie that binds any good story together. Without tension there is no point in watching, reading, or listening to anything.
In Cathedral Carver does a great job of following his own advice. This is also a good example of the fact that tension, or menace can be portrayed in many different ways, it doesn’t have to be a fight or something violent between two people. By being inside of the husbands head the whole time we see the tension that he has in himself over his own anxieties about meeting Robert. This makes you tense while you read the story because you never know if he is going to do something stupid or embarrassing to himself or his wife, regarding Robert’s blindness. It’s like watching NASCAR, the whole story you are waiting for a crash and that makes it entertaining (although I found this more entertaining then a NASCAR race!). The more they drink the more you expect something bad to happen, then when he gets Robert high for the first time you think “there’s no way this is going to end good!”
What I liked about this story though is the fact that it does end good. Even though you expect it to go bad at some point, it never does, and I think even that is part of the tension. The unexpected ending is always a source of tension. This is a great short story that definitely follows the authors own advice. It’s also kind of funny to think that just a short story about an old family friend, who is blind, could bring so much tension. It’s also easy to relate to, most of us have been in the position of spending time with someone we don’t know, drinking too much, smoking weed and most of the time things don’t end as well as they did for the husband and Robert. This is great use of normal everyday things, in normal everyday circumstances being used to create a source of tension.
Response Paper 3
“Best in Show” is a funny, dry humored mockumentary based on the participants of a dog show. The film is cast with a plethora of underground, and some who since have become mainstream comics and actors who to my knowledge took a bare bones script and turned it into a somewhat improvised realistic comedic dialogue. What I found to be the most appealing part of the movie was that all different stereotypes of people are represented in a scenario where they take themselves too seriously and the viewer is given a chance to poke fun at the eccentricities of seemingly everyday normal people.
Such stereotypes of people represented in”Best in Show” are a redneck, a gold digger and her lesbian counterpart, a yuppie couple, a nerd and his wife who seems to have gotten around, and an over the top gay couple from New York. If you can appreciate the weirdness of “ordinary” people being poked fun at then this film is for you. The witty back and forth dialogue keeps the movie going and although it isn’t really laugh out loud funny, if you have a sense of humor you will find yourself snickering the whole way through. I mean really who can’t appreciate making fun of the yuppie couple who met at Starbucks, is seemingly perfect but after closer inspection we realize they are both insane! The beautiful thing about this movie is how the exaggerated stereotypes are carried out, but the director and the actors still keep them close enough to home that with more than just a few of the characters I’m sure you can think of somebody who they remind you of.
The settings used are also great, realistic plasticky Florida houses, a fly fishing shop in nowheres-ville redneck land, even the un-glorious hotel the participants stay at in anticipation of their years culmination is scarily, realistically appropriate. If you are a weirdo, and you might not know it until you watch something like this or a film similar, you may not find this too funny as it may hit a little too close to home! What better way to find out if your a freak than to give it a shot. I recommend this film to anyone with a dry, quirky, sense of humor, and also to anyone not sure of their level of creepiness to check it out and see how well they can relate!
Culture is not your friend
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This guy is a little out there, but I like his view points, and this dances around happiness with good food for thought on critically thinking about our culture.
Response Paper 2, Option 3 Alex Goetzfried
I am going to use the “invisible third option” on this blog post because there is a theory here dealing with ego and repression put forth by Freud that in some ways coincides with my own views of the sub-conscious and also directly relates to a book I just finished reading called “The Shadow Effect”, by Deepak Chopra, Debbie Ford, and Marianne Williamson.
I find Freud’s theory of the relationship between the pleasure-principal, and the reality-principle very intriguing. On page 5 of chapter 1 Freud writes “Under the influence of the instinct of the ego for self-preservation it {pleasure-principle} is replaced by the ‘reality-principle’, which without giving up the intention of ultimately attaining pleasure yet demands and enforces the postponement of satisfaction… and the temporary endurance of ‘pain’ on the long and circuitous road to pleasure.” After this to paraphrase he also goes on to say that the pleasure principle prevails over the reality-principle to the detriment of the whole organism. Now in “The Shadow Effect”, to fill you in the idea is that we all have a shadow side where feelings, actions, and personality traits, which at some point in our lives were made to feel wrong or bad are hidden, and when we do stupid things, or embarrass ourselves it is this shadow side, which is considered part of if not all of the ego, tries to come out and that is when we act foolish. The correlation I find between the two is that the pleasure principle prevailing over the reality principle seems to me to be the same idea. The reality of the situation is we know what the right thing to do is in a given situation, but there is always that little evil ego side that sometimes pushes us to do what may not be the best thing for our ego, soul, reality, or whatever you want to call it in the long run. Have you ever been in an unfulfilling relationship, you know it’s making you miserable, but you think, “this is better than being alone”? Now that sounds like one small part but maybe that bad relationship is what is preventing you from developing fully as a person and although you might think I’m just miserable now but it will get better, this situation could be making you miss out on great opportunities, and new open doors.
To get back to Freud I think when he says the pleasure principle “prevails over the reality principle to the detriment of the whole organism”, what he is saying is going for instant gratification, (i.e. that one night stand, going out drinking and missing work, burning yourself out in order to help others because you don’t want to be selfish etc.) although seeming fun and pleasurable at the time is not helping in the pursuit of long term happiness.
On page 6 Freud writes “particular instincts, or portions of them, prove irreconcilable in their aims or demands with others which can be welded into the comprehensive unity of the ego. They are thereupon split off from this unity by the process of repression, retained on lower stages of psychic development, and for the time being cut off from all possibility of gratification.” From this I gather that certain actions or instincts cannot function together even though they all fall under the umbrella of “ego”. I believe certain parts of our ego are hidden in the “shadow” area due to past experiences of guilt, embarrassment, or any other trauma causing us to believe in their social un-acceptance. This shadow area is very different for everyone, and depends upon personal experiences and reactions to them. Freud also states “most pain we experience is of a perceptual order”. This idea of perception I have recently come across in “The Shadow Effect”, “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius, and a quote from Shakespeare: “Things are neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” Everything in life has a purpose, or even if it doesn’t, “just is”, so by perceiving something as good or bad, we are just putting our own spin on what “is”, good things come from bad and sometimes vice versa, so it is our own perception of a situation that causes this ‘pain’ which Freud is talking about and not the actual situation itself. This is a timeless theory and I would like to know how everyone else feels about this concept.
To further elaborate on the idea of perception we come to stress management. In chapter 2 page 8 Freud talks about “traumatic neurosis”, which I took to mean posttraumatic stress disorder. He describes it as “general weakening and shattering of the mental functions” and claims it to resemble hypochondria. Like most instances with PTSD, he uses the example of soldiers returning from war. However what about students who are cracking under the pressure of final exams, or an over-worked under paid man who loses it in a fit of road rage in traffic. I feel neurologically, these all can have the same end result, now you may consider the students problem to be menial in comparison to that of the soldier, but it is not the situation which is causing the ‘traumatic neurosis’, but it is the individuals ability to perceive the situation as it is and then implement proper stress management techniques. Although this is not a physical illness, stress can certainly lead to one, and also “weakening and shattering of the mental functions” is not something I would say resembles hypochondria! Have you ever been stressed out over a bad situation, and then heard a friend complaining about their own problems and thought “they don’t even know what stress is”. Well they may be thinking the same of you and this is why looking at problems from all different angles is important, and taking active steps to keep stress low is very important for overall health.
I think in these two chapters Freud really hits on a lot of different topics of timeless ideas, and things people have been trying to figure out since the beginning of reason about themselves and others. I hope this response fills the criteria for an option three paper and I would love to hear how everyone feels about perception as pertaining to stress, and also the “shadow” side we all have dying to get out and embarrass us!
