This is my local narrative.

This week in AP Literature, we have been discussing postmodernism and its relation to society. Our main focus this week was to grasp the underlying principles and ideas of the postmodern thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard. Some of his ideas consist of the following: conscious and unconscious minds, computer technology and science, and lastly, local and metanarratives. In today’s post, I would like to stress his ideas about narratives.

According to Lyotard, there are two types of narratives, metanarratives and local narratives. Metanarratives are “big stories, stories of mythic proportions – that claim to be able to account for, explain and subordinate all lesser, little, local narratives” (Powell 29). This also explains local narratives as well. If you did not catch that, read it again!! Well if this is still a little confusing to you, a local narrative is just a small part of a bigger story of metanarratives. Metanarratives have been used throughout our past and culture to help explain the unexplainable. For instance, Native Americans use these narratives through myths, helping explain the creation of man and natural phenomena. Long ago, they did not have the math or science to fully comprehend why there are such things as seasons of drought or floods, so they used myths to explain what seems to be unexplainable. On a side note, it also scared kids into believing that their bad behavior was the reason why the entire tribe was starving of hunger that year. They honestly did not have any idea to what was truly going on in the Earth’s crust or its atmosphere, so they created tales and myths to answer the dying question “why?”

This is also true with many religions. Most religions have one main source, the metanarrative, which contains many smaller stories, the local narratives, to explain their ideas of creation, morality, and life style. These smaller stories help illuminate the major idea, or central theme, of what is trying to be conveyed by the metanarrative. These narratives also give many people a meaning to life and how they live. As I mentioned before, religion also helps people answer the unmistakable question “why?” We base our lives on a central meaning whether or not we believe in a certain religion. Believe it or not, there is a bigger picture to life which all people live towards. They say that we people are all connected one way or another, spiritually. Well, this is it for now. I hope you all enjoyed the post! It is not as long as the others, so hopefully you did not get too bored. And here is the quote of the day…

“Each spiritual journey begins with a step forward — the moment when you realize that there’s more to life than you’ve been living.”
~ Vicky Thompson

Baby-Making at its finest.

Try living in a world where all people are biologically created and born into a predestined life chosen by the government. Not only did the government create you with specific qualities, but you were only one of the hundred they were able to spawn with the same identity. In the first few chapters of Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, he describes the harsh reality of the scientific advances humanity is reaching to create a perfect world.

His depiction of the future is truly frightening. The way people are brought into life appears to be an enormous lab experiment run by those trying to keep society and social groups in check. They call this the Bokanovsky’s Process, “one of the major instruments in social stability” (Huxley 7). This is completely unethical. How can people even begin to think of creating the same identical children by the hundreds with their life predestined for them? Identity and individuality completely vanish when people are created this way. The meaning of life is destroyed as well. People have this life to experience emotions, to create friendships, and to succeed or fail. Whether their life turns out good or bad, the whole process life helps people learn by improving their judgment and decision making in the future. But this meaning of life is pointless when it becomes predestined for you and there is no possibility of changing who you are. These “people” they are creating should not even be called people but slaves who help fuel the power of those already at the top of the social pyramid.

In Huxley’s society, the main social groups are, from highest to lowest, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Throughout our history, we have the upper, middle, and lower class. The Alphas always dominated over the Epsilons by telling them what to do and by making them feel powerless and inferior. This relates to the times of slavery and discrimination. The African American was always being suppressed, from being the slave worker out in the fields to the one having to sit in the back of the bus for reasons of skin color. Do you remember the Grandfather Clause and the poll tax? These were tools of absolute manipulation by the superior “White Man,” trying to exclude African Americans from their right to vote. Those at the top will always try to hinder the ones under them to keep their power from being diminished. That is why the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where all the babies come from, is run by the Alphas, the social group that the Betas believe “[works] much harder than [they] do, because [the Alphas] are so frightfully clever” (Huxley 27). This novel grasps the troubles of our social ladder, and how that itself is the tool which degrades our humanity.

Although wrong and twisted, I do see some beneficiaries in this process of creation if ever applied in the future. We would no longer have to worry about cancer or diseases if we were able to create children with super immunities. Parents would also be able to choose the qualities of their children and their physical features. But this slowly creeps its way around moral values and the beliefs. People opposing the use of this “new technology” would say that this is against our human nature to be able to pick and choose the child we want. They would also state that the creation of life is “God’s power,” and how the human race should not interfere with such ideals. Although the picking and choosing of the perfect child may be a little extreme, I still see benefits that can come from new discoveries and technologies in DNA engineering.

Well to sum it all up, I must say I still have a hard time getting through each chapter of this book; for example, chapter three’s insane decision to jump from plot to plot after every line. Maybe it’s because I can’t pay attention very long or focus just on one subject. And I am sincerely sorry for the super, mega lectures I’ve been posting. I know that a long passage can get pretty boring at times. Anyways, I’ve decided that with every blog entry I’ll leave you guys with a little inspirational quote starting with today’s.

“Give the world the best you have and the best will come back to you.”
~ Madeline Bridges

Life... It's just another story.

The United States is facing a new dilemma, not about health care or the war in the Middle East, but a new proposition brought up by the Texas Board of Education “to further emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history” (Simon). Wait, wait, wait… Did I just say that Texas is proposing a new curriculum which goes against my rights as an American given to me by the central core of the United States called the Constitution? What happened to the idea of the enlightened thinkers who helped us realize that the separation between church and state was for the better in our country? And who gets to have the ultimatum of choosing what goes in and out of the history books? I am pretty sure our buddy John Locke would not approve of this.

Anyways, there are three reviewers who support this new proposition, appointed by social conservatives of Texas, who believe that the biblical principles of our country need to come out in the textbooks. They argue that our founding principles are biblical. This may be true, but why should the scriptures be integrated into the history books as well? This goes against the beliefs of many Americans who are non-Christians and their Constitutional rights. Many people will argue that history books should include the facts, including the fact that American History has been influenced by Christian values. This may be true, but was the creation of the United States based more on the contribution of Christian beliefs or the ideas of enlightened thinkers? What about the men whose beliefs our government is based upon, such as Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu? Even the man who penned the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, was influenced by enlightened thoughts. History books are meant to educate the public about the past events which have occurred throughout our lifetimes which have led to the society which we live in today. By keeping religious views out of the public education system, this gives everyone a chance to learn and comprehend history at their fullest potential, without being suppressed or even shameful for not believing in another person’s beliefs. So keeping religion out of the history books is good right? In our case, that is correct, but how this is done is not so truthful.

Textbooks, like all other government approved forms of writing, are to be written objectively, or without bias. This is said to be “professional” and “acceptable” by major news publishing companies, like CNN and the New York Times. Who’s to say that everything written in the history books do not reflect a certain bias? Who gets to decide what goes in and what is not acceptable for publishing in the textbooks the American children are learning from while being educated in school? The event to decide what goes in and out of history books demonstrates the human’s uncontrollable ability of being biased while believing they are objective in their course of writing. This decision to control who or what is published for everyone to read shows the capable manipulation of what the history books teach students. This is beginning to sound a lot like the quote from Orwell’s 1984 novel, “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past.” While writers decide which events go into the books and what perspective it is coming from, they should understand that everything that goes in them will be eternalized by the ones who pick up the book and decide that what they are reading is true. This means that perspective becomes a huge issue. By only stating one side of an argument, in this case historical events, people are lead to support the side they read about without knowing the wholesome truth. I would like to argue that there is no such thing as objectivity in any form of historical documentation. As long as people write, the thoughts and ideas going through their heads give them a bias that we cannot escape.

So what is the answer to all of this madness? I say the only thing that we can do to satisfy all of humanity is to publish the ultimate history book containing every major event from all cultural perspectives, with the views of all different religions described in the backs of them and how they have contributed to the world. This sounds pretty crazy, but it’s the only way we can be “objective” in a world or bias. What should we name this gargantuan of a book? I think the word “Life” suites it very well.