Final blog.

During my time in Order and Chaos I learned to attach significant meaning to those two core words. My understanding of order and chaos has expanded in a way that I can not only relate them to the readings, but to things in every day life around me. In this final blog I will review five definitions of order and chaos and relate them to my readings to prove that I now fully grasp the concepts.
The first term, structured, comes from order. The reading that I attached this to was Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. In this reading Franklin creates a planner (or schedule) for his every day routine so that he may become more ordered and optimize all of the time he has in a single day. While working through this schedule he wrote, "but, on the whole, tho' I never arrived at perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it" (cr, p. 6). By this he means that by ordering his life (through the use of a schedule) he had bettered himself as a person, and found happiness as well. This is one way in which order, although not fully achieved, can have positive effects on a person's life.
The second term, confusion, comes from chaos. The reading I will use to explain this term is Oliver Sack's, "The Lost Mariner." This reading recollects a psychoanalyst's time with Jimmie. G, a man who has lost his ability to retain his short term memory. Sack's points out that, "if a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self--- himself--- he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it" (cr, p. 35 - 36). This statement causes great distress and confusion for Jimmie. G. It shows the chaos that surrounds him, and all of the people that he comes into contact with. One of the main issues is that Jimmie. G has no way of knowing that he has lost himself, and so, is confused when people tell him that they have met him before.
The third term is command. This term comes from order, and can be most seen in government. The reading that attaches the most meaning to this term is 1984, by George Orwell. In this novel the future is shown as being under absolute control of the government to that point that even thinking something negative about their leaders could end in catastrophe for the people. You may wonder why I placed this term under order. One instance in which the order can be seen is when Winston Smith (the main character) is performing his daily government enforced exercising duties and is suddenly yelled at through his telescreen by the instructor. "6079 Smith W! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade" (Orwell, p. 34). This is just one example of the many commands that are made by the government throughout the novel. This can be considered order, because if the government controls everything that its people do, then they will never have to worry about their people stepping out of line. It is in this case that we remember that order is not always considered a good thing for everybody.
The fourth term I picked was fear, and it is best demonstrated by the absolute need for protection that is seen in Nadine Gordimer's "Once Upon a Time." The aforementioned need for protection practically drives the family in "Once Upon a Time" insane. They come to a point where they are surrounded by electronic walls, razor wire, and barred windows. As Gordimer described, "they no longer paused to admire the show of roses or [their] perfect lawn; these were hidden behind an array of different varieties of security fences, walls, and devices" (cr, p. 120). This quote shows the extent to which chaos can ensue when people allow fear to overwhelm them and control their lives.
The final term is "free-for-all." I chose this term, because it has a very chaotic sounding nature about it, and sure enough I found instances of it in Night, by Elie Wiesel. I relate this term to a phrase, "every man for himself," when writing this. In the Nazi concentration camps there is definitely a relevance to this phrase. It is especially shown nearing the end as food becomes more scarce. One old man calls out to his son, "Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me... You're killing your father..." (Wiesel, p. 101). This quote speaks for itself in demonstrating the horrors that can come about when people are left to fend for themselves with very little resources.
One other thing I learned in Order and Chaos, was that chaos can lead to order, and vice versa. This is especially seen in the creation stories Genesis and The Creation. In Genesis Adam and Eve are put on in the Garden and all is ordered, however due to curiosity and temptation Eve eats a fruit from the forbidden tree and suddenly the world is chaotic. In The Creation the opposite effect is witnessed. It begins chaotically when the mother of the Good and Evil Spirits is pushed down a hole to the Lower World from the Land of Happy Spirits. In the end she births the Good and Evil Spirit, who through antagonism towards each other create all of Earth and its order.

(This one's for you Mackenzie! :] )

- Tia Lambert '13

Professor Jacobson's lecture.

("chaos." Online image. 5 April, 2010.)

On Monday, April 5th, I attended Professor Jacobson's lecture, "Dynamical Systems and the Chaos Theory." I did not walk in with expectations, because I honestly had no idea what a dynamical system was. Nor was I about to make a guess at the chaos theory. I think I was mostly surprised, because the last thing I figured would be happening was that we were going to sit through a mathematical lecture. I guess when I think chaos I do not immediately think of graphs or equations.

I learned a lot in this lecture, mainly because it was all new to me. For instance, I was finally told what a dynamic system was. It is a a system of mathematics associated with other systems that change over time. Now that would have been helpful to know, huh?

The most interesting part was probably when we learned about the history of the chaos theory. In this portion of the lecture Professor Jacobson discussed Poincar'e, Sharkavskii, Lorenz, and Devaney. These are all names that I had heard at one point or another. It was nice to finally be able to place a name with an important contribution to history.

The lecture also related back to the Gleick text that we had previously read and discussed. This happened nearing the end of the lecture when Professor Jacobson started to talk about the butterfly effect. It's strange to hear a theory like, "when a butterfly flaps its wings in Elmira, a tornado appears in Japan." It is not normally how we think, however, thanks to this lecture I now have a better understanding of chaos as we learnt it.

- Tia Lambert '13

Professor Kjar's lecture.

On Friday, March 26th, I attended "Evolution: Order and Chaos," a lecture given by Professor Kjar. It was a new, and pretty comical, spin on Evolution that I had not really learned before. For instance, when he asked, "why are there consistant characters?" and answered himself by saying, "because that's the kind of mood God was in." It was a real belief, but I had never heard anyone say it in a way that made me laugh.
I had already gone into the lecture with the basic knowledge of evolution, not really expecting to gain much from it. I was mistaken, and even a little embarassed, when Professor Kjar started to discuss with us the many misconceptions that people have about evolution. Apparently, there is no progressive evolution, and genetic drift is only moderately random. Whoops!
I think the most interesting part was that Professor Kjar could relate all of his studies to ants. When people say that they are studying something, I do not think anyone is prepared for them to say that the subjects are ants. I know that he was serious and passionate about them, but I also think it added to the comicalness of the program.
Professor Kjar's lecture helped to expand on what we are learning in class a little, because he helped to explain why the church did not accept evolution, something I had always wondered. Apparently, God made everything to be perfect, and if animals were perfect then they would not have the need to evolve. I can see how this might have confused people.

(Scott Thompson. 9 July, 2009. Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 29 March, 2010)

- Tia Lambert '13

Blade Runner.

Question: Blade Runner is best known for its cyberpunk mise en scene (design aspects of the film): the incredibly dense texture of its shots. Watch very carefully and describe the 2020 culture the movie suggests visually.

Answer: From what I can see so far in the movie the world makes incredible advances in science in the next few years, however, its environment takes a sharp downward turn. In 2020, animals have become virtually extinct. It had become so bad that people were paying less money for robotic animals than they were for real animals. Apart from this, everything was dark and gloomy looking. Buildings were either falling apart or leaking from every crack in the cieling, but even in this state people seemed to somehow be living comfortably (or at least without care of their situation). I believe that the state of the world is due in part to the replicants. Humans believed that by advancing science they would create more order, because they would have something that could do the work for them. In their disillusioned state they appeared to miss the chaos ensuing around them as the state of their environment decayed due to the sheer lack of care and trying.

Question: A moral message of the movie is that it was wrong to enslave the replicants and use them as forced labor since they were so human-like in both appearance and thought process. What would need to be different about replicants in order for us to feel that it was OK to use them for labor?

Answer: We use things just like replicants every day in large factories. The difference? Our machines don't resemble humans. In fact, I'm not quite sure how people from the future believed that creating human-like slaves would be ethically okay. All that they were really creating were excuses so as to not have to do work for themselves. These replicants looked exactly like humans, they had emotions like humans, and they bled like humans. So why is it right to enslave them just because they were manufactured and not born? I don't really have the answer to that, and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to understand it. Personally, I would be against the very idea of their creation.

("FOND D'ECRAN BLADE RUNNER." Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 15 March, 2010.)

- Tia Lambert '13

Dr. Kapasula's lecture.

(Claire. "Single Ladies." 17 June, 2009. Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 9 March, 2010.)

On Monday, March 8th, I attended Dr. Kapasula's lecture "Feminist Agency in the Age of Beyonce's 'Single Lades': Faces of International Feminism in Transnational Popular Songs." From just the title of the lecture I assumed that it was going to be a good lecture worth going to, and I was proved correct. Dr. Kapasula was a very fun lecturer. She was funny, and passionate about her beliefs.
In her lecture I learned that the song 'Single Ladies,' by Beyonce, could be analyzed to a point where she was singing about women's oppression, without even really realizing it. What surprised me the most was when Dr. Kapasula went as far as to suggest that the 'ring' in Beyonce's song stood against homosexual relationships. The most interesting part was probably when she told us about 'divorce' in one of the African nations. For this to happen, a woman merely needed to send the man on his way, and light a torch of grass that she pulled from the ground. This was made possible, because it was a matriarchal society where the men took the women's names and move to where they were from.
To me, this helped me to clarify the meanings of order and chaos in a feminist sense. Women all over the world are fighting for freedom, yet you have other women like Beyonce who are creating hits that they don't realize have the opposite effect as intended.
This can be related to The Burial at Thebes, because in the book Antigone (a woman) is being ruled over by Creon (a man). Creon makes all the decisions for her, until she decides to stand up for herself and defy him. This could represent the oppression that women face, followed by the rise up and take over of power. I think that it is fair to say that while Creon is still King in the end of the story, Antigone's defiance has left him powerless.

- Tia Lambert '13

Professor Lemak's lecture.

On Friday, March 5, I had the pleasure of sitting in on Professor Lemak's lecture of patriotism. In this lecture I learned a great deal about ancient Greece and politics. What struck me as the most interesting, was that people used to be chosen by chance to lead their city-state. This was done by a lottery. To me, this makes no sense at all. This would mean that anybody could run the country.
From this lecture I formulated my own opinions on justice and authority. For instance, one question posed to us was how do we balance social justice with moral authority? This line is hard to draw. As seen in The Burial at Thebes Antigone faces this question when she chooses to bury her brother's body, even though she has strictly been forbidden from doing it by the King, Creon. Antigone was acting out in justice for her brother, and Creon was the authority. Though some people would call his morals questionable, it is obvious that he had good intentions. He just went about them the wrong way. In my personal opinion, Antigone was in the right. Authority always dominates, but that does not mean that a little rebellion is not necessary sometimes (also demonstrated by Professor Lemak's rock and roll presentation). The same can be said about "just" and "unjust" laws.
Social responsibility and justice are almost two sides of the same coin. It is one's social responsibility to help others, and in some way this can be seen as a social justice, however, nobody is expected Joe Shmoe to jump into an armed bank robbery. What is expected of normal every day people is that they help others and perform their duties to the best of their abilities, without putting themselves in immediate danger. People in power, on the other hand, are given much more responsibility, and so it is often times that something they do for the greater good can be looked down on if it does not suite everybody's needs. In this way, their devotion to the people they are trying to lead leaves them with very little freedom.
Leadership is constituted by a powerful position, in most cases. However, it is possible to be a leader by merely setting a good example to others around you (like an older sibling per say). Leaders are confronted with many issues, and sometimes they can be extremely hard to solve on your own. In The Burial at Thebes King Creon thought that he was making a morally sound choice by not burying the body of Polynices, because he was, after all, a traitor to his kingdom. Was this the right choice? In my opinion, no, however, that is why making moral decisions like this is so hard. No matter what, somebody is going to be unhappy. That is why it is necessary for the leader to make a decision based on the greater good of everybody.

"The Burial at Thebes - how not to lead." - Professor Lemak.

(Franco Perrelli. "Antigone." 18 November, 2007. Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 6, March 2010)

- Tia Lambert '13

Film critique: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

(Eric."Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." 22 October, 2008. Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 21 February, 2010.)

Question #1 from "self" unit: What forces shape our sense of "self"?
Answer: The forces that shape our sense of "self" can be directly related to our social interactions with other people. For instance, many people have several different "selves" which they use in different situations in an attempt to please everyone they meet. In Joel's case, meeting Clementine changed his "self" dramatically, mostly in the case of his personality.

Question #2 from "self" unit: Is there a "self" that I can control? If so, who is doing the controlling?
Answer: Sigmund Freud created the iceburg theory, which stated that the human "self" is made up pf three components. The tip of the iceburg being the Id (the part of the "self" with natural drives and wants). The middle and the bulk of the iceburg is the Ego (the part of the "self" that is the conscience), and the underwater base of the iceburg is the Superego (the part of the "self" that balances the Id and the Ego). The reason that the superego is described as "underwater," is because it is our unconcious, and the part of us that we can not control.
Using this knowledge as a basis I would say that the "self" can both be in our control and out of our control. For some people, the Id is in more control of their body, whereas for others they are able to control themselves through the use of their conscience.

Question #1 from film critique: What is the central conflict of the film?
Answer: The central conflict of the film is that, after having a huge fight, Joel's sweetheart Clementine erases him for her memory. In a very emotional state Joel makes the rash decision to erase her from his mind in return.

This conflict is both internal and external. It is internal, because after the mind erasing operation is underway Joel decides that he no longer wants the treatment. It is also internal in the sense that he is fighting with feelings of sadness and confusion.
The conflict is external, because even after Joel decides that he wants to call off the operation he has no way of communicating with those in his environment as he is asleep.

Question #2 from film critique: Adress the "WHY" (i.e., the filmmakers "deeper meaning"). What is (are) the message(s) to the audience?
Answer: The message that I find in this film is that nobody should ever erase a memory, whether it be sad or not. The reason that this is important is because while bad memories are just that, bad, they are a way of teaching people lessons and preventing bad things from happening in the future. As shown by this movie, Joel immediatley becomes attracted to Clementine when he meets her for the second time after the operation. Because he had his memory erased there was nothing to stop this from happening.

- Tia Lambert '13