Blog Post #1

Part 1

My name is Ariel, obviously. I don’t enjoy writing bio’s. I don’t really know what my future plans or career goals are. Since this blog post is coming in very late I’m sure some of you have a pretty good idea as to what kind of person I am. I’m currently working as a bartender at a restaurant in Crown Heights called Café Rue Dix—I work a lot, I read a lot. I have a dog, her name is Disney, she’s kind of the center of my universe.

Part 2

Unfortunately, technology and language is the center of our realty. How we communicate with people defines us as a society. It’s how we connect and feel related too. Our major source of communication is technology. In terms of how it adjusts to our relationships, of course it varies. Would I ever text my grandmother the way I text the boy I’m interested in, no. Then again, I call my grandmother and the words I choose are based upon the sensitivities that she is my grandmother. I’d like to think I’ve come to a point where I’m comfortable in the way I communicate, and I accept that I’ve come to a highly technologically advanced society.

Part 3

Lewis Mumford’s “Man the Finder”

Passage: In this we see at work three aspects of mind that were intertwined with the development of language as well as with adaptation to the environment: identification, discrimination, and causal insight. The last named, which European man has too often assumed as his special triumph, and a very recent one, could never have been absent from primitive existence; if anything, early man’s mistake was rather to overdo and misplace the role of causality and to attribute both acci- dental events and autonomous organic processes, as in a disease, to the active intervention of malicious men or demons or spirits. (pg- 5)

Literally I think the author is saying men adapted according to how they developed in the way they communicated. Three aspects were most prevalent and the way in which they linked to one another lead to the “accidental” way in how we relate to everyone and everything around us.

Intellectually, I found this passage quite insightful. I thought about how far we’ve come due to our technological advances in communication.

Emotionally this passage makes me feel confident that the author has some pretty darn good insights. I enjoyed the way he linked the three aspects of the mind to communication, and then went on to explain how the roles have intertwined and changed throughout time.

The Phaedrus

Passage: SOCRATES: Does not your simplicity observe that I have

got out of dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a

censure on the lover? And if I am to add the praises of the

non-lover what will become of me? Do you not perceive

that I am already overtaken by the Nymphs to whom you

have mischievously exposed me? And therefore I will only

add that the non-lover has all the advantages in which the

lover is accused of being deficient. And now I will say no

more; there has been enough of both of them. Leaving the

tale to its fate, I will cross the river and make the best of my

way home, lest a worse thing be inflicted upon me by you. (PG 57 PDF)

Literally, I think this is the part where Socrates starts to introduce the concept to Phaedrus that he disagrees with this concept of the non-lover.

Intellectually I didn’t find this passage stimulating, it makes me think people are full of biased opinions and everyone has their own points of view on everything.

Emotionally This passage makes me upsets me a bit. I think love is objective. There is no right way to explain it. I do think it’s important to understand people points of view but overall assessing love is mostly harmful.

I thought these authors and their works were a bit bland. I enjoyed the expansive ideas brought to light but I was particularly turned on by any of it. Apart from rhetoric, which was a brand new concept to me, I thought the readings dry and outdated.