Vocabulary

Ethics: moral code on what we should and shouldn’t do.

Norms: standards of society.

Explicit: direct.

Disparate: (adj) different.

Allusion: (noun) make a reference to something else.

Delusion: believing in things that don’t have basis in reality.

Illusion: seeing something is not there.

Elude: to evade, escape.

Patriotism: to love and support your country.

Collective: (adj) together.

Counter intuitive: is not what you expect.

Content: Satisfied.

Authoritarian: favoring authority.

Dogmatic: to think what you do is the right thing.

Intolerant: can’t stand other’s beliefs or views.

After a brief talk on how to improve our class notes by Professor Belli, we first talked about what we discussed in our Human Services class on wednesday. Anna proceeded to explain that we talked about scenarios when we use our human services ethics in order to deal with clients. Followed by this, Professor Belli asked the class if we started to see connections between our human services class and english. Arlene mentioned that we are learning how we can make others and ourselves happy. Furthermore, Marie asked an interesting question “ how do you know your soul is happy?” which Professor Belli responded by making a connection to Socrates who thinks that soul and body are separate. Therefore, there are different means on how to make your soul happy, contrasted to Maslow’s belief in basic needs for happiness of the body.

When the previous discussion finished we continued to talk about the Mayoral Victory speech of Bill De Blasio. Kelsey mentioned that De Blasio uses pathos when he talks about the tragedy of 9/11 in minute 9:15. He uses this tragedy in order to show the public that he has sympathy for the community and the city. Continuously, Professor Belli explained that pathos can be manipulative because they strike the emotions of people.

Moreover, we talked about “The tale of two cities” that De Blasio was referring to. By this statement, De Blasio was referring to the fact that there are a big group of poor people and a small group of rich ones. He mentions that he doesn’t want anyone to be left behind. Hence, Jacob made an inference from De Blasio’s speech: people should stop thinking about themselves and instead unify the community. Therefore, we concluded that De Blasio was promoting patriotism to the audience.

Furthermore, we went back in the video where De Blasio’s daughter Chiara speaks before his father. We concluded that she was using ethos when she spoke because she was appealing to the character of his father. Her words can be considered extremely credible due to the fact that she is De Blasio’s daughter. Since she talks from first experience, the audience can believe that what De Blasio is promising will be true. After this, Professor Belli showed us one more example where De Blasio uses ethos through his son Dante for his campaign. It was a commercial where Dante appears as a 15 year old boy who lives in Brooklyn, this video focused in appealing to De Blasio’s character by mentioning his goals for the community. Hence, Dante’s skin color, age, and place where he appears to live appeal to the audience De Blasio is targeting: the credibility of the commercial is very high.

Followed by this, we continued to talk about Joe Lhota’s speech. Brandon mentioned the difference of how De Blasio and Lhota talk about the Stop & Frisk program. De Blasio wants it to be removed due to the racial profiling that has been occurring, and Lhota wants to keep supporting it because it has supposedly decreased the crime rate by 75%. We wrapped up the discussion about the speeches and proceeded to talk a little about the article “ Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals” by Arthur C. Brooks. We started to talk about how the article is counter intuitive because it mentions that conservatives are happier than liberals. The conclusion of this statement is because conservatives who are married and religious tend to be more happy according to statistics. Moreover, the class concluded that since conservatives are narrow minded it keeps them happier or at least content because they don’t wonder about many other possibilities or perspectives there are in life.

There is NO homework. Except, to review the article and be prepared for next class. However, Professor Belli said to keep an eye on the homework schedule this week just in case.

I hope this is not too much to read, I tried to make it as simple as possible… if anyone has any questions don’t hesitate to ask me through message in openlab ! 🙂