Essay 2 Reflection

When I first heard we were going to be writing a persuasive argumentative paper based off of one of the essays we had read, I was nervous. I didn’t quite understand where to start in terms of which essay I could actually be argumentative about. It took me quite a while to fully understand how to get started writing the essay. I was having trouble trying to connect the author’s main ideas and my main ideas. While trying to be persuasive and argumentative. The writing of the paper came easy once I finally figured out a way I could connect the reader to me and the author I was supporting. I didn’t find this connection until I visited with Cindy in conferences.

 

If it wasn’t for the conference I don’t know if I would have had any chance of actually writing essay number two at all. I gained a lot of good ideas, and got rid of a lot of bad ideas that I had coming into the conference. It seems as though I always have too broad of examples or examples that are not personal, in which a reader could gain a connection to me. So it was good for me to get feedback in those conferences on better examples to use in my paper and better ways to use those examples to gain ethos, pathos, logos. I’m definitely glad that we had scheduled conferences before the turning in of our paper it helped me immensely.

 

I didn’t have a chance to go to the writing center. Luckily I had submitted my paper last week so it won’t affect my grade, but I wish I had gone to the writing center anyway. It is always a good idea to get extra help on any essay or type of writing you do. I’m disappointed that I didn’t seek further help in going to the writing center besides having conferences. It could have given my paper that edge it needed in rhetorical argumentative style. Plus a better grade never hurt anyone.

 

Overall though I feel like this essay has increased my overall ability to make connections from others to connections I make. When I say this I mean my ability to agree with someone else’s ideas and to use their idea to support a claim I had on my own. I believe my overall writing is increasing not only in ethos, pathos, logos, but in style, and flow. At first I was nervous about this essay, but after writing it I’m glad Cindy assigned it, it really helped my overall writing skills.

Cortez

For this weeks response I choose to write on Cortez’s blog post Eaarth. I wrote on his post because just like him I too found the wasting part in the book hitting close to home.

All About the Moolan

Since we have been talking about Eaarth by Bill McKibben in english all week, I’ve decided to talk about one of the most important factors in the book for this week, Money. Bill McKibben said in Eaarth, “Money, in our system, equals information. It’s how we understand risk; it’s how we measure possibility; it’s the only gauge we have for understanding our collective future. If you have a lot of money, you have a lot of options, and if you don’t have much, your options narrow” (McKibben 69). I agree with everything Bill is talking about when it comes down to money. I can’t get over the fact that it seems like nothing ever gets done in this world we live in because, we simply don’t have the money to spend on issues such as the environment.

It seems as though everything always revolves around money. So much that the Author Bill McKibben relays extraordinary amounts of information based on how much money damages can cost or will cost. From what I have read almost every single page in this book has a statistic revolving around the money caused by damages or future damages of global warming. I’m new to all this information on global warming but, it seems like this issue is a big deal. So I started asking myself when are we going to start investing bigger chunks of money into global warming. Instead of things such as the running for office, or military, etc. If we even want a future on Eaarth at all we have to start ponying up the dough at some point.

Nate

Last week I choice to respond to Nate’s post about turning feces into meat. I choice to comment on his blog because I agree with him on how scientist could be putting their knowledge to better use.

Wordle!

Essay 2!

Austin Masuga

Cindy Bateman

English 101

9 September 2011

“Outsiders”

            Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” may sound crazy to a vast amount of people when they read it. Upon taking a second look and starting to dissect his essay, one can start picking up on the main claim he is trying to prove to the reader. His message is simple. Humans created this thing called knowing/truth, they then put meaning behind these truths, and overtime they forgot they created these truths. Meaning in my opinion humans invented a system in which created these outsiders that will not possibly know these truths. Humans then exclude these people that don’t conform to the society’s truth; these are what I like to call “outsiders”

Nietzsche says, “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins” (455). Humans have forgotten that they created truth. For example we give objects names but who is to say that a desk is truly defined by the word desk. “Just as certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf” : the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model” (455). He wants/needs the reader to understand that we created these illusions that do not matter. These illusions that Nietzsche are talking about create outsiders.

Nietzsche says, “There was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute” (Nietzsche 451). This is how he states that Humans created this knowing, to give themselves something to be arrogant about, this then created outsiders. “He Misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him” (453). This quote is the definition in which outsiders are created or better known as those who are exclude.

There are many things that happen in society to create outsiders. A prime example is Christmas. When I was growing up we would always celebrate Christmas, by having huge parties before Christmas break. Every single year a fellow Jewish student at my school would be excluded or left out of our “society” because of this knowing we created separated him from the main group. He would be left out of our party because his truth was different from our truth. Imagine growing up in his shoes. Every year there was a huge celebration in class. Which, you could never be at because you were separated from the group. By a truth that wasn’t your truth. One can only think of how upset and frustrated that child must have been. What was going through his mind at the time? Do my fellow class mates hate me? Did I do something wrong? Why can’t I attend the party? He is someone who got excluded and therefore became an outsider. These truths that we create affect people severely some times.

Another prime example of the exclusion of others or the creating of an outsider is High School. There was a student in my high school that was considered to be a part of our society. One day he told his best friend that he was gay. After that point he was excluded from our society in high school. Based on the fact his truth or reality was different from everyone else. One day he went from being approved of in society to being an outsider just like that. This affected him greatly he started having problems with depression and suicide. All of this came from an individual relaying to the group he had a different truth than theirs. Having this truth hurt this person to the extreme.

Nietzsche said, “But in this conceptual crap game “truth” means using every die in the designated manner, counting its spots accurately, fashioning the right categories, and never violating the order of caste and class rank” (456). Truth is what we want it to be and it has to be exactly that and nothing else, and never out of order ever. In reality Nietzsche is using this essay to tell us how this truth is a lie and doesn’t matter at all. If truth doesn’t matter why do we use it to hurt others at times? And create this outsider class among society?

Another example of how we use this knowing or truth to create these outsiders is way of expressions. For example when and if you happen to walk down the street and see someone dressed in all black. Society’s truth could be that people who wear all black are somehow evil. Creating this outside class just on how a certain persons truth is they want to wear all black to express themselves. Also how if you see someone dressed in rags or torn up clothes. Society may exclude them based on them not conforming to what the average person may wear in clothes bought or sown in a store. Based off society’s truth if one doesn’t conform one becomes excluding or outsider.

My final example on how society creates outsiders based of truth or knowing is extreme but true knowledge and intellect itself. In middle school I went to school with my cousin who happened to be autistic. He was separated by society in multiple ways just because of his intellect. First way in which he was excluded from other students is the bus to class itself. He would always be forced to ride on a different bus regardless of if we were at the same stop or not. Secondly once at school he would then be put into separate classes from the rest of the students or “society”.

Nietzsche lets readers around the world in on this little thing called knowing and truth. And how humans then put meaning behind these truths, and overtime how humans forgot they created these truths. Meaning in my opinion humans invented a system in which created these outsiders that will not possibly know these truths. There are many cases in which I have personally experienced. Religion, sexual orientation, Expression, and mental illness. Most of these examples people can’t control. But if they could I’m sure they would have the desire to be in the “society”. Everyone has a desire to be in society’s truth no one wants to be an outsider. If this is the case why does society create truth to create outsiders?  “There was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history” (451)

The Art of Persuasion: Swift Style

This week we decided to read a master piece of a satire. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is the ideal way to write a rhetorical essay. He has great use of ethos, pathos, and logos. He is good at using ethos with adding in his random knowledgeable friends from the “states”. I like how he does this by adding credibility, but at the same time keeping it sarcastic by not giving actual names. His use with pathos is there with talking about eating children, most people would get emotionally worked up if some one mentioned eating their children! Finally his use with Logos is there throughout the essay. He uses words to make him self sound more of the higher class type, also he throws out numbers all over they essay to sound as if he has researched. He is also very good at making the reader think he is being serious. In fact he was so good at this that people actually thought his proposal was serious. They couldn’t distinguish between the Swift and the narrator.

I’m hoping having read Swift’s rhetorical essay. To take notes from it on how to be persuasive for my next essay. Having seen multiple examples on ways to use ethos, pathos, and logos. I think I can work those types of persuasion into my paper with better use. Meaning I have a better grasp now that I’ve seen them used in actual text!

Riley

For this weeks reponse I chose to post on Riley’s blog. She put out a good point about how we speak negativley of nature. And the piece speaks out to me.

Writing Without Specifics

I found it extremely hard to write my essay without any true guidelines or prompt. There was so many ways you could interpret how to write this past essay. It nearly took me a week just to figure a basic idea in which to write about. Then when I finally got the basic idea in my head I had to turn the idea into a description of an experience, or multiple experiences I have had with it. This took me another couple of days to figure out moments, in which I had experienced, in my case “Changing”. Then finally putting all of those thoughts together in a way in which it was a narration. I felt like I couldn’t write the essay as well as I would have liked to. It felt rushed by the time I finally figured out what to write about and how to write it. On the next essay i definitely plan on making sure I spend a lot of time more in the process of getting an idea. That was surely the hardest part about this essay.

Having said all those things about the process on the last essay we did. I was overall happy with how the lack of a prompt made me have to try and think about what to write and how to write it. Instead of the usual here’s what to write and here is how I want you to write it. It did make it hard and it was annoying, but it is helping me gain some skills on how to start thinking on my own. I didn’t much enjoy this essay. Because I wasn’t quite prepared for how much effort I would need to give in the idea process. So hopefully I can enjoy the next one by being more prepared!

Descriptive Narrative Essay

Austin Masuga

Cynthia Bateman

English 101

20 September 2011

 

 

 Petty Change and Other Things Not to Worry About.

 

           The smell and the weight of the air as I opened the door to my dorm made me feel vulnerable. It was like a shower of air, and instead of dirt and sweat, it washed away everything that I had ever known. For the first few moments I was empty. An entire books worth of life was behind me, and now all I had were empty pages. What should I write? The weight of each and every decision I made mattered more than it ever had before.  I realized how truly under prepared for life I was. I quite simply was not ready for the change, and that terrified me.

In high school all that I wanted was to be liked. It was critical for me to be liked. I was always thinking about the cause and effect of my actions in my “friends” minds. Now in college this hardly matters, no one gives a crap about who I hang out with. What matters now who do I really like, who do I get along with, and who do I want to be around. The change in the social structure collapsed all of my mental stigmas.

Moving from Tuscola to college imposed a lot of changes. At home I never really had to think about the basic necessities; toilet paper, toothpaste, tissues. I never had to think about food, all my favorites were at my beck and call. Making the change from home to college was rough. I had a hard time making even simple decisions about what to eat. The situations were so trivial. All I had to do was decide what to eat. However; every time I got hungry instead of my criteria being what and where to eat  my criteria: were who should I eat with, what time should I eat, will there be food there that I like, will I be judged if I eat alone? Basically everything that I was worried about had absolutely nothing to do with eating even though all that is what I was trying to do.

I cruised through high school, I really didn’t care all that much. I had the opportunities to be an advanced student but I chose to take the easy route. Now, however, I feel much more pressured about academics because if I do poorly it affects the rest of my life. Unfortunately, my high school academic career didn’t quite prepare me for the change to college.

Up to this point my main stressor has been change. Genuinely I think that in the environment that we live in change does not really matter because whether we want it to happen or not it does: there is actually nothing that we can do about it. In this however I am a hypocrite. I have a hard time getting over all the changes that life has thrown my way. Furthermore I can personally attest to the fact that I do not in any way shape or form embrace change. I resist it just like the rest of the world.

Change is a fact of life, it is there period. It cannot be tailored to what we want; it simply is what it is. Worrying about how, when, and were life goes is futile, it is pointless. I suppose that somewhere in my psyche I know this but it is definitely not developed enough for me to act on in on a day to day basis. However, when I do take the time to think about it I do realize the fallacy of this style of thinking and privately realize the importance of accepting change.