Trevor Gustafson
Bad Eyes
As I approach writing this reading response I am faced with a major dilemma: I agree with pretty much everything that the author has to say. I find it easiest to write about something I disagree with rather than find a way to say something about an essay I agree with. That is, without simply summarizing it. Arguing is what I love to do. Being used to doing it, I find comfort in writing from an argument standpoint. The writing that I consider to be my best is always the ones where I am arguing a point. When I approach writing this reading response, I might let fear start to get in my way. I might say that I am afraid of how this reading response will look. Will it be boring? Will I look like I have no ideas of my own? Will those who read this think that I am just summarizing what the author had to say? I have a few ideas of ways to make it interesting, but I don’t think anyone will like them. So I sit here at my desk, afraid to write, afraid of failing.
I considered cheating. I could hire someone to write this essay for me. I think that not only will my writer’s grammar be better than mine; he may even have better ideas. But then what if my writer and I get in an argument over the best flavor of pizza, he gets mad, and won’t let me have the writing. Faced with this dilemma of not knowing what to do, I turn to the essay to see how the author handled her situation. The part that jumps out to me is where the therapist says, “then you don’t know how to look. This isn’t some kind of mystical thing. Just pay attention.” Could it be true that I had not paid attention to my own feelings, thoughts and convictions about the essay? Had I assumed that my ideas weren’t important?
In an utter end of my line moment, I sit down at my computer and start typing. It’s slow. It’s scattered. And yes it plain out sucks. The ideas that come to my mind aren’t that great. Possibly I’ll get an f on this reading response, but at least I write down what I feel. I realize that my ideas might be wrong, but I continue writing, remembering that I cann’t see part of the picture of what this completed text will look like. I also remember that in the end, this reading response will be more elegant, polished, and graceful than the fragments of thought now listed on my computer’s screen.
Now this was a partially false story. I never exasperated to the point of considering going to a friend for help in writing this response, but I did feel overwhelmed by the prospect of not knowing what to write about. Somehow the thought that my dilemma was similar to the dilemma of the author intrigued me. I followed that thought, not even sure of my own emotions until I compared them to the situations that the author encountered.
Like the author I was faced with a challenge and decided to be afraid. I didn’t think that my view on the essay was very good just like the author didn’t think her view of the world was very good. And so the author turned to other sources for help and I contemplated doing the same, but we both soon realized that those sources aren’t reliable. They won’t always lead us in the right direction. Sometimes they flat out betray us. Then both the author and I came to the realization that we are able to think for ourselves. It doesn’t matter what others think. It doesn’t matter if Rhonda marks this reading response as an f, what matters is that I have something to say. I know that I might not always be right, so I try to put forth my views humbly, but yet in a confident sort of way.
Why is it that I believe the author to be correct? For one I, too, have gone through the same thought process. What if both the author I myself had decided to keep on thinking of our views as being less important that the views of others? Well the author probably would still be going through life, living one tragedy after another. Like her failed marriage, she probably would not be able to see the bad things coming. If I had of continued to think of my ideas as being less important, I probably would have never finished this essay. I would have been so worried about the views of others that I would have ended up not writing this response after all, hence bringing the judgment of my teachers and classmates as to my ability to think and write.
Just like weeding is the staving off of brute chaos, picking through information and discarding the bad stuff is staving off the brute chaos of our thoughts, which will in turn lead to a better understanding of the world around us, even though we may not be able to see our world enough or correctly.
I love how the author makes the connections between her literal vision, and her vision of life. The connection is made that just as we might allow others to be our eyes; we may also allow them to be our brain. Just as the author realized that she shouldn’t always allow others to be her eyes, the essay subtly, yet compellingly, implores us to be our own intellect. “Since people around me had the first kind of sight, I was willing to grant that they had the second. And then the corollary: since I lacked the one, I surely lacked the other.” It’s amazing how metaphors like this are sometimes the best examples to use when proving a point.
Even though the author’s main point was hidden in a metaphor, I found this essay the easiest to understand out of all the ones we have read for this class so far. She doesn’t use words that only an English geek would know, nor does she ramble on, spouting out seemingly random information. This author has chosen to tell her story and lightly hint at the deeper meaning behind this pleasant narrative.
I find some similarities in between all three essays that this class has read so far. Namely that all three of them aim to show that the reader is a source. What I find different about this essay is that the author doesn’t seem to bash taking the opinion of others as much as, especially, the last essay. It seams to me that the author is saying that our ideas are important, but maybe not always right. As the author says in her closing thoughts, I am a person who has trouble seeing enough, or correctly. The implication is given that the author is not just talking about her eyesight, but also about her worldview.
As I have said before, it is important that we take a moderate view on the distinction between being confident in ourselves, and realizing that we may not always be right. While I found this essay harder to respond to, I did enjoy finally being able to agree with the author.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
I stand here writing
Trevor Gustafson
I stand here writing
Just like in my last reading response, I would like to focus on one key sentence. This time it is a quote. The quote reads, “Life was not something to be learned but to be lived.” I find that an unfortunate amount of people today are afraid to learn from the mistakes of others. We feel that we must learn for ourselves. Why is it that history is not looked on as an essential subject? It is an important subject because it can teach us valuable lessons about life. For instance, if we were to look back on all the problems that war has caused over the years and how it has accomplished practically nothing, wouldn’t we be more willing to avoid a war? This is not to say that I am a pacifist. There are sometimes reasons for war, namely self defense, but the majority of wars in this world’s history could have been avoided if people had of realized what the outcome would be-nothing. You see that’s what history is. It’s a looking into the future by means of the past. In essence, history is just repeated over and over again because we are unwilling to learn and move on.
Now if a scientist were to try to come up with a theory that someone else had already come up with, say how to make a light bulb, he would be foolish. He would be wise to study the research already done on light bulbs. He could question the theory itself, test it, and see if he can come up with a better way of doing it, but to spend time “discovering” something someone else has already discovered, is utterly pointless. It’s reliving history. When we are presented with evidence, but say we think that we must try everything out for ourselves, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we our discovering something new.
Without learning from history, our society will never progress. Fortunately we do learn from history. Do we question everything that is involved in turning on a light switch every single time we turn on a light in our house? No. Of course not. You see you see we are learning from and accepting history when we accept the research and experiments done by people in the past to discover a way to harness electricity and make it light up our houses at night. We should be, as Henry James says, “A person upon whom nothing is lost.”
Now all this is not to say that there is no place for living facts. Every parent knows that children need to learn some things for themselves. A parent would be foolish to pick a baby up every time it falls. If the parent did this, the poor child would never learn to walk. The parent must let the child learn for himself. All the lectures in the world about the importance of money will do nothing for a child unless he is forced to make his own money.
Unfortunately some parents don’t realize that life is also to be learned. Everyone needs advise. Why should we travel a road someone else has traveled? Now if this is an exiting road, say learning to walk, there might be a difference, but letting teen try harmful drugs when the parent knows people who have gone down that road and discovered it to be harmful and dangerous, would be foolish. Abstinence from drugs is either avoiding harm or the avoidance of unnecessary time spent “experimenting” with that dark and slippery road called drugs. Learning to walk is a good thing. The baby will have to do this anyways. There is a difference in-between letting someone try something harmful and letting someone learn a necessary part of life that will end up being for their own good. Might the baby get slightly hurt when he falls? Possibly, but not nearly as much as he would if he tried going through life without knowing how to walk. The same is not true for trying drugs. The harm is not worth the outcome because no outcome from that scenario is good.
There must be a balance in-between letting a child learn life and letting him live life. To say that someone should learn everything by learning from others would be foolish. In many instances the person would never end up learning anything. But to say, as the authors shirt said, question authority, would be foolish, too. Yes we should question the information given to us, but we shouldn’t try to always come up with that information on our own. We should not be, as the author says, ventriloquists, mouthing words. However we should be open to other’s ideas, not in a believe anything that comes along sort of way, but in a discerning of the advice given us. We must always find a medium. Neither extreme is good. I find that I, to some extent agree with the author that we should learn things for ourselves. However I feel that she leans way over to the side of learning everything for ourselves. I would disagree just as much with someone who said we had to learn everything from others. The point I am trying to make in this reading response is that there must be a balance.
What if someone were to believe everything presented to him? He would end up pretty confused. What if a man was building his house and took advice from everyone passing by. One person said to build a country-like wrap around porch. The builder built this. Another said the exterior walls should be contemporary. Make them out of a mixture of mettle, concrete and bricks. The builder built the walls in a contemporary style. Still another passer by told the builder that the interior should be styled like a Native American hut. Again, the builder built the interior to look like a Native American hut. Needless to say the builder’s house would look very odd. Probably no one would like it. You see the builder didn’t decipherer advice. He just took in everything that came along. This is what happened to the author when she had a practice debate. She just believed a quote she had been given, not even fully understanding it. The result was being picked to pieces by her opponent. She claims that by borrowing someone else’s word’s, she was left with no words of her own. This is not entirely true. She was left with no words of her own because she did not test the information given to her. The author quotes Reynolds Price, “Nobody under forty can believe how nearly everything’s inherited.” If we choose to inherit everything from our parents, and make no decisions for ourselves, our lives will be in a pretty sorry shape. Just like the imaginary house.
Up to this point I have mainly discussed this topic from the aspect of someone giving advice. However we must also look at this topic from the prospective of one who is receiving this advice. A student may be presented with all the right information that a parent, teacher, or book can give him, and yet if he lives life with a mindset of not believing anything, what good are all those resources to him? To refuse someone else’s advice is prideful. Take the classic example of the man refusing to stop for directions. What is he doing? He is refusing to take the advice of someone else. Why? He is being prideful. What will it cost him? Lost time. As teenagers our pride is put into overdrive. If we’re presented with a difficult math assignment, are we willing to go to a friend who is knowledgeable in math, or are we afraid to ask for help? What will we lose end up asking for help? We may end up being slightly embarrassed, but probably not as embarrassed as we would be if we got an f on the math test.
A good balance is where the parent or teacher realizes that sometimes, a person must learn things for himself. In addition, the other end of that is when the student realizes that sometimes he must let go of his pride, decipherer the information given to him, and realize that he cannot always discover everything for himself. As the author says, books give us insight but not answers. It’s what we choice to do with the information given to us that creates answers. The author also says we may never be able to segue our way through life. However, I think that we may be able to smooth the journey if we keep in mind that we can learn from others. As the author says, “nothing reveals itself straight out, especially the sources around [us].”
I stand here writing
Just like in my last reading response, I would like to focus on one key sentence. This time it is a quote. The quote reads, “Life was not something to be learned but to be lived.” I find that an unfortunate amount of people today are afraid to learn from the mistakes of others. We feel that we must learn for ourselves. Why is it that history is not looked on as an essential subject? It is an important subject because it can teach us valuable lessons about life. For instance, if we were to look back on all the problems that war has caused over the years and how it has accomplished practically nothing, wouldn’t we be more willing to avoid a war? This is not to say that I am a pacifist. There are sometimes reasons for war, namely self defense, but the majority of wars in this world’s history could have been avoided if people had of realized what the outcome would be-nothing. You see that’s what history is. It’s a looking into the future by means of the past. In essence, history is just repeated over and over again because we are unwilling to learn and move on.
Now if a scientist were to try to come up with a theory that someone else had already come up with, say how to make a light bulb, he would be foolish. He would be wise to study the research already done on light bulbs. He could question the theory itself, test it, and see if he can come up with a better way of doing it, but to spend time “discovering” something someone else has already discovered, is utterly pointless. It’s reliving history. When we are presented with evidence, but say we think that we must try everything out for ourselves, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we our discovering something new.
Without learning from history, our society will never progress. Fortunately we do learn from history. Do we question everything that is involved in turning on a light switch every single time we turn on a light in our house? No. Of course not. You see you see we are learning from and accepting history when we accept the research and experiments done by people in the past to discover a way to harness electricity and make it light up our houses at night. We should be, as Henry James says, “A person upon whom nothing is lost.”
Now all this is not to say that there is no place for living facts. Every parent knows that children need to learn some things for themselves. A parent would be foolish to pick a baby up every time it falls. If the parent did this, the poor child would never learn to walk. The parent must let the child learn for himself. All the lectures in the world about the importance of money will do nothing for a child unless he is forced to make his own money.
Unfortunately some parents don’t realize that life is also to be learned. Everyone needs advise. Why should we travel a road someone else has traveled? Now if this is an exiting road, say learning to walk, there might be a difference, but letting teen try harmful drugs when the parent knows people who have gone down that road and discovered it to be harmful and dangerous, would be foolish. Abstinence from drugs is either avoiding harm or the avoidance of unnecessary time spent “experimenting” with that dark and slippery road called drugs. Learning to walk is a good thing. The baby will have to do this anyways. There is a difference in-between letting someone try something harmful and letting someone learn a necessary part of life that will end up being for their own good. Might the baby get slightly hurt when he falls? Possibly, but not nearly as much as he would if he tried going through life without knowing how to walk. The same is not true for trying drugs. The harm is not worth the outcome because no outcome from that scenario is good.
There must be a balance in-between letting a child learn life and letting him live life. To say that someone should learn everything by learning from others would be foolish. In many instances the person would never end up learning anything. But to say, as the authors shirt said, question authority, would be foolish, too. Yes we should question the information given to us, but we shouldn’t try to always come up with that information on our own. We should not be, as the author says, ventriloquists, mouthing words. However we should be open to other’s ideas, not in a believe anything that comes along sort of way, but in a discerning of the advice given us. We must always find a medium. Neither extreme is good. I find that I, to some extent agree with the author that we should learn things for ourselves. However I feel that she leans way over to the side of learning everything for ourselves. I would disagree just as much with someone who said we had to learn everything from others. The point I am trying to make in this reading response is that there must be a balance.
What if someone were to believe everything presented to him? He would end up pretty confused. What if a man was building his house and took advice from everyone passing by. One person said to build a country-like wrap around porch. The builder built this. Another said the exterior walls should be contemporary. Make them out of a mixture of mettle, concrete and bricks. The builder built the walls in a contemporary style. Still another passer by told the builder that the interior should be styled like a Native American hut. Again, the builder built the interior to look like a Native American hut. Needless to say the builder’s house would look very odd. Probably no one would like it. You see the builder didn’t decipherer advice. He just took in everything that came along. This is what happened to the author when she had a practice debate. She just believed a quote she had been given, not even fully understanding it. The result was being picked to pieces by her opponent. She claims that by borrowing someone else’s word’s, she was left with no words of her own. This is not entirely true. She was left with no words of her own because she did not test the information given to her. The author quotes Reynolds Price, “Nobody under forty can believe how nearly everything’s inherited.” If we choose to inherit everything from our parents, and make no decisions for ourselves, our lives will be in a pretty sorry shape. Just like the imaginary house.
Up to this point I have mainly discussed this topic from the aspect of someone giving advice. However we must also look at this topic from the prospective of one who is receiving this advice. A student may be presented with all the right information that a parent, teacher, or book can give him, and yet if he lives life with a mindset of not believing anything, what good are all those resources to him? To refuse someone else’s advice is prideful. Take the classic example of the man refusing to stop for directions. What is he doing? He is refusing to take the advice of someone else. Why? He is being prideful. What will it cost him? Lost time. As teenagers our pride is put into overdrive. If we’re presented with a difficult math assignment, are we willing to go to a friend who is knowledgeable in math, or are we afraid to ask for help? What will we lose end up asking for help? We may end up being slightly embarrassed, but probably not as embarrassed as we would be if we got an f on the math test.
A good balance is where the parent or teacher realizes that sometimes, a person must learn things for himself. In addition, the other end of that is when the student realizes that sometimes he must let go of his pride, decipherer the information given to him, and realize that he cannot always discover everything for himself. As the author says, books give us insight but not answers. It’s what we choice to do with the information given to us that creates answers. The author also says we may never be able to segue our way through life. However, I think that we may be able to smooth the journey if we keep in mind that we can learn from others. As the author says, “nothing reveals itself straight out, especially the sources around [us].”
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Owl Has Flown
Student name: Trevor Gustafson A response to: The Owl Has Flown by Sven Birkerts Due date: September 26
In this reading response, I would like to focus on one sentence where the author writes, “Wisdom is a seeing through facts, a penetration to the underlying laws and patterns.” Now this sentence could mean two things. One, it could mean that we should try to see the underlying laws and patters in spite of facts getting in the way. Or it could be saying that, as I believe, wisdom is seeing the underlying laws and patters with the lenses of facts. Because the author, Sven Birkerts, says in the previous sentence that, “wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering or organizing of facts,” I shall assume that the author takes the former opinion of seeing the underlying laws and patterns in spite of the facts.
Yes, wisdom is being able to see the underlying laws and patters. However it is also knowing simple facts like the earth revolves around the sun. Like the author says, we tend to act embarrassed around words such as truth, a synonym for fact. We all, consciously or subconsciously, know that there are truths in life, but many people deny facts and say that anyone who believes in them is closed minded. However, if, say, someone ordered a tender beef stake at a fancy restaurant, and the waiter brought out a side salad, the customer would be furious. He would certainly not be satisfied if the waiter told him that to him, the waiter, this was a steak. Why is this? It is because the customer knows the fact that a salad is different than a beef steak. The modern train of thought has led us to believe, however, that we cannot know truth. That is so absurd. I guess that is what I vehemently disagree with about this part of the essay. I get so frustrated when people say there is no truth and will believe anything they read or hear. As the author says, we have lost a belief that all things fit together. I am not sure, but I believe the author believes that we can see how things fit together if we ignore facts. I believe we can see the big picture only if we look through the lenses of facts.
Wisdom is not ignoring the facts in order to see the underlying laws and patterns; it’s seeing these things through the microscope of facts. Just as adding magnitude to a microscope makes seeing the small things easier, adding facts to our brain makes seeing the underlying workings of life easier. Trying to look at the underling layers and patterns of this world without knowledge of facts is like trying to solve an algebra problem without knowing basics of arithmetic. If we don’t know that one plus one equals two, then how are we going to solve an aquatic equation? You see, we use facts in our everyday lives. They are essential. By zooming in on something we may momentarily loose the big picture, but just like a microscope, we can angle facts to look at any topic of our choosing.
If we choose to fill our minds with a garble of information, instead of quality information, our microscope gets blurry and we can’t see as well. It is said that Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective ever, once scolded his sidekick, Watson, for telling him that the earth revolved around the sun. Holmes said that this was useless information to him that would clutter up his brain. While Holmes was probably just kidding, and the implications of not knowing the basics of our universe is absurd, it does make a point that what we fill our minds with does matter. The better the books, the paramount of which being the bible, we fill our minds with, the better our ability to bring up important facts when we need them. I would have to agree with the author that, over the course of time, we have because lazy in our readings. In fact, unless forced too, we may not even read an essay like this due to the difficulty of reading and understanding it. It is sad that the quantity of books would replace the quality of books. Like I said, if we choice to read anything that comes along, we garble the microscope of our minds and we can no longer discern how to look at life through the microscope of our brain.
In this reading response, I would like to focus on one sentence where the author writes, “Wisdom is a seeing through facts, a penetration to the underlying laws and patterns.” Now this sentence could mean two things. One, it could mean that we should try to see the underlying laws and patters in spite of facts getting in the way. Or it could be saying that, as I believe, wisdom is seeing the underlying laws and patters with the lenses of facts. Because the author, Sven Birkerts, says in the previous sentence that, “wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering or organizing of facts,” I shall assume that the author takes the former opinion of seeing the underlying laws and patterns in spite of the facts.
Yes, wisdom is being able to see the underlying laws and patters. However it is also knowing simple facts like the earth revolves around the sun. Like the author says, we tend to act embarrassed around words such as truth, a synonym for fact. We all, consciously or subconsciously, know that there are truths in life, but many people deny facts and say that anyone who believes in them is closed minded. However, if, say, someone ordered a tender beef stake at a fancy restaurant, and the waiter brought out a side salad, the customer would be furious. He would certainly not be satisfied if the waiter told him that to him, the waiter, this was a steak. Why is this? It is because the customer knows the fact that a salad is different than a beef steak. The modern train of thought has led us to believe, however, that we cannot know truth. That is so absurd. I guess that is what I vehemently disagree with about this part of the essay. I get so frustrated when people say there is no truth and will believe anything they read or hear. As the author says, we have lost a belief that all things fit together. I am not sure, but I believe the author believes that we can see how things fit together if we ignore facts. I believe we can see the big picture only if we look through the lenses of facts.
Wisdom is not ignoring the facts in order to see the underlying laws and patterns; it’s seeing these things through the microscope of facts. Just as adding magnitude to a microscope makes seeing the small things easier, adding facts to our brain makes seeing the underlying workings of life easier. Trying to look at the underling layers and patterns of this world without knowledge of facts is like trying to solve an algebra problem without knowing basics of arithmetic. If we don’t know that one plus one equals two, then how are we going to solve an aquatic equation? You see, we use facts in our everyday lives. They are essential. By zooming in on something we may momentarily loose the big picture, but just like a microscope, we can angle facts to look at any topic of our choosing.
If we choose to fill our minds with a garble of information, instead of quality information, our microscope gets blurry and we can’t see as well. It is said that Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective ever, once scolded his sidekick, Watson, for telling him that the earth revolved around the sun. Holmes said that this was useless information to him that would clutter up his brain. While Holmes was probably just kidding, and the implications of not knowing the basics of our universe is absurd, it does make a point that what we fill our minds with does matter. The better the books, the paramount of which being the bible, we fill our minds with, the better our ability to bring up important facts when we need them. I would have to agree with the author that, over the course of time, we have because lazy in our readings. In fact, unless forced too, we may not even read an essay like this due to the difficulty of reading and understanding it. It is sad that the quantity of books would replace the quality of books. Like I said, if we choice to read anything that comes along, we garble the microscope of our minds and we can no longer discern how to look at life through the microscope of our brain.
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