Best of Week: Born in a Brothel.

            I missed most of this week of humanities due to being sick, but the day that I was there we watched the movie Born into a Brothel. This movie was the highlight of my week because of the way it opened my eyes to the way that people are living in our world. It made me think about the bubble that we live in called Glenview. That we are exposed to some hardships in our lives, but not nearly as many as people living in other parts of the world. I have never taken the time to think about how people live in India because it is so far away from me so it doesn't really affect my life. But after watching this film I have found myself pondering what it is like in other places too. I think this is how many people in the north shore think since we are never really exposed to such horrible living conditions or such horrible laws and restrictions. 
            This film also made me think about how lucky I am to have what I do. I was born into a family with a house, an income to put food on the table, loving parents, and a safe neighborhood. These kids are lucky if they have more than a dirt floor to sleep on every night. I thought it was incredibly unfair that these kids have to live like that, it just makes the cycle continue when they are forced to do as their parents did. It isn't fair that it matters so much where you are born as to what you will do with your life. I mean there are the exceptions that have a wonderful story to tell when they work their way out of the horrible life they were born into, but most are not that lucky. That's why I think what this woman was doing for these kids by trying to get them into schools that would help them get to universities was amazing. She was giving these kids a chance for a bright future that they would not have had without her help. 
            Another thing this film made me realize is that I would love to travel the world and learn as much as I can about other cultures. I want to be an elementary teacher after college and I think it would be brilliant to travel the world teaching elementary kids. I would get to experience the culture and traditions of every place as I was also getting to teach their youth. This is now one of my goals in life. I plan to study abroad in college, but after watching this film I do not want studying abroad to be the last of my traveling. We will see what happens! 

Connection: Creativity and The Beatles

            These past few weeks we have spent most days getting to the bottom of what creativity truly is. We've taken apart poems, essays, and many other works of art in order to do so. I think that i've finally begun to grasp the true concept of creativity during this class. Now onto the connection. I have always been and will always be a huge Beatles fan. I could listen to their music for days and never get sick of it. It's something about how different their music is compared to other people that draws me in. All of their songs have an element of mystery and the ability to always make me wonder what they are really about. With my passion for the Beatles in the back of my head at all times I began to make connections as we learned about creativity.
            Throughout learning about creativity I have been thinking about the amount of creativity John, Paul, George, and Ringo had to have possessed in order to create such amazing works of art. In a time when experimenting with different ways to make music was just beginning they were able to take it to a new level. Something that we talked about in class a lot was that creative people were able to think outside the box and make something new and different. They used trumpets, sitars, and created sounds that nobody had heard before through creativity. Sometimes they would just stumble upon a new sound by accident and still they would find a way to incorporate it into their work. The two band members that specifically embody creativity to me are John and Paul. These two brilliant men never stopped learning. They were always hungry for more. 
            Just one of many examples of their extreme creativity is the song A Day in the Life. John wrote half and Paul wrote half. The two parts of the song are immensely different yet they found a way to connect it with a musical interlude. They were able to make two things that normally would not mesh, mesh perfectly. All four of the men in the Beatles possess many different traits of a highly creative person. So as we have been learning about these trait I have found myself always going back to this wonderful band. 
            This relationship matters to me because I was able to understand how these men made some of my favorite music on a greater level. Before this unit I understood the details of their lives and I knew all the words to the music, but I never knew the traits that they all needed to posses in order to do the amazing things they have done with music. I guess this connection really taught me how important something like creativity is in the life of a musician like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, or Ringo Starr.

What if?: Technology and the future.

            Something that was brought up for a brief moment in today's class got me wondering... what if, in billions of years, when the sun is still going strong, whoever inhabits the planets consider us, humans, to be minor organisms from the past? I've spent quite some time thinking about this topic since we spoke about it in class today because I really think it is interesting. We consider the small organisms that first inhabited earth to be minor in the grand scheme of evolution. Compared to human beings, those organisms were nothing. In billions of years people could be calling us those organisms. It baffles me to think of what the world could be like billions of years from now. With all of the technological advances that are being made every day, it seems to me that we are exponentially growing in our technological use and our ability to understand what is around us. 

            The possibility of humans being more machine than human in the future also came up in class today. The thought of that ever happening to the human race scares me. Not just because of the movie Terminator, but for many other reasons. If humans become less human and more machine will we still be able to feel? Will we still be able to experience the emotions of love, hate, fear, happiness? A life without emotions, both good and bad, is a sad one at best. If we keep going at the rate we are going now with technological advancements then, sadly, i can say that I would not be surprised if this actually did happen sometime in the future. If this were to actually happen we would probably gain years on our average life span and a few more physical abilities that we could not have possibly had being fully human. But at the same time we would have the possibility of losing all of the things that make humans such amazing creatures. 

            I don't know about you, but I know that I would not be willing to risk the amazing things about being a human being just in order to live longer or be able to lift heavier objects or jump really high. I wish that things on Earth could just stay the way they are now, but this is a very naive thought. Our world is changing right before our eyes and there is nothing we can do about it. We are just along for the ride. I could probably go on about this topic for hours, but I will end this blog entry now. Maybe I'll continue this post on another entry in the future. I guess we will see!