yayyy, colonization.

I have decided to write my essay looking through the lens of the colonization theory. Throughout history we have learned about the colonization of tribes throughout America. In the passage we received in class, the author discusses many ideas that can be connected to the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. One idea that I plan to analyze in my essay is the idea of colonizers taking advantage of the ‘Others.’ The author of this passage quotes, “In effect, the colonizers were revealing their unconscious desires for power, wealth, and domination, not the nature of the colonized subjects.” Said believes that the colonizers put their own interest above the tribal people. I plan on using this idea to connect it to some examples in Things Fall Apart. For example, when the messenger takes extra cowries for himself when the six tribal men where in jail shows how they did not care so much about the well being of the tribe, but more about what they will get out of the situation.

Another idea I plan to discuss in my essay is how the Europeans saw themselves as being better and their religion being the 'right one'.  The theoretical text states “These subhumans or “savages” quickly became the inferior and equally “evil” Others.” I plan on tying this quote into how the Europeans saw the tribal people as lesser to them. Also, they told them that the gods they believed in were not real, and there was only one true God. It is ironic to me that they barged in and told them this when they had no proof of there being one god or a billion gods.

I plan on uses more ideas to develop my essay. I am thinking about talking about how they wanted to turn as many people as they could to Christianity, not just because its what they believed in, but because they wanted the numbers to insure domination. Overall, my main topic for my essay will be on the idea of the colonizers seeing themselves as being the superior race. 

TECHnopoly

           Singularity and technopoly, I believe, are two words that express close to the same idea. Singularity is the idea that people and technology will combine together as one, and technopoly is the idea of surrendering our culture to technology. In this chapter, Postman describes a technopoly as “workers were relieved of any responsibility to think at all. The system would do their thinking for them.”  I believe that Bernard and Lenia live in a technopoly in the Brave New World. They have no sense of opinion and they use technology to create a “perfect” society.  A technocracy is defined as a form of government controlled by technocrats.  Postman describes a technocracy as “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven y the impulse to invent the “unseen hand.” Now does this relate to Brave New World? In the Brave new World, there are no customs or religions at all. They could be considered robots, specifically designed to do what they are made to do. But they are driven by the ‘unseen hand.’ Everyday they advance in technology always pursuing on making their world function better and better. Efficiency is the key.

            Fredrick Wilsow Taylor is known as the man who developed the use of scientific management. His philosophy is described in this quote, “The goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.” Taylor believes that computers are more efficient because they have no emotion. This can be related to the idea in Brave New World. For example, the people are controlled by their happiness. They are conditioned to think the same, and to be happy about it(mostly). This allows for faster and faster progress. This sense of thought makes me think about how much faster our society could advance if everyone agreed on things. Would it be easier if we had no emotions? It is scary to think about this happening to our world…the idea of no more humanity. If computers keep advancing and can think more efficiently than we can, it’s only a matter of time before technology is using us instead of us using technology. 

The Singularity

Throughout the years there have been major advancements in technology, especially computers. It has always been for good, like faster internet or easier applications, but what happens when progress of technology back fires on human society. In the article, 2045: The Man Year Becomes Immortal, Grossman describes his view on how he believes that computers will one day be more intelligent than the human race.

“Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only.”(Grossman 2).  As illustrated in this quote, one thing that the Human intelligence has over the computer intelligence is the ability to be creative. However in 1965, Raymound Kurzweil challenged this. “To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence”(Grossman 2).  If computers have the ability to have the creative personality as we do, how long is it before they develop a conscious too? When this intelligence is developed by computers, they will have the ability to do everything we can but at a much faster speed. What will we be used for then?

Being authentically human, in my opinion, means to have your own unique personality and opinions about things. You have to have your own sense of individuality. In the Brave New World, the director quotes, “Murder kills only the individual, and afterall, what is an individual.”(Huxley 148). In the Brave New World the humans do not have unique characteristics for themselves because they were born in groups of hundreds. They are more like robots, conditioned to do only what they are made for. How is this different from being a computer? In the article, Grossman mentions many ideas he believes that may occur when computers become smarter than us. For example he states, “Maybe we’ll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities.”(Grossman 2). Is this what happened in Brave New World in a way? They use technology to make people smarter or dumber depending on their needs. Technology may become so advance the concept of individuality could be swept from mankind.

Computers over taking humanity itself is not a good thing in my opinions, but what if they were used to help us live longer or forever. In Grossman’s article he states, “Maybe the artificial intelligence will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely”(Grossman 2). Would this be such a bad thing? We could use technology to be able to live indefinitely. But would we still be considered humans? Or would we lose our sense of humanity? For example, people’s belief in Christianity or other religions would just vanish because there would be no such thing as an afterlife.  A religion is a big part of who someone is and without it they soon believe what everyone else believes. If everyone is like everyone else, soon our world will be just like the "new world" in the Brave New World, without a sense of individuality.

Rhetorical Analysis

This essay changed the way I view how to write an essay. I was taught to follow a certain rubric and stay to certain rules. This essay stretched the rules allowing the essay to be more developed and allowed the author to be more creative.

I was taught the last three years the “rules” on how to write a well-developed introduction paragraph.  The first sentence would be a generalized statement that can be related to the theme. The second sentence included the title and the author. And the third sentence would be the thesis, or what you were going to try to prove during your essay. In the article on “A Far Cry From Africa” Marion A. Davis includes three quotes in his introduction paragraph. I was taught never to include quotes until you got into your body paragraphs. Davis use of these quotes allows him to familiarize his readers with the story he is writing about, which could help the reader understand what he is trying to prove in his essay.

In Davis’s essay he starts some of his body paragraphs with a quotation. In my previous English classes I was taught to begin each paragraph with a topic sentence, then include a quotation afterwards.  His paragraph structures contradict the format that I have been taught my whole life. I feel like a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph makes your essay stronger because it introduces the reader to the new idea you will be talking about.

In the essay, “A Far Cry From Africa,” I felt as if Davis did not stay to one strong argument throughout his essay. In this second paragraph he was mainly talking about Wallcott, the author of the book, and on Wallcott’s focuses in the story. In my opinion, I felt like the second paragraph was like a second introduction paragraph. This goes against what I was taught, but it seems like a good thing to take into consideration. I think this could be a good technique to consider in my writing because sometimes it is hard to express everything you are going to talk about in your essay in only one small paragraph. Adding a second introduction paragraph, or even a third, could help expand my writing into a more developed essay.

Davis’s essay structure goes against all the rules I have been taught. If I had wrote my essay like this my freshmen and sophomore year I would have most likely gotten a C, maybe a B if I was lucky.  This surprises me because this essay is obviously way better than mine was; it is just writing in a totally different format that I would have known to do. Davis is much more free flowing, and just says what he needs to say without following any rules or structure.

            Reading this essay has shown me that there are many different ways I can expand my writings to become a much stronger writer.  I need to break away from all the step-by -step rules that I have been taught the past few years. If I do this, I believe my essays will go from being good, to great!