#12-2-15

This Week's discussion was inspired by Ideas from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ted Talk, The danger of a single story. However, our discussion centered mostly around Authority and how it can influence our beliefs.

We Discussed How teachers can influence the beliefs or mindsets of their students:

Many teachers make an effort to keep their own opinions to themselves so not to influence the beliefs of their students, Students will often phrase their Ideas similarly to the way they hear their teachers do. Additionally, sometimes when students look up to their teachers they'll adopt those beliefs without really filtering it for themselves.

Consider this quote from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself":

“You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”

And this one by Albert Einstein:

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth”

This melted into a discussion on how our parents can influence our beliefs growing up, specifically about body image. Ideas that we grow up with can be very hard to shake, even when we no longer agree with them.

Consider this picture:

We then watched this video on Westernization and how America has influenced beauty standards around the world: (The Illusionists Opening )

Although there's no doubt men also have Ideals thrown at them, it's debatable whether media puts as much pressure on men to adhere to beauty standards. There's this trope in TV shows where families will often have mothers whose bodies conform to society’s ideals while their husband's bodies don't. Here are a few examples:

We briefly discussed the fact that there societies where toplessnes among women and men alike is a norm:

"The lack of clothing above the waist for both females and males was the norm in traditional cultures of North America, Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islands until the arrival of Christian missionaries,[3] and it continues to be the norm and acceptable in many indigenous cultures today."

Contrary to this, There is a society called "Inis Beag" which was (in the 1950's) considered by anthropologists to be "the most sexually repressed culture in the world"

We also talked a bit about how people with unpopular beliefs can rise to power (when those beliefs are actually secretly popular); Many people have racist or sexist (etc) beliefs that they are reluctant to voice until someone who is popular and powerful voices it for them. This may have contributed to Trump’s popularity.

We briefly discussed perspective with this comic: (click for a better view)

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend! Feel free to continue the discussion in the comments

So this is my last year of high school and the seniors get a senior trip every year and so a lot of us paid $35 to go to Medieval Times in Dallas, TX, and the place was really cool like when we walked in we got these colored cards with table numbers on them and like then you walk straight into a gift shop that is really cool like it has legit swords and body armor and sheilds and little dragon figurines and necklaces, etc. 

Then another thing you see is this pretty long slushie bar and like you can pick your cup and I bought this light-up cup that like had a button on the bottom to change the colors of it and it makes your drink look really cool like maybe i’ll take a video of it sometime to show you guys. There was also a guy with a Falcon who, during the show, had this Falcon show us it’s flight when it hunts and it was so cool. By the way, every person who works in this place is dressed in Medieval attire and like they’re in character the whole time and this guy came out in really cool clothes and I was like “Hey, I like your attire,” and he said “Thanks! I just woke up and decided to put it on.”

Then he said that we need to keep track of the color of our cards because he’ll say it and direct us to a certain door. Once that was done, we walked out into an arena and me and my friends were able to get front row because we got table 1 so I was v happy abt that. Then the ‘kind and queen’ of the Medieval Times came out onto this balcony type thing and started giving us like a History of it and waiters and waitresses came out and gave us food (all finger food bc of the time period; they also didn’t drink tea in the morning (???) so we got pepsi (though i asked for water) which was this amazingly cooked/seasoned chicken and corn on the cob and a big potato wedge. 

Then in the arena these knights came out while the king and queen were giving a backstory on their training to become a knight and like they had legit swords and shit and were like doing all the moves it was so cool. Another reason the table cards were a certain color was because each color had a corresponding knight and so the color would be called out and a knight would ride out on his horse and the color coordinated audience would cheer for them. Me and my friends got the black-and-white knight who was so fucking hot like honestly the 3rd hottest person i’ve ever seen irl like even his smile was cute i was mesmerized. Also during the show each knight had like a handful of Carnations (real) and were throwing them to their color-coordinated audience and it was the last one and cute b&w knight started coming our way and was like “C’mon, you guys aren’t screaming loud enough” and I legit screamed as if I were at a concert and he looked right at me, smiled and said “Now, THAT is a scream” and threw the carnation at me like I was sosoosososo happy. 

Then, while we were eating and cheering for our knights, people in the arena were demonstrating some fighting techniques and so there were swords and battle axes and the spiky-ball thing and stuff like you could actually see the sparks come off the swords when they collided it was so fucking cool. Then, lastly, two knights at a time came and jousted and like eventually both ended up on the ground fighting combat style and it was so fucking cool to watch tbh. My knight didn’t win but he still looked hot af and gave me a flower so everything was all cool tbh. It was just a great, great day.