Number 10

1. "Most Beautiful Work Award" - I am most proud of my tragedy essay. I put a lot of work into organizing it right and making sure my ideas got out in the essay. I've always been afraid that my writing will be confusing in its order and organization (because when I start off I spill all my ideas out), but after this essay I've learned to trust myself to wisely organize an essay or other piece of writing. I also like the ideas I came up with in the essay about how the definition of tragedy changes with the times (the Greeks loved their rulers, so it was tragic when rulers were revealed to be flawed; we hate politicians nowadays [unless they're truly beneficient to the people], so our focus lies on what happens to the everyday commoner).

2. "Lesson Learned" - One particular pointer I've found helpful is to pad quotes with explanation. I've started to notice that it's really helpful when reporters do this in articles, even if they comppletely repeat the point that was made in the quote. I've started doing this in my writing, too. I feel I've also gotten better at analyzing writing for a specific point--like in our inquiry projects. Although it can detract from the simple joy of reading, searching text for answers to a question can also add a lot of depth to the reading experience.

3. "Lessons I'd Like to Learn" - To feel ready for college, I'd like to go deeper into analyzing writing. It would be interesting to discuss quotes from the "great minds" of the past couple thousand years, sort of like what we did with Socrates.
I don't know if this is part of the senior curriculum, but I would love to do some creative writing. I think we all have ideas that are waiting to turn into an awesome story.

High Tech High is named High Tech High for a reason. The founding fathers wanted us to employ technology in our learning adventures. In our everyday lives, is technology employing us?

Michael Pollan, in his book The Botany of Desire, poses the question: We have developed crops like corn and potatoes well beyond their original potential. Now that corn has grown out of its grubby, near-death shrub-like form it started out as, and potatoes have undergone a similar journey, we must ask ourselves: who has used whom?

It almost seems like technology is evolving, very quickly, through us. Heck, if at the beginning of our evolution, if we had wanted to evolve more quickly, we couldn't have done better than to have someone else use us.

Poetry on Technology

My group's essential question is:

How will advancing technology affect who we are as humans?

So far, our poems seem to be answering that it will make humans an inferior being, lowering our status in the world. Technology will be greater than we are. However, in some cases, if we are wise, we will still have overall control over technology because we created it. It's only our own ingenuity trying to subjugate us.

What do you think? Did Terminator have it right? It's tempting to hand complete decision-making control over to technology sometimes--will this result in our demise or does technology promise us a brighter future? And please don't say "a mix of both"--be specific if you answer the question.

Thank you!

Tragedy

I enjoyed writing my tragedy essay. My ultimate conclusion was that tragedy depends on the society. The Greeks loved their kings, but we could care less about kings and we don't adore leaders just for being leaders. So we turn to the people. I agree with Arthur Miller: we weep at the tragedy of the common man. Tragedies should also end well, not in disaster. Still sad, of course, but very meaningful. What thinkest thou?

Yes, it's my essay

Tragedy and the People

A tragedy has to consist of a character in a high class of society who, following an error that anyone could make, loses his grip on power and falls to the bottom rungs of society. Or so said Aristotle in his praise of Oedipus (Lytle). But do all tragedies share this template? Can we call a story a tragedy if it diverts from this standard? What, today, gives us that tragic feeling? I believe a tragedy in the modern day revolves around the common man and his familiar struggle against an unfair world. Many writers throughout history have disagreed, however.

Some hold that tragedies have to involve a great and very public fall. In their 1998 article, "On Wall Street, Pride Signals a Fall,” Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner contend that today’s corrupt CEOs evoke in us the sense of tragedy that the tragic Greek heroes did. According to Niederhoffer and Kenner, these modern events parallel powerful Greek tragedies. The main character holds a high and respected position, acts overconfident and, through his or her hubris, loses the respected position. Public embarrassment is a necessity.

Contrarily, playwright Henrik Ibsen believes the action of the tragedy takes place in emotions rather than on a political or economic stage. While Aristotle believes that tragedies should center around a very public fall (Lytle), Ibsen contends that public embarrassment does not have to be involved. He writes that the situation of a woman, with her feminine morals and beliefs, losing to a world of men and their masculine morals, is a tragedy. Mental conflict is the key here. The woman loses her sense of sureness and ends up morally compromised and mentally lost.

Washington Post writer Lloyd Rose agrees that the main action of a tragedy should take place in the mind. Rose points out a vast difference between Greek tragedies and the more recent Shakespearean tragedies. The summary of a Greek tragedy, says Rose, is action-packed and interesting: “Man unknowingly kills father and marries mother, discovers the truth and blinds himself.” A Shakespearean tragedy sounds much less exciting: "A man makes a bad decision and is mistreated by his children." Clearly, Greek tragedies were based on the movement of characters through different situations and different societal positions. But in Shakespeare, the action is all in the mind.

A viewpoint completely contrary to Aristotle’s is that the common, everyday man is every bit as qualified to be a tragic hero as a Greek king. Arthur Miller, the famous author of Death of a Salesman, says, “the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his ‘rightful’ position in his society.” Miller might agree that the emotional mind is the stage for a tragedy rather than a political stage. According to Miller, we feel tragedy when we see immense passion, care, and hard work result in nothing.

A complete view of modern tragedy should consider all of these points. The definition of tragedy depends on the society. The Greeks revered their kings; for them, as for many European societies, the common man was nothing. Kings had a special place in the hearts of the populace. The Greeks wept when a leader fell. In the modern age, however, we no longer weep when a leader falls. Rather than respect political and economic leaders for their status, we care about them because of what they can do for us. South Africans do bemoan the retirement of Nelson Mandela because he was a great man, but also because of what he did for the country. He fought to raise up the common man of South Africa, and for this the citizens love him. In the Western world there are few leaders whom we consider “great men.” In fact, in the modern world the position of the common man has risen far above what it was in ancient Greece. The kings are dead. We are in the age of the common man.

The characters we care about, therefore, are our fellow people. As Arthur Miller points out, their struggles are the uphill struggles against a society that aims to keep them down. It is the story of the salmon swimming upstream, whom we watch, pity, and empathize with as he pushes against all external forces to achieve his goal. The tragic feeling comes to us when he fails, through no fault of his own, but because society refuses to let him raise his position. Of course there are hardly any real-world examples of this to which we can look because real-life tragic heroes do not become noted or famous. Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner would argue that the bosses of Enron and other such defrauders qualify as tragic heroes according to Aristotle’s definition. However, they do not take any noble actions (as Aristotle and Joseph Krutch require) and do not fall from power on a simple mistake--their whole persona is a lie. The citizens did not mourn their fall, either. As opposed to the story of a noble king who loses his position because of a simple error, the entire journey of Enron was an error. There was no nobility. Tragedies, therefore, cannot be made up simply of hubris.

Since we get the tragic feeling from stories that follow Arthur Miller’s definition--Tragedy and the Common Man--a tragedy does not need hubris at all. I believe that in the modern world we are all a bit fed up with hubris. Greedy men who lust for power and ultimately fail have plagued the pages of history too long for us to sympathize with them anymore. We don’t care about the falls of greedy people any more than we care about the falls of average leaders. A character has to capture our hearts with his passion and unending devotion to his cause.

To recap, a tragedy must center around a common man who tries harder than anything to improve his situation. He goes to all lengths and devotes all his energy to his cause. But ultimately, society or outside circumstances do not allow him to rise above his situation. He fails not from lack of effort but from the influence of an unfair world.
However, the ending should not leave the audience hopeless. On the contrary, it should expand the audience’s thinking on life and leave the audience hopeful that the world is ultimately good. His Dark Materials, for example, a trilogy by Philip Pullman, ends with the two protagonists and lovers realizing that because of unfair outside events, they can never be together. They discuss options for staying together that would require otherwise unthinkable sacrifices, but ultimately conclude they have to separate and never see each other again in this life. They have both defeated impossible chances to do good, but they receive no reward. However, the story ends on a hopeful note. Although the lovers are separate, they each realize they can make the world a better place with the spiritual inspiration of the other. This is the best kind of tragedy.
What, then, do tragedies teach us? They teach us that regardless of situations, our attitude controls our happiness. We can always do something, even if the world tells us we can do nothing. The world can at times prevent us from achieving our highest goals, but it is important to try. Even if we don’t succeed in our lifetime, the effort and the passion that we devote to our cause will inspire the readers of our story to change the world.

Whew. Thanks for hacking through that.

Essay

Here is a section of my essay. Do you agree or disagree? Should tragedies teach us something? What should they teach us?

However, the ending should not leave the audience hopeless. On the contrary, it should expand the audience’s thinking on life and leave the audience hopeful that the world is ultimately good. His Dark Materials, for example, a trilogy by Philip Pullman, ends with the two protagonists and lovers realizing that because of unfair outside events, they can never be together. They discuss options for staying together that would require otherwise unthinkable sacrifices, but ultimately conclude they have to separate and never see each other again in this life. They have both defeated impossible chances to do good, but they receive no reward. However, the story ends on a hopeful note. Although the lovers are separate, they each realize they can make the world a better place with the spiritual inspiration of the other. This is the best kind of tragedy.

My thesis

This is what I think a tragedy is now:

In Greek tragedies, the action was in the movement of characters through various classes in society. But in modern tragedies, the action is more in the thoughts and emotions of the characters. It's much more mentally based. Like the writer of the fifth tragedy reading said, summaries of Greek tragedies sound a lot more exciting than summaries of Shakespeare's tragedies. But Shakespeare's work is powerful because you see the struggles not between nations or power holders, but between a man and himself, or between a man and society at large.

As Arthur Miller said, the tragedy of the common man is much more powerful today than the tragedy of people in high places. Besides, the "flawed" heroes of Greek-style tragedies are either noble, flawless people who are victims of ridiculous situations (Oedipus) or just dirt bags to begin with who seemed like cool people because they were lying (Enron and friends). Bill Clinton, it's true, seemed to fit the description of a great man who made a mistake, but his story doesn't qualify as a tragedy because, well, look at him. It didn't exactly end in tragedy. He remained president and he's now a big political guy who Democrats love.

So what gives us that tragic feeling nowadays? When the action is in the characters' emotions, their personal crises, their brains. It's more inwardly focused. No longer do we weep when a great leader falls. The kings are dead. We are coming into the age of the people.

What makes it a tragedy?

I thought Oedipus was tragic because of the scope of the whole thing. The audience witnesses this incredible downfall, and it has repercussions for everybody. It shakes the citizens' faith in the infallibility of their king, and makes everyone feel a little weirded out. However, i get more worked up about newer tragedies, in which it's tragic because of the people, not just the significant events. If a character you love dies, or you know that two characters love each other so much but can't be together, it strikes a much deeper chord. Character development is the key to any modern tragedy, and it's so powerful because we identify with the character.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Apparently they do. Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" explores the confusion surrounding androids, which are organic robots indistinguishable from humans except for a lack of empathy and different bone marrow.

There are androids who simply serve their masters on Mars. But the ones who have escaped to Earth obviously want to be free; this suggest they are not just drones. They dream of something better. While they don't care about what happens to other androids, some of them felt despair at learning they were in fact androids.

My question is: How can this kind of being come about in the real world? I suppose scientists could clone humans and take out some empathy gene, but the lack of empathy seems to be a mere side effect. It seems like they built android brains, which were circuit boxes, and surrounded them with real skin and hair. If this does eventually happen, I wonder if androids would develop dreams and wants. Their electric brains could conceivably become complex enough to function as a human brain (if that whole Singularity nonsense is true), so the world Dick created might be more accurate than we think. If so, we are going to face moral issues more unclear than any we have faced before.

Socrates' Philosophies

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

I really don't know if this is true or not. My immediate reaction is "no." But I don't completely understand what Socrates means. Maybe he means life is meaningless without constant analysis of how you are living and consideration of the best way to do things. That one should always ask him or herself: Is what I'm doing the best way to lead my life? Now, of course any person in Socrates' setting should have followed this. With our screwed-up Western values, it's important to think about the best thing to do if we're surrounded by ridiculous ideals. If you're living in a society which has strong values that are healthy for the functioning of the group and the area, knowing what's right may be more of an instinct than a carefully thought-out premise.