The Best of All Possible Worlds

I am not so creative, so this is my attempt at "creative notes."

The long hours of Social Justice cause my days to be completely revolving around it. Today we discovered how a "real college class" would be like. We no longer are required to raise our hands to speak and we are encouraged to discuss and have deep conversations about the material presented by the teachers. We began the day by discussing the advantages to having this opportunity to take an intense non-graded academic class. I think it puts a lot more emphasis on learning. I also found out that a lot of classes at Brown use a Pass/Fail system, which I think is very interesting and will definitely be looking more into that. Although it is nice to have an idea of how well you are doing in the class, I think that when it becomes all about the grade and not about the learning that there is a problem. We discussed how people learn, using both sides of their brain and how the stereotype is that women are more in touch with the right side, artistic and creative side, of their brain and men think more with their left, academic thinking side. We were presented the idea of taking "creative style" notes in which we use colorful markers and pictures instead of traditional style note taking.

We then watched another video of some of Slavoj Zizek's philosophy. In the video, it was explained that the ideal life for a good civilian would be to grow up as an employee. In doing so, you would learn and master a certain craft and grow up to be an employer in this field. You would use division of labor and hire more young people to make yourself rich and then live comfortably. You would give any extra money to charity and leave all your money when you died to others who would need it. It would be a cycle because all the young employees would grow up to be like you. Mr. Lamas gave Benjamin Franklin as an example of a succesful man who gave a lot to charity through his founding of UPENN and many libraries and more. Other examples would be Rockefeller and Carnegie. The discussion then changed to the differences between optimism, pessimism and realistic thinking. We came up with situations in which the three types of thinkers would come up with a different solution for capitalism and the problems that come with it. We agreed it is easier to come up with a thousand ways the world could end than imagining a way to go beyond capitalism. 

An optimistic character, Pangloss, from Voltaire's "Candide" quotes, "This is the best of all possible worlds." I don't believe this is a very productive way to think because then no efforts are made to improve the world. Humans should never stop trying to make the world a better place. There will always be room for improvement. Some of the descriptions we came up with for describing the type of people who would think like Pangloss are arrogant, comfortable, nationalistic, anti-intellectual, in power and in denial. We then talked for a while about the dangers of being in denial. I really appreciate that we can really decide where the conversations will go. The teachers definitely give us a lot of freedom in that sense. 

We were dismissed a few minutes after 12:00 PM to go to lunch. I had a sandwich and some cheese cake at Houston Market. A lot of Summer Discovery students are finding that spending $8 or less on a meal simply is not enough, so we are unable to get drinks. Since my sandwich was very small and cheap, I got to enjoy the slice of cheese cake! As we were walking back to class, I got asked by a lost tourist where Houston Market is and I was actually able to give her directions. That was a good feeling. Luckily, it was one of the three places I know how to get to!

When we returned to class, Mr. Lamas and Mr. Nairn were not there and instead were two girls who took the Social Justice course last summer. They told us about how much they loved the class and asked if we had any questions. There were a few, and afterwards they asked us how we felt about the traditional classroom setting we were sitting in. It was four rows of desks sitting behind each other. They told us to surprise our professors and be sitting in a circle when they came back. Personally, I think the whole thing was planned and that the professors wanted us to be sitting in a circle the whole time!

Me working at the library.

We watched a video I had already seen a long time ago about being the importance of the first follower that a leader needs in order to make his or her movement. We watched a video using a shirtless guy dancing crazily in a park which ended up in a ton of people dancing together. It was the fault of the first follower who stood up with the crazy shirtless man and danced with him. Then, everyone else followed and did the same. We split into groups again and discussed last nights reading which was "The Ways of Seeing" by John Berger. Reading an entire book in one night was challenging but worth it because the book offered a lot of insight on how different people see things using nudity in art. Again, our conversations were very deep and interesting and we even ended up going a bit beyond 5:00 PM because we were so into our conversation. 

Now, I sit in one of the many libraries that UPENN has working on my blogging and my reading for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be doing two site visits, which I am looking forward to.