Blogging Around

The first blog I read was that of Mr. David Zakhodin, titled "Dialectics: Reality and Simulation," where David contemplated both ideas, along with that of a middle-ground, subconscious world in between the two.

David! First of all, great job, man. I love how much you've thought about the worlds of the Matrix, and after reading your post I knew I had to comment on it right away. (But just a spoiler alert, what I'm going to say has to do with the the last movies of the Matrix trilogy, so if you don't want to know anything about what happens, don't say I didn't warn you.)

I'm so glad you brought up the possibility of this "in-between world" in the middle of reality and the Matrix, because it exists! At the end of the second movie (Matrix: Reloaded) and the beginning of the third movie (Matrix: Revolutions) Neo is in a subway station, called Mobil (anagrammatic for "limbo"). This limbo is very much like the one as you mentioned in Inception; Neo's mind and RSI are stuck in this "dreamworld," so to speak, and his body is back on the hovercraft (sound familiar?)

And thus this idea of the dream-state manifests! I completely agree with you - I think our subconscious inadvertently reflects immensely on our reality. I kind of talked about this in my Dialectics post, where I examined the conscious and the unconscious, and also pointed out that the unconscious has more influence over our conscious reality than we realize, and can reveal a good deal about ourselves and the world around us. 

So, yes! To answer your intriguing question, the buffer state between reality and simulation does exists - both in the Matrix (Mobil), and I believe arguably in the real world (dreaming). But I still cannot answer whether or not I would live blissfully ignorant or realistically free. I'd like to think that given the choice I would avoid choosing what I consider self-indulgence and instead choose freedom, but I really can't stand behind that answer and say 100% thats what I would do. 

And what's really going to "bake your noodle" (to use my nerdy Matrix vocabulary) is whether or not I will consciously or subconsciously make that choice.

Or even if I truly will have any partaking in that choice at all?



The second blog I commented on was entitled "Inconvenient Truth: Clichés," written by Academy's very own Sam Korsky. Sam talked about the excessiveness and seemingly unavoidableness of clichés and overused ideas.

Sam Korsky, you insightful young bloke! I'm so happy I found this post, because it was wonderful and perceptive, and clearly I have some things to say! (All good, no worries!)

I am probably the most anticliché person out there. Especially when it comes to typical love stories, or how love is supposed to be, etc, etc, I cannot stand it! Call my crazy, but I'm the type of person who cringes at flowers and balloons and chocolate on Valentine's Day, or excessive and inconvenient demonstrations of chivalry. This might seem oddly pessimistic for someone like me, but it's just one of many paradoxes about myself. And this isn't because of any feministic motivation. It's simply because of its tacky and overbearing appearance basically since the beginning of time.

I love what you said about how ironically deviating from typical clichés have sort of become clichés within their own rights, because I think that is definitely true. And it's frustrating when all you want is something new and different. But this is also what I think makes certain examples of literature, art, or music more phenomenal than others. I don't think it's so much the ability to avoid clichés, but rather the ability to deliver them in an atypical way. I think a lot of the music I'm drawn to can easily be said to embody cliché and overdone themes, but by showing them through unique stories and sounds, that's where it becomes golden. :)

Dialectics: The Conscious and Unconscious Mind

Psychoanalytic theorist Sigmund Freud defines consciousness and unconsciousness as the following:

The conscious mind consists of what we are aware of; what we can rationally process and think about.

The unconscious mind consists of feelings and thoughts that influence our behavior when we are unaware.

The Martrix demonstrates two worlds in which one exists consciousness, or "enlightened" minds (with Morpheus and friends) and the other exists unconsciousness (with Agent Smith and friends). It is easy to separate the world as such because, as defined by Freud, unconscious minds can be classified as unaware and incontrollable, whereas conscious minds are knowledgeable of reality.

The power of the Matrix comes from its ability to work through the unconscious mind, to influence our behavior through feelings and thoughts without us realizing it or being able to control it. The problem is the unconscious mind has much more influence over our demeanor and personality than our conscious minds. Thus, what those in the Matrix may think they are thinking or doing consciously is actually just a reflection of what is in their unconscious mind (and unfortunately that happens to be the Matrix.)

This idea reflects the reason for what I believe makes Neo "the one," besides his anagrammatic name. Neo's ability to channel the unconscious is what makes him have an edge against the Matrix. Now, granted, I don't know why he specifically has this ability, maybe its some genetic mutation, who knows? Neo says when he first meets Morpheus, "I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my own life," which basically exemplifies the notion that Neo would much rather be completely aware that blissfully ignorant. But not only would he prefer to be aware, but he doesn't even know yet that he actually is. Throughout his whole life, as Morpheus points out, Neo has felt that there is something wrong about the world, "like a splinter in [his] mind." This, I believe, is his unconscious mind that he is bringing into consciousness; taking the idea of the Matrix that is vested in his inner thought and pulling it into a place where he can rationally process, and ultimately control it.

Controlling the unconscious mind is a powerful thing. This goes back to the whole post-modern idea that "you cannot defeat the system." So the only alternative I see is to get inside of it. One cannot simply destroy their unconsciousness to destroy the Matrix. Instead, as Neo so expertly does, working within and testing the system's boundaries, is basically like infiltrating the unconscious mind and controlling it from the inside out, bringing it into consciousness; bring the Matrix into a location where it can be controlled, yet, as the post modernist would point out, not entirely eradicated.

"When I used to look out at this world, all I could see was its edges, its boundaries, its rules and controls, its leaders and laws. But now I see another world. A different world where all things are possible. A world of hope. Of peace. I can't tell you how to get there, but I know if you can free your mind, you'll find the way."

Metacognition: Jane Eyre Mashup

Around 380 pages later, I could finally close Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre for good.

That is, until I had to reopen it once more to dive into its many complex themes and subtleties to create a compilation of examples of de and recontextualized love. And I chose to do this with none other than Mr. Aaron Ach. 

Originally the thought was to go with independence as our theme, but we struggled with just scratching the surface and realized that we needed to choose a theme that allowed us to dig deeper into not only Jane Eyre, but also previous English and outside sources. That's when we decided to mashup 'love'.

I will willingly admit that this assignment was not easy. Despite a seemingly obvious topic, it was difficult to "go back in time," so to say, to not only text from Jane Eyre we read weeks ago, but also to that of Orlando and King Lear that we read months ago. But making connections to these very different examples of great literature was surprisingly exciting. Through these commonalities I was opened to new ideas and themes that I never recognized while I was actually reading, and that was fun for me. And while coming up with these connections took some time and thought, it got easier with time. It was like getting a strike in bowling, as weird as that sounds; once you hit one pin, more and more fall each time, and the more excited you get. Once we came up with one great idea, the rest just flowed from there.

Getting to work on iMovie for the first time was awesome. I had so much fun being able to creatively express our ideas on a new medium. I really think that making decisions about what music to use, what transitions were best, and how to get text and ideas across helped tremendously in understanding not only the assignment but also the theme. Personally, I also think that a movie, as opposed to a PowerPoint or website, is very entertaining for the viewer, and that is also an important aspect to this project.

If I were to change anything, it would probably be my partner...

Just kidding! Aaron was amazing to work with, and I think our individual strengths and weaknesses were perfectly balanced with one another, and I think we both share the same determination and work ethic, so this project was very pleasurable! But in all seriousness, I think being more organized during the process would have made it a little easier. This is especially important for someone like me who, as I've probably said in every Metacognition blog, loves diverging and struggles with converging. Organizing our thoughts and keeping track of what we had/what we needed could have been better, but ultimately we nailed it down and birthed a project that I am very proud to be a co-creator of. 

Metacognition: "Short" Story

Finally. I never thought in high school we would ever get the opportunity to flex our imaginative and creative muscles to conjure a wonderful work of fiction. And I love writing fiction. So from the get-go I was completely ready to dominate when I began writing the first draft of my story.

Right away I knew what I wanted to write about. I honestly don't even know how it came to me, but I knew that my story had to revolve around life at the home front during the Vietnam war in the 60s. I also knew where I wanted my story to go, and that in the end the relationship between the main characters would be stressed.

In a nutshell, I ultimately decided to write a story about a girl and her brother. But it took a few steps to get to my last draft, and definitely a lot of changing. The first draft consisted of a girl who has a rough relationship with her brother, and the brother comes home after a long time, and they have this car ride, and yada yada yada. My favorite part about writing fiction is all of the freedom of description, and unfortunately I got a little carried away with my first draft. The plot was complicated and needed way too much background and explaining that just wasn't going to work for a short story. There was no way I could have written 1200 words worth, when setting up the main plot took over half of that. And that was my biggest downfall.

So I scrapped that, and started the second draft. This time I made sure that the relationship between the brother and sister was explicitly clear, and ultimately once again spent too many words getting ready for the main conflict of the story. My biggest problem when it comes to writing, as has been evident in previous assignments, is the divergent thinking. I have so many ideas and so many places to take them that I find it difficult to focus on one main idea.

So I scrapped that too and started all over again. This time I turned the relationship around between the two characters, and starting basically where my previous drafts had barely ended. I made the pressure come mostly from character v. self and character v. environment. Of course no final draft is actually final, but I was glad that I was finally able to take bits of pieces from my old drafts and make them into something much more complete.

In short, (haha, get it?) short stories aren't as easy to write as one may think. They're always fun, and it feels good to take a break from more serious forms of writing, but should I ever write another, it will definitely be important to come up with a solid, concise, and straightforward plot, as well as character personalities and sources of pressure!

Just to be fun and cliché:

It Matters: Denying Love

DISCLAIMER: The following blog expresses my personal opinions about certain religious ideas. I in no way intend to offend anyone or challenge their beliefs.

The other day I was watching "For the Bible Tells Me So," a documentary about how conservative Christians have explicitly used their religion to deny human rights. Among these was the ever-pressing and extremely current topic of gay rights. So far only ten out of the fifty states in America have legalized gay marriage (one of them more recently Illinois, who historically passed the law this past Valentine's Day.) And what I find so frustrating, as I saw in the documentary, arguably the most common reason for the justification of homophobia is religion.

I could go on a Bible-lengths rant of my views on religion and what I believe and don't, but that will be for another blog, perhaps. But right now I am concerned with the topic of love. No, love is not perfect. No, it doesn't have to be destined. Maybe this is because of timing, maybe because of personal conflicts. But no love, whether it be imperfect or forbidden, is so because two people are of the same sex. And in no way whatsoever should religion be used in such a way to curve morality to the point where this ignorant idea is justified.

A common theme within Jane Eyre so far has been the manipulative nature of religion to legitimize certain thought and advocate certain way of life. For example, Jane is told that instead of standing up to her enemies who wrong her, she should just be passive and absorb every mental and physical blow like a sponge. To clear something up: if religion is your thing, right on. I understand completely why people find it important to have something to believe in, to have something to serve as guidance, or to have something to have faith in in times of need. But when religion starts becoming an excuse, when it starts filling people like empty shells with immoral beliefs that go against basic and undeniable human emotions and rights, this is where I start to lose the beneficial idea of guidance and start seeing a mirage of manipulation. And this is confusing. And frustrating. And I simply just don't get it.


So it is moments like this that I like to reflect on. This past October, two straight women kissed in front of a crowd during an anti-gay protest in France. The image is not only powerful, but this quote explains it impeccably:

"This snapshot brings out a simple and efficient mechanism: the one of the oppositon between reason and emotion, between the power of the image and the complexity of the slogan. The protesters are holding signs and screaming claims that cannot exist, to make sense, in the instantaneity of the photograph."
- Romain Pigenel

This photo, and the countless homosexual couples across the world, blatantly disprove every anti-gay, anti-same-sex-marriage, homophobic claim that love between two people of the same sex cannot exist. Because it does. It exists with your neighbor, your cousin, that stranger across the street, that guy that checks you out at Jewel, the lady who told you to buy that shirt. So how can someone say that it not only shouldn't exist, but that it doesn't?


In my opinion, this picture is part of the many, but not nearly enough, viral medias circulating universally that challenges common worldviews and has a powerful impact. Too often we see, especially in media, obnoxiously conspicuous celebrity couples too readily getting married, only to get divorced within the week. And this drives me insane. I don't know if they're entranced by the idea of a billion dollar wedding or overcome by lust mistaken for love at first sight, but these people do not really love each other. So we, as curious, nosy, and magpie Americans love to do, are immediately enthralled and even somehow inspired by this idea of obliviously false "love." Yet a great deal of our country, and even a great deal of the world, has no problem being so repulsed by certain couples, who have been together for years in true love, that they deny the human right of marriage, a right that those we idolize throw around like nothing.


As we discussed while watching Once, love is imperfect. It doesn't come at the right time, it may not always work out, etc. But it is also something that we cannot control. As we see during the film, we do not choose who we fall in love with. So the idea that there are many people out there who try to tell us to do so, or even try to do so themselves, is inexplicably ludicrous. How can people say for some love does not exist? Who's to say that it should or shouldn't exist? Love is not a privilege. It is not something that is only graced upon those deemed "worthy." Denying someone love is not only wrong, but it is not, and never will be, possible.

iMedia: "The End" - The Doors

(Lyrics to this song can be found here.)

iMedia: “The End” – The Doors

When I first chose this song I was completely unaware that it was the opening to the Heart of Darkness-based movie Apocalypse Now. The Doors are classic, and having this song in my never-ending mental iTunes library, I immediately knew it perfectly epitomized not only the novel itself, but also deeper character and plot themes.

Heart of Darkness is plagued by themes of ironic savagery: the twisted truth that those deemed as “civilized,” aka the Europeans, are actually more savage than the natives themselves. It also touches on “the horror, the horror” of colonialism and brutal foreign dominance. These are ideas are specifically demonstrated in the following lines from the song.

“This is the end

My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end

Of everything that stands, the end

No safety or surprise, the end

I’ll never look into our eyes again

Can you picture what will be

So limitless and free

Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand

In a desperate land

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain

All the children are insane

All the children are insane”

These lines touch on both the colonialist theme of the book, as well as Kurtz’s character. The lines “our elaborate plans” and “desperately in need of some stranger’s hand” clearly are referencing European dominance and unjustly taking over African lands. However, I think that not only do “elaborate plans” reference those plans of colonists, but also those of Kurtz. On page 65 of Heart of Darkness, when Marlow is with Kurtz in the forest, Kurtz says, “’ I had immense plans… I was on the threshold of great things.’” So the plans mentioned in the song also could relate to those of Kurtz, who while although a tad mad, did have a glorious dream he never really got to fulfill.

In my opinion, the most haunting lyrics from the song are “all the children are insane.” Clearly this can be interpreted in as many ways as anyone who read the book or knows about European colonialism can come up with, but I took this also as a reference to Kurtz. Toward the end of Kurtz’s life, Marlow compares his mind to that of a child, needing to be cared for yet always in a world of their own. From this idea, I took that the children were just another way of referencing all of the colonial men who came to the Congo and were hypnotized by the primitiveness of the surrounding nature. When entranced by this, Kurtz, like many men I supposed, truly went insane. It’s pretty obvious that Kurtz has pretty much jumped of the precipice of insanity and this point, and these lyrics further reflect the irony in that.

Although the song has a slower, more hypnotic sound, this parallels the egotistical and dark lyrics that together incite a creepily suspicious feeling for the listeners. The son’s ambiguity not only reflects that of the entire book, but also Kurtz as a character, as most of what we readers learn about him toward the beginning of the book are second-hand and often biased notions of his personality and actions. This is also repeated at the end of the book when Marlow is visited – and visits – all of the people who Kurtz knew, and we still cannot get a completely crystal clear picture of who he really was.

This feeling of eery complexity is one that I got throughout the book. Whether it be reading the suspicious trek down the river, the natives repetitive shrills and ceremonies, or the colonial intentions, reading Heart of Darkness left me with more questions than answers, and “The End” by The Doors just does the same. I am left to wonder whether the darkness serves metaphorically for the truth, or for blindness. Maybe both. But this song puts it into perspective. The characters and themes of Heart of Darkness constantly push the complicated, twisted, hard to accept truth at its readers. Kurtz especially is walking irony, a mish-mosh of civilization and destruction, but also blatant savagery. However, it is “The End” that oddly answers this confusion with its own added confusion, leading me to accept that there really is no answer at all. Nothing that can permeate the “heart of impermeable and impenetrable darkness.” 

Blogging Around

The first blog I responded to was miss Stephanie Smelyansky's. In her post, iMedia: Orchestral Skrillex, Stephanie analyzes the similarities between a bass-pounding modern-day controversial music style with the highly respected orchestral art form. She also talks about how many people are quick to have negative opinions about this type of music, but at the end of the day dubstep really is no different.



Stephanie, this is probably one of the coolest things I've seen in a while! So first off, thanks for showing me that, I will definitely be passing it on. 

I completely, wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. The only thing is is that I'm just not a really big fan of dubstep; it just doesn't provoke the same feeling as a folk mandolin or barely-there indie voice has for me. However, I think that many people who do not like something are quick to dismiss it as unworthy of what it really is, like the concept of dubstep being or not being music. Even though I don't personally listen to dubstep on a regular basis, and while my more reserved personality shies away from the fist-pumping, headbanging, hyped-up concert atmosphere, I would never think of disregarding dubstep as true music or art.

Who's to say what is and is not music? I may never understand full-fledged screamo or incomprehensible rap, but who am I to deny music that exemplifies so expertly inciting feeling and emotion while giving listeners an much-needed escape? Because isn't that what music is for? It's an artfully crafted medium for expression, and DJs do that rightfully so. I ask, what makes Skrillex any less genius or less creative or less worth of appreciation than Bach? What makes the crescendos of a melodic symphony any different than the bass drops or high-pitched synthesizers of an electropop-meets-metallic-meets-who-knows-what dubstep DJ? I answer, nothing. 100, 200, 300 years from now, I would not be surprised in the slightest if Skrillex - or any dubstep DJ for that matter - becomes a highly respected and fervently analyzed historical artist of the 21st century.






The second blog I responded to was Sebas's post about education. I noticed it was an extremely popular post and was very anxious to read it. He starts off by talking about the extension of school hours in Chicago, and also examines how school is transforming into a lifeless, lackluster environment when it desperately needs a splash of creativity. 


I think I'm going to get on the Sebas educational editorial bandwagon. Seven (now eight) comments on one post! You must have something going for you.

We make it no secret as students when we express our boiling hatred for school. The days are already long enough as it gets, and slowly but surely with new laws such as the extensions in Chicago, school is becoming increasingly arbitrary and redundant, which isn't at all what it should be. 

And this is why I think Academy is great. What we learn and the way class is formatted not only provokes the creativity and insight that we need to do well in the class, but also arms us with important knowledge that reaches far beyond school and applies to everyday past, present, future life. Like you said, it's not so much about what you teach but how you teach it, and when we learn in Acad's open and vulnerable environment we acquire so much more intellectual, conversational, and social skills that are normally stifled by the mundane routine of average classes. 

I often here my friends in honors or regular English classes who talk about how they are supposed to be writing an essay on why this character did that or memorizing unnecessary details on what happened on this or that page. I don't understand the seeming necessity of any of that. When we write a paper or read a book in Academy, we apply what we learn to things way beyond the text and explore ideas that coincide with the real world. 

And that system is what I think that school should be; an open environment for kids to learn actively and thoroughly. Most importantly, students need to see a purpose. Classroom ideas should constantly be reinforced as being applicable to the real world. After graduation that is the world we live in, and I would like to think that the hours I spent studying for my math test or trying to learn about chemical bonds will follow me even throughout my life, even when I may think I am no longer at need of knowing it.