Making it Official
APELCers, although we’d know the “presumptive” candidates would be their respective parties’ nominees for many months, Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s nomination acceptance speeches at the conventions in Denver and St. Paul made their candidacies official.
I’ve posted an extra-credit opportunity for you on your class page in which I’ve asked you to analyze, and compare and contrast each candidate’s presentation. Here’s video of both for you to consider as you work out the optional assignment:
Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech, Denver, Colorado, August 28, 2008.
John McCain, Republican National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech, St. Paul, Minnesota, September 5, 2008.
AP Language Class Notes
Objectives: APELCers 1) completed a practice timed-writing, and 2) evaluated their own and their peers’ timed-writing performance.
Period 2, today you wrote a practice timed-writing, a synthesis essay, which many of you found easier or at least better than timed-writings 6 and 7. You worked in groups and assessed your and your peers’ performance.
A couple of quick items on the importance of worldview. I hope you’re paying attention to the media coverage of our current presidential campaign, because worldview has taken center stage for two of the hopefuls.
Barack Obama has had to distance himself from Jeremiah Wright , his former pastor, for comments the latter’s made on a recent series of speaking engagements .
Meanwhile, John McCain has had to deal with the heat generated by the endorsement of Christian Zionist and Texas megaminster John Hagee , who himself has made controversial comments about Catholics and God’s supposed retribution on New Orleans .
Developing the skills to sort through these ideas and rheotric is essential for critical particiaption in the agora, students.
Linkjam!
Mostly for APELC students, here’re some links I mentioned to you which are germane to our recent activities.
After reading “On Compassion” by Barbara Ascher, I referenced “A Dollar a Day”, a recent, four-part BBC documentary. Worth listening to and wondering about when you plunk down $4.00 or more for a Starbuck’s macchiato.
Eric Wilson, author of Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, was interviewed on NPR this week about engaging melancholy. Interesting listen in consideration of our late encounter with John Stuart Mill’s and his thoughts on happiness.
Finally, here’s an article from Newsweek, particularly noteworthy for Blaise and Eliza who’ve recently referenced the “safety” of one of Amsterdam’s most famous attractions for their argumentative papers in favor of legalized, regulated prostitution: “Turn Out the Red Light?” Seems like the fun’s over in that very special and unusually aromatic section of the city.
Philosophizing
In the past several weeks, Nigel Warburton has produced four most excellent podcasts over at Philosophy Bites. Take some time to expand your thinking beyond your immediate familiarities and really examine the struggles we deal with daily. You’re gonna hear these names in college anyway, so why not be prepared? Check’em out:
- Ludwig Wittgenstein on philosophy, language, and logic;
- Plato on war;
- Edmund Burke on politics,
- Richard Norman on Humanism.
And, as a supplement to that last one, dig this recent NPR broadcast of an interview with Steven Pinker on the idea of morality as a ’sixth sense’.
Peace out.
Linkjam!
Charity and goodwill aren’t fixed to the holiday season. Here’re some items I found (some that go back to November that I just didn’t have time to post) that may provoke thought or even inspire action for the new year:
There’s the curious story from CNN I mentioned tp some of you before break that highlights an ironic coming-together of the word’s three great monotheistic faiths: “Muslim helps Jew attacked on New York suway”.
In effort to get technology into the hands of learners in underdeveloped nations, One Laptop per Child was highlighted on the NewsHour: “Laptops Offer High-tech Hope in Developing Countries”.
Of course, kids need to be healthy in body as well as mind, and you can help feed families and expand your vocabulary at the same time at FreeRice.com. (Kind of chintzy, but every little bit helps.) And Country Crock has partnered with America’s Second Harvest to help feed families right here in the States, but they need you to tell your story of sharing.
And still back at home, the Alliance to End Homelessness released a study claiming that our veterans make up one quater of the of America’s homeless. While this and other shames are perpetrated on our doorsteps, conditions are even worse in other parts of the world. Doctors Without Borders released it annual Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian stories of 2007, and NPR followed up with a piece on the same.
There’s plenty going on in the world boy and girls, but you’re not helpless when it comes to taking action by digging in and helping out.
See you soon.
What Would Emerson Think?
In an effort to continue to encourage you students to question your own assumptions and think clearly, objectively about culture and society, let me quote Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words from “Self-reliance” to frame the story that follows:
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.
How then would Emerson respond to this: “Saudi Rape Victim Gets 200 Lashes and Jail”? The authorities did offer an explanation, “Saudi: Why we punished rape victim”, in which they even justified more than doubling the victim’s original sentence from 90 lashes to 200 as a result of her appeal, and offered further details to validate the punishment.
If people are laws unto themselves and can determine by consensus what is good for their own communities and what is bad, that is, they readily apply the labels good and bad to this and that according to their preferences, can others’ criticism of the such systems be justified? Should we do anything to stop that with which we don’t agree?
What think you? Leave a comment by clicking the link above?
A Growing Problem
On the heels of the news of the death of Badour Shaker from a botched surgery that was supposed to make her a more “manageable” wife to a future husband comes the following: “Concern grows in Britain over female genital mutilation”. Of course, this isn’t the only trend gifted to the West from developing nations on the rise. Although the recent stories of the Jordanian man sentenced for killing his pregnant sister in Amman and the stoning death of 17 year old Dua Khalil in Iraq, both so-called honor killings, may seem remote (Apart from the small headlines buried in the “World” sections of some periodicals, did they receive much attention?), the case of 20 year old Banaz Mahmod Babakir Agha in England is more immediate. Of course, before casting stones, it’s important to look at the United States’ own problem with violence against women.
Check out these resources for more information:
- Violence Against Women at WomensHealth.gov
- Stop Violence Against Women at Amnesty International
- International Campaign Against Honour Killings
- Female Genital Mutilation Education and Networking Project
Leave your thoughts by clicking the link above.
Update: Here’s a recent CBS article on the continuing problem in the UK, “Mutilated Girls; U.K.’s Ignored Secret”.
Pluralism, Tolerance, and Relativism
It’s very popular to state that there exists no universal truth or moral code which governs or guides individual and corporate behavior; rather, we act and react within particular conventional, social systems of morality, and therefore culture is relative. Philosopher James Rachels summarizes the very fundamental claims of cultural relativism in The Elements of Moral Philosophy:
- Different societies have different moral codes.
- There’s no objective standard by which we can judge one social code better than another.
- Our own society’s moral code had no special value; it’s one among many.
- No universal ethical truths exists, thus no moral truths exist that govern all people at all times.
- Actions within a particular culture are deemed right or wrong by consensus.
- It’s disdainful to judge another society’s conduct by our own standards.
Adopting a culturally relativistic perspective then is seen as a mark of tolerance in pluralistic societies. How then should we react to the practice of female circumcision? Most recently, twelve year old Egyptian girl Badour Shaker died in June after the procedure was performed on her by a physician for the equivalent of a mere $9.00. Startlingly, 97% of married Egyptian women reported to UNICEF in 2003 that they’d undergone genital mutilation. (An ancillary, but no less important, story was under-reported last week: “Turkish boys circumcised at a local butcher’s shop”.)
So, what think you? Are group and personal morality relative? Is it supercilious to judge others’ cultural practices through the lens of our own? What then are the limits of tolerance? If there are limits to the tolerance of corporate cultural and individual subjective practice, can relativism be valid? Leave a comment by clicking the link above.