Best of Week: Revolutions

The whole theme of revolutions this week was what sparked the most interest with me. The ever moving world and circular time reminded me of the poem on the poem test (Juggler). The metaphor of the world and the universe (in Juggler) also moved in a circle or rotation. What goes up must come down, fate's wheel, it will get worse before it gets better, reincarnation, and the eternal cycle... there are so many different allusions to this circular idea. I think its a way for people to have hope that their circumstances will change. That even though they are facing down and in the mud right now, the wheel will turn and they will soon feel the warmth of the sun on their faces. A circle is a symbol of power, something unbreakable. When that circle can move though, the unbreakable stations can switch, changing and always moving as things in this world are oft to do. It reminds me that the more you have weighting you down, the harder it is to get to the top... not impossible, but difficult. All that weight will just as easily swing you back down to the bottom. I believe in a relatively active participation in ones fate... but the wheel still fits. Even if you are the one turning the wheel instead of some god, or if the things are changed by the environment and others around you, the wheel still turns. We still move from top to bottom... switching weight for flight... sun for mud.

Connection: King Lear and Power

In King Lear the decisions of the characters are fueled by their greed for power. We see that even the love between family can be torn apart by the need for power. These power struggles can be seen even today, and in King Lear you get a glimpse at what feelings might be behind the war and politics of these dealings today. What caught me the most is how much the people we (the audience) see as being bad believe in their eternal rightness; disregarding the obvious signs of wrongness and hurt. Goneril and Regan are so focused on seizing power that they refuse to see that they are torturing their own ailing father into madness (until it's too late). Edmund is a different case. He sees and knows what he is doing to the people that once were very close to him, people that he shares blood with, yet he still continues. He believes his quest is righteous because he deserves power. He thinks it was stolen from him, that fate played a cruel trick. In his reasoning he wrongly puts the blame on his family instead of on years of social norms. Shakespeare inspired a whole slew of different plot themes that are utilized by many writers today. The Chronicles of Narnia, Goose Girl, Fall of a Kingdom, Abarat, the Looking Glass Wars... to name a few. In King Lear, Shakespeare presents the ultimatum in these feelings because you finally understand why power was so important, and you understand why these people felt justified in their actions. The end justifies the means. Shakespeare dealt in different worlds, but he used subjects that spanned generations and cultures... it is one of the reasons he was a king of his craft. He makes us feel what the 'bad-guy' feels... which has been much lost in literature today. His characters have depth and feelings and come alive... and therefore we see a mind in their madness.

TED Presentations

Watching the presentations was very educational... I learned a lot, El Sistema and Innovative Ideas for a Sustainable future were my favorite presentation groups. I think that we learned a lot, but we only saw a third of the presentations... which is good and bad at the same time. It was nice having a smaller audience because it was less stressful and you could connect with the audience a lot easier; but, it felt anticlimactic, because most people put a lot of work into the project and then only a third of the target audience heard it (or had the opportunity to hear it).
The project still needs to be refined and fixed a lot, although the format was better than last year (so at least we're improving). I think the best thing to do would probably be to keep it in the seperate classrooms until all the wrinkles are ironed out (which will probably take a couple more years). I know that the whole point of the project is to get the academy classes together, but it usually just creates a whole lot of anger between the classes (the freshman aren't doing any work, the seniors are slacking, ect.). I don't think that people didn't know how to collaborate, it was that a few chose not to, or were unable to for many different reasons. I think a lot of the project was blown out of proportion, and then other parts weren't focused on enough. Also, many people only learned about there tasks and never bothered to read anyone else's work (so how can they learn anything from the rest of the presentation).
I like to think that all of these ideas to save the world are there because we need to use all of them to get anywhere... make some kind of master plan to save the world accounting for all these innovative ideas. Saying that, we learned about these ideas, and we really haven't done anything about them. We are more aware, but nothing has changed.