Astoundingly . . . I don't have a song this week! Instead, I am reflecting on a field trip that we went on this past Thursday: none other than the comically misspelled Writerz Blok. The most impressive thing I witnessed - and photographed - was a work of art in the making. Not just our stencils, although I photographed those also, but a real mural done with too many colors of spray paint to count, crafted on-site by hand, and much larger than life. I was very impressed by the artist's skill in making this mural, and rather inspired by its creativity. Moreover, since I'm not the best artist, I thought that the artistic license in creating the cartoon look of the mural's subject - a man in a sweater with an as-yet-unreadable caption - was incredible. It proved to me that the murals I have seen on the computer, under bridges, and in places such as Chicano Park, can actually be made from scratch, with a human mind by human hands.
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"The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules, but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages." -Banksy This is an extremely biased argument; it does not so much as acknowledge the other side(s), and therefore is easy to argue against. The people following orders must in fact have orders to follow, and those orders must come from someone (and that someone is breaking the rules). Which is a greater crime: pulling a trigger without ever knowing the consequences of your actions but knowing what will happen to you if you don't; or, knowing full well the consequences, both physical and emotional, or your actions, but giving the order to pull the trigger anyways?
As you have probably figured out by now, most of my posts have been music-based, and will continue to be music-based for a while. I really like music, I play the piano, and I know too many songs to not share a quite extensive list of my favorites. No, I cannot play the Paragon Rag on the piano, unfortunately. It is a song that I would like to learn soon, though. The Paragon Rag is one of Scott Joplin's more popular songs, and one of my favorites. Although I really enjoy playing ragtime music, I have always had a hard time with it -- I will learn a song quite well, but the quality of my playing will inevitably begin to degrade with time regardless of how much I practice. Therefore, ragtime represents a struggle for me, and the concept of having great expectations for myself. I actually enjoy these challenges, although it is frustrating when my playing does begin to degrade, and really the only way I can keep playing ragtime passably is to learn a new song once my old one begins to degrade. And, Paragon Rag is next on the list!
(What's so Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding, by Elvis Costello We have begun to learn to look for literary devices in songs that relate to our topic in our new project: making a statement through art. I thought of the song above immediately, but it doesn't have enough literary devices. Still, I thought that I would put this song on my Moral Compass page, because it relates to our current project in that it highlights the current state of the world and sends out an implicit plea for change, because I really like it, and because I can also connect it very strongly to my previous project. I would like to go ahead and take a step backwards to the Reinvention Exhibition project, in which we had to make a production about Romeo and Juliet set in the Rwandan Genocide. A part of that production was the soundtrack, and this song was actually featured at the end. It is incredibly relevant to the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis; the climax was a horrific genocide in which 800,000-1,000,000 people died in 100 days! The conflict is also still going on to this day, and one of the worst parts: the world turned its back on the genocide, and very few people are doing anything about it to this day. It's very horrifying and sad, and shows just how much our wicked world could use a little peace, love, and understanding.
"It's not a gun control problem; it's a cultural control problem." - Bob Barr I completely agree with the reasoning behind this quote; we don’t need to ban guns if people learn the dangers of firearms and make the decision to control their impulses. In fact, this would be more effective than banning firearms, since people are always going to get firearms from somewhere; even if they are illegal in the United States, they aren’t in neighboring countries. Furthermore, while banning firearms will just create problems with smuggling and black markets, teaching people about the dangers will significantly cut down on those problems. This quote is significant because gun control is an important issue, and is one that extends to the bill of rights. This quote does not infringe on the second amendment. We actually had a debate about this in model UN, and the problem of the second amendment came up.
"Just a world that we all must share; it's not enough just to stand and stare. Is it only a dream that there'll be no more turning away?" - Pink Floyd, On the Turning Away I think that you will like this song. I certainly do. I heard this song for the first time only recently, and it is now one of my favorites. It also fits in perfectly with what my class is currently learning about; today we saw videos of interviews with Malala Yousafzai, a political activist in Pakistan who has been speaking out against the Taliban's oppression of schools for several years through a pseudonym on a blog. She was shot for her actions, but recovered when the world united in her defense; doctors from across the globe helped her to recover. Meanwhile, her message was carried on by supporters in Pakistan and surrounding countries, and the world stopped turning away from the tragedies in Pakistan that Malala had been trying to raise awareness of. Malala still carries on her battle for women's education in Pakistan to this day, even though she is living in Britain, because she saw that she was living in just one world that everybody has to share, and that the futures of those women who need that education are linked to the futures of everyone on the Earth. Malala is still calling everyone to recognize that, just as Pink Floyd is, and to stop the turning away.
The above art piece states that politicians are not always truthful. In fact, a large part of politics is attempting to out-bluff political opponents. Politicians also set high standards for themselves and others, and these standards are not always met. Because politicians attempt to get people to believe in what they are saying using means that are not always very logical, the artist gives his/her message by taking an old saying that is sometimes used by politicians and changing it to read, "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes [not truth, but] politics."
This idea of lying to people over and over again came from Hitler's right-hand man, and it was proven by the Holocaust's very existence. Many people simply do not have the will to continuously resist the allure of the "easy way out," and others will do almost anything if they see that everyone else is doing it. The concept of lies has been used over and over again to manipulate people from teh seat of power, and history in this instance shows that people in general are not motivated enough to fight back against political bluffs. Because I have been reading a lot of Tom Clancy's books recently, the first political body that comes to mind when I read the words of the art piece is the Politburo of Soviet Russia. Soviert Russia was designed for everything to be controlled by the government. Consequently, Russia's government occasionally had to trick the populace into doing things they did not want to, when the Politburo thought that those things were best for Russia's economy. Communisim required the people to simply fall in line. The artist was trying to convey in his/her art piece that too often, people, like the Soviet citizens, think that succumbing to the will of the government is just simplest. |
Author My name is Peter Fisher. I am a freshman at High Tech High North County, and this page is for the Moral Compass project that we are currently working on in my Humanities class. Archives
April 2014
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