On the Topic of Microlecture B...

One of the things that grabbed my attention in the microlecture was the star map. I've noticed that cultures around the world, from the Americas to India to Southeast Asia to Africa, all seem to be noted to have charted the constellations and paths of the stars during the calendar year. Of course, the modern, 12 month calendar year was created in Rome, hence why some of the months are named after emperors, but people have been using the stars to create 365-day calendars a couple millennia before Rome rose. It's just a quick note that I thought was enjoyable.

Now I would like to touch upon the methods of communication, storytelling, and general culture discussed in the microlecture. They were interesting no doubt, but they were also somewhat bizarre, even taking into account how easy international communication is today. It's to the extent that if you were to place one of the pelts or quipus in front of a random person today, they'd just assume it to be some sort of textile; even if you were to tell them that it was for communication, they still wouldn't know where to start. With that in mind, I can see the logical through-line of how the colonizers thought that the Natives were inferior: the Natives were taking actions for which the colonizers could not attribute a meaning, thus leading them to believe that they were savages who simply did meaningless tasks. That by no means comes justifies their actions to even a miniscule extent, but in a world as unknown and xenophobic as it was then, it wasn't surprising that massacre was in the works.

To be frank, the microlecture didn't really change my views on how I saw There There. It was certainly interesting to see different cultural aspects of Native society, but overall it simply adds a bit of background knowledge, as I think Tommy Orange was incredibly successful in portraying contemporary Natives' cultural and societal struggles for the general populace.

On the Topic of Microlecture A...

While listening through the first microlecture, I was reminded of how extensive these tribes' and peoples' cultures were, which only made it all the more harrowing how little is known of the Confederated Villages of Lijisan and other Ohlone subcultures, which I discuss to some detail within the previous blog post. That being said, I was already decently familiar with the common misconceptions surrounding Native Americans, and how a lot of media--primarily just before the break of this century, but also bleeding into it--portray the Natives as savage, or misrepresent their culture. The most common example that people will know of on this subject is the Disney movie Pocahontas, which almost everybody understands is a gross portrayal of the massacre that took place; I first learned of its falsehood during the fourth grade, and expanded upon that information during both AP World and US History. That being said, I can understand that portraying Native conflicts in media is difficult and rife for criticism, as they were not helpless prey, but they were also manipulated, massacred in droves, and forced to assimilate culturally nonetheless.

All that being said, I think that approaching the colonization and subsequent inhumane treatment of natives through the perspective of contemporary Natives was a brilliant narrative decision by Tommy Orange. It really shows how Natives are torn between a search for culture that has long been tarnished and internal turmoil regarding whether or not it is even worthwhile to pursue such a thing when life is already hard enough as it is. Despite this schism depicted through the varying characters, all of the key players find their way to the powwow, indicating how the Native culture is intrinsic to them, regardless of whether or not they desire it to be. It can either be a stigma that archaic society uses to oppress, or it can become a source of strength and solidarity.

On the Topic of Native Land...

My home lies on the land of the Confederated Villages of Lijisan, who were a subgroup of the modern umbrella term "Ohlone." The group of native tribes located around the bay rebranded themselves as the collective Ohlone in the 1960s, inspired by the American Civil Rights movement, and the British Independence movement led by Gandhi. 

Unfortunately, there is frighteningly little information about the culture of the Confederated Villages of Lijisan specifically, but we do know a fair amount about the general lifestyle of the Ohlone as a whole. For one, the Ohlone, like many civilizations, were a hybrid of hunter-gatherers and cultivators, creating sedentary settlements. They were mindful to maintain animal populations, acting without overhunting, and getting a large food source from gathering seafood, namely Bivalvia. Religiously, the Ohlone did not have a singular religion, as they were some forty-plus individual tribes that primarily interacted through trade and ceremonies, but overall their religions were shamanistic in nature.

All this changed drastically due to Spanish colonization, hence why so much information about the Ohlone lifestyle has been lost. This is because Spanish colonization was characterized by evangelism, and so many years were spent driving the religion of the Ohlone into the ground, as well as attempting to force them to conform to Spanish cultural habits. A key aspect of this is folk tales: folk tales were an integral part of Ohlone culture which were nearly eradicated through evangelism; this was to the extent that these folk tales are highly valued today, and passing down these tales is almost an obligation to preserve the culture that had been trampled upon.

On the Topic of Progress on the Final Project...

Research is going just fine for now, in the sense that there is little that I really need help with. I have yet to start the Neatline exhibit, which, yes, I did ultimately decide to go through with. Neatline just feels like it will be better suited to conveying the wide span of time and space that civil disobedience stories compose. I have gathered a decent amount of potential sources, and at this point, I'm considering using practically every potential source to have a sizeable collage of information on the Neatline exhibit. 

Learning about the stand against unjust authority across time is interesting to look at, and has been and, unfortunately, will always be relevant. It gives insight into the potential responses to abuse of authority, and how we can modify these methodologies to suit contemporary situations. That being said, I don't find very much entertainment or enjoyment from the process; it might be more fulfilling if research topics connected like dominos, or opened up into a rabbit hole, but these are largely separate and take a while to find the meat and potatoes of a story.

Honestly, I think that getting all the information onto Neatline will be easy, and supplementary images and the like will be equally simple. I can't say for certain how well I'm doing, as I don't really have a goal for how many sources I want at the end, I just intend to keep going and get as much clear, descriptive, and relevant sources that I can. Naturally, since my topic is about rebelling against institutional injustice, every story that we've read so far in class will be applicable, and they are decently varied in time and space of creation.

Overall, I'm feeling just fine about the project, and the more sources the merrier, at least in this case.

On the Topic of There There...

What was most surprising to me about There There thus far was the complete tonal change between Tony's section and Dene's. Obviously, we've seen and discussed tonal shifts with a change in narrative perspective while reading Home Fire, but it was never as blatant and clear as in There There. Obviously there were tonal shifts in Opal's section and Edwin's, but those were closer to the changes in Home Fire.

The narrative perspective that introduced us to the story was that to Tony Loneman. From his diction and thoughts, we can get a good grasp of his personality: abrasive, moderately jaded, and slightly snarky. His mannerisms and statements are generally crude, owed to his harsh childhood experiences, but his character is pitiful in the sense that his struggles are relatable due to the glimpses of rationality and kindness we see, specifically with regards to Maxine. In fact, his devotion to Maxine is the reason that Tony relates with Octavio, and peddles drugs for him.

Then, we are introduced to Dene, whose thoughts and mannerisms are pretty standard. We see that he is adjusted to hostile environments, but is not nearly as jaded as Tony. In fact, the characters other than Tony are all fairly standard narrative styles.

What I'm trying to say is that we very rarely have abrasive characters as protagonists, so seeing one introduce the story of There There was fairly surprising. Not only that, but the quick shift to standard narrators was mild whiplash as far as tone was concerned, but there was still an undertone of misfortune in all the sections. It's just that Tony's section is the most raw, which fits his character as seen in the story thus far.

On the Topic of Urbanization...

After going through the three context links, I think that the one that stood out to me was the article "Gertrude Stein's Oakland." It discusses how a fairly well known quote, "there is no there there," expresses the sorrow of unfamiliarity when Stein returned to Oakland after 40 years away, and how everything that had composed Oakland in her memory had been replaced with urban sprawl.

While I don't think that many people within my generation have experienced such a drastic example of urbanization, change is an inevitability. In that regard, while Generation Z may not have felt the pain of alienation that Stein felt, I'm certain that each one of us can look back to moments in our childhood in nostalgic reverie. It's only human to do so: we find comfort in things held constant, and we are uncomfortable when placed into completely new situations. When we find that things we remembered fondly have been upheaved, pangs of melancholy are to be expected; we can see reactions from things as simple as coming back to a "cleaned" room, to the more severe example as in the case of Stein.

I think that this is a large part of why people revisit their alma maters, even if they didn't particularly enjoy their time there. People will often view their pasts with rose-tinted glasses, and grasping at what once was to relive what they believe to have been happier times helps to come to terms with whatever situation that they're in now. Obviously this isn't the case for everyone, especially for those who come out of dire straits, but I do believe that there are still aspects of the past that everyone craves, or at the very least look back fondly upon.

Frankly, it's likely that those growing up now will experience something similar to Stein within their lifetimes, especially if they return to someplace they lived 40 years prior. Technological innovations have been coming at unprecedented rates, and residential areas are being constructed across the nation. The cities we grew up in are different from the ones they are today, it's just that we were there while they changed. Although Stein's case was extreme in the sense that she had to take in all of the changes at once, I'm certain that if we ever think back to how things once were, we will feel tinges of sadness.

On the Topic of "Improving Human Reason"...

The given prompt was whether Hayy Ibn Yaqzan improves the reason of the reader or is a history of the improvement of human reason, as the name roughly translates to "The Improvement of Human Reason." 

Through a modern lens, it's definite that the story correlates with the latter definition moreso than the former, as it catalogues development of scientific discoveries and methodologies at an extremely accelerated rate through Yaqzan. For people in developed countries in the modern era, the information and methods shown by Yaqzan are all known, barring the philosophical/religious components, which are "affirmed" by Yaqzan using the aforementioned methodologies. 

With that out of the way, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan  was written close to a millennium ago, and the scientific methodologies that are common knowledge now were not so obvious all those years prior. That  being said, and I do believe I mentioned this in a blog post last week, but Yaqzan's scientific methodology is deductive in nature, which has been the basis for science since science was a concept. Would the scientific information given in Hayy Ibn Yaqzan be new to the general populace reading it? Possibly, but the question is whether reason was improved, not knowledge. 

Concerning "reason" as defined by the philosophy of Yaqzan, and I may be misremembering, but Yaqzan's beliefs are similar to Buddhism, not in the presence of a Necessarily Existent, but in the humility and dissociation from worldly desires that was the basis of Yaqzan's path to corporeality. It's certainly not avant-garde, and, like most philosophy, it is not exactly packaged in an easily digestible manner. To be blunt, you'd think that philosophy texts are written explicitly not to inform people of their contents, and I say that because most philosophy texts, at least that I've read, are musings that are loosely tied together, the original shower thoughts given textual form. I'm not downplaying philosophy, but it is probably the least clear literary genre overall. All that is to say that I don't believe that Hayy Ibn Yaqzan improved the reason of the reader even in the time period it was written.

On the Topic of the Final Project's Progress...

Right now, finding leads with which to derive primary and secondary sources is somewhat difficult. I was given a couple interesting leads by Dr. Burnham, but finding texts about civil disobedience prior to modern history is somewhat difficult, if only because search terms on databases will primarily elicit articles concerning events from the past century. If I hit a dead end, then I'll consult Kelcie, but I do think that I'll see what else I can dig up for now.

Regarding what's going well at present, I do have two primary sources that I think would do well and will most likely use in the final iteration of the project. That being said, they are both within the past three centuries, hence why I'm having concerns about gathering sources from before modern history. I wouldn't say I've had fascinating finds thus far, but that's mostly because I'm just hoarding topics right now rather than doing in-depth investigations.

I am still debating whether or not to use Neatline or to write a traditional essay, but I will definitely use Neatline if I find six or more primary sources. My concern with using Neatline for less than six sources is that it might be underwhelming to have such few points on the exhibit map, regardless of how much writing I have for each one. Also, it was good to know that four primary sources is a minimum, as limiting oneself during research when there's still things you would want to present is would be fairly unfortunate.

On the Topic of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan's Purpose...

Thus far, I believe that the class readings have a commonality in their purposes: they all critique the ruling or upper echelons of society. With regards to this, I am of the opinion that Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is most direct in fulfilling said purpose, followed by Antigone  and Home Fire, in that order. As a short aside before I elaborate on Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Home Fire is nuanced in its critique, and is fairly open-ended with its overall meaning through the use of well-developed character motivations and personalities; Antigone, while not quite as straightforward as Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, explicitly states that Creon, who is the embodiment of the ruling class in Antigone, was wrong in abusing his position of power.

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, as described by Ibn Tufail, is a story about three characters: Yaqzan, Absal, and Salaman. This is important to note, as the philosophy and religious lattice we find through the perspective of Ibn Yaqzan is only a component of the message, though, based on the length dedicated to exploring said mindset, we can determine to a high degree of certainty that it is central to the overall message. Concerning Yaqzan's mindset, Ibn Tufail often refers to Yaqzan as having reached a state of enlightenment, sharing a corporeality with the "One," who I believe is also the being Tufail calls the "Necessarily Existent" and "Him." The takeaway is that what Yaqzan has attained is not only miraculous, but should warrant respect, at least how Tufail describes it. 

Absal and Salaman are introduced in the last eighth or so of the story, with both being intellectuals from a larger city, the highest caste. The one who follows Yaqzan as a holy man is Absal, who meets Yaqzan while isolating himself from society which he believes inhibits spirituality with their materiality and avarice. When Yaqzan wishes to go to the city where Absal came from to impart his wisdom, Salaman and his cronies are kind and receptive out of respect for Absal, who is Salaman's friend; as his lectures continue, they come to loathe Yaqzan's teachings due to their inability to understand the corporeal which is the cornerstone of Yaqzan's enlightenment. 

Absal attributes this to their materiality, and Yaqzan arrives at a similar conclusion through his personal investigations into society from which he had been isolated from his entire life. For Yaqzan's philosophy, life is to be both minimized with regards to indulgences, and also dedicated to kindness of actions. This serves as a base for which to glimpse corporeality, which is done through complete isolation of physical stimuli, achieved by Yaqzan using a meditative state within a cave. This is all to say that the avarice and overindulgence in worldly pleasures characteristic of Salaman and his friends, who are the ruling class, are the zenith of ignorance and barbarism. The story ends with Absal and Yaqzan returning to their isolated island, pretty explicitly indicating that there are no merits to living in a society ruled by decadence. 

As a final note, the reason why I believe that Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is more straightforward in critiquing the ruling class is that it provides a premise and its conclusion of which, if assuming the premise to be true, the conclusion--the intrinsic corrosion of morality in the ruling class--is not arguable. In Antigone, while it would be difficult, it would be possible to argue that Creon's actions were not inherently corrupt.

On the Topic of Tea...

After thinking about what to write about on-and-off for a good half-hour, I just decided to write about the drink I was having: tea. Tea is and has long been a beloved drink, simple yet lucrative as an export. For the most part, you just dump some leaves in a teapot, pour in boiling water, and you get tea; it became the backbone of the largest trade empire in history, and remains one of the most popular drinks in the modern era.

As a recommendation for potential newcomers to tea, I would advise starting with green tea; the taste doesn't differ too much from regular water, but it feels soothing and contains select traces of caffeine, meaning it is desirable as a drink to sip while working or to start the morning. Despite containing caffeine, it is not to the extent of coffee, and its inclusion serves to promote yet another aspect of personal health rather than being the focus of the drink. Also, while several sources claim or dispute the health benefits of green tea, I haven't cared to look into those, so I can't say with certainty that green tea is some sort of panacea, but I would be shocked if it had any ill-effects.

As a recommendation for people familiar with tea or just a bit more daring, I would recommend my favorite tea: plum tea. First of all, plum tea tastes divine; different brands have a different balance between sweetness and the citrus tang, but I've yet to find a brand that tastes poor. Although I do not believe that plum tea contains caffeine, a quick Google search of its benefits lists so much that one would assume that it actually is some sort of panacea, though I won't claim that any of said benefits are scientifically backed. And as a final sell that isn't my personal bias, it smells pretty good, so if you want to look pretentious for whatever reason, making exaggerated motions to smell said tea won't irritate your sinuses.

Now, as a facet of the discussion of tea, I think it is only due diligence to speak upon a certain type of tea that has become absurdly popular as of late.

Of course, I am referring to "boba", or bubble tea. If I am going to be blunt, I'm not sure where the hype around boba comes from. As a preface to what I'm going to say, I've had boba twice, once that I recall was rose velvet flavored, and the other, while I don't recall specifically, was a pretty standard flavor like orange. I was indifferent about the orange boba, and I thoroughly disliked the rose velvet boba. If there is some specific flavor that makes boba worthwhile, I still probably won't try it, but if a situation arises where I have to have boba, then I'll keep it in mind. With that out of the way, I'll gloss over why I dislike boba.

To start, I don't enjoy milk tea. For me, tea is explicitly something that you can dump in a teapot, pour boiling water into, and enjoy for somewhere between a half-hour and hour. Tea fills a specific niche that no other drink does, except maybe coffee, but coffee serves the explicit purpose of being concentrated caffeine, and I have a bit of a high tolerance to caffeine due to one too many 5-hour energies. Whether it's a cold drink, a sweet drink, or a smooth drink, I already have things that fit the bill, and not just that, but drinks that, I would argue, do the job better than milk tea. Not only that, but, if I recall correctly, milk tea is often based off of black tea, which, may the British forgive me, is about the most basic, bland tea you can possibly have. Is that bad? No, but there are much better alternatives of black tea. Anyways, to my knowledge, boba is just tapioca pearls in milk tea. I don't like the tapioca pearls. When I first saw them, I thought they'd some sort of sweet pop of flavor, but both times I had them, they were bland. Under the assumption that they are bland, I don't understand their inclusion at all; maybe their flavor was absorbed into the milk tea? Unless both times I had boba the tapioca was defective, I just can't see what sets it apart from normal milk tea, which is something I already don't particularly care for.

Overall, I just don't see the appeal of boba, and, to be blunt, I feel like it's more of a trend from a select group of people who actually do enjoy it, with most others just having it with friends because it doesn't taste horrid.

So in summary, plum tea is great, you can't go wrong with green tea, and I don't understand why so many people seem to like boba, but that's cool.

On the Topic of Archives and Special Collections...

It was incredibly interesting to get a glimpse of the extent of the texts and other materials that SCU keeps in archives and collections. Honestly, I thought that it would be much colder in archives and collections to preserve the materials it had, but I was also wearing a heavy overcoat so I may not have gotten the full experience. 

Personally, I didn't expect archives and collections to be all that impressive, but it was essentially a miniature museum from what I saw. I certainly didn't expect SCU to have papyrus scraps, and learning that researchers come to archives and collections to study various items was enlightening to say the least. Also, the scope of materials collected was baffling; I thought that archives and collections would be focused on texts, but I spotted paintings, armaments, and what appeared to be a textile banner of sorts.

Regarding facets of book history that I am curious about, I am interested in the forms that text have been transcribed on as times have passed. We've touched upon scrolls and codices thus far, and during the visit to archives and special collections I was able to see folding mediums that were a sort of middle ground between the two. This got me curious about other mediums, such as tablets, which would have preceded scrolls. The assumption would be that mediums evolved to be more portable, as I assume that longevity of texts would have been tied to the physical material that would have been transcribed upon. That being said, I'm not sure what would have preceded tablets, as etching into stone is probably one of the simplest mediums possible, but perhaps there was something between tablets and scrolls.

On the Topic of Imagery in Hayy Ibn Yaqzan...

An image that I believe to have a very clear meaning thus far in the narrative would be feathers. It is stated, in passing, that the ark upon which Ibn Yaqzan had been found was cushioned by feathers; the mention of the ark indicates that the feathers would likely only be present in the interpretation of the narrative in which Ibn Yaqzan was conceived by a human rather than by spontaneous generation.

With that in mind, in the interpretation where Ibn Yaqzan was conceived by a human, he was born to a tyrant's sister, who sent him to the waves in an ark with prayers to god in order to protect her newborn. The religious affiliation of the author seems to lie with Islam, at least that is what is indicated in the preface section of the story, and Islam worships the Abrahamic god. Imagery surrounding the Abrahamic god often evokes visions of traditional angels, which are humanoids with feathered wings.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. The mother of Ibn Yaqzan prayed to the Abrahamic god for her child's safety on the seas, and he was found on an uninhabited island with his ark nestled upon feathers. Angels, being the messengers and general servants of the Abrahamic god, would be responsible for carrying out any actions that said god would want done. Hence, I think we can say with some certainty that the feathers found under the ark of little Yaqzan represent divine intervention, as his safety would have been nothing short of miraculous.