#7 Bibliography Son!

1. Baumann, Greg. The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic and Religious Identities. NY: Routledge, 1999.

2. Ceric, Mustafa. “How Religious Leaders Can Come Together to Work on Global Problems”

Carnegie Council For Ethics In International Affairs. 2012. http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/ethics_online/0073.html

3. Davis, Diane E. Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Politics in Urban Spaces. Indiana University Press, 2011

4. Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. “The Reformation: Religious Wars” http://www.swissworld.org/en/history/the_reformation/religious_wars

5. Jr, Gagnon, V.P. “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia” International Security, vol.19, no.3 (winter 1994/95), pp.130-166. http://www.ithaca.edu/gagnon/articles/is/is.htm

#4 Left Libertarian? What?

"Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties." This is the definition I found when I Googled the word ‘libertarian’. It wasn’t Wikipedia, it was the first listing called Libertarian Party (www.lp.org, an organization, I can tell because of its use of .org at the end.) It’s the official homepage of the national Libertarian Party. From clicking on that link, I was taken to the homepage, where I could take yet another political compass test. There was all this information on the side for Advocates of Self Government. Location, phone numbers, orders and donations. The big header at the top of the page says, “World’s Smallest Political Test”. There were 10 questions: 5 Economic Issues and 5 Personal Issues. Your options to answer were Agree, Maybe, or Disagree. At least on the first political compass test I took gave me the choice to strongly agree or strongly disagree. Anyways, off topic. They also had a counter at the bottom of the page that said, “THAT’S HOW MANY TIMES THE QUIZ HAS BEEN TAKEN SO FAR SINCE 1995” The number was 18,956,456.

 

After doing some reading from Wikipedia and other websites, I’ve found I’m not too sure what being Left Libertarian even means. I don’t feel like I actually associate with the descriptions I’ve found online and just because I’m next to Gandhi doesn’t make me feel all the more ‘libertarian’ either. There is no sure-win definition, no list of characteristics that makes you 100% libertarian. You practice liberty, free will, yadda yadda. I’m just me.

#2 I See What You Did There..

In Douglas Rushkoff’s introduction to “They Say”, we get tricked. Fooled. Swindled. Everything he talked about in his introduction, he used against us, and we didn’t even know it until we read the last couple paragraphs. The purpose of his book is to teach us about how we are so easily tricked into buying things, or thinking a certain way because of marketing tactics, research and testing. He talks about how things are structured and built a certain way, such as malls, to make us buy more than we need. He says in paragraph 13, “We don't know exactly how to get back to the car, and we will have to walk past twenty more stores before we find an exit.” Take Fayette Mall for example, there are very few entrances, with a rather large parking lot. You’d be out of luck if you found yourself clear on the other side of the mall come closing time. It is things like this masked coercive ideas in our everyday lives that are really messing with us. There’s this picture I always see on Facebook, a media site which posts advertising based on my age, where I live and what I like to do, that says “Nine year olds now a days have Ipads, Iphones, Itouches, ECT. When I was nine, I had my coloring book and crayons.” Since when did having all of those fancy electronics become a must have toy for small children? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s also not just the kids who are spoiled; it’s the adults as well. The coercive techniques they use now days to get people to buy their products are scientifically proven to work! Apple stores are required to tilt their screen’s 70 degrees upon opening the store to lure people into opening them up all the way, taking a look at what’s being offered. I know from experience about up selling. I work, and have worked in a place where it’s something you must do. I really liked this article. It really tricked me in the end, and it really does show how easily we can be suckered in to buying things we don’t need or doing things we don’t need to do.

#1 Mumbo Jumbo

When reading "Introduction to Criticism, I found that it was very easy to read. The language he used was professional, using a rather large vocabulary and different sentence structuring than I'm used to. He made everything easy to understand by using examples of modern day phrases. He used the word terrorism as an example of giving power to words. Here in America, we use the term to sum up Islam as a whole, as a bunch of terrorists, who hate America for their freedom. But he says, if we look at Islam and do research, we will find that not everyone there has a vendetta against us, our freedom and what we stand for. He says if we look at Islam and do the research, we will find things called Islamic Relief, a charity that focuses on helping others. Another thing he talked about was Capitalism. I liked how he talked about power, money, wealth, and how we give meaning to a piece of paper that says $100 or a shiny gold rock. It helped me understand his passage about Capitalism when he finally started to talk about. One section that I didn't understand too well was "Effects Are Sometimes Causes." I wish he would have taken the time to explain it like he did with the Capitalism passage, or expanded it to provide more examples. It was simply to brief for my liking. Contemporary Theory was something else I didn't understand. I tried to do some research on what it was, and a whole list of things popped up, I just didn't know where to begin! I really enjoyed the reading because it opened up a whole new level of thinking when it comes to reading, analyzing and critiquing someone’s work.