Did you say Library Anxiety? - Part One :: Essays Papers

Did you say Library Anxiety? - Part One Most people are familiar with the terms test anxiety, math anxiety, performance anxiety, computer anxiety, or even social anxiety. But mention "library anxiety" and you'll likely get a response similar to, "Library what?" Library anxiety is not a well-known phenomenon, even among librarians. The bulk of research on library anxiety has concentrated on the problem as it applies to university students, but it’s not hard to imagine that it manifests itself in library patrons across the board. Where did this idea come from, how can librarians identify it, what steps can be taken to reduce it and what can the library community learn from it? Although it has been cited in the literature as far back as 1972 , the term library anxiety was first identified in 1986 by Constance A. Mellon. Virtually every article or study on the subject since then has referenced Mellon’s work in this area. Her studies showed that most students felt that other students knew more about library searching than they did and that to ask for help would be to reveal their stupidity. She also found that contact with reference librarians was more effective in alleviating library anxiety than the bibliographic instruction sessions conducted by their teachers. There are other names in the field such as Carol C. Kuhlthau, who found that students’ ability to process information from the aspects of mental, creative and physical locating operations is hampered by their feelings, thoughts, and actions. In 1992, Sharon L. Bostick devised a valid and reliable instrument to measure Mellon’s theory of library anxiety. The basis of her doctoral dissertation, she developed a 43 item, 5 point Likert-format test instrument that defines levels of library anxiety. Her instrument showed that it is possible to identify library anxiety and to measure it quantitatively. She identified five factors that contribute to library anxiety: 1) Affective Barriers; 2) Mechanical Barriers; 3) Comfort with the Library; 4) Knowledge of the Library; and 5) Barriers with staff. "Affective barriers" measures the feelings of adequacy when using the library. As we will see, affective barriers come in to play with all of the other factors, each of which will be described in greater detail. Mechanical Barriers: The ability to locate and use library equipment is hampered by the physical barriers libraries present. Students search for copy machines and upon locating them they learn that they need specific change to use them, or must purchase a copy card.

Mainstreaming Children in the Classroom Essay -- Mainstreaming Classroo

Mainstreaming Children in the Classroom The idea of mainstreaming children is an incredible idea. By integrating classes, it requires changes in organizational management. For children to be mainstreamed it takes great devotion from directors, teachers and families. It is important to understand that the mainstreaming of children with disabilities should not be implemented according to a certain standard model. This process is an individual one (Daniels, E & Stafford, K. 2001). Mainstreaming of children is based on the belief that education of every child should be individual. This states that every child has their own individual right to go to a normal school if that’s what they would like. Advantages for Mainstreaming Children Many people believe that disabled children should be mainstreamed in normal educational environments. Mainstreaming students with disabilities has many advantages. One main advantage is simply forming relationships with different types of children. They can adapt to "playing" with normal children and the normal children can adapt to the disabled. Starting the children off early by mainstreaming, both the normal and the disabled children can learn that there are other worlds out there other than their own. This can be a huge step in today’s society. By forming relationships with people that are different than you, the children will learn that there is nothing wrong with doing so and they will grow up making friends that are different from them. This will teach the children that even though they have differences, they are both still kids that like to have fun and be educated. Mainstreamed children also find that even though they learn differently, they may have the same hobbies and common interes... ...th/family/family-1.html Daniels, E. and Stafford, K. Mainstreaming Children with Special Needs. Retrieved October 28, 2008, from http://www.children.lviv.ua/involve.html. Burnett, J.(2002) Mainstreaming Ourselves. Retrieved November 15, 2008. http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0702/0702ft4.html URL: Uniform Resource Locator: http://www2.edc.org/NCIP/ Horner, R. (2001). Special Education Resources on the Web. Retrieved November 17, 2008 from http://seriweb.com/ URL: Uniform Resource Locator: http://www.dssc.org/frc/ Kennedy, E. (1999) Special Needs in Schools. Wellington Newspaper Limited. Retrieved October 7, 2008 from Academic Search/EBSCO database. Siegel, Ernest. (1969). Special Education in the Regular Classroom. New York: John Day Co. Halsey, William. (1984). Dictionary for Students. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

About Revenge Essay Essay

If there is one thing that has been prevalent since human interaction began, it is the concept of revenge. Everyone has a moment in their life where someone does them wrong, and they want nothing more than to get back at the person who is responsible. While this reaction is completely normal, the results of actually acting on these feelings usually end badly for everyone involved. One of the main reasons that revenge does not typically end well is because once all is said and done, the past can not be changed. â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado†, like many other stories, is focused on the theme of revenge, which is a feeling everyone is familiar with and is something that almost always ends badly. One of the more prominent stories about revenge comes from Edgar Allan Poe, a very well known author recognized mainly for his dark story writing. His story, â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado†, is an interesting tale about a man who feels insulted and seeks revenge. Essentially, the ma in character, Montressor, feels that he has been insulted by his apparent hated enemy, Fortunato, and as a result he leaves Fortunato tied up in the Montressor family’s catacombs to die. In this story, many things are left unclear. For one thing, it is never told what exactly Fortunato did to exact this revenge. This means that his â€Å"insult† could be anything, and the punishment for his ‘crime’ in this story goes to show the length that people are willing to go to get revenge on someone who has wronged them. One thing to note in this story is that the narrator is never caught for his crime. Although â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado† is a good story about revenge, it is not Edgar Allan Poe’s only story that relates to the subject. Another one of his stories that focuses on revenge is â€Å"Hop-Frog.† â€Å"Hop-Frog† tells the tale of a dwarf and his female companion, Trippetta, who are taken as prisoners from their homes and brought to be entertainment for a king that is very appreciative of humor. The story ends with Hop-Frog and his companion getting revenge upon the king for striking Trippetta and  his mindless council by burning them alive in front of a crowd of people at a masquerade party. The main difference between this story and â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado† is that there is a lot more information to go off of. For one thing, it is made very clear why Hop-Frog wants to get revenge upon the king. One similarity between â€Å"Hop-Frog† and â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado† is that in neither story do the people achieving revenge have anything bad happen to them as a result. In both stories, it is apparent that the characters get away with their deeds. â€Å"Hop-Frog† brings a sense of joy in that Hop-Frog and Trippetta get away, but it leaves the viewer wondering if what they did was right. Even so, wanting revenge is a natural feeling after being wronged, and there are deeper, psychological effects revolving around these feelings as well. An article by Stillwell, Baumeister, and Del Priore says that, â€Å"The discrepancies between how different people see the same event may contribute to such seemingly inequitable outcomes.† (253). What this means is that many times, people see different things when looking at the same situation, and as a result, one person can be left less satisfied with the results than the other person. For example, one person may view a prank as a minor thing and laugh it off, while the person who was pranked may view it as something that really rubbed them the wrong way and is something that they want to get back at the other person for. â€Å"When people are hurt or angered by another person they may try to restore equity to the relationship.† (Stillwell, Baumeister, and Del Priore 253). This means that when someone feels wronged, they feel like they have to make the relationship even again. Needless to say, some people will act on their feelings, and naturally some cases of revenge can go wrong. There are a bunch of cases in the news about how someone tries to take revenge upon someone else. For the most part they end badly, which would make sense considering they ended up in the news. One case of revenge gone wrong occurred in New Port Richey, Florida when a seventeen year old turned a corner too fast and crashed into a few parked cars and a house in what was meant to be a simple attempt to throw eggs at her ex-boyfriend’s car. The end result was thousands of dollars worth of property damage and a citation for careless driving (Tampabay.com). As with this story and many others, revenge likely occurred because of a bad relationship break up. There are countless cases where someone seeks revenge on an ex-partner and ends up  doing something fundamentally worse than the actual breakup. In a similar case, I interviewed a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous about a time that he seeked revenge. As with many cases of revenge, his was the result of a relationship gone bad. It was directed towards an ex-girlfriend who had recently began dating one of his close friends. After the break up, he was crushed. He took it very personally when his ex-girlfriend began dating one of his close friends. As a result, he ended up making threats against the new boyfriend and harassing his ex-girlfriend by hacking all of her social media accounts and deleting them. The end result of his actions lead to a sit down between the group, which resulted with the possibility of harassment charges. In his case, he got lucky, but it could have ended much worse had they chosen to press charges. Since then he has made the decision that it would be best for him and for them if he just cut them out of his life for the time being, so that is what he is doing. Relationship break ups are rarely mutual, and if they are it usually does not stay that way for long, with one person ending up regretting the decision more than they thought they would. This case goes to show that acting on feelings of revenge is not good for anyone. Of course having a successful act of revenge towards someone may feel very satisfying at first, but in the long run people tend to reminisce about the initial event and it leaves them feeling just as bad as they did when it happened. Something that many people should learn is that there is no way to change the past. There will always be a v oid in the mind when thinking about what happened. â€Å"Revenge is a doomed attempt to eliminate shame and increase stature by asserting dominance.† (EmotionalCompetency.com). This means that when we feel like taking revenge, it is just a hole we are trying to fill with confidence to make ourselves feel better. As humans, we do not want to lose face with the people we know, so we feel obliged to take action against the wrongdoer to balance the scale. Conversely, while many people would jump on the opportunity to get back at someone, some people are strong enough to not act on the urges of revenge. It takes a strong person to let something go, and it takes an even stronger person to completely forgive. â€Å"Forgiveness is the cancellation of deserved hostility and the substitution of friendlier attitudes.† (Hughes 113). To forgive someone should be viewed as a type of release. When a person forgives another, they are releasing all of their anger and hostility and opening the door to a renewed friendship, or at least an agreement to not interact again. Of course, forgiving someone will not always stop them from doing something else in the future, but it is still a good method to practice for yourself. â€Å"Forgiveness has a discretionary nature, and the discretion belongs to the injured.† (Hughes 113). Many times, the best way to get back at someone is to show them that they did not have as massive an effect over you as they were hoping. While forgiving someone will not give immediate satisfaction, it is usually better for a person to let something go than to dwell on it for a long period of time. In contrast, it may be wondered whether or not retribution is always such a bad thing in certain cases. In the case of ‘Vicky’, it seems like retribution may be something that she deserves. Ten years ago, ‘Vicky’, who was ten years old at the time, fell victim to her father, who recorded many videos of her performing sex acts with him and even made her act out scripts. Her real name as well as her father’s name was redacted from the court documents, however the case ended with her father being sentenced to fifty years in prison. Prosecutors from ‘Vicky’s’ case have said that â€Å"While she continues to try to live a normal life, ‘Vicky’ carries emotional burdens which continually get in her way.† (OpposingViewpoints.com). Needless to say, this case is an extreme one, which begs the question as to whether or not retribution is something that Vicky is right in seeking. It would seem outlandish for anyone to blame her for making the people who download the videos of her pay for her therapy. In this case, it may be best to let the victim act out what they feel, because very few people can truly understand what it is that ‘Vicky’ has been through and continues to go through everyday. Not surprisingly, the entertainment industry has quite an interest in the topic of revenge. Some of the most popular shows that air on television relate to the theme of revenge in one way or another. In ‘Breaking Bad’, there are episodes toward the end where one character wants revenge very badly on another character, and it ends up putting him in a monumentally worse position than he was at before. There are countless other shows with similar themes. Many popular movies do this as well. The film series ‘Kill Bill’ by Quentin Tarantino pretty much revolves around that subject entirely. It can be wondered what it is that makes movies and television shows about revenge so popular with people, and the most likely answer lies in our society as a whole. A thirst  for vengeance is a feeling everyone is familiar with and it is satisfying for us to watch others achieve it. Overall, revenge is a very common theme throughout the world we live in. It is something that is unlikely to change because it is just how we are wired. As humans, we can not help but get feelings of anger and retribution when we are wronged, but it should at least be known that most of the time, the actual act will only make a person feel worse than they did before in the long run. Society as a whole should be more accepting of the method of forgiveness as opposed to revenge as this is the only way to truly move on. â€Å"In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.† (Sir Francis Bacon. EmotionalCompetency.com) Work Cited: Poe, Edgar A. â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado† (1846) Web 03 Dec. 2013. This is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s Classic tales about revenge. I used this story as a starting off point for the theme of my essay, which revolves around revenge. This information is in my first body paragraph which dissects the story. Poe, Edgar A. â€Å"Hop-Frog† (1850). Web 05 Dec. 2013 http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/hopfrgb.htm. This is another Edgar Allan Poe story which also focuses on revenge. I used this story to show that in many stories revenge is a very common theme. This information is in my second body paragraph which dissects the story. Stillwell, Arlene. Baumeister Roy, and Del Priore, Regan. â€Å"Basic and Applied Social Psychology† We’re all Victims Here: Toward a Psychology of Revenge. (2008) 253-263. Web 06 Dec. 2013. Academic Library- Psychology and Behavioral Sciences. This article explains the psychology revolving around revenge and does studies involving the subject. I used this article to help explain the psychology behind feelings of revenge. This information is in my third body paragraph. Hughes, Martin. â€Å"Analysis† Forgiveness. (1975) 113-117 Web 06 Dec. 2013. Academic Library- JSTOR. In this entry, Hughes explains the concept of forgiveness and what it truly means. This information is used in the part of my essay that explains forgiveness. Chavez, Adriana M. â€Å"Online Child Pornography Can Harm Victims for Life.† (2013) Web 06 Dec. 2013. Academic Library- Opposing Viewpoints. This article goes over the case of a girl who was sexually abused as a child and explains what she has gone through since the incident. This information is used in the paragraph that wonders if revenge is always such a bad thing in certain situations. Sanders, Katie. â€Å"Revenge gone wrong: Teen driver crashes into New Port Richey home.† Tampa Bay Times. 05 Mar. 2010. Web 06 Dec. 2013. This article reports a case of revenge gone wrong in the form of a girl attempting to throw eggs at an ex-boyfriend’s car and causing a lot of property damage in the process. This information is used in the essay’s paragraph that explains how revenge can go wrong. â€Å"Revenge – Getting Even† – No author listed. EmotionalCompetency.com – ND. Web 06 Dec. 2013. This web page helps further explain some of the concepts of revenge and forgiveness. This information is used in my essay’s paragraphs involving forgiveness. I also use a quote about revenge from this page. Anonymous. Personal Interview. 05 Dec. 2013. This is an interview i did of a friend who wanted to remain anonymous about a time he seeked revenge against an ex-girlfriend. I use this information in the area that involves revenge going wrong.

More Machine Now Than Man

Laura Frost, in her essay â€Å"Huxley's Feelies: The Cinema of Sensation in Brave New World,† states that â€Å"Brave New World has typically been read as â€Å"the classic denunciation of mass culture in the interwar years†Ã¢â‚¬  (Frost 448). This is true to an extent, as Frost points out. The novel explores the effects of mass culture and the implementation of eugenics and mass education to serve an industrialized society of consumption. Aspects of culture, such as the arts, have been reduced to pleasure seeking, and the population as a whole is kept within the machine of culture by means of pharmaceuticals.Much of this vision is drawn from Huxley’s experiences during the interwar period and for that reason, an exploration of his reactions to mass culture and his philosophy of culture prove useful in understanding the novel. This essay will be exploring Brave New World according to Huxley’s reactions to the culture of the 1920s and the early 1930s, es pecially to aspects of mass culture, consumerism and scientific and technological approaches to human growth and reproduction.Huxley wrote a number of essays in the late 1920s and early 1930s that deal with these issues and several of these serve as the primary focus of this essay. â€Å"Prophecies of the future,† writes Huxley in a 1927 essay, â€Å"if they are to be intelligent, not merely fantastic, must be based on a study of the present. The future is the present projected† (â€Å"The Outlook for American Culture† 187). This sentiment must be taken to heart if one is then to read a prophetic book by the author of the quote.Aldous Huxley was living and writing during the so-called â€Å"Jazz Age,† an age of increasing commercialism, consumerism and mechanization. The age saw a massive boost in the production of consumer goods and technologies, idealized in the streamlined assembly lines of Henry Ford, which provided goods for consumption, but demanded a larger worker class to fuel the boom. The further development of mass culture, thanks to the growth of music and film industries, was spurned by this growth in the working classes. Aldous Huxley’s novel is, at least to a degree, a product of this present.Consumerism and materialism are central to Brave New World; any work that features Henry Ford as a god figure would surely have to be. Huxley writes in 1931: The God of Industry supplies his worshipers with objects and can only exist on condition that his gifts are gratefully accepted. In the eyes of an Industriolater, the first duty of man is to collect as many objects as he can (â€Å"On the Charms of History† 131). Huxley acknowledges that capitalists and industrialists need people to want the stuff produced.He argues that Ford, to whom Huxley refers rather sarcastically as â€Å"the saint of the new dispensation,† and other industrialists have no choice but to hate history, literature, the arts and others because all these â€Å"mental activities†¦ distract mankind from an acquisitive interest in objects† (131-132). The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning in the opening section of the novel speaks of how mental activities in the lower classes, in this case a Romantic notion of nature, are discouraged in the hyper-consumerist society in Brave New World: A love of Nature keeps no factories busy.It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature but not the tendency to consume transport†¦ We condition the masses to hate the country†¦ but simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport (23). The goal in the society of the novel is to adhere to what Huxley argues is the first duty of man to industrialists, owning and using the g oods produced by industry.Every aspect of the World State is crafted to maintain production and/or to encourage consumption. Those aspects of culture that occupy surplus time, the time spent not producing, have two functions: the consumption of material or the sedation or comforting of the producer so that he or she will continue to produce. The latter function is expressed by the Twentieth-Century theorist, Theodore Adorno. Shane Gunster, in his book Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory  for Cultural Studies, summarizes Adorno’s theory involving this idea of â€Å"free-time† Bored by the endless repetition of the assembly line or sales counter, people want novelty in their leisure time†¦ While leisure masquerades as ‘free-time,’ it is an open secret that its true purpose is to replenish one’s working energies†¦Work and leisure are bound together in an unholy alliance: the culture industry openly celebrates its independence from prod uction, selling its products as ‘freedom’ from the drudgery of the everyday, all the while secretly delivering its consumers ever-deeper into the clutches of a world from which they so anxiously desire to escape (Gunster 42-43). This theory of the â€Å"culture industry,† feeding the consumer with entertainment during free-time so that the work will not suffer, is the driving force behind the Fordian culture that Huxley writes about in the 1920s and 30s and satirizes in Brave New World .Adorno, whose major works were not written until the Second World War, is analyzing a reality of mechanized society and mass culture that Huxley wrote of years before. As a writer during the â€Å"Jazz Age,† Huxley would bear witness to the rise of commercial music as the record industry created a popular music that Huxley viewed in a negative light.In a 1925 essay on music, Huxley describes a piece of popular music: There is a certain jovial, bouncing, hoppety little tune with which any one who has spent even a few weeks in Germany†¦ must be familiar. Its name is â€Å"Ach, du lieber Augustin. † It is a merry little affair in three-four time; in rhythm and melody so simple, that the village idiot could sing it after a first hearing; in sentiment so innocent that the heart of the most susceptible maiden would not quicken by a beat a minute at the sound of it. Rum-tiddle, Um tum tum, Um tum tum†¦ By the very frankness of its cheerful imbecility the thing disarms all criticism. (Collected Essays 173) Huxley finds this example of popular music simplistic and moronic, not even worth a real critique.He continues on the subject by comparing the tune to an eighteenth-century waltz of the same name and to all music prior to the mid-Nineteenth century: The difference between â€Å"Ach, du lieber Augustin† and any waltz composed at any date from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, is the difference between one piece of music al most completely empty of emotional content and another, densely saturated with amorous sentiment, languor and voluptuousness. (173) Huxley then expands his critique to criticize all contemporary popular music as lacking the meaningful emotional content that was, he feels, characteristic of all pre-mid-nineteenth-century popular music.In his essay â€Å"The Music Industry,† published in 1933, the year after Brave New World’s publication, Huxley writes about the short life-span of popular music and declares his era as â€Å"an age of rapid technical progress, and the desire for incessant novelty is a natural product of environmental change† and adds that the tendency for novelty increases consumption and is therefore, â€Å"encouraged by manufacturers† (â€Å"The Music Industry† 101). The music show that Lenina and Henry attend towards the beginning of the novel echoes Huxley’s fears from â€Å"The Music Industry† regarding the need for novelty in popular culture. The advertisements for the show â€Å"invitingly† declare it, in all-capital letters, â€Å"LONDON’S FINEST SCENT AND COLOR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC† (BNW 76).There is an emphasis placed on the â€Å"latest,† favoring that novelty which fuels consumption. Again there is an echo in Adorno.Gunster looks at an essay Adorno published titled â€Å"On Popular Music†: On the one hand, he argues, the ‘fundamental’ property of popular music is that it is unremittingly standardized: ‘every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine’†¦ On the other hand, marketability demands that repetition be hidden beneath the illusion of individuality, difference, and novelty (Gunster 24). Adorno’s â€Å"culture industry† is again reflected in the popular music. His descriptions of popular music are very similar to way Huxley describes popular music as si mplistic and standardized. Likewise, both acknowledge that the culture industry markets its goods to consumers based on supposed novelty.Within Brave New World, Huxley’s critique of popular music comes through in his descriptions of the music of the World State. The music, like the example song Huxley described from Germany in 1925, is cheerful, with simple, formulaic, verses and chorus reeling with meaningless phrases and clichà ©. An excellent example of this is the Solidarity Hymn of â€Å"Orgy-porgy† Orgy porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at one with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives release. (BNW 84) This song not only contains little real meaning, a critique that Huxley aims at all popular music, but also contains, as most music in the novel does, strong sexuality.In that same essay on popular music, Huxley is critical of what he calls a â€Å"certain vibrant sexuality† of popular music describing it as â€Å"vulgar,† †Å"savage† and â€Å"barbaric† (Collected Essays 174-175) and maintains that the sexuality and barbarism are pervasive: Whether, having grown inured to such violent and purely physiological stimuli as the clashing and drumming, the rhythmic throbbing and wailing glissandos of modern jazz music can supply, the world will ever revert to something less crudely direct, is a matter about which one cannot prophesy. (175)This description of the clashing drums and glissandos certainly is echoed in the scene wherein Lenina and Henry watch â€Å"Calvin Stopes and His Sixteen Sexaphonists† with the sexaphones (clearly a play on one of staples of jazz music, the saxophone) â€Å"wail[ing] like melodious cats† with moaning tenors and altos â€Å"as though the little death were upon them. † (BNW 76). The implication is that of sex and orgasm in music form: Aldous Huxley’s vision of jazz music taken to the extreme of â€Å"purely physiological. † This critique of mass music is also repeated in a supposed alternative to mass culture, the â€Å"Savage Reservation.†Huxley, at the time of writing the novel, had never been to New Mexico, in spite of the fact that his friend D. H. Lawrence owned a ranch there beginning in 1924. Peter Firchow, in his essay â€Å"Wells and Lawrence in Brave New World† writes that the fact troubled Huxley, but quotes the author as having done â€Å"’an enormous [amount] of reading up on New Mexico’† since he had not yet been there (Firchow 272). Huxley relied on Lawrence’s writings about the Pueblo Indians as well as Smithsonian reports of the place (Firchow 272-273). In spite of of his relative inexperience with historical New Mexican native cultures, Huxley creates a culture for the Pueblo and, in doing so, creates one that is at times incredibly similar to World State.Lenina draws comparison between the drums of the Pueblo religious dancing to the music of the Solidarity Service hymns in the World States â€Å"religion† of Fordism. Lenina liked the drums. Shutting her eyes she abandoned herself to their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invade her consciousness more and more completely, till at last there was nothing left in the world but that one deep pulse of sound. It reminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Ford’s Day celebrations. â€Å"Orgy-porgy,† she whispered to herself. The drums beat out just the same rhythms (BNW 113). Here we have a sexual response to music as Lenina abandons herself and allows the music to take her, in spite of it coming from a foreign place and culture.The drums here are strikingly reminiscent of the way that Huxley describes the Jazz and popular music of the 1920s. He talks about how popular culture has â€Å"grown inured to such violent and purely physiological stimuli as the clashing and drumming† and this he attributes to the influ ence of â€Å"barbarous people† (Collected Essays 175). By supplying the Indians and the mass culture of the world state with similar music, music that Huxley himself finds void of real emotion, he is equating the two cultures intellectually. The Reservation within Huxley’s novel becomes a mirror to the World State culture, an echo of Huxley’s fear of growing barbarism in popular culture. There are some points of contrast between the two.For instance, materials in the reservation are made by the individuals and are valued enough to be repaired rather than replaced as is the expectation in the World State when, say, an article of clothing becomes worn out. There is a passage on labor wherein John is working clay and through this action he becomes â€Å"filled with an intense, absorbing happiness† (BNW 134). However, these differences are superficial. There is still a value placed on productivity just as in the World State.John is made happier and feels mor e a part of his culture when he is allowed to work the clay. Just as the World State has the Community sings to promote â€Å"Community, Identity and Stability†, religion of the pueblo serves a function for productivity. John explains the whippings that Lenina and Bernard witness as being â€Å"For the sake of the pueblo – to make rain come and corn grow.†Adherence to religion provides Stability and Community for the Indians. To further the comparison between the Savage culture and the World State, Huxley gives the Indians their own drug, mescal, to help cope with life just as soma does the job for the World State citizens. Similarly, John’s position within, or rather without, the Pueblo society is similar to Bernard’s position within the World State culture. Both are outcasts for their appearances and therefore both seem more alone than the others; â€Å"If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely. They’re beastly to oneâ₠¬  (137). This mentality mirrors the values of Community and Identity contained within the World State’s motto.Identify as an individual and you are hurting the community; â€Å"when the individual feels, the community reels† is what Lenina recites, which is most likely some hypnopaedic verse (94). These characteristics, exemplified most clearly by the music of the two cultures, show that the reservation society is not a true alternative to the degradation of culture prevalent in the World State; it is just many of the same processes in a different form and to a different extent. A second form of mass culture within the World State is the â€Å"feelies. † Laura asserts that â€Å"[t]he ‘feelies’, a cinema of titillating, pansensual stimulation, are clearly a response to the ‘talkies,’† and that Huxley is extending the inclusion of sound in film to the rest of the senses (Frost 447).Huxley’s reaction to the â€Å"talkies, † specifically to the first â€Å"talkie† The Jazz Singer, expressed in an essay titled â€Å"Silence is Golden† is, as Frost points out, one of â€Å"scorn and fury† (Frost 443). He is absolutely disgusted by the film as he writes: Oh, those mammy-songs, those love-longings, those loud hilarities! How was it possible that human emotions intrinsically decent could be so ignobly parodied? I felt like a man who, having asked for wine, is offered a brimming bowl of hog wash. And not even fresh hog wash. Rancid hog wash, decaying hog wash. (â€Å"Silence is Golden† 21) He sees in film the same degeneration of human emotion and integrity that he sees in popular music.That the first â€Å"talkie† he saw was about a singer of popular music only solidified his dislike and in the end he feels â€Å"ashamed for [himself] for listening to such things, for even being a member of the species to which these things are addressed† (â€Å"Silence is G olden 23). The feelies in Brave New World are described in similar fashion as Huxley’s description of The Jazz Singer. The film that John and Lenina see, â€Å"Three Weeks in a Helicopter,† is described as having an â€Å"extremely simple† plot, with the real focus placed on the effects of the movie, as with the â€Å"famous bearskin†¦ every hair of which could be separately and distinctly felt† (168).The images and effects come off as â€Å"more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality† just as Huxley, whose vision had worsened following an eye infection during his teenage years, described the images in the â€Å"talkie† A beneficent providence has dimmed my powers of sight, so that, at a distance of more than four or five yards, I am blissfully unaware of the average human countenance. At the cinema, however, there is no escape†¦ Nothing short of total blindness can preserve one from the spectacle. The jazzers were forced on me; I regarded them with fascinated horror. (â€Å"Silence is Golden† 21) â€Å"More solid-looking† than real life is exactly the reaction Huxley had to seeing the film, since the real world was not that solid to him because of his impaired vision.Frost accepts that Huxley is at least â€Å"half feigning† his reactions to the films (Frost 443) but she points to a moment in Huxley’s â€Å"Silence is Golden† when he condemns film as â€Å"the latest and most frightful creation-saving device for the production of standardized amusement† (â€Å"Silence† 20). The standardization of amusement is what frightens Huxley, be it in music or film or in literature. In his fictionalized culture, these devices for amusement standardization are taken to the extremes. They are â€Å"more than human,† more real than reality at the same time that they are void of substance. The subject of substan ce within art is brought to the foreground in the conversation between John and Mustafa Mond in the later parts of Brave New World. The Controller argues, â€Å"You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art,† and he concludes â€Å"We’ve sacrificed the high arts.We have the feelies and the scent organ instead† (BNW 220). There is a hierarchy wherein pleasure replaces the need for aesthetics. John responds by stating that the â€Å"feelies† and the other elements of mass culture in the World State do not mean anything. Mond then replies that these things â€Å"mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience† (221). The feelies are horrifying to John because the end result is not knowledge of the human condition, but rather pleasure seeking. And in the world of hyper-pleasure, it is difficult to find anything on which to base meaningful art. That is the problem Helmholtz Watson struggles with: â€Å"writing w hen there’s nothing to say† (221).In an essay from 1923, Huxley writes â€Å"The poetry of pure sensation, of sounds and bright colors, is common enough nowadays; but amusing as we may find it for the moment, it cannot hold the interest for long† (Collected Essays 93). One can easily draw comparison to the â€Å"feelies† and the music of the World State here as something that amuses but that fails to, as John or even Mustafa Mond might say, mean anything beyond itself. The inclusion of Helmholtz Watson brings up another issue of mass culture, namely the place, if there is one, for the intellectual or the artist within mass culture.Towards the end of the novel, Bernard and Helmholtz are to be sent to an island. Mustafa Mond speaks of Bernard’s fate He’s being sent to an island. That’s to say, he’s being sent to a place where he’ll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world.All the peop le who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who’s any one (BNW 227). This is a clear separation between the intellectual free-thinkers and the mass population. As Mond points out, there is no room in the World State for individuality and the search for truth and meaning since â€Å"truth’s a menace. † He concludes by adding that Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t (228).In the movement towards mass culture, artists and intellectuals, like the aspiring poet Helmholtz Watson, and individualists have no place. In a 1929 essay Huxley raises this question of the possibility for the individual in a mechanized state Is it possible for a human being to be both a man and a citizen of a mechanized state? Is it possible to combine the material advantages which accrue to those living in a mechanized world with the psychological advantages enjoyed by those who live in pre-mechanical surroundings? Such are the questions which future politicians will have to ask and effectively answer in terms of laws and regulations. What sort of answers will they give? Who knows? Not I at any rate.I am even a little doubtful whether the questions are answerable (â€Å"Machinery, Psychology, and Politics† 221). Huxley sees the war between individual and the industrialized state but provides no solutions to this issue and even has doubts whether the issue will ever be resolved. In his novel he has the rulers simply separate those that become too individualistic from the mass-minded because they are dangerous to the sedated, pleasure-driven masses. Furthermore, Huxley fears that through mass educ ation, those intellectuals might be eliminated. In a 1927 essay titled â€Å"Education† Huxley writes on the defects of Mass education Under the present system of mass education by classes too much stress is laid on the teaching and too little on active learning.The child is not encouraged to discover things on his own account. He learns to rely on outside help, not on his own powers, thus losing intellectual independence and all the capacity to judge for himself. The over-taught child is the father of newspaper-reading, advertisement-believing, propaganda-swallowing, demagogue-led man†¦ (â€Å"Education† 205-206) This analysis of mass education makes the learner dependent upon the system, which Huxley sees as fueling advertising and propaganda. Huxley wrote in 1929 on the effects of mass education on society We have had universal education for about fifty years; the supply of [Isaac] Newtons, however, has not perceptibly increased.Everybody, it is true, can now r ead – with the result that newspapers of an unbelievable stupidity and baseness have circulations of millions. Everybody can read – so it pays rich men to print lies wholesale. Everybody can read so men make fortunes by inventing specious reasons why people should buy things they don’t really want (â€Å"The New Salvation† 212-213). Huxley’s view on mass education is that it does not better society. No more geniuses are to be found in a wholly educated society as in a partially educated one. The effect in his mind is that capitalists have more means through which they can influence people into desiring and buying the goods they produce.His obvious prejudices and elitism aside, the note about separate newspapers that target certain intellectual class levels of society is reflected in the various periodicals aimed at the classes of the World State like The Delta Mirror or The Gamma Gazette. The process is taken one step further in Brave New World by having the education system emphasize the value of consumption of goods, rather than that consumption value being pushed by the writers of the newspapers as Huxley wrote about in 1929. Consumerism is more standardized. Education is not the only means of control of the masses employed to maintain production, the population itself is in the management of the state.The populous is bred systematically in a process much like that of a Fordian assembly line: using bottles and genetic manipulation instead of the natural process of human reproduction. With the bottling, the creation of the sterile â€Å"free-martins† and the rigid implementation of contraceptives like the â€Å"Malthusian belts,† the population of the world is entirely in control of the industrialized state. This culture also employs scientific methods such as â€Å"Bokanovsky’s Process† and Pavlovian conditioning to carefully craft a society of rigid castes. The function of education is to teach the members of those castes their respective roles and the roles of others and the necessity of these roles in the greater context.This process of industrialized reproduction makes raising and educating citizens much easier for the World State since they can begin that conditioning during the embryonic stage of production. Additionally, the levels of society, the castes alpha through gamma, can be predetermined and separated strictly. Education is begun at the fetal level, thanks to hypnopaedia, saving time. Since reproduction is standardized and contained wholly within a factory, the leaders of the mechanized society do not have to wait until a semblance of character starts to show in people to condition them towards a certain way of life; the genetics do that for them. This process reflects Huxley’s views of the potential of science from his 1930 predictive essay â€Å"Babies – State Property.†He writes Psychologists having shown the enormous importance in ev ery human existence of the first years of childhood, the state will obviously try to get hold of its victims as soon as possible. The process of standardization will begin at the very moment of birth – that is to say, if it does not begin before birth! (231). He goes on to predict that this process of standardization at or before birth will be destructive to the family. But, unlike in his novel, he predicts that the family â€Å"will emerge again when the danger is past† (231). This careful selection of genetic material is the idea of eugenics, a term that is hard to separate from the fascists of the 1930s and 1940s, especially the National Socialists in Germany. Prior to that period though, Huxley often expounded on the ideas of eugenics.In a 1927 essay called â€Å"A Note on Eugenics† Huxley expresses a common fear of the time period that scientific and technological processes were preserving â€Å"physically and mentally defective individuals† and that the quality of human reproduction was diminishing (â€Å"A Note on Eugenics† 281) In her essay â€Å"Designing a Brave New World: Eugenics, Politics and Fiction,† Joanne Woiak addresses this subject by writing â€Å"[Huxley’s] ongoing support for so-called race betterment was typical of left-leaning British intellectuals in the inter-war period† (Woiak 106).Huxley’s own feelings on the subject seem mixed. Also in 1927, Huxley wrote an essay dealing with the subject of equality and democracy We no longer believe in equality and perfectibility. We know that nurture cannot alter nature and that no amount of education or good government will make men completely virtuous and reasonable, or abolish their animal instincts. In the Future that we envisage, eugenics will be practiced in order to improve the human breed and the instincts will not be ruthlessly repressed but, as far as possible, sublimated so as to express themselves in socially harmless ways (â€Å"The Future of the Past† 93).He continues to predict that education will not be the same for everyone and that this education system will teach â€Å"the members of the lower castes only that which is profitable for the members of the upper castes that they should know† (93). Huxley is arguing that the nineteenth-century ideals of democracy and universal equality are not a reality and predicts a future of selective reproduction and a defined caste system based on genetic stock. Brave New World certainly reflects this prediction; eugenics policies have been implemented but there are certainly instinctual processes, like violent passions, that have to be expressed in â€Å"socially harmless ways† – the Violent Passion Surrogates.But that sort of hope-filled view of the possible benefits of eugenics is not wholly what is at work in Huxley’s Brave New World. In that 1927 prediction, the intellectuals control the selective processes for determini ng the caste system. However, in 1932, the year of Brave New World’s publication, Huxley returns to the issue of eugenics by writing that â€Å"The humanist would see in eugenics an instrument for giving to an ever-widening circle of men and women those heritable qualities of mind and body which are, by his highest standards, the most desirable† (â€Å"Science and Civilization† 153). This is in line with his earlier views on the possible benefits of eugenics.But Huxley acknowledges that it might not be the humanist that is in charge of the process. But what of the economist-ruler? Would he necessarily be anxious to improve the race? By no means necessarily. He might actually wish to deteriorate it. His ideal, we must remember, is not the perfect all-around human being, but the perfect mass-producer and mass-consumer. Now perfect human beings probably make very bad mass-producers. It is quite in the cards that industrialists will find, as machinery is made more f oolproof, that the great majority of jobs can be better performed by stupid people than by intelligent ones (154). This is the society of Brave New World.As Mustafa Mond puts it, â€Å"The optimum population†¦ is modelled [sic] on the iceberg – eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above† (BNW 223). The population, as mentioned earlier, is conditioned to consume and to produce, and the eugenics policy helps create the society can perform the necessary tasks. Taken that way, the novel seems to be a satire and condemnation not of eugenics, but of eugenics run by the industrialist to create masses of dumber humans to buy and consume stuff. This then returns the mind to Huxley’s 1927 prediction of eugenics and those instincts that have to be expressed in â€Å"socially harmless ways† (â€Å"The Future of the Past† 93).Realizing the necessity for emotion, they employ â€Å"Violent Passion Surrogates† to â€Å"flood the whole system w ith adrenin† in order to satisfy what Mustapha Mond calls â€Å"one of the conditions of perfect health† (Brave New World 239). In short they are simulating the dangers of life in a safe and systematic way. Freedom of sex covers the sexual instincts and has the benefit also of providing pleasure during free-time. One of the greatest forces of keeping the workers producing is through the drug soma. â€Å"The perfect drug†¦ Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant†¦ All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of the defects† (BNW 53-54). Soma is the release and the reward for the obedient mechanized worker of the world state.Combined with the â€Å"feelies† and all the other aspects of mass culture in the World State, soma helps keep the society in order by keeping the workers pleased. â€Å"Industrial civilization,† as Mustafa Mond puts it, â€Å"is only possible when there’s no self-denial. Self indulgence up to the very limits of imposed hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning. † (BNW 237). As with eugenics, Huxley’s writings on drug use varied, especially following the Second World War with his explorations into psychedelic drugs in The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. But even around the time of Brave New World’s publication he often was writing on drug use.In 1931 he addressed the issue of drug as an escape in a brief essay titled â€Å"Treatise on Drugs† Everywhere and at all times, men and women have sought, and duly found, the means of taking a holiday from the reality of their dull and often acutely unpleasant existence. A holiday out of space, out of time, in the eternity of sleep or ecstasy (â€Å"A Treatise on Drugs† 304). For Huxley, drug use seems inevitable. This holiday is certainly mirrored in Brave New World. â€Å"The cause of drunkenness and drug-taking is to be found in the general dissatisfaction with reality,† h e writes in a 1932 essay titled â€Å"Poppy Juice,† an essay talking about the effects of drug policing. But Huxley continues by including the sort of people that might not be dissatisfied with life and the possibility of drug use among them.Alcohol and drugs offer means of escape from the prison of the world and the personality. Better and securer conditions of life, better health, better upbringing, resulting in more harmoniously balanced character, would do much to make reality seem generally tolerable and even delightful. But it may be doubted whether, even in Utopia, reality would be universally satisfying all the time. Even in Utopia people would pine for an occasional escape, if only from the radiant monotony of happiness (â€Å"Poppy juice† 317). This idea of people using drugs to escape monotonous Utopia seems one of the probable reasons for soma’s pervasiveness in the World State.The hypnopaedic chorus â€Å"A gramme is better than a damn† refle cts those moments when reality might not wholly satisfy; rather than cursing the situation, just take soma to escape on holiday. But escapism is not the only use of soma. Or rather, the effect of escapism soma has is not just beneficial for the individual. John Hickman, in his essay â€Å"When Science Fiction Writers Used Fictional Drugs: Rise and Fall of the Twentieth-Century Drug Dystopia,† writes that â€Å"[The] use of the recreational drug soma is one of several aspects of dehumanization made possible by the scientific expertise wielded by amoral elites† (Hickman 144). Whether or not the industrialists of Brave New World are â€Å"amoral† is beyond the scope of this essay.Nonetheless, Hickman’s point about the dehumanizing effects of soma remains true. The drug is used by the World State to keep the masses in check. One of the hypnopaedic lessons Lenina recites is â€Å"Was and will make me ill†¦ I take a gramme and only am† (BNW 104). Th e sentiment here is that thinking of past occurrences or having ambitions or fear does not help, and that soma can help keep you in the present. There is no need for rebellion or trying to better one’s position if soma can take the individual out of the negative moments. The lack of downside and the steady stream of governmental supply of soma ensure that the citizens are kept in a pleasure-filled world so that they might continue to produce and consume more.Hickman concludes, based on those later novels by Huxley and on the comparison with the mescal used in Pueblo society, that Huxley is not against drug use â€Å"as a more direct route to spiritual development, but was instead opposed to recreational drug taking that would render a population docile† (Hickman 145). In the 1931 â€Å"Treatise on Drugs†, Huxley was dreaming of a super soma-like drug when writing about the history of drugs and how all of the drugs present in the world are â€Å"treacherous and harmful†: The way to prevent people from drinking too much alcohol, or to becoming addicts to morphia or cocaine, is to give them an efficient but wholesome substitute for these delicious and (in the present imperfect world) necessary poisons†¦ The man who invents such a substance will be counted among the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity (â€Å"Treatise on Drugs† 304-305).Huxley’s perfect drug was achieved in the fictional soma. But as was the case with eugenics policies, this too fell into the hands of the industrialists who used it to benefit the mechanized society by keeping the mass culture satiated with pleasure and escapist trappings. The drug, as Hickman points out, is used to keep the masses producing and consuming, just as all other aspects of the culture had those goals in mind. Brave New World is a vision of a future that is based on Huxley’s reactions and interpretations of the 1920s. His strong favoring of an intellectual cultu re over a mass-produced comfort driven culture is abundantly made clear in the novel.In a different 1931 essay titled â€Å"To The Puritan,† Huxley pushes the idea that Fordism as a philosophy could prove destructive to humanity if pursued fully. There is no place in the factory, or in that larger factory which is the modern industrialized world, for animals on the one hand, or for artists, mystics, or even, finally, individuals on the other. Of all the ascetic religions Fordism is that which demands the cruellest [sic] mutilations of the human psyche – demands the cruellest [sic] mutilations and offers the smallest spiritual returns. Rigorously practiced for a few generations, this dreadful religion of the machine will end by destroying the human race (â€Å"To the Puritan† 238-239).

Marketing Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

Marketing - Coursework Example The spine board looks excellent and is marked as a ruler, the design that stands out as the most unique feature of the magazine (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2007). Research should have been done to determine the likes and dislikes of the consumers. Maybe they had a great idea, but assessing the market ensures that improvements are made to the product to be published to the audience. This ensures that quality products are availed to the consumers. Little research had to affect the magazine because they did not have the strong basics of how the consumers would react to the publication (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2007). Readymade magazine relies on opinion leaders to determine market trends. Relationship marketing is evidently a vital business marketing strategy considering that clients have become more demanding, competition becoming ever more severe. Opinion leaders will help Readymade magazine to build long term relationships with customers so as to build a competitive advantage over the potential competitors (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel,

Peer Journals Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Peer Journals - Essay Example To begin with, one of the strategies that teachers can play in enhancing in such a case is giving students time to practice on their own before the real peer journals begin. In this case, the instructors ought to show the class how to get in groups and then provide his/her feedback to the group. Another excellent strategy is the teaching of students on how to keep track of other students’ right answer. From this strategy, students learn from each other fast enough, which enhance continuity and increased learning (DuPaul 2). In addition to these strategies, another strategy that can greatly influence learning in such a case is making learning fun to students. This can be done using various helpful strategies such as rewards, encouragement and giving of points among many other methods. While doing all these things, the instructor ought to act as a trainer, a demonstrator, an organizer and most of all, a model. They also ought to play the role of commentators and checkers for max imum outcome (Yang 75). In conclusion, peer reviewed journals are among the best method of teaching in almost any group. In order to enhance learning and to ensure maximum outcomes, strategies like making of the method enjoyable and playing the right role should be adopted. With such methods, fast learning and positive outcomes are possible. DuPaul, G.J. Peer tutoring procedures in general education classrooms. In A.S. Canter & S.A. Carroll (Eds.), Helping children at home and school: Handouts from your school psychologist. National Association of School Psychologists, Bethesda: MD.

Television Interview with Bill Mckibben Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Television Interview with Bill Mckibben - Essay Example Human being shave not left the earth alone. They are carrying out activities that may significantly change not only the earth but also its climate. In this regard, carbon dioxide has been recognized as the main culprit. In fact, the single activity that would be most likely to have a significant impact on climatic conditions is burning of gas, oil, coal and other fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are made up of carbon and therefore burning them would produce carbon dioxide. Since the early 19th century, when the burning of fossil fuels in large quantities began, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased by more than thirty percent. This has led to an increase in global temperatures from 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit. While this may appear to be a minor and even inconsequential increase in temperatures, it has had devastating effects. Numerous books, journals, essays and magazines have been written to this effect and an equally large number of propositions made on how to salv age the situations to save planet earth or even mitigate the effects. No other book captures more graphically the grim picture pertaining to climate change as Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, by Bill McKibben. The following is an excerpt of a television interview in which Bill McKibben talks about the book in particular and climate change in general. With him is a panel of media pundits (Stanley who is hosting the show, Joyce and Craig) and Richard (from Africa), all bound to express their views on the issue as well. Stanley: Bill, thank you for honoring our invitation and welcome to this show. Quite a lot has been said about climate change and your book has extensively touched on the issue. Please enlighten us on the views expressed in the book. Bill: Thank you Stanley. As you have said, climatic changes have been a major concern more so in the recent times. While most of our governments are flirting with the issue, it is important to acknowledge that the implications o f climate change and global warming are quite severe. Look at the changes that have been experienced in many parts of the world. The environmental news has actually deteriorated. Have we not seen ice caps vanishing, oceans acidifying and crops failing more than we have ever seen in the past? Can our forefathers recognize this earth if they were to rise from their graves? I doubt that. We are no longer living in planet earth as they knew it but rather Eaarth. Unfortunately all this has been caused by insensitive human activity. Craig: With all due respect Bill, don’t you think we are overlooking quite a number of things in this respect. I definitely agree that there has been a significant rise in the temperatures as to cause all those things that you have talked of. However, it is important to acknowledge that we know very little about the environment, pertaining to its history, its current state or even how we can protect and conserve it. The debate that we hold actually over states the level of existing knowledge as well as its certainty. Of course I agree that carbon dioxide levels are increasing in the atmosphere and human activity is actually the main culprit. However, how can you be sure that this is the cause of increase in temperature and the consequent changes while we are in the middle of a natural trend of global warming that kicked of around mid 19th century just when we were emerging from the â€Å"Little Ice Age†