Theory of Knowledge: Where is the line between Art and “Profanity”?

With the recent release of the book 50 Shades of Grey and the subsequent books in the series, I have to wonder, does erotica count as art?

I want to argue that any form of self expression is art, but then I have to stop and think. It is art to someone, erotica novels, but just because it may not be “taken seriously” does it make it not art? What about the “good”ness aspect of it? I will tell you that Twilight is a terrible book and the series doesn’t get any better, but my assignment of goodness/badness doesn’t make it a universal consensus. Is Twilight a piece of art? Is any piece of popular fiction art?

I think it’s rather pretentious to dismiss popular forms of work as not being art, however, I will not disagree with you if you said half of the books that are best sellers aren’t great. But then, I’m also judging them without seeing them.

I digressed a little bit.

There was a painting of Stephen Harper naked. Is that art?

Is it the fact that it has a political message making it different from 50 Shades of Grey? I would say that gratuitous sex is not worth publishing, but some people really enjoy reading those. What makes it different from porn videos on the internet? Is it the fact that it has been published and put into print?

Do any of those things deserve censorship then?

I still haven’t wrapped my head around all of those questions to be able to think of an answer.

Theory of Knowledge: Is there an End to Scientific Knowledge?

Erin was in my group for the Natural Sciences presentation, she presented the questions “Is there an end to scientific knowledge?”

I thought the first question was a particularly difficult one to answer simply because we don’t have the ability to predict the future as she mentioned in her presentation. Even if we had come to an end to scientific knowledge, we would not know. Or we may think it’s come to end, but there might still be room for growth. I think what makes it particularly difficult is the creation of new fields that didn’t exist fifty years ago.

It’s also difficult to predict what will result from new technology. For example if a new machine allowed the synthesis of a stronger and more durable metal. Or in the case of evolution because of the nature of changing species, if we’ve ever studied all the animals to ever be studied, just wait a bit for them to evolve.

The other thing she addressed was that there was no real way for scientific knowledge to shrink as every time something is disproven, we are also adding to our knowledge. Or if for example knowledge is lost before it can be publish, it wouldn’t really make our knowledge base shrink, at least perceptively because we don’t actually know that that knowledge was lost.

Theory of Knowledge: If I were rich…

I would eat organic and buy fair trade.

It’s callous and selfish to say that I am going to continue supporting child labour and global warming, but it doesn’t make sense to my economic situation. It’s great if you have the money for you to buy more expensive food. For my family, it doesn’t matter how much we care about the environment or human rights, we’re just not able to spend more money on each item. It might be a couple of cents per item, but it adds up.

That isn’t apathy, we just like having food on our table and clothes on our backs.

My family can afford food and clothes and electricity and electronics. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have struggles. They’re just not as bad as say, in Nigeria, or in Northern India.

It never made sense to me that we have to pay more for companies to put less chemicals into our food.

and I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m a product of the consumer society. I like having my stuff, my gadgets, my cheap clothes and food.

So yes, when the day comes and I’m making my own financial decision and in a comfortable financial situation, I will opt to buy fair trade and local, but until that time, I won’ be feeling that guilty about buying cheap.

Maybe it isn’t ethical, maybe it’s immoral, but it makes economic sense.

 

Theory of Knowledge: Censoring Yourself

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people censor themselves.

What I mean is:

“What the f***?!”

or

“That b***h.”

etc.

Words only hold whatever power you give them.

“Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.” – Albus Dumbledore.

Yes, I just pulled out a Harry Potter quote.

Many swearwords stem from normal words, look at many Quebecois French swearwords, a lot of them are religious. This might have something to do with the stronghold the Catholic church had in Quebec for so long.

What I think is that if you choose to use a swearwords, use it like any other word. If you feel the need to censor yourself when you swear, then don’t even use that word. There are plenty of other words that hold the same meaning without the same “force” assigned to them.

I am writing about this because I read someone’s short story on the internet and in the story she used the word, “b*tch”. It was written exactly like that.

Literature is a form of art. Art is a form of self expression.

When you censor your own work, it feel to me like you are shying away from conveying your thought and opinions because it might offend someone. In my opinion, there’s no point of writing that piece. There’s always going to be someone who hates the work, there’s always going to be someone who is offended. What is the point of trying to please everyone when you can’t?

By censoring a word, it’s implying that something should be hidden about it, that there is some power there.

Also, censoring a word like that doesn’t actually make a difference.

I know exactly what she’s talking about even with that letter taken out.

What was I suppose to thing that * stood for?

“She was a real batch.”

“She was a real betch.”

“She was a real butch.”

Why not just avoid the word altogether.

“She was a real meanie.”

Author’s Note: Why I Write Romance

Because I’m bored and lonely.

Yeah, I thought this post was going to be some profound thing about why romance is such a big part of my writing, but that’s pretty much the biggest reason.

The better reasons are:

1. I like the idea that even though there are generally no new ideas, every single writer can take the same one and spin it a different way. In terms of how the events happened or just their writing style. None of my writing is particularly new, I am just interested in what I can do with an old idea.

2. Romance is universal. No matter what theme I want to address, every single person can relate to a story about love. Whether it is loss of love, or unrequited love, etc.

I decided to address this question because I scrolled through all of my stories and realized all of them featured a romance in some way.

Theory of Knowledge: Scientists and Their Moral Responsibility

I’m currently working on a TOK presentation on Natural Sciences, one of the questions that I will be addressing is, “Are scientists morally responsible for the application of their discoveries?”

The most common example of this issue is the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Should the scientists have known better than to have worked on the creation of this bomb? The short story, “The Weapon” written by Frederic Brown in 1951 addresses this question. It ends with the line, “Only a madman would give a loaded gun to an idiot.”

Is what Brown proposing correct? Should scientist be on a higher ground than people and be the ones to foresee the terrible results of the atomic bomb?

The scientists were not ignorant to the fact that the atomic bomb would be the ultimate weapon, and they did test runs withe atomic bomb. They had every opportunity to “blow the whistle” on this project.

Or are scientist responsible in so far as the atomic bombs working and not for what comes after? It was not a scientist that gave the order to drop the bomb, it was US president Harry Truman who gave that order. It was not a scientist that dropped the bomb, it was a bombardier aboard the Enola Gay who dropped the actual bomb.

In my opinion, I believe that it is the scientist’s moral responsibility if the risk and the outcome is foreseeable. We learned about the Precautionary Principle in relation to climate change earlier this semester: essentially, an action must be shown to be harmless beyond reasonable doubt before the action could be take. It’s of my opinion that scientists should be able to foresee possible outcomes and if they decide to accept the risk of something to go wrong, they should also accept moral responsibility for the outcomes.

Essentially I believe that if a scientist knows the possible applications of their discoveries, such as being use to kill thousands of people, they should be prepared to take responsibility for it. An accident or a miscalculation is different than knowing the possibility of something to go wrong and allowing it happen anyway.

Author’s Note: Salt

http://figment.com/books/342052-Salt

This is the new story I wrote for a writing challenge on Figment. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with writer’s block as usual. Doing these flash fiction challenged actually helps me just write because I feel like I have a purpose again. It’s really hard to sit down and force myself to think of an idea out of nothing.

There was no real explanation to this particular piece.

I wanted to utilize the imagery of the sea to illustrate their relationship. I wanted to draw the parallel between her pulling herself out of the water at the beginning and her pulling herself away from him at the end.

To me there is still some doubt whether it was a good idea for her to leave him. He is like the tide, he comes and goes, but tides are predictable, you can depend on the tide to come in then recede. I wanted him to be innocent in this piece. He showed up like he can be be expected to show up, but she decided to stop waiting.

The word limit for this challenge was only 150 words, but I think it may be interesting to revisit this couple.

Theory of Knowledge: The Problems I had with Kony 2012

It’s interesting to me now that the main arguments against the Kony 2012 campaign is Invisible Children’s use of donation money and the antics of its founder. It was interesting to me that so many people shared the video, believing its contents. I wonder at the time whether or not we had watched the same video, or the pathos driven narrative was truly that captivating.

The big problem that I had with Kony 2012 is simple, and the videomakers didn’t even hide this.

They wanted Joseph Kony killed. They wanted a man dead.

Ah, that’s where I was going with this, the death penalty question!

Does it change everything that Kony has ever done just because he is killed? Or alternatively, should we kill someone in retribution? The logic behind killing him: We cannot change the past, but we can certainly prevent any future crimes. The problem is that Kony is not the only person in the Lord’s Resistance Army. If he is killed there will be someone to take his place, as someone took Osama Bin Laden’s place. The other problem is that the LRA hasn’t been active in Uganda since 2005.

Should we have this revenge driven mindset? Make him pay with his death?

Forget the problems with gender equality, infrastructure, economy, education. In order to “fix” Uganda, we need to kill one person that is no longer in the country.

So, should we be going out and pasting cities full of posters because it makes one man’s 5 year old son “sad”?

Theory of Knowledge: Futile Debates

When it comes to subject like religion, or abortion, I want to run in the other direction. I do have an opinion, I don’t like sharing my opinion. Mostly because it seems to most people an open invitation to preach at me.

There is a difference between a dialogue and preaching though. I am very interested in hearing people’s opinions, I don’t want any opinions shoved down my throat. So really, you pick choose who you open that can of worms with. If a person is interested in sharing their views without forcing their views, I am open to listening. But to me, controversial topics are so fueled by emotions that there is no convincing the other person and there’s no convincing me. 

For example, an atheist would argue against the existence of God. For a Christian would argue for the existence of God. How do you convince an atheist that there is an all knowing deity watching over them? How do you convince a Christian that there isn’t?

These are the fundamental beliefs that someone holds, people will need to come to a conclusion about what they believe themselves, not based on the argument of someone else. Certainly with a compelling argument, you could push someone in the direction you want them to go, but you cannot force someone shift the way they view the world.

Theory of Knowledge: The Benefits of Being a Rich Learner

The last journal entry raised a different question for me: In the past, the rich were the only ones that could be educated because 1) they could afford the education and 2) the poor had to end their educations early in order to get jobs to earn money and support their families. This is still the case for some today in terms of university education. Does this mean that those who can learn for learning’s sake are those with the luxury of free time?

What I mean by this is that even now, most people will only receive their bachelor’s to embark on the career that they want. They only take the degree that is necessary. Not many people will go up to a PhD level degree because it is unnecessary and they cannot afford to continue studying when they can be earning money already.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs stipulates that in order to reach “self actualization”, all basic needs must first be met.

What I’m suggesting here is that “learning for learning’s sake” rests at the top of the pyramid in the “self actualization” portion and that money provides that means to climb all of the steps to reach that top of the needs hierarchy to achieve “self actualization”.

A person doesn’t necessarily need to be rich in order to be self actualized, but they need to be able to feed themselves and their family, have a secure job, a safe home, love and belonging, as well as a sense of self esteem before they get to a place where they can even consider gaining knowledge for the sake of it.

For me, I learn what I have to in order to succeed. In other words, I am reading criterion and doing only what is necessarily to fulfill them, I am learning the test rather than the subject. I am amassing knowledge in order to fulfill the basics that would allow me to get into university and in turn, get a secure job. I say things like, when I have time, I will go back and really learn French.

It’s perhaps easier for a rich person to want to learn at the high school level for the sake of their own understanding. This might not be true across the board, but I believe this to be true in a big proportion. What I mean is that they are not worried about achieve good grades which would lead to scholarship that would help pay for university. They might not necessarily be worried about getting a degree in a high earning field because they already have money, so they can get out and chase a field that they truly are passionate about regardless of the salary. They also don’t have to worry about repaying student loans.

This in contrast with a poor student or average income family student who not only will working hard for good grades in order to get scholarships, they also need a job that would eventually repay the student loans that they would need a good job. Even if they’re passion is in, say, art, they may choose a different field because being an artist is considered “impractical” where the pay isn’t as stable as that of an accountant.