GHS208-05 Fall 2019 China and the Islamic Middle East
Global and Historical Studies at Butler University
I went to the lecture featuring Dr. Douglas, Dr. Jett, and Dr. Logan on Tuesday night because I am in Dr. Bauman’s class that is associated with the lecture series. We had the opportunity to have dinner with the speakers beforehand, and it was really nice to have personal one on one conversations with them. …
Continue reading “Incarceration, Christianity, and Black Bodies”
If I am going to be totally honest, the GHS Reader that we use can often be very boring and I tend to enjoy Ha Jin’s short stories much more, but this time the reader was actually really engaging. The whole section to me seemed like a book of fables, and I found that fascinating. …
During class, we had a really interesting discussion about what counts as something good, and what counts as something evil that went along with the reading that day from the GHS Reader. We also briefly referenced the Friends episode in which Phoebe and Joey try to find a selfless good deed, only to find that there …
The transformation of things paragraph is interesting. Is he really a butterfly dreaming or himself dreaming he is a butterfly? It makes us question what reality is really. I also like how in section A they talked about beauty. It reminded me of the Tao Te Ching poem on the perception of beauty. What I …
Continue reading “Class Discussion and Reading of “Flame” and “Chuang Tzu””
While exploring the different philosophies that we have studied so far I immediately found myself drawn to the beliefs and morals of Daoism because they represented an ideal life of peace that begins with an inner sense of morality shared by everyone. I noticed that almost everyone has a similar opinion and idealizes this philosophy. …
Out of the selections that we were reading from Chuang Tzu, I found selection “E” quite interesting. The selection was about the tree that was known as the town shrine, that had no good uses. The carpenter in the story said about the tree “It’s a worthless tree! Make boats out of it and they’d …
Throughout this reading, as well as past ones, I have been surprised at the amount of metaphors that these ancient philosophers used. All of their teachings seem to be up for interpretation by the reader. This was interesting to me, because in some other more convoluted speculative texts I have had to read for other …
Is the survival instinct selfish? Do we cooperate because we have a desire to help people? We can start this discussion with the terrible twos. Nature and nurture play a role in our sense of good and evil. We are testing our limits and seeking attention when we are two. We are learning and being …
In this section in the book it talks about wanting to be able to have everything, meaning we all don’t get everything we want. It say’s “I like fish, but I also like bear’s paw, but if I can’t have both at the same time, I will forego the fish and eat the bear paw”. …
As I was reading some news about China, I came across an interesting article from BBC News. This article talked about a Chinese woman who is pleading guilting here in the United States on federal charges of a “birth tourism” scheme where Chinese nationals would pay to come to the States and have their children, …
Continue reading “Why Chinese nationals want their children to be born in America”