Sophomores 2020
Blog for 5/19/20 #38
Period 9
Muhammad Chaudhry
The Aim: How and why does Winston manage to resist the manipulative power of language and total mob mentality?
Do Now: imagine we are in room number 102
“Comrades” you have been selected for re-education by the Party. To begin, I want you to observe 3 citizens and write everything they do and what you believe they are thinking. Do not let them know you’re watching them! You have 5 minutes!
Reyblat: shifting around in her seat looking at the screen obviously typing something, not doing much else, observing people like I am. I think she is thinking of something happy because she is visibly happy and smiling.
Isabella: looking down at her phone. Maybe she was You can’t really tell since they are focused on writing down and observing other people.
Irene: writing down notes while looking back at the screen, is she a spy? Who is she looking at?
Discussion: People said they thought people were suspicious for little things, everyone was suspicious of someone. Making yourself seem less suspicious because you are helping big brother, we earn points for telling on other people. You get consequences and punishments for lying or doing the wrong thing. Everybody wanted points since other people earned points. If you exaggerate then you might get extra points but might get punished.
TEAM ACTIVITY
Imagine you’re the Mayor for NYC. Create “3” slogans/mottos for NYC, which you believe exemplify doublethink (contradictory/opposing statements). Ascent is descent. Order is chaos, strength is weakness
Doublethink: knowing the truth and knowing the fabricated truth by the government and have a belief in both of them. 1+1=2 but the government says it's 5 but we know the truth but have to believe the government too.
What did we learn: just because we know the truth doesn’t mean we will advocate for it, humans can be manipulated very easily by an authoritative figure, very easy to snitch on others when people start doing something and you want the rewards too, Winston started screaming out of his control, children are easily manipulated by language. People will trample on others to get ahead, Winston said the children will turn on their mothers. This is similar to the cultural revolution in china when old thought and customs were frowned upon by younger people, they snitched on their parents and got them prosecuted.
Why did I learn it? I think we learn all these things to learn about human behavior and to be aware of what happened in the past to not repeat the mistakes. I think we are learning about stuff like this to be grateful for all the freedom we have as individuals in this country. We shouldn’t ever give away our freedoms and shouldn’t blindly follow something just because other people are doing it.
How will I use what I learned? I don’t blindly follow something without doing research and this just reminds me to question everything and not follow the herd or be sheepish about something. Never take for granted the freedoms I have and exercises my rights to vote for something not in my best interests.
Write about your thoughts regarding the reading: Sci-Fi books always make me angry and make me feel helpless, in this case, I felt that I was ungrateful for the freedoms I had and I wanted those same freedoms for Winston, the people in the book had no privacy, no freedom to choose how to lead their life, people were told what to believe and if they didn’t they were prosecuted. That’s a miserable way to live life, most people were coughing their lungs out and living in horrible housings
What is it like working from home: I personally hate staying at home, I’m a very social person with the right group of people and being at home makes me lonely and I miss my friends and playing football. The work load for school work is pretty manageable except for a few select teachers who give wayyy too much homework for no apparent reason. My grades have never been better though. I like the amount of time we have in between.
Your own personal feelings and thoughts about what is happening right now: I just hope this dies down and we get a vaccine ASAP because I have a lot of plans for the summer and going to the gym and stuff, I wanna get back to school and meet friends and do what I love.
No comments:
Post a Comment