Week 12 Story Lab: Crash Course Myth Videos

Crash Course Myth videos. Watch these videos and record your thoughts in a blog post: Overview of Mythology (3 videos, 40 minutes total). These are most useful for the Myth-Folklore class, but I think they can be useful for the Indian Epics class too.

What Is Myth? Crash Course World Mythology #1

This video talked about how due to the age of myths, there is a lot of interpretation. Beyond the multiple versions of myths found, we do not know exactly how a myth was created. Does a myth originate from a twist of truth, are they made up fictional stories for entertainment or to teach a lesson, or were they simply a way to explain natural phenomena? I thought the part of the video that started on the theory of myth was fascinating, and I better understood why our Mythology and Folklore class contains story-telling, as myth from "mythos" means "story." In this class, we are making up our own interpretations of myths as many have done for thousands of years. And myths aren't only old, they are integrated into our societies, such as the "Rags and Riches" example the video provided. The way we use myths in society further explains how we think and how we experience life.

Theories of Myth: Crash Course World Mythology #12

This video talked about how myths have been and are studied. Myths are powerful because of their ability to survive centuries by people believing that their stories are worth passing down. However, not everyone was in agreement. One example this video used was how the criticism of myths has happened for thousands of years, even back in 500 B.C.E. Before I saw this video, I thought everyone in ancient Greece worshipped the Greek pantheon, so I was very surprised to hear that figures such as Plato and Euhemerous disregarded the myths as having any factual truth. Plato called myths another type of lie, which is a connotation that still exists today. Strangely enough, people pretend that they are the most evolved being and that humans in the past were lesser, such as Euhemerous who said people made up myths because they did not have science. However, I thought the field studies (as problematic as its view of a 'primitive' society) told the most about how myths function in society. They teach morals, rules, and beliefs for people to live by. It is really in the context of where the myths are told that tell us more about how they influence us. I thought this was fairly obvious but it didn't occur to me how mythology was affecting history. The connections found between languages created modern mythology of the Aryan people, who, despite having no evidence of existence, created a gateway for superiority thought that fueled Nazi propaganda. This made me think of the modern mythologies we take for granted in our own lives. The internet is a tool that doesn't discriminate with information allowed on it. Such as the following:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34568674

The above is a link to a story of a model who did work for a plastic surgery advertisement. However, people made up a false story behind the photos the model was a part of, and soon the model, Ms. Yeh, had a lot of trouble finding work because of the rumors surrounding her. The moral of the story: Think carefully and critically about what you read before you hit "Post."

The Hero's Journey and the Monomyth: Crash Course World Mythology #25

The main idea this video focused on was that a hero is someone that answers the call to journey from home and undergoes many deadly trials. During this process, the hero surpasses their mentor or gains the approval of their mentor. Once all their challenges are complete, the hero returns home or continues to ascend from humanity. In either case, the hero gained hard-earned peace. Throughout this description of "The Hero's Journey," the hero is put in parallel to ourselves. We all want to find our place in the world, and the hero's trials can act as analogies to the struggles in our everyday lives.

Then "The Hero's Journey" continued past just going home because they need to be accepted again into the community. It reminded me of"The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien. One of the lines was about how people who go on adventures may not come back and if they do they will not be the same. This was seen in Bilbo Baggins as he became a social outcast of the shire because of his adventure. I thought about how my own adventure was going, and I remembered coming home for the first time as a college student. Everything was both familiar and strange because I had grown as a person and the people back home had done some growing without me.

That's it for my Story Lab. Here is a personal photo of a sunrise.

Week 10 Lab: More TED Talks

The Human Brain. Source.

Copyright is Brain Damage by Nina Paley. Source.

Paley's TED Talk covers how copyright has many detriments, including preventing the flow of culture, no additional benefits to the actual creator, etc. Overall, Paley calls herself a copyright abolitionist because any change in the laws and legislation would occur well after a human lifetime. I disagreed with a lot of Paley's talk. One of her arguments is that as copyright is traded between corporations and that the creator does not really benefit from copyright. Paley even mentions that copyright has not earned her any more money.

I argue that copyright allows creators to earn money in the first place. Yes, copyright is traded between corporations, but the reasons corporations own the copyright in the first place is because the original creator benefited from giving them rights to their art. Without money as an incentive, corporations would not be invested in art for the advertisement and production of it. In addition to this point, who would buy art such as a film when they could easily obtain a free version online. The level of consumers would drop of art was allowed to be shared everywhere, so what monetary value would it have.

And as much as people don't like to think about it, money is deeply involved in art. Aside from the money used to gather supplies to create the art, there is an upkeep cost as well. Overtime, mediums of art such paint degrade over time by chemical reactions with the air. The job is delicate enough for specialists to be required to reverse these reactions so the art retains its beauty. If no one pays to see the art, how can museums pay to conserve the art.

I agree that copyright laws are incredibly absurd, but the complete abolition that Paley describes sounds more harmful than anything else. Piracy is not a victimless crime, yet Paley says that people should use whatever art inspires them, no matter the license they fall under. If people did as Paley suggests and ignore copyright, aside from the legal consequences, the corporations would take a blow. If you do not think this is a loss, I would like to remind that a corporation may have strict businessmen on top but the people under them are just trying to make a living. If corporations lose profit, thousands of people could lose their jobs.

Another point Paley makes is that her art becomes lesser with a copyright filter, and she is correct. The work she created without the copyright material would have less substance. However, why did Paley want to use copyright source in the first place for her film's score. There are plenty of young artists who would greatly appreciate the chance to create a score, yet Paley is insistent on using already well-known art. Paley claims copyright hinders culture, but doesn't it play a part for opportunities for new artists to make their mark? I say that the use of copyrighted materials allows new ideas to spread and if after the copyright period of time a piece is still a classic, then it has made a large enough cultural impact to be worth using for the rest of time.



A New Theory of Human Intelligence by Scott Barry Kaufman. Source.

This TED talk focused on the story of a man who was rejected into a program because of his early test scores. Instead, he joins the university under another major and transfers into his preferred department. He started out as someone diagnosed as mentally impaired to getting accepted into Yale for graduate school. He describes how schools focus on past scores rather than the professional and innovative people that students want to become. 

I thought the points in this TED talk were incredibly obvious. My generation is fully aware of the problems of the American school system and attempts to improve it. For example, the No Child Left Behind legislation was made to penalize school districts with students with bad scores and reward school districts with good scores. However, if a student was doing badly in school, how could reduced resources help them improve? Changes to the SAT in recent years, such as the reduced emphasis on vocabulary are an improvement, but the SAT still has such a rigid structure that allows no leeway. 

Some students are easily confused by how a question is worded but they can describe a chemical process or historical event with a teacher's fluency. However, these students do worse on the SAT because the test is mainly multiple choice.

Another point is that when I took the ACT, there were questions about how to fix a single sentence. Except, I thought the whole sentence sounded unnatural. I would have rewritten the whole paragraph, but this was not in options A through D.

The one point from Kaufman that I agree most-whole heartedly with is that we need to treat unique traits of a student as co-abilities, not disabilities. I wholeheartedly agree with this. People diagnosed with some mental impairment are so often treated as lesser and it breaks my heart to hear or see any of it. As a premed, I get most riled up by idiots saying that vaccines cause autism. First of all, no they do not. Secondly, would you really rather have your own child die from debilitating diseases than have an autistic child. People with mental disorders such as autism still live perfectly normal lives.

Most of the time, we don't know a person is autistic unless they tell us they are. The reason for this is that autistic people may have difficulties but they can adjust as any other person. The same goes for any person with low test scores in their early life. People change over time and, as Kaufman said, should be allowed to live outside the scores other people assign to them. 

Week 6 Lab: TED Talk Videos

Photo of TED Stage Logo with Julie Freeman Altered by Juliana Rotich. Source.

This week I decided to complete the Story Lab: TED Talk option.

The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Source.

When I watched Adichie's TED Talk, I was struck by how she began by introducing herself as a storyteller. Adichie explains how she wrote stories like the ones she read, including cultural differences she did not understand. She only read British and American books, and as a result, she had a single story of what made up a book.

This anecdote made me understand part of why this TED talk was picked out of the hundreds of other TED talks to view for this class.

In this class, we will read stories from all over the world. The exposure to other stories helps dissolve the single-story, which in turn prevents a lot of harm. Adichie mentions that a single-story is not necessarily incorrect, but it is incomplete. It is when we refuse to acknowledge any other story that we alienate other cultural groups as "different and "wrong" rather than noticing our similarities.

This highlight on differences is where I believe the most harm from a single story comes in. As shown in history, when one group meets another, there are cultural differences. Unfortunately, multiple groups have been stripped of their cultural identity and forced to assimilate with European culture (see the 1892 speech made by Capt. Richard H. Pratt's "Kill the Indian, and Save the Man." Source.). Westerners had a single story of what was proper and correct in many things. As a result, they did not try to understand the cultures they eventually repressed and instead simplified them as wrong and Devil-worshipping.

Imaginary friends and real-world consequences by Jennifer Barnes. Source.

I am an avid fan of multiple fictional universes. I buy merchandise, spend hours watching, reading, drawing, etc. to interact with my favorite characters. I've yelled at the TV when someone in the fictional multiverse doesn't go right for a character. When a character I love died, I could cry buckets and buckets or flat out deny canon. I'll well aware of what a parasocial relationship is. Before I watched Barnes' TED talk, I already knew first-hand why we care about fictional characters.

Something that she made me consider though was the blend our subconscious makes between fiction and reality. If we can subconsciously believe fictional universes as real, perceive actual events as fiction? In the case of fictional characters, we know they aren't real, but we still feel close to them. By contrast, we can treat real events as stories and put them away in our minds like a book on a shelf.

Barnes mentioned that we view fictional characters as part of our social circle. And like real friends, fictional characters provide comfort and grief and all the emotions in-between. I want to expand on this idea with real-world events. By treating them as fiction, we protect ourselves from going insane over every horrible thing in the world.

Sometimes this denial is on a subconscious level where we understand it is real without the emotions. However, sometimes would this expand to flat out denying that the horrible event happened? In either case, how would that affect our empathy? I suggest we become more apathetic. To counteract his effect, we must be careful not to ignore what real people go through when we do not experience their suffering ourselves.