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Influencing factors to self development
Influencing factors to self development
Influencing factors to self development
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“This Is Water: Some Thoughts Delivered on a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life,” is a Commencement Address delivered by David Foster Wallace. The speech is taken place at the University of Kenyon on May 21, 2005. Throughout the speech, Wallace explains the significance of education is the choice of what to think about and learning how to think. Wallace goes on and tells a story of two men, with different religious beliefs, sitting together in a bar. Both of the men, experience their own encounter with religion but have two different ways of constructing meaning from it. The moral of the story is learning how to think means learning control over how and what you think. Paying attention, will make you more conscious and aware to choose how you construct meaning from experience (Wallace). The story helps demonstrate the importance of thinking for yourself in different surroundings. …show more content…
In addition to the story, Wallace gives the true meaning of “day in day out”, which is a large part of the adult American life.
On average, adults employed full time, work 47 hours per week. On an average day, an adult gets up and goes to work, then comes home to go to bed and get up the next day and do it all again. This is a daily routine until you have to go to the grocery store. After working all day long, it’s easy to become frustrated at anything and anyone while getting groceries. In times like these, you can learn how to think and choose to look differently. Wallace states, “It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred.” Living “day in day out”, is an example of learning how to be well-adjusted and having the right
attitude. As a result, in any situation you face, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently. It’s not impossible to know what someone is going through, it just depends what you want to consider. Wallace insists that “If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. By learning how to pay attention, you will know there are other options. In life, you get to decided how you see certain things. That is the freedom of real education and learning what has meaning and what doesn’t. “This is Water,” is an exceptional speech and a good reference to find advise about what to think and learning how to think. Wallace shows how to think for yourself in different surroundings, learning how to be well-adjusted, and learning what has meaning and what doesn’t. Being educated and understanding how to think is real freedom. Everyone has a choice to think freely of whatever they want but thinking of real value can have a big impact living day to day.
In Theodore Isaac Rubin’s essay, “Competition and Happiness”, he summits about how in today’s society its always the battle eat or be eaten. Therefore our parents always tried to get us involved at an early age to help with our self-development, well being, and health. Since our culture has made us believe that competition brings out the best of us. Yet, it simultaneously brings out a stressful, isolating, and paranoid ambiance at a very young age. I agree with Rubin’s notion since the use of our time and energy is determined by competition and limits our happiness because it weakens our sense of identity.
David McCullough Jr., delivered the commencement at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts on June 1st 2012 to staff, the 2012 graduates, and their family and friends. The speech was straightforward and supplied valuable information for their future. . McCullough’s speech at times felt harsh, offensive, and insulting. His words and examples were given to achieve insight, knowledge, and awareness for each student’s future. The commencement expressed a great deal of achievement, but conveyed that there was more work to be done. His speech was effective and appreciated through humor parallelism, repetition, and anaphora. His point of view has obtained respect and determination by all those that have been challenged and have heard his words.
The speech is arranged into short paragraphs, providing an example in almost every one. Everyone is familiar with commencement speeches. They are usually used to congratulate a group of people and tend to be looking towards the future. Instead of congratulating the students at Kenyon College, Wallace challenges them. The essay opens with a metaphor about two young fish that do not realize what water is, setting the tone for the rest of the speech. Wallace proceeds to describe how completely oblivious society is to the world around us, just like the fish. Wallace supports this claim through examples within the speech. His use of examples rather than facts or statistics weakens his claim. If more facts or statistics were used his claim would become more convincing. His rationalization come in the form of the short stories that illustrate the choices people make in their everyday lives. He...
1. The main idea is not only that owning stuff is not the key to happiness, it’s also that consumers today own more than they need to thrive which directly impacts the environment. Hill illustrates the environmental impact by showing statistics of global warming today versus the past century, and how consumerism is leading to a hotter climate. Hill debunks claims of buying happiness by discussing a study where stress hormones spike to their highest when people are managing their personal belongings. Hill’s most prominent example that consumerism is not the answer is himself, as he discusses some of the most stressful times of his life being right after coming into a large sum of money and buying whatever he fancied. When Hill concludes his article, he states that “I have less—and enjoy more. My space is small. My life is big” (213).
Plato explains, “Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him? (1129).” Since the prisoners are unable to see the outside world they are forced to believe strictly what they can see. Plato describes that the prisoners can only be sure of the objects seen currently and not what they saw before. The prisoners used what they Douglass, like Plato used what he learned to his advantage to learn from the talking of slaveowners. “The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder (430).” The self-centered thoughts of thinking of how he will be able to become free took over his every thought and consumed him to listen in on conversations. In addition, Wallace describes self-centered thoughts in which vehicles are always in his way, but he could never be in their way. For instance, “In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way...Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe.. is trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he 's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way (7).” Unlike Douglass, Wallace recognized that he was thinking just of himself and not of his surroundings. All of these characters demonstrate that at one point they had self-centered
As a person living the life style Barbara Ehrenriech is experimenting with, I can relate to most of the stuff she goes through. Like the long hours, poor working environment, low wages. This is all very common to everyone that lives this lifestyle. Some people even suffer from physical and mental issues, from not getting a break, only to sit and pee, customers being rude, sometimes even standing 6-8 hours. It really takes a toll on your back, which could give you muscle spasms, make you fatigue, and, give you headaches.
Henry David Thoreau argues that when people are thinking too much and focus on details, “our life is frittered away by detail.” (p.276) People keep working in the bustling world, and forget the beauty of nature and our world. Thoreau also says “As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence”(p.277), what he means is that people are working meaninglessly, they are
...s story: do not let Earthly ideas of salvation through the religion blind self-judgment and acceptance of earthly lives and inevitable death.
He compares the two by talking about a trip to the super market after a long day at work. He reminds his audience how flustering it can be to “maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the ADHD kids who block the aisle” (206). This is a shopping experience everyone can relate to at some point in their life. Wallace states that this is just a default mindset that of course no one wants to admit to constantly having primarily due to the negative connotation it is given by society. If someone were to state they were annoyed by the old lady taking her time through the aisles or the “ADHD kid” they would immediately be labeled as rude, inconsiderate, and disrespectful.
In David Foster Wallace’s graduation speech, This Is Water, he uses logical and emotional appeals to discuss the importance of critical thinking. Wallace uses the term “conscious” to signal critical thinkers, while those who do not think critically are referred to as “unconscious.” Wallace’s main argument is that a person has the choice to think critically and should do so every day. Wallace’s analysis of consciousness and unconsciousness focusses too heavily on the logical and emotional appeals and ignores the possible ethical arguments that support the development of conscious societies, such as activism. In doing so, Wallace favours the self-interested members of the audience and alienates those who favour altruism, limiting the scope of his argument.
The main connection made is that of a closed mined untrained thinking person not being able to see the world or anything as it really is. A person who is closed minded is no better off than a slave chained inside a cave who has no clear understanding of the world as it is. The untrained thinker is to themselves a slave of their own mind. The untrained minded person also has no idea he is in a cave like the two fish in Wallace’s speech that have no clue they are in water cause it is all they have ever known.
Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in 2005. Everyone at Tulane University had an uncertainty if they would be able to regain back their future. It was an obstacle for the students to overcome, but they later on prevailed and attended their graduation. Being a comedian you wouldn’t expect someone to give such a wonderful commencement speech. The guest speaker for the Katrina class of 2009 at Tulane University was Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen gives a speech that not only acknowledges the class’s achievements but inspires them to be greater. I will analyze how Ellen uses Ethos and Pathos by allusion, imagery, repetition, and tone. It is an emotional and inspiring speech that I believe can convince almost anyone.
In the story "So Much Water So Close To Home" a young girl is raped, killed and found in a river where four men are fishing. What makes this story interesting is that after discovering the body they did not report it until after they left, three days later. When one of the men who discovered her, the husband of the narrator, Stuart returns home he doesn't tell his wife about the incident until the following morning. Because of this, Claire believes that all men are responsible for the murder of the girl. Due to these facts she acts irrationally, suspiciously, and with distrust not only towards her husband, but also to all men in general.
... Had Lawrence not utilized the story frame, the reader may not have realized the purpose behind the connection between the reactions of the monk and the stableman. The reader would not have concluded that spirituality within the beholder affects the way in which individuals see the world. The need for these two groups of people to believe in a higher being or protector helped them to endure hardships; by showing these actions, Lawrence brings new light to the meaning behind faith.
On its surface, Martel’s Life of Pi proceeds as a far-fetched yet not completely unbelievable tale about a young Indian boy named Pi who survives after two hundred twenty-seven days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. It is an uplifting and entertaining story, with a few themes about companionship and survival sprinkled throughout. The ending, however, reveals a second story – a more realistic and dark account replacing the animals from the beginning with crude human counterparts. Suddenly, Life of Pi becomes more than an inspiring tale and transforms into a point to be made about rationality, faith, and how storytelling correlates the two. The point of the book is not for the reader to decide which story he or she thinks is true, but rather what story he or she thinks is the better story. In real life, this applies in a very similar way to common belief systems and religion. Whether or not God is real or a religion is true is not exactly the point, but rather whether someone chooses to believe so because it adds meaning and fulfillment to his or her life. Life of Pi is relevant to life in its demonstration of storytelling as a means of experiencing life through “the better story.”