The End of Humanity( Don't get freaked out.... I just mean humanity as the unit title)

Soooooo... we finished the project finally, and I think pretty soon we'll be moving on to our next unit for quarter three. If I forgot to explain the project in previous blogs I'll reexplain it now. Basically for our gifted and talented class we have been exploring the human spirit and hope and characteristics that separate us from other species. After we discussed that for a while our teachers wanted us to be able to all come up with individual topics that interested us  and branched off of  hope and human spirit as a universal theme. When I first learned about this all I wanted to know was what exactly humanity was and I assumed my classmates would all choose the same general idea of what exactly is humanity.I was severely mistaken and I underestimated just how many different takes we all had on humanity hope and the human spirit. I learned so much from this unit not just from my own research but from watching my classmates presentations.
 One group that presented asked the question what does it meant to be human and do you have hope for the human race? They then went all over our school and asked these questions to both teachers and students alike and got many responses. What really interested me about their project was the second question about if we have hope for the human race or not? I was honestly expecting everyone to say NO because of how the world looks right. I don't really have hope in the human race and I figure why bother humans are set in their ways and unless something monumental and worldwide happens we aren't going to change. We are constantly at war with other nations and we are destroying ourselves the way people involved in mob hysteria do. We fight and spill oil in the ocean and treat the planet like a gigantic garbage can and constantly divide ourselves and ostracize and form hate groups, so quite frankly I think its going to be an endless cycle until we all kill ourselves or the apocalypse or a  nuclear war. Despite my oh so positive outlook on life, many teachers said they did in fact have hope for the human race ( I have no idea how since Justin Beiber has more followers on Twitter than the President of the United States!!!!!). They say they lose hope when tragedies such as the Congresswoman in Arizona being shot(click here for more details)  but they gain it back eventually like when we all come together for things, such as the disaster in Haiti.
On a more personal note, I eventually decided that what I wanted to learn from this unit was, why are there so many lonely people in the world if we are social beings and meant to be and empathic race? Honestly just take a minute to think about it... When you think of lonely people you don't really think of it as a big deal, but there are so many lonely people in the world. This is unnatural because since the beginning of human existence, whether you believe in the Big Bang theory or Adam and Eve or the Norse religion of the cosmic cow, we have been meant to function as a social race.Throughout time we have banded together to form tribes, nations, and ultimately whole countries. So then why you ask are there so many lonely people in the world. The answer is right in front of you. No literally your looking at it...computers. Well at least that's my theory. Leading neuroscientist John Cacioppo says that loneliness is contagious and we can catch it from one another, it isn't something that can be helped. If our friends begin to feel lonely so do we because of neurons in our brain and other psychological and scientific stuff. However I wanted to know why people get lonely in the first place and Roger Ebert thinks its technology. Now that we have computers and facebook and twitter, why bother going outside or talking to people face to face when you can type it. Technology  can fulfill our need for companionship, but it can also destroy relationships. We( I'm speaking America in general) have gotten so bad with our  gadgets that a family all together in the same room will have individual little screens to keep them occupied, and that is what drives wedges into our relationships. That I believe is what starts the domino effect of loneliness in this world. And now self( because I know I'm the only one who reads my essay long blogs) I bid you adieu.

Ubuntu and Jeremy Rifkin's Empathic Cvilization

What is ubuntu, the African philosophy, one may ask? Different people have defined it as different things. However, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has defined it as almost like a peace that one can have within themselves. He says "a person with Ubuntu is open and available to others... [and] does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished."He then goes on to say "We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity." I think that he is entirely true, we have become a race that is entirely consumed by gaining our own tangible wealth. We have become so caught up in our own lives that we(including myself) often forget that we are apart of something bigger than ourselves. From reading a collective bunch of definitions on the ubuntu philosophy I have decided that to me it basically means that every link in the circle of life is important, no matter the size, color or shape because together we make up humanity and divided, well things might go downhill.

Now, currently Jeremy Rifkin has the idea of an empathic civilization, which is quite similar to this ubuntu philosophy. He has written a book called The Empathic civilization,and he has also created a short 10 minute video that includes him drawing and lecturing us on his idea and the origins of this empathic civilization, which you can watch here. Basically Rifkin is saying that humans are not wired for agressiona nd selfishness, but for empathy, love companionship and the feeling of belonging. We all have empathy for one another because we have one thing in common no matter race, gender, or age. We all know that we are born and we live for a limited period and then we die, this is how we are empathetic towards one another,because Empathy is grounded in the acknowledgment of death and th e celebration of life, and rooting for each other to flourish and be. Jeremy Rifkin believes that if we can extend our empathy to the entire human race,and our fellow creatures, and to our common community the earth. He believes that if we can imagine thta then we can save our species and the planet. This is so similar to the ubuntu principle in the fact that we just aren't meant to be alone no matter how much we want to beleive that we are. In fact Rifkin provides scientific evidence in about the way the neurons in our breains light up to what others around us are doing. We have to see that the only way to save our planet is to embrace  the ubuntu/ Rifki theory of unity an dcreaty a society based upong solidarity.

What i wanted to get out of the unit was to figure out what exactly is the human spirit and how does one obtain a strong human spirit when life has got you in the dumps. This ties into the unbuntu and empathic civilization philosophies because perhaps our fellow humans are what jeeps our spirits up when it seems like there is no hope. Maybe its because we know someone else has this same problem and together we can make it, possibly?

Below you can watch Jeremy Rifkin on "The Empathic Civilization"

Internet: Blessing or A Curse To Lonely People?

All the Lonely People and A Meeting of Solitudes by Roger Ebert, and another article by Ezra Klein, immediately made me think of myself. Three years ago I was new to my school district and I was angry at my parents, the world and God for taking me away from a place where I was comfortable to a place where I was the foreigner. After a while my anger faded and I deluded myself into believing that I wouldn't make any friends in my new area for dumb reasons like: I'm not funny enough to have friends, and no one would ever like me because I'm just so different from all the other kids. So with that in mind I was set to not try to make any friends at all since i was so sure no one would ever want to be friends with me. I resolved I only had 5 years to spend in purgatory until I graduated and could go to college wherever I decided. Until then I figured I would just spend my total of 7 hours at school no more no less and come home to my computer and chat with my old friends on facebook and bebo or whatever social networking site was cool that month. After a while I had my annual check up at the pediatrician and the doctor asked me how many hours a day I spent on the computer/television total. I answered with more than 5 hours altogether and she was stunned and told my  mom I needed to go outside more often or I might develop depression. So my mother cut back computer time therefore cutting back my social time, and I was forced to wander the neighborhood alone, as my brother already made friends with all the neighborhood boys. As Ebert stated in his article "Just because you're afraid to go outside doesn't mean you're happy being inside," this is entirely true. I was most definitely not happy being inside no matter how much I lied and told myself that inside was better; because it's not. It is so much easier to be brave over the internet; to be bold and fearless and witty online is easy.Whatever you write can easily be edited before you send a message. Whereas in person you can't take wordds back, you say whatever you want in the spur of the moment. In person people know you for you; for the brash, or sarcastic witty you;but on the Internet people only know the polished and edited you, which is why I think the Internet can be blessing, and yet a curse.

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man

In my last post I explained what we're discussing in GT II right now. So in class we read an article called Roger Ebert: The Essential Man by Chris Jones, and it was in Esquire magazine Now chances are you have heard the term "two thumbs up," if you haven't well then usually people say two thumbs up when they like something. I have always wondered where the term came from and it just so happens, the article was about one of the guys who introduced two thumbs up to television. His name is Robert Ebert, and he is a movie critic. He currently has no lower jaw because of cancer, and has lost the ability to speak and eat.
When I was first handed my copy of the article I wanted to know what the relevance of it was. I wanted to know what this random movie critic had to do with anything regarding the human spirit. When I began reading the article I started to see Roger Ebert as more than just someone over coming cancer, but as a great man who just seemed fulfilled. The amazing part is he knows he has lost his ability to speak and he's dying but instead of wallowing in self pity he continues to critique movies and shares his wisdom on life with the followers of his blog.

By reading this I just realized how blessed I am to have a voice. I don't speak much to people, but can you just imagine having so many things to say and being forced to keep it all in. Maya Angelou once said "Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning." Imagine not ever being able to say I love you to the people you care about in your voice packed with emotion, but being reduced to simply writing down the words. Roger Ebert taught me to be thankful for the voice I've been given and to not waste time being upset with people because if I didn't have a voice my anger would be gone in the time it would take me to write it down.

Hope, Humanity, and the Human Spirit

I think the humanity/hope/human spirit" unit is supposed to get us to think about the role the human spirit plays in our lives and what makes us human. I think that we are trying to find out what keeps the human spirit going; Is it hope, love, faith? Soooo we are studying events that would lead people to need  hope and individuals who have or had a strong spirit so that we can figure out how we too can have stronger spirits and reach our highest potential.....at least that's what I understood we were trying to do. Personally I think that right now I would like to figure out what exactly is the human spirit and how does one obtain a strong human spirit when life has got you in the dumps. I want to know how people's spirits can be so loving and filled with hope and  faith when life constantly kicks them down.

Who Are You? And Why Are You Writing This Blog?

Those are both excellent questions that definently should be adressed before this blog gets started. My name is Nikki and I'm a sophmore (wise fool XD) in high school. I decided to take a class called gifted and talented or GT last year and found that it was a pretty cool class to take, that challenged me; so i took GTII. Are previous unit was about somehow finding a problem in our world and fixing it. Our class decided poor body image is a major problem in America so we decided to do something about it, starting in our school.With the guidance of our teachers we put together the I AM campaign. The point of the campaign is to make our middle schoolers know how great they are just the way they are and to get them thinking about the seriousness of bullying and putting others down. The unit we're doing now is hope and the human spirit, and basically we're blogging the things we learn in this unit... gotta love the learning of the future!!!!