Writing on the Wall (part 2)

I've been thinking a lot since we did this reading about what it means to have a close group of friends. I've always seen my friendships as being equal and the same between everyone I knew. But now that I have started to look at these friendships closer I can see how different each one is. Dunbar's numbers for our connections to people were 5 intimate friends, 10 close friends, and 150 general friends. At first I though these numbers were ridiculous and pulled out of nowhere. However, having reflected on this for a couple of weeks and looked at how many people I talk to on a daily basis I can see this numbers being real. 

I always think about MySpace and how in middle school I moved someone off my top 8 and made them number 10. When doing this I didn't really think they would notice because we weren't really good friends, I was wrong. They freaked out and lost their mind. I don't think we talked after that. This reaction seems a little intense to me at the time because social media was a new thing and I didn't realize how important these connections were to some people. Now I think of friends as a fluid thing, they come and go. At one point someone may be considered an intimate friend but then they may get busy and fade into my close friend circle. While this isn't how it is for everyone I do think that it is easy to move people in and out of each group as you change and grow. 

I think that a lot of our views on friendship and intimacy are warped by social media and movies. We are constantly bombarded by these images of how life and relationships in general are supposed to be. While some things may be accurate, others are not. Being friends on social media doesn't mean you actually know someone. You probably only see the good things that they post about, not the bad. This gives people a false sense of security in different friendships. This is causing us to lose touch with one another. While you may think that you have 10 close friends because you keep up with their Facebook they may think you're a stranger because a lot of people have lost the ability to have real, open conversations and relationships with one another. 

The Writing on the Wall

Can the written word still unite people? 

I think that this question is one that we should ask often. A lot of the time I react more to something I have read versus something that I just see online. I think that this is because of how much effort goes into reading an article or blog about something. When you just watch a quick YouTube video or clip on Facebook it's easy to feel an emotion right then and maybe share the video but then move on. However, when you read something you get an emotional connection to what the author is saying. Also you can get so much more out of a well written article or piece about any topic. In a video you can only see and hear what the producer wants you to but in writing you can infer things and read between the lines. 

In our day and age people aren't getting their news from published works or written articles, they turn on their TVs, open their laptops, or tune their radio stations in. Now we don't have this overwhelming amount of knowledge and news being spread through written word. For that reason I think that it's harder to have the written word still unite people, it's easier to have the media or movies unite us. While this is the new norm I don't think it's something we, as a society, should be proud of. I would love to see the day when news is read and spread through the written word instead of through media. I think that if this happened we would see a lot more action-taking place instead of this false sense of action that forms of media encourage. 

When the written word is utilized effectively I think that it can unite people in many different ways. I can think of so many things that I've read online that have gotten either a lot of heat or a lot of praise because of the way it is worded. There is purpose when you're writing something online, when speaking it's easy to let your words get away from you. When writing it's hard to post something or say something and then try to say you didn't mean it. I think that this effort makes the written word more believable and thus easier to unite behind. 

The Book: The Life Story of a Technology (pgs. 87-158)

This reading was very interesting to me as I am a history major and a writing minor so this was touching on both my interests. These chapters looked back at the history of writing and showed how it has evolved and grown into what it is today. I particularly like the first part of this reading, when the author, Nicole Howard, is explaining how far authorship has come since its inception. At that time being an author wasn't something your were supposed to broadcast or make known. Today, we look at authors and give them a celebrity status and praise them for their ability to write or craft a novel. This drastic change was fascinating to me; this shift shows just how much we have grown to respect authors and understand how hard what they do is.

These chapters also showed how the price of books has changed over the years. It used to be based on how many resources were used to produce it. This meant that books would be very expensive and hard to come by unless you had that kind of money. Looking at today and how people get mad or upset if a book is $15 is crazy to think about. While books have become more important to us they have seemingly lost their value at the same time. Now, since it is so common to have them they are not worth as much in the eyes of the public. Whereas if someone from the Renaissance came to our time they would be shocked at how inexpensive our books are. 

This difference in price can be looked at just like any other good, the harder it is to make the more expensive it'll be. Today it just isn't as hard to make books and mass produce them. However by looking at how we glorify authors now you would think that we would be willing to pay more to own their works. We don't though. We want all our books to be easily accessible and cheap, while a person who lived around the Renaissance time would just be happy to afford a book, no matter whom it was written by. This contrast is interesting to me because it shows how as a society we have changed what is valuable to us.   

The Name of the Rose

When we sat down to watch The Name of the Rose I thought that it would be another boring movie that the professor really liked but didn't make sense to the rest of us at all. However, this after watching it I realized how important movies like these are to us as a culture. Living in the 21st century it is easy to take for granted all the access to literature and knowledge that we have. By watching movies like this we are reminded just how valuable this knowledge is and how it contributes to our everyday life. This movie had so many different ideas packed into it, for me I took away the idea of how important books and knowledge are to us and how they can impact our lives in different ways. 

I particularly liked how in the movie the young apprentice, Adso, didn't understand why William (Sean Connery) was so obsessed with finding the books and saving them. He had to grow to understand why this type of knowledge could save people, such as the village girl from living such destitute lives. I think that this is an important lesson that we can take away from the film. That without the knowledge that we have come to rely on we would slip back into the "Dark Ages". This is not to say that all our knowledge is necessary or very important but it is pivotal to how far we have come and how far we hope to go. 

Another reason why this film is so impactful is all the symbolism that it has packed in. It shows the depravity of man through the deformities in the monks, all the issues they have can be attributed to how deprived they are of knowledge and books. While in contrast we see how important knowledge is by looking at how healthy William and Adso are throughout the film. This contrast is obvious but is easily skipped over because it doesn't seem as important. For me this shows how we as people could take two paths through life. We can either become deformed or warped by going through life without seeking knowledge or being afraid of it. Or we can go through life being happy and health by feeding our minds with new knowledge and ideas.