Things Fall Apart

I have chosen to analyze Things Fall Apart from a Postcolonial perspective.  I will therefore write about how Chinua Achebe conveys how the British colonizers think they are doing the African people a favor for Christianizing and “civilizing” them yet all they are doing is destroying their culture and infuriating them.  I will show how these people where actually not as savage as they where perceived to be by the British and how this misconception will end up being fatal for Okonkwo.  He could not handle the destruction of his culture and humiliation from the colonizers so he ended up taking his own life then having to live in this new one forced upon him by the British.

I believe the text will be useful much more in this essay than in previous ones because of how the prompt is entirely about the book and there are no other pieces of literature I must use in analyzing it.  By following the three phases in the book this will help me keep an organized and coherent essay.  The first phase is describing the culture of Okonkwo’s people.  Even though their culture might seem a little of to us but that is only because we are used to American culture and they are also used to there culture and that is what seems right to them.  The second is what happens when religion and evangelical Christians are introduced into his land.  At first it is not that bad and the natives are just being nice to the Christians at first yet the Christians constantly try to force their religion onto them.  The last is what happens when a form of the colonizer’s government is brought into the land and forced upon them.  This is what will completely annihilate Okonkwo’s culture and substitute the British culture for there own. 

I think this novel was incredibly eye-opening to me because I have never read a post colonial piece of literature like this.  Although I have always thought colonization was wrong this brought my dislike for it to a whole new level.  It is sad to think how many cultures have been completely whipped off the face of this earth through colonization.  I thought the most ironic part off the book was the title which the commissioner was going to give his book, The Pacification of the primitivetribes of the lower Niger.  This is ironic how they claim to pacify these people yet they are being more violent then the natives themselves to force their culture onto them.  I believe they could have approached colonization in a much less damaging way but the narrow mindness of that time period made it practically impossible.    

Neil Postman's Technopoly

The World State: The Ultimate Technopoly

Technopoly: “The submission of all forms of culture life to the sovereignty of technique and technology.” (Technopoly Postman) This is the definition of Neil Postman’s idea of a “technopoly.”  In other words it means that everything that humans do they have found the best and most efficient way to do it with the latest and constantly mounting technology.  This idea is can even be seen in today’s modern world and Postman describes how the world has moved from a technocracy to a technopoly.  A technocracy is the stage before a technopoly and this transition occurred around the early twentieth century.  “The citizens of a technocracy knew that science and technology did not provide philosophy by which to live, and they clung to the philosophies of their fathers.” and the end of this technocracy is seen mostly when Fredrick Wilson Taylor describes how humans are inefficient and that they should be made more efficient through machines and technology. (Technopoly Postman) Taylor came up with the idea that started the technopoly and this idea is one of the central points of a technopoly.  This idea is also the central point of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  Brave New World is essentially a perfect technopoly.  Is follows that main ideas that everything has become as efficient as possible through the help of technology.  They even went as far as to engineer humans to be the most efficient at the job which they are predestined to do.  They way they did this is through the use of new technologies which also plays a vital role in a technopoly.  Neil Postman’s  theory of a technopoly is the best description of what the human race in the World State is trying to achieve. 

Singularity: The Inevitable Truth

Technology is growing exponentially and this is an irrefutable fact.  The question that mankind should be asking is how long till this technology becomes smarter than human intelligence.  This could lead to no more disease, no more getting old, no more dying; but it could also lead to the destruction of the human race.  There are many people that are skeptical of this idea and fear it but some people embrace it much like Raymond Kurzweil.

            Kurzweil is the father of singularity:  the idea that technology grows at an exponential rate and that this will create artificial intelligence that I smarter than human intelligence.  He has predicted that AI will have been created by the year 1239 but in order for man to prevent the AI from being smarter he must “[use] computers to extend our intellectual abilities” to become “super-intelligent cyborgs.”(Grossman)  Some people believe this to be a bad thing like Bernard in 1984 because they think mankind will lose its humanity.  This might be partially true but when humans merge with the machine they do not loose there consciousness or their morals but they just become more intelligent then any natural human is.  I believe it is necessary for humans to merge with the machine to prevent the machine from becoming too intelligent and turning on the humans.  This newfound intelligence is also essential for mankind to make new discoveries at a pace higher than no other.  This idea of singularity is inevitable and mankind must be ready for it.

            There are also many parallels seen between the novel 1984 by George Orwell and the ideas of singularity.  Disease has been irradiated from humans and now humans don’t even give birth to other humans anymore; machines do.  

Critical Reading Essay

Cody Brotter’s essay Immigration, and What it Means to be an American analyses two pieces of literature that describe the same thing but they are written practically two centuries apart.  Both describe immigration but Crevecoeur’s describes the immigrant much more favorable than Fallows does.  He reveals through rhetorical strategies how Crevecoeur’s What is an American? And Fallows’ Immigration: How It’s Affecting Us are practically contradicting themselves because of how time has changed the view on immigration in America.

     These two pieces show how immigration has changed greatly from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century.  Brotter shows how Crevecoeur depicts the American immigrant as someone who has done everything possible to get to American and that their life outside of America was an atrocity compared to their life in America.  On the other hand he show’s how Fallows depicts the immigrant as someone that was more resourceful than most Americans and that would benefit America with their resourcefulness.  According to Brotter this change in attitude had simply occurred because of the great changes that took place between a couple of centuries.  

Although the author is not as credible on the subject as Crevecoeur or Fallows is but he certainly provides enough evidence to seem credible to the reader.  He uses many quotes from both pieces and this shows that he has closely read both passages.  From his constant reference back to the two texts makes the reader feel knowing and comfortable with the subject even though they could have never read either of the texts or have no idea about the subject.  The author therefore proves his credibility and is able to write an essay that the readers will believe and accept.

     The author’s language also plays a vital role in the essay itself.  Diction like differentiation, assimilation, and ample subsistence are used throughout the passage. This type of elevated language gives his essay even more credibility that the author is well read and has a wide and diverse vocabulary.  Although the language is slightly elevated it is still perceivable by the audience and gives the essay more depth.

     The views on immigration and on immigrants themselves have changed greatly and Brotter makes this apparent in his essay.  Immigration, and What it Means to be an American shows how time truly changes everything.

           

           

      

 http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/176/immigration-and-what-it-means-to-be-an-american