Sumblog 2

Karl Marx is one of my favorite Philosophers, his ideas of  community and working together to achieve a common goal is very similar to my own. Marx was ahead of his time on the subject of equality. When reading this past section, he wrote this in 1856, a year where women had basically no rights and African Americans were still in slaved. However, when reading his work it does not sound like a person who is from such an unequal time. Karl Marx saw the diverging of power going to the few and the rich, similar to what is happening now in our time with the exposure of the 99%. Where only 1% of the population has the majority of the wealth while the one percent are the majority of the middle and lower class or working class citizens. When this happens it turns away from democracy because the "people" are no long running how this country works. The few and rich people are running the show how they feel is best, which is more on what is good for big investment business and not the small town market. He also gets passionate about the way religion is looked at in this time. Modern science is not quite around yet and people still turn to religion for answers. This is normally a good thing but the church is exploiting people for there money and other resources. He states that religion is just a way for man to explain something that man doesn't understand and knows that some of the ideas are not being said in the good of the people but the good of the few. Marx talks  about the camera obscura, how film comes into the camera to show an upside down picture even when in reality it is right side up. To me this shows that the ideas to have a good clear positive picture are there but the way we do things are upside down and even though the ideas are there they may not be presented in the way for the best outcome.

SumBlog 1

Social Change

In the late 1700s the world was becoming more globalized and countries were forming and dying. Time moves forward no matter how hard we would like it to slow down or stop. As time moves there is a replacement of control, social order, and a change to the commonplace every day norms. These social changes were brought to light by Alexis De Tocqueville, an aristocratic writer in the dim light of democracy. He writes about the centralization of people during this time, and about how democracy posed as a starting point for something new. Being endorsed by various successful governments of his time, his ideas were considered very reputable. Centralization is the act of consolidating power under a central control, or of the modern day France, as Tocqueville describes it.  These ideas were implemented before the French Revolution and neglected aristocratic forms of government. Centralization stood firm throughout the region. After the revolution there was a dramatic change in how people saw others. The spread of knowledge and wealth did not bring people together but rather brought out the greed people had, and yielded a desire for more which did not help the economic problems of the time. The benefits proved small when being free and having the ability to buy land only widened the social gap between the haves and the have-nots. The biggest social change reflected by my generation is the movement towards internet relationships. The mass of people getting together through match.com and through random interactions on Facebook, has grown exponentially forming a new and expanding phenomena completely foreign to previous generations. We are completely changing how people date and interact with the speed of technology. This can also lead to heartache and disappointment. A semi-new show on MTV, “Catfish”, tells the stories of people engaged with internet relationships that remain strictly on the internet. Having never met before in person, the host brings the two together for their first encounter proving sometimes good and other times not so good. With the internet’s advantages and the utilization of these advantages, a new social norm has been adopted further allowing the widening of dating, friendships, and possibilities for meeting entirely new people.  

Citations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtzMP3QNSA0