Reflection on Star wars movie

In the scenes we watched from star wars, i though the points that were connected to religious factors were very true.  Some people said that there were no religion points made in the movie, but i definitely saw some of those points come to light.  I think the idea of having a evil and a good side isn't too religion related because thats pretty much the plot to every good story.  The symbolism starts to come out when the good side comes out in the story when Luke SkyWalker starts to speak about his beliefs of the force.  Also Darth Vader talks about his beliefs in the force.  The whole idea of having this argument between the idea of science and the idea of belief is a roll found a few times in this movie.  One of the earlier scene shows Darth Vader at a meeting and a member makes a snappy comment about doubting Darth Vader's beliefs.  Another obvious moment is when Han Solo is watching Luke Skywalker practicing with the force, and observes that he thinks Luke is running on pure luck.  The movie is split in half creating two opposing sides in many ways.  One could be one side being evil, and the other being good.  One being believers in the force, the others being believers in science.  While we were discussing these topics in class another scene and addition from another unexpected movie sparked my memory.  In the movie Nacho Libre, with Jack Black, his side kick in the movie believes in science.  Jack Black's role was born to a church.  This concept of science and beliefs comes up a lot in this movie.  Overall, Star Wars was a good choice to create a foundation for our Religion Unit.

Reflection of Machiavelli

In the Machiavelli reading, it talks about how to rule as a prince.  This reading was very confusing to me in the way it is laid out.  In one opinion it says its better to be loved then to be feared but in the other its vice versa.  Wanting to be favored by your people is a normal thing, everyone wants everyone to like them, so what do you have to do to get that?  Well the easiest thing to do if give your people money, which takes away money from the government/yourself.  Because of this you end up taking back your money, which just leaves your people even angrier.  If you want your people to like you and you can’t give them false notions, in the long run its just going to bite you back.  So the best idea is said to scare the crap out of your people and then don’t take anything away (land, money, and draft) away from them.  I think that you should be a fair prince, but a feared one also.  I don’t think they mean a scary prince as in he cuts the heads off of random people.  I think that the prince should be scary as in he lays down the law.  For example he shows people the consequences for not following the laws.  He won’t show that there is a second chance to make that up.  He is projecting that you’ll be fine and will not be screwed as long as you do what his laws are.   Making laws is a completely different story.  There are fair laws and unfair laws to the people and if the case is that there are unfair laws, why should the citizens obey them?  If people are living in a overall unhappy place, then revolt will happen.  So to maintain your status as a prince for a long time you have to be a overall fair and scary prince.  

Reflection on Starting the Government Unit.

Starting the government unit is something that i wasn't looking forward to at first.  My first idea was that we were going to repeat pretty much what happened last year when learning about the constitution.  My first idea when hearing about government is boring.  The things we have touched on so far with Haiti and ancient governments are actually quite entertaining.  I had read about Plato before and how he was a genius but i never knew how much he effect western government.  G

Plato Biography

Plato was born into a aristocratic family in around c. 428-427 B.C.  His father, Ariston, died sometime in Plato's early childhood for unknown reasons.  Ariston had traced his descendant from the king of Athens, King Codrus.    Plato was a philosopher,mathematician, and writer.  Because of his rich and informative background, Plato received the best education of the time.  He was a very smart student and was very bright.    After his amazing education, his first mentor was man named Craytlus who he was supposedly not too fond of.    He was the student of Socrates who helped him create the future foundations of western government.  Socrates referred to him as being his most committed follower.  During the Peloponnesian War Plato served in the military service for a few years then left to continue his efforts of a political career.  After the war ended his attempt of going into politics was corrupted by the new government and the execution of his mentor Socrates.   After Socrates died, Plato traveled to italy and Egypt to continue his studies.  Eventually he returned to athens and created his own school to enforce his own teachings.  For students enrolled there, Plato tried both to pass on the heritage of a Socratic style of thinking and to guide their progress through abstract philosophical truth.  His main intention of running the academy was because of his earlier intentions of becoming a politician.  He wanted to train young men to become good statesman.  However, having given them the ideas that Plato believed in, Plato thought that these men would improve the political leadership of all of greece.  Plato then died in c. 347 B.C. in Athens, Greece.

Reflection on The cave.

The Cave was a reading that i thought was hard to understand.  The cave represents a government and aspects of being a leader.  The people sitting in the front facing their shadows are the citizens.  The people behind them alluding their shadows are government heads and leaders.  The fire represents the overall idea of the government itself.  If this whole government is fake though, why did people not escape?  I think that people were pulled into the whole cave idea because of many different reasons.    One of which could be that people had been living inside this cave (government) for so long that they don't know and difference to it.  In modern times this allegory could be used for different ideas smaller then a government.  For example, magazines, fashion, and posters for women.  Self-image nowadays is that girls see these images of extremely skinny and beautiful women and become stressed and angry about themselves.  The people who write and design these magazines and posters are over editing to make sure that the posters show a false image so that people would want to be as much like them as possible.  Though in this case, they do this to make more money.  This allegory could help us with this government unit because its a simple foundation of how leaders work and how governments could be seen as.  Three things that a good leader has is bravery, persuasion skills, and wisdom.  Without all of these or even just one, a leader could be nothing.  When we learn about different types of governments and governmental leaders, we can compare them to this reading!  If the leader was a good leader he most likely had all three of those main traits.  Im excited to read more about the government unit!

The Lives of Others Reflection

The Lives of Others was a powerful movie.  Personally i don't know much about this time period they were in so i felt out of it.  I felt like i knew nothing about germany at that time.  It was a interesting stand point about how it followed the live of a Stassi and someone who was being monitored.  Wiesler was my favorite person in this film.  Just saying, the actor was splendid.  Something i noticed about him is that when he took the type writer in the end and found out he was bugged himself, how did he never check his apartment.  I mean they make such a big deal about how he's the man and how he trains people to become this roll so how could he not suspect that people working within the Stassi weren't being monitored either.  Something that stood out to me in the film in general is when they would cut to interrogation scenes and they would always focus in on the chairs.  The first time they interviewed the man in the first scene, he was asked to put his hands under him.  The time they asked CMS she put her hands under her without question.  The third time when Wiesler was being interrogated, he didn't put his hands under at all and there is a shot of him just staring at the chair.  I thought that was interesting because of how many times he had done it and taught it, he was shocked that he was put in a situation like that.  That movie was great and I am excited to start our government unit!

Reflection on Environmental unit

The environmental unit was something that effected me in different ways.  In the past, we had learned about ancient civilizations and countries, but never had we gotten so deep into how it worked.  The assignment where we had to design our own society and create resources accessible to the people.  After we went up and presented our thought our societies, questions were dropped on how we got those resources.  Most of the kids presenting stood up and had to take a minute to think.  A problem with that is obviously kids are going to think of stuff off the top of their heads but still the assignment really got us thinking about what a society is.  That activity is one that is beneficial in every way.  It gets us thinking in depth about resources, creates a way to experience handling a society, and its fun.  Another activity that is good enough to reflect on is the in class activity where we did the black plague switches.  It started off being just discussions about a homework we had just done, but then it continued until a moment you stopped us and told us that one of our classmates had the plague.  If you had told us when we walked in, we would have stayed away from this one infected classmate.  It was a example showing us how unexpected the black plague went around.  The most recent assignment, the Haiti assignment, was difficult.  I'm sure that was the whole idea but the notion of having to reflect on a serious event in a certain subject prior to that problem is hard.  My subject was social which sounded easy but was actually a challenging thing to come by.  Searching for information that wasn't a factor of economical or governmental was the hard part.  It does take a lot of work to prepare for a paper like that.  Overall i thought this unit was very interesting and should stay a part of history class.