Honors Blog

A few weeks ago we talked about how Morningside allows us to talk about whatever we want even though we were a private school. I grew up in Sioux Center 3 blocks away from Dordt College, where my whole dad’s side of the family went, so I knew what some of Dordt’s rules and regulations were. I also knew a lot about Northwester Colleges rules because that’s where most of my high school always went for college. Now that I came to Morningside, i am glad that I didn’t go to either of those schools because they clamp down on so much of what the students do and can say. I am so grateful that our president doesn’t do the same things that the presidents of those schools do.

This year in honors, i feel like we covered a lot. I think that during our meetings every week, we learned a lot, not only from the readings, but from the people from outside that came and taught us about their area of expertise. Doing this not only helped us to understand what we were reading, but it also helped us to broaden our horizons and look at things in a different way than we were used to. If I were to change one thing about honors, it would be that we would not follow a set theme, or if we did we would go about picking which topic we would cover. Because as a male, I found it really weird discussing beauty for as long as we did. Once we diverged away from the theme, I thought our conversations got better and deeper because we were talking about things that we were interested in and things that pertained more to us. So I think if you were to change it in some way, that you should pick a topic as a group or get rid of the theme altogether.

This article raises a very cool question on if the world can sustain life past nine billion people. I find it funny that as the world continues to increase in population the number of people that are thought to be sustainable continues to rise. We find new ways to do something and new ways to make something better. Personally, I think a disease is going to sweep through the world and wipe out people to control the population, just like what happens in nature to control the population. If the world is able to sustain the population, then another question arises as to if the world is big enough to hold all of the extra people. My opinion is that the world will never make it that big but if it is able to get there, it will be interesting to see how we were able to do it.

This article talks about sexism in the 2008 presidential election. Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton both ran for president but neither got the bid for nomination. In my opinion it doesn’t matter if they were men or women because I wouldn’t want either to be president. But this isn’t about politics its about sexism. In that election, I don’t think either of them wanted it to turn into a sexism debate. I think they went in with the right intentions but the media turned it into a sexism battle. When the media attacked some of the male candidates stances on issues they attacked the fact that Palin went and spent tons of money on clothing. They also attacked the fact that her children weren’t “ideal” children and blamed it on Palin’s lack of ability to raise a child. Clinton took that and ran, saying that because she was able to raise her kids and because of that would be able to run a country. The media took over that and portrayed her as the “mother.” In both cases, neither of them wanted the attention for it, but both got it because they were women. I believe this was dumb, sometimes women look for attention for being a women, but most of the time its thrust on them without them wanting it.

In this reading we read about how food gets its flavor. Most artificially flavored food is gets it from a mix of chemicals which kind of grosses me out. It’s not even real food and were not even getting the real taste of the food. Relating this to beauty, I think it is telling us we need to be real. Yeah some people like you at first when you are making yourself up. But when they find out what you are really about, what your really made of, they don’t want you just like some people don’t want to eat the french fries when they find out about the chemicals. When we are ourselves, or natural, we are showing them exactly who we are and they don’t need to find anything else out, or have to find the real us because they are seeing it right away. Thats what I think we need to remember everyday, be yourself so we leaving nothing hidden.

In a career a person is hired for the way they look way to often. If a female walks into a job interview for some companies and she is beautiful, it doesn’t matter how qualified she is for the job, she will almost be hired on the spot. I know its not limited to just females but it always seems to be them. You never hear about guys who say they were hired because they were beautiful, only girls. I’m sure it happens with guys though, if two guys were to walk in to their interviews the one who looked better will probably get the job. Thats the problem with jobs now, its all about appeal, not about experience. What needs to happen, is the people doing the interview about need to be blindfolded when the give the interview so that they hire by how the interview went not by how the person looked during the interview.

So far this class has been a little bit of an adjustment for me. I don’t normally like to read and write about stuff since I never had to do it in high school. The topic is a weird subject for me to. I don’t normally like to talk about beauty and what I like to look at in people. Its kind of a personal topic for me and don’t like talking about it. But I’m beginning to feel more comfortable about it and am really enjoying the class.

I found this reading very entertaining. I’ve never thought about looking for God like the way the described it, “Yet these people are little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God, and desiring to find him. For while they live amoung his works, they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful.” We are always looking at things that are beautiful but never giving credit to the person who created it. We are always looking for the man that created it and never acknowleging the man who made everything around us. I think that’s the sad part about humans, always wanting beauty, money, and other worldly possesions, and we pray to have them, but once we get them we never give thanks for having them. If we want to be truely happy with ourselves we need to give thanks for everything and look for beauty in everything as well.

1. What is the contrast effect? Do you think it effects us now more than in the past? How?

The contrast effect is how we percieve things relative to the things around it. If we lift a 50 pound weight and then a 10 pound weight, the 10 pound weight is going to feel like a feather compared to if we would have tried to pick the 10 pound weight up first. The same can be said with attractiveness. If we see someone attractive with a bunch of unattractive people, they are going to look way more attractive then if the were with people of the same attractiveness or more attractive. I do think it affects us more today with television and other media sources trying to tell us what to look like. If we weren’t being constantly compared to them all the time, we would feel better about ourselves and feel more attractive.

2. How might the contrast effect influence men and women differently?

Women always will have the contrast effect influence them more. They are constantly being compared to models and actresses and always have to try to maintain a sense of beauty no matter what they are doing.

Do you think “extreme” photo retouching should be banned in advertising? Why or why not?

I think it should be for some things and not for others. If its an ad for a necklace where you only see the neck, sure touch it up all you want. But if its for a certain type of clothing, I don’t think you should. A person will always be comparing what they look like with the clothes on to the picture they saw it in. So depending on what the subject of the picture is depends on my opinion for retouching.

In my opinion, when your “attracted” to someone, its through sight first. So when you take away that portion of the puzzle you lose part of the attractiveness of the person. Don’t get me wrong, what’s inside is important too but sight is always the first part of it. To completely take away a person’s sense of recognizing people is a very strange and weird feeling for me. I don’t think I would ever want it done to me, but the thought of them being able to do it is very weird. To take away a sense of recognizing faces, it just doesn’t seem ethical. I think you can teach a kid to learn about the person inside instead of focusing on the beauty. You don’t need to go and turn off their ability to get that point across. When they get it turned off, what if the person they “like” turns out to be completely unattractive to them? What if they don’t like the way they look and if they had grown up recognizing themselves the whole time they would have been able to live with it? I think more problems are raised then avoided by using this technology.