Behind the words

In the first three tablets of the text, we meet Gilgamesh as the mighty ox and king of Uruk. He is the indisputable ruler of the reign and feared by the people, who have no other choice but to submit to his desire. But then the gods hear their plea and created another powerful being. “I saw a hairy-bodied man at the water place, powerful as Ninurta the god of war, he feeds upon the grasslands with gazelles; he visits the watering places with the beasts.”(p.6). This hairy man then asks to be taken to Gilgamesh, to challenge him and his power. But when they fight they end up as friends, even brothers. Enkidu is presented as the new companion and helper of the ox. He tells him about yet another powerful being in this world, Huwawa. This restless ox decides to go challenge Huwawa with his new companion at his side. They receive the blessings of the city and the warnings of the old, but ignore the suggestions to stay back. New weapons are crafted for them and they depart towards their new challenge.
In these tablets we read about characters that may have some greater meanings and connections to real life. Gilgamesh is the ruler of all, and it says he is old and there to presence many things before men. This can be a characteristic of sort of a creation myth. Maybe Gilgamesh is an attempt to explain a creation story by our ancestors who had no scientific way to prove any past events. “of him who knew most of all men know; who made the journey; heartbroken; reconciled; who knew the way things where before the flood, the secret things, the mystery; who went to the end of the earth and over; who returned, and wrote the story in a tablet of stone” (p.3). This shows Gilgamesh is a character represented as the one who knows all and that was there to presence everything, and therefore has the knowledge that our civilization has always aimed for. I look forward to advancing in the reading, so that I can try to grasp the meaning of many important things hidden behind the words. Will they beat Huwawa? Or will their greed and desire for being the only powerful ones take them to death, as our world is coming to a catastrophe due to our self-centered minds?

With great knowledge comes great responsibility

The concluding chapter of the novel is rather short. In it the narrator decides to make a plan to get Ishmael to a better place. He withdraws his savings and produces a very weak plan, with many flaws. He arrives to the place on a rented van and with the hope of giving back something in appreciation for all that Ishmael had taught him. But what he finds is a very disappointing sight; he realized that it was all gone. But he does find a trace of his friend. His old bribe turned up and saw him collecting all the garbage the gorilla had left behind, and with him came bad news. “It was the pneumonia that got him- your friend the ape.”(p.260). This news shocked the pupil and dug into his head at once. He realized he had let his mentor behind on the cold night, which had killed him. He wondered what he could do and figured out it wasn’t much, so he decided to drive home.
But this can’t be the end of so much dedication and thought. All this knowledge Ishmael had left behind was a huge treasure which the narrator had to share with the world. In his hands he had the ability to make a change. It was his obligation to transmit the message, an obligation he accepted since the begging of the teachings. But now that he was all alone with this knowledge, and no one was going to guide him, what would he do to save mankind? He had always assumed his mentor would be there to tell him what to do, but now he wasn’t, and the pupil was lost. “With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?”(p.263). This quote ends the novel by leaving us in great suspense about future. In a superficial way, we still wonder if the pupil was able to transmit his knowledge. But once you think about it, the book is the way of transmitting these ideas, and he successfully enlightened our minds with this story. Now we ourselves are in the place the pupil was put into when his mentor died. We have the knowledge in our hands now, but do we have the courage and determination to share it with others for the well-being of all? Will we succumb to an eternal wait for someone to hold our hand and tell us exactly what to do with this knowledge? And Ishmael gave a very true example about our civilization comparing it with an airman in free fall: “That craft is doomed- and so is he unless he abandons it”(p.107). We are all on our aircraft thinking we are on a great flight, but we are really in a free fall going straight to disaster. And if we don’t make decisions and change the way we live, abandoning that doomed aircraft, we will soon be faced with our end, the very same thing we have always thought impossible. So it is up to us now to start changing the way we live, to accept that we make part of the law which the entire world follows, and to save ourselves and our world. Now it’s all in our hands as we have wanted it. With great knowledge comes great responsibility.

Michelle Obama´s speech

While we listen to Michelle Obama’s speech with a partner try to decide which punctuation mark should be used and where it should be putText of Michelle Obama's speech at the conventionBy The Associated Press – 1 day agoprepared remarks of Michelle Obama wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for her address to the Democratic National Convention on Monday night in Denver as released by the Obama campaign:OBAMA: As you might imagine, for Barack, running for president is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother Craig.I can't tell you how much it means to have Craig and my mom here tonight. Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us, just as I've felt his presence in every grace-filled moment of my life.At six-foot-six, I've often felt like Craig was looking down on me too - literally. But the truth is, both when we were kids and today, he wasn't looking down on me — he was watching over me.And he's been there for me every step of the way since that clear February day 19 months ago, when — with little more than our faith in each other and a hunger for change — we joined my husband, Barack Obama, on the improbable journey that's brought us to this moment.But each of us also comes here tonight by way of our own improbable journey.I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend.I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.I come here as a Mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world — they're the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night. Their future — and all our children's future — is my stake in this election.and I come here as a daughter — raised on the south side of Chicago by a father who was a blue collar city worker, and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters.My dad was our rock. Although he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early thirties, he was our provider, our champion, our hero. As he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk, it took him longer to get dressed in the morning. But if he was in pain, he never let on. He never stopped smiling and laughing — even while struggling to button his shirt, even while using two canes to get himself across the room to give my mom a kiss. He just woke up a little earlier and worked a little harder.He and my mom poured everything they had into me and Craig. It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you're loved, and cherished, and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work, we both were able to go on to college. So I know firsthand from their lives — and mine — that the American dream endures.And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he'd grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves. And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do that you treat people with dignity and respect; even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them.And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.And as our friendship grew, and I learned more about Barack, he introduced me to the work he'd done when he first moved to Chicago after college. Instead of heading to Wall Street, Barack had gone to work in neighborhoods devastated when steel plants shut down, and jobs dried up. And he'd been invited back to speak to people from those neighborhoods about how to rebuild their community.The people gathered together that day were ordinary folks doing the best they could to build a good life. They were parents living paycheck to paycheck; grandparents trying to get by on a fixed income; men frustrated that they couldn't support their families after their jobs disappeared. Those folks weren't asking for a handout or a shortcut. They were ready to work — they wanted to contribute they believed — like you and I believe — that America should be a place where you can make it if you try.Barack stood up that day, and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about "The world as it is" and "The world as it should be." and he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and settle for the world as it is — even when it doesn't reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves — to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be. And isn't that the great American story?It's the story of men and women gathered in churches and union halls, in town squares and high school gyms — people who stood up and marched and risked everything they had — refusing to settle, determined to mold our future into the shape of our ideals.it is because of their will and determination that this week, we celebrate two anniversaries: the 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote, and the 45th anniversary of that hot summer day when Dr. King lifted our sights and our hearts with his dream for our nation.

Making a difference

In chapter twelve Ishmael begins to wrap up the whole idea of his teachings. They talk about how man came to be man and how to start making an impact in the world with the knowledge the gorilla passes on to his pupil. Being of the last chapters, and the end of the teachings, these chapter wraps up a lot of the content and helps us make a connection on how we should apply the knowledge to our lives. “Man became man by living in the hands of the gods.”(p.237). This shows how the takers contradict themselves and their ideas, because if the gods where so useless, how is it that through their work man became what they are? Man is a product of the evolution in hands of the gods when we where only another being in the world without control over the others. But once we got to the stage of Homo Sapiens Sapiens and we thought we could do a better task than the gods themselves, we went ahead and thrust ourselves into a revolution with no turn back. And now that our flight is coming to an end in a disastrous crash against the hard rock, we play blinds and keep on driving the world to its limit. “White or colored, male or female, what the people in this culture want is to have as much wealth and power in the taker prison as they can get. They don’t give a damn that it’s a prison and they don’t give a damn that it’s destroying the world.”(p.253). We are drowned in a materialist society in which all of what we want is power and richness without limits because even if we know it’s pointless and empty, it’s the only way to live a taker life, and it’s the way we think we are supposed to live, taking things in our hands. But with the knowledge on our hands, we must go on and teach the others that we are going directly towards the cliff, but that there is also a way to avoid it, if only we work hard enough and together to save our world.

In control of your life

In chapter eleven we read about the leavers and about some of the causes and benefits of the agricultural revolution. Through a dialogue between Ishmael and the pupil we understand the different points of view of the takers and the leavers. This chapter is sort of a debate in the sense that the pupil tries to convince Ishmael, who is acting as a leaver, to join his revolution, but Ishmael puts up his own arguments on why they won’t. The pupils main argument consists in having the control of your own life instead of putting it at the gods´ will. “You die because you live at the mercy of the gods. You die because you think the gods are going to look after you. That’s okay for animals, but you should know better.” (p.225).This seems pretty logical to any taker, but when the leavers hear this explanation, they are shocked by its meaning. “From time out of mind we´ve lived in the hands of the gods, and it seemed to us we lived well.” (p.225). The opposite points of view make us realize many things about our culture and about the leavers. Through this, Ishmael is able to explain why the leavers refused and will always refuse to take part of this revolution, because even though we seem to think their lives are pointless and horrifying, they also think our revolution is a waste and totally meaningless. After long discussion they come to a conclusion on what the importance of the agricultural revolution was for all the Takers. “This is what the revolution does for you: It puts you beyond the reach of that appalling nightmare. It puts you beyond the reach of the gods.”(p.229) That’s why this revolution makes such a turn on our history, because it marks our beginning as independent beings, who take the responsibility of their lives in their own hands, trusting no others. What this chapter leaves for us to consider is something that essentially makes part of everyone’s lives: Who are you going to trust with the responsibility of looking after your life? Many times we let others make choices and decide our direction for us. Sometimes we follow the pack and trust someone else to make the right decisions, but it’s important for us to know how to make our own set of choices and decisions. No one but ourselves knows what we want for our lives, and what are goals are, so we shouldn’t throw away our life into the hands of others when we can take it on our hands, the only hands that will never let you down and that will always seek what you want.

Building roads

In this chapter, Ishmael lost contact with his pupil for a while because he didn’t pay his bills and he was removed from the apartment. The pupil was really worried about this event because he had gotten used to visiting the gorilla, and he hadn’t finished his learning. He looked for the gorilla everywhere where he figured Ishmael could be at, or at least people who knew. He found no answers so he decided to look for him in a circus that had been in the city a while ago. He did find his mentor in a corner, changed and distant. “I didn’t invite you to make yourself my patron,” he said, “so kindly refrain from patronizing me” (p.195). This shocks the pupil, because he feels his work looking for him wasn’t being appreciated. He leaves, but with his mind set on coming back to his mentor to acquire more knowledge. This shows how much he values the teachings of Ishmael, and how much he had come to appreciate the gorilla.
When he does come back and they manage to continue with the teachings, they talk about culture and certain knowledge. They trace back the beginnings of culture and the way how its passes on from generation to generation. It helps us identify the role of culture on how we view things and on how we make decisions. “Certain knowledge is knowledge of the one right way. That’s what takers want”(p.204). People try to find a one way to live, a single way of living that will always tell them what to do. But there isn’t always a right way, and sometimes many ways are right, but there’s times where none are right. And that’s what we have to take into account, the choice of how we are going to live our live, and under what set of rules. Are we going to follow the culture and rules that the takers have imposed? Or are we going to have the courage to change our minds, to think outside the box, and to leave out a mark on this life, an opening for a new path besides the main road.

Ishmael: a personal revolution

Ishmael is a book of great depth and analysis. Through it we can deduct our own ideas on how to live, guiding us through the problems that hold back the world. It tells the story of a teacher and his pupil, but not as you would imagine it. Through the teacher, a gorilla, the author communicates with the reader and shares his knowledge on the topics presented by the novel. But this book leaves space for personal consideration, for the reader to interpret the teachings and to make up his own ideas.
“You’re captives of a civilization system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.”(p.25). this is one of the quotes that made me go in and actually take the ideas in this book seriously, analyzing their meaning. This is true in a certain way, but it’s also suggesting an impossible solution. How are you to live on earth without harming it? And if there is any way to do it, are we willing to give up all we got to make it happen?
The gorilla is a symbol of development though the book. His story begins as a simple animal, a being no superior to others of his species. And as he tells us his past, we notice how he transforms into a wise being with power to instruct others on how to carry on a better life. The author chose to transmit wisdom through an animal and not through a person for a reason. Daniel Quinn wants to break with the idea that we humans are the superior and intelligent race. At the end, it’s us who don’t know how to live and who are putting the world in peril with our careless ways.
By reading the text we will come up with many ideas that we might not agree with, but it’s a novel that deserves time and patience to understand and read. It’s a great way to evaluate your life and the way you interact with the world, so that maybe we can change into better people. Is it possible that our captivity comes from our own minds? Can we break its bars? Are we willing to sacrifice our ways for that which we depend upon?

Response to blog questions

1. What is the difference between a blog and a book?

A blog is a journal or log that appears on a Web site. All interaction in a blog is effected on line. Its open for everyone with access to internet connection, and open to all kinds of comments. The term "blog" comes from the conjuncture of Web+Log, or Weblog. On the other hand, a book is "a set of written, printed, or blank pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers". Its a tangible element which we can manipulated physically. But it has a limited use, because not too many people can use it at a time, and the public which has access to book is much more limited than those with access to blogs.

2. How have blogs changed recently?

Although blogs have been around since 1980, they only started growing strong in 1998. From 1999, people with internet had access to create their own blogs through some free programs that had been opened to the people. The development and growth of blogs spiked up, and by 2003 there where over two million blogs. with time, more blogs have been created to the point where we have over 100 million blogs presently. Even their utility has changed over the past years. At the beginning, they where a source of information and links to useful websites where readers found what they are looking for. With time, they have been turned towards opinion and gossip, and eventually a competition. Bloggers now create their blogs to attract people, even if what they say are lies or irrelevant.

3. Why might you read a blog?

You might read blog in search of opinion about a certain topic. You might also seek enterteinment through topics and comments other people make. But you could also read blogs looking for (factual) information, wich is hard to find in a blog. There are several reasons for people to read blogs, and thats what takes them to all kinds of different blogs for different purposes. Blogs provide an opportunity to confront different points of view about a topic, sort of like an on-line debate. But blogs may also display lies, information made up by viewers that have no way of proving their ideas. When reading blogs its important to doubt the information you read and ask for evidence, because not all of what you will find is true.

4. Is there reason to doubt the objectivity of a blog? Why? Why not?

There are reasons to put into doubt the objectivity of a blog. Because almost anyone has access to read and comment on a blog, the information may have any source (including unreliable sources). So the information you are inferring might be posted by anyone, even a person ignorant on the topic being discussed. This is why you must check the reliability of the information you read on blogs, and expect factual proof. Comparing all posts, or event comments on different blogs help so understand the topic and identify some irrelevant posts. Its all about checking what you find, and doubting any information you may read.

5. If you kept your own blog, what would you title it?

If i kept my own blog its title would have to be relevant to the subject being discussed. It may be some type of a grabber to attract people to read my posts and comment on my ideas. It might also be a title that gives a hint on the topic, but that leaves my position ambiguous orcing people to read everything. Choosing a title is an important decision, because as in books, your title will decide how many people buy (or read) your ideas. A title for my blog could be something like "Obama lost popularity: did he win the debate?" this could attract people to figure out what im talking about, and to share their ideas about the debate. Then again, this title shows im getting into politics;wich selects a public for my blog. But by involving a current event, more people are informed about the topic and more readers will be able to comment and compare ideas.