Reality

The three articles (The Futile Pursuit of Happiness, Why Women Smile, and Against Love) that we discussed in class today all shared the common purpose of exposing things for what they really are. Each of these articles looked at things for their actual value, stripped of all the ideas and images that people/society tend to wrap them with. Marriage, happiness, and society’s expectation for women to always present a smiling face are really not the nice things that we’re taught they are. Happiness never lasts, being stuck with one person till death do you part is not eternally romantic, and expecting women to hide their true emotions behind a submissive smile seems sick and sadistic. These things are what they are because of the ideas, expectations and emotions that we attach to them. The articles we discussed presented these things with the ideas that society attaches to them removed.

Seeing things for what they are can be unsettling because it causes us to question and reexamine our beliefs and ideas about these things. Admittedly these illusions serve to make the world seem like a prettier place and keep people moving the right direction (but whose direction is the “right” direction? Are they perhaps a tool for social control?).

What do you think? Do the ideas we associate with certain things enhance life? Or do they just serve to numb reality?

Peer-reviewing, eh?

First of, my sincerest apologies about the late post. Apparently I did not correctly submit this...

If I have counted correctly, this Tuesday was the third time we did peer-reviews in class. Personally I find that this seems to be helping me a lot. My peers usually point out awkwardly phrased sentences (I swear they look fine to me...) and arguments that I need to explain to a greater extent.
Yesterday, one of my peers asked me to define the word 'crux'. Here's what the dictionary says:

crux (krks, krks)
n. pl. crux·es or cru·ces (krsz)
1. The basic, central, or critical point or feature: the crux of the matter; the crux of an argument.
2. A puzzling or apparently insoluble problem.

Me being from a different country I automatically assume that each and every classmate that grew up in a english speaking country will know more words than me.
This simple example is something that I learned through the peer-reviews: don't just assume your audience knows everything, make sure to explain it thoroughly.

In which way has the peer-reviewing helped you? What did you folks learn?