Dr. Freund's Lecture

We can only wonder what our future generations will think about our codes and symbols. How crazy will they think that they are when they see the dancing and singing purple dinosaur that guided us through our childhood or see how many hours we waste playing Legend of Zelda on our Wii. We are fortunate to have recording devices so that we can save some semblance of our perceived sanity by explain on television or in writing about our insane ideas and beliefs  This technological luxury is something the ancient people never had. They did not have any sort of permanent communication that we can review in attempts to understand them and their thought processes. We leave the guessing to the archaeologists such as Dr. Freund who believe that "archaeology is the study of pre-ideas". 

I have a new profound respect for archaeologists because when they look at something for the first time they have to put what they know behind them. They have to take a fresh look at even something is so common and everyday and be able to see it's extraordinary properties. By putting your personal ideals behind you, you can really get at the meat of what that image could have meant to the people of that time frame. An example of this was shown with a picture of an anchor. Dr. Freund explained that for a long time several people thought that this image represented a cross even though it was created well before Jesus's birth or death. Freund then pointed out that we now understand it to be an anchor. However, we should not blame the archaeologists for this mistake because when we see an image that has a large line with a smaller line intersecting it we automatically think, "it's a cross". Like this "cross" something are such a common part of our culture that we subconsciously are on the look out for these familiar things. 

By putting aside the prejudices that we have formed from our current culture we are able to understand another mindset better. We can see an astrological sign in a Jewish temple and understand that it was not put on the floor to be disrespectful but maybe because the people in the temple liked the image and believe in it. A mixing of ancient religions in the olden days was found to be acceptable because that is who they were and how they believed. They do not share our common day prejudices and we need to allow them to believe whatever they wanted, even if it goes against our own beliefs.

Our common practice of how we view love and desire as a culture is not so different from the ancient practices. The ancient people carried around statues of fertility and love to help them become fertile and turned on. Now people can take drugs to make them more potent and fertile. On the walls of a pubescent teen male are quite likely to be donned with some sort of half-naked woman, this depicts a current image of desire. Go back a thousand years and you will see such images as Zeus as the Eagle or with Ganymede on the walls of houses showing the, then vogue, picture of love and desire. Besides our technology we are not all that different from the ancient people. If we put aside our current prejudices it is possible to try to look back and understand them more as humans then ideas and what we wish to perceive them as.

Professor Miller-Ott's Lecture: Love After Marriage

            Dating is scary and stressful enough when you are alone and have the convenience of privacy. However, if you add an ex-husband, or the long term equivalent, and maybe a child then you get an arena of disaster. This formidable world of communication between exs entering the dating world again is an area of research that Dr. Miller-Ott has looked at extensively. After numerous phone calls to people in this demographic she has found that there is a lot of discrepancy between people in understanding what societal “rules” they should follow and what information they should share with each other and their family.

            Being the ex to someone means that you have been hurt and have “baggage”, it doesn’t matter how the relationship ended you are officially used goods. No longer are you able to keep up this persona of innocence that seems to be a high attracting factor towards men. This is especially hard when you have kids as well. Most people would do almost anything to have a clean break from their partner. They want to forget about the love and desire that they once shared so that they can be new, rejuvenated, and free. They wish to experience the world as themselves. This is impossible when you and your ex-partner shared kids together. As long as the kids are still around the other partner you have this permanent connection and reminder of your ex. Having had kids with your partner also makes your ex, whether you like it or not, an official family member. This means that they have to be communicated with and let in on certain subjects, such as who you are bringing around their children. This awkwardness is what makes the study of communication so interesting in these cases. It is impossible to know the right thing to say and in these situations it seems that the “right thing” doesn’t exist.

            It is difficult enough to tell your partner in the relationship your feelings towards them. You have to somehow convey very intimate feelings at a very non-intimate level. You have to communicate how you feel and future possibilities opening yourself up to get hurt by more than one person. You could suffer scrutiny from your ex, from your children, or even from the new partner. It is also impossible to know the order of who you should convey the information to first. If you tell your feelings about the partner to the partner first and they accept the feelings then you would be betraying your family by not letting them in on the “loop”. If you tell your ex first then they could not only resent you for these new feelings but feel like you are trying to hurt them. This could especially go wrong if the new partner rejects your feelings and then makes you feel like you told your family for no reason and are put in a very emotionally naked position. If you tell your kids first, so that the ex doesn’t have to hear about the partner from you, then they could possibly get even more upset that they have to learn about your actions through their kids. There is literally no winning.

Nothing is private in these scenarios. You might as well be a walking tabloid magazine because if you don’t feed the information to everyone yourself, then they will eventually find out about the relationship if it goes well enough. In these cases the information comes with feelings of betrayal. You are no longer your own self but a part of a larger picture that has to communicate with the world. It is sad to say, but it seems that eventually it comes to a point where you will have to make a decision that parallels you from your children. During these times you have to decide who you want to please more, yourself and your children.  

Professor Borck's Lecture

The notion of politics is usually one that would be brought into the realm of love and desire. On NPR all of the political talk revolves around the lack of bipartisanship and how the senators are all trying to defy either each other or the president. The desire for power seems much greater than any desire to establish even the premise of friendship. However, Professor Bork was able to merge my ideals between friendship and politics together. Our political system is divided up into factions, especially between Republican and Democrat. I used to think of these factions as exclusive clubs more than any sort of group of friends, but maybe that’s what the party is. Even outside of the white house it seems that if you are a Republican then you have Republican friends. If you are a Democrat then you have Democrat friends. There is very little intermingling unless you want to be looked at as a threat to both sides. Whether the politicians want to admit it or not, our current political leaders have taken a slight turn towards Karl Schmitt’s view of politics. They place themselves with their “friends” because they have similar views and use their “friendship” as a tool to get what they want. The reason why these politicians have these friends is to go against their enemies. Sometimes I see Schmitt’s point of view. The times when I most need friends are when I have enemies. If someone is making me feel bad then I don’t want to internalize the pain, I want to share it with a friend who can help stand against this common enemy.

            Dierda’s ideal of friendship and politics is much more of a fantasy. He feels that we should be friends with everyone and that it should be, “beyond concepts of homogeneity”. This goes against the typical thought where we should hang out with people of like desires because only they will be able to understand us. We usually pick the people we are around due to their agreement towards our thoughts and personality. It would be strange to say that someone is your friend because they make you question your ideals and because you get into heated arguments with them. If someone told me that they were always getting into arguments with someone I would think the pair to be more enemies then friends. Yet maybe this says something about be because Dierda points out that, “naming an enemy says something about the self”. The fact that we have this necessity to have an enemy, our own antagonists through life, says something about our lack of confidence in ourselves. We shouldn’t need these enemies to obtain power and influence. We should be able to live in a world where we can all be friends and still feel like we have a commonality.