Your task is to take the story about how evil comes into the world, from King’s text, and change it to tell it. First, learn the story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family. When you are finished, post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered. If you want, you can post a video of you telling the story, in place of text.

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Everything is a story, from the conversations we have, to the news, to textbooks we read. Stories vary in believability, form, and structure. My story may look different from those you would expect. With that being said, I have a great story to tell you.

The creation of evil doesn’t begin with a time immemorial, it starts with the development of human consciousness. Everything that ever lives is faced with a continuous struggle, the need to survive. Animals consume each other and sacrifice their young to avoid being killed. In some species, the stronger siblings kill their younger relatives to reduce the amount of food required to sustain the family’s life. In primates, when one chimp defeats another in combat and becomes the alpha male it is not unusual for him to hunt down the offspring of the previous alpha and kill them. These activities occurred for millions upon million of years before morality became a question. Until a rogue branch of animals descended from primate lineage developed brains of sufficient mass that were capable of reasoning about their own actions, and the intent of others.

This is called Theory of Mind, the ability to see oneself as a distinct and separate being from everyone else, and being able to adopt the perspective of another creature or person. Theory of Mind doesn’t develop in humans until at least the age of three, from what we understand, and until then people are as self-serving as their animal brethren are.

When humans developed this ability to see through another person’s eyes, they simultaneously won and lost in every competition. They understood that fighting over territory meant that one group would attain greater odds for survival, and the other would have to spend time searching for somewhere to live, risking their lives at the same time. They understood that killing someone held the same loss of life, and potential, and held the same meaning as being killed them self. With this understanding came the pull for morality, what is justified and okay, and what is wrong? As our ancestors began living in groups they evaluated the risks that other members posed to them, and mulled over the best outcome for themselves. In order to succeed as a group, rules would need to be created and their reasoning would have to be justified. These rules became integrated into every group because they enabled cooperation, growth, and survival. Those who chose not to live by these rules were perceived as a threat and were exiled from the community and forced to survive on their own, most did not survive. As time passed and societies that followed these rules prospered, they became ingrained within the developing culture, and their creation was questioned less and less. The rules became morals, and they defined what was deemed decent. “Why must we follow the rules?”, the people started to ask. I imagine earlier people would have said, “because, that’s the way they’ve always been”. The more keen individuals began creating explanations for how things came to be, in order to satiate these questions, and avoid people from trying to destroy these rules, this comfortable living. The explanations began with the divine (they were created by gods), then reinvented within the Old Testament (the ten commandments were the “new” moral code), then secularized (laws of the government). Any act that conflicted with these established morals was considered evil. In truth, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.

Once you have told a story, you can never take it back. So, be careful of the stories you tell, and the stories you listen to.

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The people I had told this story to questioned its viability as a story. It didn’t begin like stories, it wasn’t narrated like prototypical stories, and it seemed more like an amalgamation of information. I think that we have ideas about what stories should be, but don’t realize that everything we communicate conveys a story.

Many disliked it, and thought the differentiation of good and evil were inborn.

Works cited:

Soraya, Lynne. “Empathy, Mindblindness, and Theory of Mind”. Psychology Today. Psychology Today., 19 May. 2008. Web. 29 May 2015.

Castello, Molly. “On the Origins of Morality”. Psychology Today. Psychology Today., 26 Sep. 2013. Web. 29 May 2015.

Question 7) At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.  I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?

*This is based on anecdotal evidence (newspapers) & opinion*

Social media tools have enabled an unprecedented growth in both global accessibility to information and in popularity in creating blogs, tweets, status updates to share personal stories. Social media has given rise to a greater freedom in story-telling, because it provides everyone with an opportunity to provide their own narrative within the world. Many websites also allow the listeners to provide feedback, comments, and ask questions as if they were present at the telling of the story. This can be seen as a merge between the divide of orality’s interaction, and literature’s static context. The popularity of video logs, blogs and other forms of social media have given people who normally wouldn’t want to share their lives and perspective a medium to promote sharing. The accessibility of social media allows any person to search and read stories of various topics with free availability, and ease. These tools have created new genres of narrative, and have created types of stories (oral and text) that would be unknown. Any country with access to internet can upload information that is globally accessible so there is no longer a need for people to seek out publishers to print their works. Social media has provided multiple perspectives on issues that go beyond general media and novels, it illuminated problems that most people would not have simply because they don’t exist in the same circumstance.

Both an advantage and disadvantage of social media over published works is that social media is not subject to the censorship that published material are. The text is not scrutinized for being inappropriate, it doesn’t have to be “dumbed down” or altered to please certain audiences. This freedom from censorship allows the shared literature to be thought-provoking, and to elicit emotions. Not to say this is absent from published works, but this uncensored literature can speak about uncomfortable topics and taboos without being hidden from the public. In some cases this freedom from censorship and general opinion is no longer true. Employers check employee social media profiles and hold them to what is said.

The downside to social media’s freedom is that there is no fact-checking of what is being said, so anyone can spread false information. Fortunately the rate of misinformed and well informed eventually equalize, and the checking of facts and sources is becoming more common. In some cases, correcting misinformation can lead to the false facts to become more deeply ingrained and believed. Another downside is that many people choose to spend their time online instead of reading books, which has led to a decrease in their linguistic capabilities.

Hypertext allows for the author to color the perception of the reader before they analyze the text. This alteration occurs through the words chosen to represent the text it links to, and the words that precede it. Hypertext has also provided a quick access to additional information about the story or literature that it’s a part of, giving the reader access to a broader depth of detail that the author could not or chose not to provide. From a general perspective hyptertexting has impacted stories and literature positively by expanding the educational capacities of the text they’re included in, and by providing the avid reader more paths that can lead to further investigation. An unfortunate side effect of hypertext is that the author can also provide misleading websites as citations for detail, or expand the horizons of false information.

What do you think? Is social media a more accessible tool providing a global voice to those who couldn’t previously share their stories? Or are its disadvantages greater than the service it provides?

Works cited:

Elizabeth, Jane. “New fact-checking research: False information floods Twitter; many Americans confidently wrong”. American Press. American Press institute., 29 Apr, 2015. Web. 22 May, 2015. http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/fact-checking-project/new-fact-checking-research-false-information-floods-twitter-many-americans-confidently-wrong/

Kelley, Susanna. “Texting, Twitter, contributing to students’ poor grammar skill, profs say”. The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail Inc., 1 Feb 2010. Web. 22 May 2015. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/texting-twitter-contributing-to-students-poor-grammar-skills-profs-say/article4304193/

Paterson, Erika. ENGL 470A: Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2015. Web. 12 May 2015.

Snowden, Collette. “Social media sackings risk stifling journalistic expression”. The Conversation.The Conversation. 21 May, 2015. Web. 22 May, 2015. http://theconversation.com/social-media-sackings-risk-stifling-journalistic-expression-41824

 

Hello and welcome readers,

My name is Landon Tang, and I am a 4th year Psychology major.  This course is one of my final (hopefully) credits at UBC before I finish with a BA.  My focus in Psychology is on the effects of social perspectives and culture on cognitions/thoughts of individuals.

This blog is a part of the English 470A Canadian Literary Genres course.  This course is an exploration into story-telling: the interactions between the First Nations people and the European settlers, and the gradual movement towards what we now consider Canadian culture. There is a critical thinking focus on what stories are being told, which ones we choose to believe and listen to, and how these stories impact our views.

I expect that this course will provide me with important and relevant source material that I can use to form an understanding of how Canadian views have shifted. By reading the novels, and the blogs that other students provide I will be able to compare and contrast current opinions and ones from the past. Utilizing my understanding of Human Psychology I will attempt to analyze the material I read, and combine it to create a semi-linear ‘picture’ of alterations in cultural consciousness. Being that Canada is a multicultural, heterogeneous nation, whose population heavily relies upon immigration to grow, it will be fascinating to understand how other people view this country (especially those who were most affected by colonization). I hope that by the end of English 470 that I will be able to answer three questions: 1) What does it mean to be Canadian? 2) What is Canadian culture? 3) How did we come to develop this idea of Canadian culture, and what struggles were faced in its development?

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/05/06/bil-c-51-anti-terrorism-passes-vote_n_7227520.html

This article is a part of the C-51 bill following. It outlines a set of controversial security laws that will impact our freedoms as Canadian citizens as a trade off for national security. It redefines the amount of authority that agencies that previously only gathered information will now have, and allows them to decide what counts as a threat to national security. This bill will alter the course of Canada and its citizens but it’s too early to know how.  It has the potential to be passed within the year, and may not be the first of its kind.

I look forward to your replies,

Landon Tang

Works cited:

Buchot, Emmanuel. Canada Climatic Map. 2008. Photographic book. Web. 12 May. 2015.

Lum, Zi-Ann. “Controversial Anti-Terror Bill Passes House With Liberals’ Help.” The Huffington Post. HuffingtonPost.com, 6 May 2015. Web. 12 May 2015.

Paterson, Erika. ENGL 470A: Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2015. Web. 12 May 2015.