Human Minds

            Over the past few days in class, our primary focus has been learning about psychoanalysis. Human minds are more complicated than I ever could have imagined, and it baffles me that anyone could no so much about the things we subconsciously do all the time and why we do them. A large portion of our time in class has been spent talking about the defense mechanisms our mind subconsciously deploys in order to deal with certain things. These defense mechanisms range from being a total psycho who can not function in society to things that everybody does everyday. There are four classifications of these defense mechanisms; pathological, immature, neurotic, and mature.

            I found it interesting that, even though some behaviors are considered that of someone who can not function in society, we all engage in these defense mechanisms to a certain degree. Like I said above, the human mind is incredibly complicated and it can do some wild things. Obviously someone who completely denies reality or reshapes facts to fit their needs is insane and needs help, but I think we all do this, at least consciously sometimes. I know when something bad happens to me, it is a lot easier to deny it than to deal with it. Moving on to the immature class of defense mechanisms, passive aggression is a behavior that no one is new too, yet it is falls in a class towards the more insane side of the spectrum. The third class in neurotic and this is simply considered odd behavior. One behavior in the group sparked a lot of discussion; dissociation. Essentially, the person creates multiple identities to deal with different situations. I thought this was a misprint in class and this was meant to fall in the first, more crazy, class. After talking about it, I realized that nearly everyone does this to at least a small degree. If you are in a situation that requires you to speak publically, your mind can trick yourself into thinking you are actually someone who is a good public speaker. Our minds are incredibly powerful.

Inception and Modernism

            This week in class we are watching Inception. I have seen it a few times before, and I am happy to watch it again. I think it is pretty sweet that we are watching a movie-especially a movie as enjoyable as Inception- this early into the year. However, the purpose of viewing this movie in class is not just for our entertainment, it is to highlight and help us understand the characteristics of modernism. I am surprised by how many modernist themes director Christopher Nolan works into Inception. According to my notes, the Modernism Movement was over by the 1960's, but its been 50 years since then. It is interesting that, after all this time, we can still find modernism in today's works.

            Today, Inception is welcomed as a fresh and unique movie, but, Christopher Nolan smartly followed in the footsteps of modernists authors like the ones we have learned/will be learning about in class. These authors focused on everyday things and the conflict of a typical character. Of course the premise of the film is extremely complicated, ambitious, and can be hard to understand, but the things that make the film great, like Cobb's conflict with his own subconscious, are simple, everyday things that reflect reality and that is modernism at work. It is not an everyday reality for us to share dreams and do some of the things the characters in the film do, but I think we can all relate to being at war with ourselves.

            

Blog Post 1- Elephants and College

This week in class, we began our unit on modernism by focusing on a few short stories. One story that stood out for me was Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway. In the story, an American couple is in Spain, waiting at the train station with some drinks that they are happy to try for the first time. On the surface, this couple seems perfectly happy and the reader can not be sure where they are going or what they want to do. Hemingway does not give the girl the ability to speak Spanish, and he also only refers to her as "the girl." This gives the reader the sense that the man is the authority in this relationship. That notion is reassured as you read along and get the sense that the girl is in no rush to go where she and the man have planned to go. When you fondle the details, you can see that this couple is not quite as happy as they appear, as the girl ask the man things like, "you think then we'll be alright and be happy," or "if I do it, then it will nice again." After in class instruction, I now know the "elephant in the room" that caused the argument that went absolutely nowhere was over an abortion.

             I found a connection to this story in my own life through looking at the big elephant that sits in my very bedroom; a mountain of college application related documents on my desk. Looking at the blank common application, I feel like the girl and the man must feel as they sit waiting in Spain, just wanting it to be over so I can go back to focusing on what I hope will be a great senior year before I really have to get my life going. My mother constantly yells at me to get a jump on all of this stuff, and she is frustrated with the slow pace I am currently going at. I understand that I am certainly in the wrong and that I definitely have to treat this process with much more urgency than I am. Our fights never really go anywhere, just like the two in the story. Mark Twain said “if you eat a frog first thing in the morning, than nothing worse will happen to you all day.” Now the sun is setting and the deadline for the common application looms large, and I still have a lot of frog left on my plate. Unlike in the story, if I just hurry up and do what I need to do, thereby ending the occasional circular arguments I have with my mother, happiness will follow. In the story, it seems more like these too simply wont be able to see eye to eye when deep down, the girl knows the man has been wrong all along. For me, I know my mother has obviously been right all along.