What Does It Mean to be Human/Final Reflection

What does it mean to be Human? Does this pertain to Humanity or the biological definition of a homosapien? Am I more human than a serial killer or less human than the monkeys sent into space? In the beginning of last semester each day was a heated debate, what was human? What was the true definition? The answer? There is none.

Ishmael, from Quinn's Ishmael, the text I chose, I find more human than the derelict high schools I call my peers.  Ishmael points to the humans as the problem for all of the world's crises. I look around me as children are starving and point to my friends who unknowingly deplete all of the world's resources. 

What does it mean to be human? Does it mean we talk with eloquence and speed? I see Loralai and Rory Gilmore rattle off words on Gilmore Girls and I am dumbfounded, yet don't the crickets chirp with equal speed? And who knows what they are saying, some cricket out there might be the next shakespeare. Or rather are we human because we have empathy? Because in my personal experience, animals frequently have more empathy than the humans I know and love. I look into the big brown eyes of my loving Irish Setter and see more love, kindness and humanity than middle school girls showed me in seventh grade. I think of my best friend, unable to get married in most parts of the world due to his sexuality and how homophobic only exists in mankind, not the animal kingdom. 

I think back to the beginning of the semester, watching the video of the feral girl, "Genie" and is she human? Yes, biologically, but is she? Is she died and in hundreds of years humans discovered her body she would appear just as human as I am, but are we one in the same? I would say not. Biology only goes to an extent. There is more to being human than DNA, we have heart and passion. We strive to make others happy and truly do what we believe should be done. Clearly, this is not true for all humans. But I do not think human DNA or our civilized culture adorned in concrete and steal make us human. I think our humanity makes us human. Our inability to be satisfied, to always try and improve, to innovate and along the way love, care and make connections and communities.  

This project, similarly to ours last year in New Global Voices, was an entire class-wide project. We split up into teams and did most of the work in our teams but ran big ideas past each other in the full group setting. On the first day I helped contribute ideas and helped to shape the ideas into the final product. I annotated my individual article as well as all of the group articles for team Ishmael. Within the entire group element, each individual family had to come up with questions and answer other team's questions. I came up with one of the two questions for team Ishmael as well as answered other team's questions and helped discuss answers that make it into the final edit of the script. I think our final product is going to be different--- but interesting. I like the idea and the concept we came up with, I feel like it can truly showcase all of the books we read but still present it in a creative manner, which is all we really wanted. I do however wish the instructions for the project were a little clearer, and maybe what as individuals we could have done more, I found myself redoing or doing the same work others had already done and wished that maybe that was more clear (for example both Cynthia and I read all of our groups group annotations... Was that entirely necessary? Probably not but I felt that I should contribute more, so I did.) I did however like how different this project is. Normal presentations get old, and I like that I am ending my last English class of high school in a new and interesting way, not just a lame skit or powerpoint. 

You tube is frequently sited as both a sight full of love and hate, in Mackelmore's hit "Save Love" last year, he says "have you heard the youtube comments lately" referring to the harmful and bully-like comments which frequently adorn youtube. When I typed "Chris McCandless" into YouTube's search bar, a large variety of videos come up. The first video to catch my eye was a Tribute to 20 years of Chris McCandless' life. This included a slide show of many of the sites mentioned in Into The Wild. Another tribute to Chris' life acknowledges his second and "true" identity---Alexander Supertramp. Again, showing photos of some of the sites mentioned in Into The Wild, allowing for a more holistic sense of his travels and his life. These tributes glorify both his life and his death. They show photos of his adventures and although the average tribute does not focus on death, neither even touches upon his death, even though not only was it was so closely related to his vagabond lifestyle but actually the reason for his death. 

The third video was vastly different than the first two. Not a tribute, but an interview Ned Rozell interviewed Walt McCandless, Chris' father as he visits the bus where Chris spent his last days. As sad as this video was, it felt less like an ode to his life and more factual, even though this was the one video delivered by someone directly involved with Chris McCandless, the video felt as though it lacked empathy, something I never expected. He was just so detached from the interview. Granted, the interview was done in 2011, years after Chris' death, but his father was at the site of his death, I would have expected more emotion. This could be do to the bad relationship the two had while Chris was alive, as noted in Into The Wild, but even so, this caught me the most off guard. 

The final video I watched was the trailer to the movie into the wild. Since never seeing the movie myself, I thought this would not only be an interesting contrast to the book but a contrast to the rest of the videos I watched prior. Just by the flashes in the beginning of the trailer, it looks like some of the scenes are surprisingly accurate. However, this movie seems to romanticize (like many do) Chris McCandless' journey, as though this is something wondering and anyone can "take a journey, into the beauty, into the danger, into the wild", as the trailer so eloquently puts it. This is entirely inaccurate. Although it is a lovely idea, going into alaska, without sufficient supply in the dead of winter, is just stupid. About two years ago, my family went on the trip to Alaska and we did go to Denali. As you climb those mountains the temperate drops rapidly. I visited in the Middle of August and snow covered glacier ice was still all around me. But in the winter? There is no way the outcome would have been positive. 

Triptych

As beautiful as nature can be, inside is more comfortable. And for the procrastinating upper schoolers, sitting in the library is preferable to outside even though the snow has finally melted. 

As old as we get, many of us continue with our childhood tendencies. Anna Matenaer still likes to climb trees in her free time, even if an eighteen year old climbing is frowned upon...

My backyard is home to many creatures. Even though we have lived in my house for fifteen years, the animals still claim the space as theirs. Once the snow melts they return and eat my grandmas bird seeds and strut through the woods. 

A Background In The Bible Sheds New Light

From pre-kindergarten until fifth grade I attended private Jewish day school. In third grade we each received a copy of B'reishet, or in English, Genesis. We translated and studied the text from the first word until the last, this feat took us up into fifth grade. Leaving Jewish day school, I had a pre-determined notion of the Bible and the stories in it.
In Ishmael, the bible and it's stories coarse through the novel and serve as anecdotes to explain the Taker-Leaver relationship. This different interpretation of both the creation story and Cain and Abel took me out of my Jewish day school roots and made me rethink the stories I grew up on.

I found that some of the links he made between the Taker-Leaver relationship and Bible stories to be a bit far fetched. This could be because I have studied the stories incessantly but, I found the whole Cain-agriculture and Abel-Pastoral relationship a bit strained. Although from the story it is clear that Abel sacrificed animals and Cain sacrificed agricultural foods (as shown above in the picture), I did not find this to be enough to back Quinn's claim.The Hebrews continued to be shepherds and live a pastoral life style for hundreds of years, and sacrificing animals were an integral part of the Jewish culture until the second temple was destroyed in 70 C.E.
 I did however, appreciate the name of the Gorilla: Ishmael. The original caretaker of Ishmael  was in fact a Jewish man, and he named him. This name was clearly meaningful and deliberate. I always found that Sarah was unreasonable in kicking out Hagar and Ishmael, and that Abraham never had the guts to stick up to her. This was one part of the bible that awkward irked me. I love that Ishmael was the illegitimate child of Abraham and Hagar, just like the monkey was illegitimate in many senses of the word. As a telepathic gorilla, many would consider inherently, Ishmael to be "illegitimate". As someone who tries to teach a radical theory and change the foundation of the world as we know it, many would call Ishmael illegitimate.
I found this book fascinating. This whole taker-leaver theory in some ways echoed my concerns about our nation and in some way seemed to radical to consider. I did however find that my background knowledge of the book of Genesis not only make the book less confusing but added an additional layer to the book. It allowed me to consider the theory in a new more educated light.

We have all been there. When you feel out of place, everyone else seems to belong and you feel as though you stick out like a sore thumb. Sometimes it happens when you arrive too early to leave too late. As a seventeen year old without a license in Minnesota, I find myself entirely dependent on my friends and family for rides. This dependency causes some truly awkward situations... Sometimes I feel judged, afraid to make eye contact with others and occasionally I'm just genuinely bored. In all of these scenarios, my phone comes to my rescue. I text or call people in an awkward situation, and instead of being the awkward girl who is sitting alone I become the girl with better things to do and better people to talk to. I screen my CNN app for the latest news or look on Buzzfeed for a good laugh, no matter the situation, my iphone has my back. I think about my parents, and how up until our generation, what did people do in awkward situations? Or when people got excessively board?

I think about all the times that my iphone has saved me: when I am the last person awake at a sleepover and cannot fall asleep, when I need to check a fact quickly, or misplaced my graphing calculator and the app will have to do. There is no doubt in my mind that my iphone has made my life easier, but I look at smartphone statistics and I think, but at what cost?

Renown news sources all over the world, like the BBC continuously relay information about how the world's population is spiraling out of control, and increasing exponentially. Countries like China, which for years has had one-child policy to attempt at controlling the worlds population. All of this knowledge about the need for population control, puts our reliance on technology into question. According to the New York Daily News, more smartphones are activated each day than babies are born. This meaning there are more new smartphones coming into the world and being used than there are humans. And the average person checks their smartphone every 6.5 minutes. Now this may seem extreme but when you think about it, the results make sense. This is an average including all of the teenagers who spend hours straight on their phones, or who constantly check their phone to see when someone has responded to their snapchat or text and keeping up with how many people have liked their most recent instagram or favorited their latest tweet. These days it is nearly impossible to live a regular social life without a smartphone.

This notion may seem extreme, but from my experience it is true. There are days where I fall asleep right when I come home or my phone dies and I am unreachable for hours, and by the time I look at my phone it seems to have blown up with messages. I think it is less about needing to reach someone and more about since the technology is there and accessible, why not use it? Roughly 90% of my text message, viber, whatsapp or facebook instant message exchanges are not necessary, someone is just bored, or like I previously stated, in an awkward situation.

There is no doubt that I love my phone and all of its uses but I frequently wish that this technology was not needed to be social in society. Every year, I attend a camp for two months. During this duration the camp asks you to not bring cell phones and if you are caught with one, they are confiscated. I find that this atmosphere is the perfect one for social interaction, this is because it is not just me who chooses to not use a phone, but everyone is forbidden. Because of this these friendships spans more than who tags me in the most photos on facebook or who watches my vines the most. When I see these friends again, we frequently induct a "no phone zone" where everyone must put their phones in a pile and unless someone gets a call (because these days people usually just call if something is important), no one is allowed to touch their phones, the only social interaction is human face to face interaction, which even with all of this technology, I still think is the best kind.