7. Bibliography

Armitage, David. ‘Declaration of Independence: A Global History.’ Cambridge: Harvard University Press, (2007) Print.


Axelrod, Alan. ‘Chronicle of the Indian Wars’ New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1993

Kelleter, Frank. A New Literary History of America. Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009 Print.

Langguth, A.J. ‘Driven West’ New York; Simon & Schuster, 2010.  Print

McQuillin, Eugene. ‘A Treatise on the Law of Municipal Corporations‘ Chicago: Callaghan & Company, 1911.

6. Monsanto

Imagine walking down the street and a tattered man walks up to you, starts telling this morose tale about how he needs money for his family, he is down on his luck, and starving to death. Initially, the first reaction you're most likely to do is pull out your wallet and hand the poor man some money. Later on that day you see the same man, this time he is drunk, destroying things, and being a threat to the public.  Automatically your probably feel like you been bamboozled and, foolish for believing in his story. Unbelievably this scenario is similar to Mosanto's astroturfing company and campaign to cover up their true intentions. Originally Mosanto first made artificial sugar for Coke-Cola, but some how got into the biological chemical field. During WWII, this company help set up lab sites for the Manhattan Project, and created one of the most horrendous herbicide and defoliant used in the Vietnam War "Agent Orange." Since then, Mosanto has changed their field again, now a days they're a agriculture biotechnology corporation. According to Wikipedia Mosanto was Forbes "Company of the Year," in 2010. I wonder how come they don't mention that they are being sued by 300,000 farmers, or why they want to change the starndard for the word "organic." Not to mention farmers who have been using Mosanto's herbicide "Roundup Ready," has seen weeds build up a resistance to the product, which results in a plague of "superweeds" all across the Southeast and parts of the Midwest. Worst of all Mosanto encouraged farmers to only use Roundup  Ready autonomously with their crops, and blamed farmers for overuse of the herbicide. Mosanto is a company that is only worried about racking in money from the public, but not worried about how it will affect our community, so why would why trust anything they say?

5. "For Richer and Poorer: Teachers and Wall Street."

How would the world be if there were a limited number of teachers who are only able to work? What would children in America be doing right now without a proper education? Now just imagine if there were supporter who want to protect the wealthy class to keep most of their money  because they so call "help stimulate the economy," while teachers are getting their salary cut and losing their benefits considering they're government workers and rely on taxes. Sadly this event is already happening across the nation, teachers are being grossly undermined to how useful they are to people on wall street. Certain people who feel that we're not treating the super rich fairly because we expert them to pay more on  their taxes. Reasons behind this is consist of: loss of talent and interest in future employees for wall street,  people who work on wall street go to work  all year around in the private sector, and they don't need any kind of government assistance, which concludes they deserve to keep most of their earnings, right? Some critics justify with how much talent is needed to be a C.E.O, those individuals need the extra incentive for taking a chance to run a perplex establishment, plus they we're promised a bonus that was contractually obligated when they took on the job.  With teachers only earning $40-$50 thousands a year, we expect them to make a sacrifice in the payroll so the country as a whole can help lower the national debt. Apparently if we plan on filling up C.E.O positions in the future, we don't need good teachers to inspire youth to excel themselves, all we have to do is give them the idea that making more money means you deserve to keep it all without putting in your share.

4. Politics

Politics are a necessity for the world we live in, some people believe without a government the world would be a more tranquil unprejudiced paradise. Absolutely, that type of deranged thinking is dangerous, in fact, without a government we probably wouldn't have advanced to where we are at now. There wouldn't be any order in the world, I can see us acting like the movie "Mad Max", gangs and factions would constantly feud for power. Having a structural body of government sometimes helps ease peoples' mind at night, every country has and needs a political system to help form their society, though it is not all good with every politician we trust. With corporations, foreign corrupt practices, and criminal syndicates buying off people that assured us a better way of living, it's no wonder why  people get the idea that a non existing government would be the easiest way to life. To me the public enemy is probably some one in office, a person who is only looking to move ahead of the crowd, and willing to sacrifice the people in it so he can have a condo with a skyline view. I feel like they have to be willing to fabricate a story every time a situation goes awry so the public doesn't loose their acceptance in them. If politicans just came out and admit to their mistakes, the public would be more leniet with their criticism. Honestly our government has been doing a decent job so far, but changes do need to take place before people loose allegiance in their government.

3. Age of Enlightenment

Human nature and the way humans think started to take a turn in the 18th century. Scientist and philosophers were challenging the status quo, according to Wikipedia by, "after 1650, everything, no matter how fundamental or deeply rooted, was questioned in the light of philosophic reason". The point back behind this was to ameliorate the way civilization made decisions using scientific and philosophical knowledge, instead of through the traditional way of faith and church. Today those ideas have transformed our society into what it is now. However, we still face problems similar to those of the past, but rather than using conscious decision making to base our answer, RSA suggest we are using human intuition and how we automatically respond to a situation. They also say that, "it has become a cliche, that education is the most valuable resource in a global knowledge community." They feel that fostering empathic capacity is just as important to have achieve citizens at world peace with each other. Though this is a main factor to living among each other, how would we be able to if we are not educated about others we live amongst. In the second RSA video, the speaker talks about how we educate our childern so they have a sense of cultural identity, while being part of a globalization. With public and private schools keeping socially advantage and disadvantage children separate from each other, never getting the chance to interact with each other, it's no wonder why people just stress education because they don't know of any other ways to improve society. Now with a lot of kids not taking the traditional path after high school, this helps them realize what they want for them self, unlike children who take the norm path.

2. They Say

Growing up in life there are always people who try to instruct you on every move you make.With teachers telling you what you have to learn, the media telling you what to fear, and politicians telling you what you should believe in, it seems impossible to get away from all of it. Every day we are being coerced and manipulated unconsciously by people, corporations, and architectural designs. The author of "They Say",  Rushkoff says, "we are under constant scrutiny and constant assault by a professional class of hidden persuaders." We are being attacked by media and we are not as aware of it as we once were. In this point, we are made to believe that we are not being persuaded by the media due to the evolving form of persuasion techniques. We are made to believe our minds are not being persuaded by a new method of marketing. In the past, we knew that the media targeted us to believe certain things that they wanted us to believe. In the present however, due to a new culture of those who do not want to be persuaded, the types of persuasion techniques used has changed. Especially in our young adults, we do not want to be seen as conformists, and Rushkoff tells us that because of this, the way we are persuaded has been altered. Rushkoff gives the example of Sprite when making this claim. Sprite uses a form of "uncool" advertising to sneakily appeal to the up-and-coming young adult mindset that we cannot conform. The less "up in your face" the marketing is, the less aware that we are that it is occurring, and the more likely we are able to be subjected by it because we are not aware that it is a problem.The ability of the media to "shape our wills" as Rushkoff states, is going to only increase the less aware that we are that there is a problem.
Douglas Rushkoff proves his point even more when he mentions how he uses coercion techniques in his writing to convince the reader to get back behind his ideas. The entire time you are reading his article, you do not feel as if you are being altered or persuaded in any sort, because of the hidden techniques of persuasion that he uses. If we were so easily tricked in his writing, the media is clearly uses this type of persuasion to work on us as well. Only by keeping our guard up and being aware that we are constantly being manipulated will we be able to fend our minds from persuasion.

1. Summary: Theory for Beginners

 As the human race develops over time, new norms are recreated and excepted into society, while old ideas are tossed out with the past. Most new norms are beneficial to people; however, there are some unsettling  norms that are just unfortunately accepted by people, even if they disagree with it. In this article the author points out daily norms that people don't realize. One thing he mentions is how small group of individuals reap all the benefits while leaving the larger crowd with nothing but a false sense of satisfactory. From the article the author writes, "It might make less sense that one group should monopolize society's wealth for themselves while another, equally talented but less well-born or well-educated, languish in prison, the victims of poverty." To me the author thinks that if you're not born into royalty you're just a tool for the rich to use. I can agree that there has been some norms that are just unacceptable, like how we label Islams from the Middle East as terrorist, though it is a sad thing to admit it is true. Anyways, the author feels that people who start out at the bottom won't be able to get the same chance at reaching the top, since there has already been a select few chosen from the start. This person continues their point by defining what the word Capitalism means in their view: "it is a social and economic system predicated on the sacrifice of the life energies of the many so that a few can accumulate wealth." Even though the author makes valid statements, I don't think I could agree that we're going to be screwed over for wanting to make some money for a short time. People always have the chance to change the daily norm, no matter where you are at on the social pole, it just matters if you want to accept it or not.