Friedrich Nietzsche: Morality as Anti- Nature Blog

I found many of Friedrich Nietzsche's opinions to be fascinating within "Morality as Anti-Nature". His opinions on religion strike me, because it seems that his views heavily defied that of people in his time. He was one of the first influential people to speak out heavily against organized religion, specifically referring to christianity as a means of "Destroying the passions and cravings, merely as a preventive measure against their stupidity and the unpleasant consequences of stupidity". His problem with christianity lies in the fact that it uses fear as a preventative measure against humans doing bad things. If you obey gods rules, you will go to heaven, if you don't you will go to hell. Nietzsche criticizes this because the system assumes that if these rules were not in place, then many more people would sin consistently, when he thinks that in reality, it would be the exact same amount. Nietzsche instead proposes an idea that he calls the concept of eternal recurrence, which entails living the same life over and over again down to the most minute detail. He makes the argument that you should live you're life to the fullest so that you wouldn't mind living it over and over again. He believes that religion molds people into fitting into a certain image and drastically changing their life/ personality,  taking away from a persons right to live their lives instinctually. Nietzsche believes that the system of eternal recurrence will grant people a reason to keep their lives in check, while also maintaining their instinctual identity. Overall, I found the read very interesting and insightfull as Nietzsche's views align somewhat with my own.

Collaborative Project Introduction

Thomas Braun
2/17/2015
CAL 103 G Middleton

Part 1

 1. Media and Entertainment Industries
  The topic of media and entertainment is something I take great interest in, as it has played a big role in
all of our lives whether we know it or not. The topic of media and entertainment is one that encompasses
a lot of different subject areas, particularly television, movies, music, and video games. It has always been 
my dream to work within this industry, and it's no secret that I am very passionate about this industry. 

2. The end of the World
  The end of the world I feel is something that has fascinated everyone in the past at one point or another.
There are many things that could bring about the end of our world, both caused by humans, and not. 
These include things like pollution, or a meteor cataclysm.  It's fascinating to me because everything
will come to an end eventually, even time, according to modern scientific theory.  

3. Politics and Social movements
  Politics are very interesting to me as they effect every aspect of our daily lives, and give us guidelines as  
to what we should and shouldn't do. Social movements challenge these laws, and/ or the fundamental 
beliefs o certain individuals.

Part 2

 1. Media and Entertainment Industries
 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/moviesandtv/columns/moviebob/12173-Comparing-Film-Journalism-and-Games-Journalism

This article took a look at the recent spark within the gaming community otherwise known as "gamergate".
It goes over the two opinions on the state of gaming journalism and proves that no matter what side you're 
on, every gamer is a member of the same community.

2. The end of the World
 http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/12/world/ocean-trash-pollution/

This article sums up the threats of the worlds total accumulation of plastic. People often seem to think that 
there are massive islands of garbage in the ocean, that have collected because of the oceans currents, but
this article explains that the ocean is more of just a "plastic soup", which ends up being far worse. As it is 
near impossible to clean up, and hurts animals much more. On this track it seems that the end of the 
world cold come from accumulation of things such as plastic before anything else.

3. Politics and Social movements
http://www.occupy.com/article/millions-march-december-13-anger-over-police-violence-sweeps-nation

This article sums up the recent millions march protest in New York. The march demonstrates how
social movements such as peacefull protests can be used to change views and opinions, eventually leading to change in politics.

"The case against Character" Response

This week I read Anthony Appiah's "The case against Character". This reading explains Appiah's opinion on ethics and what makes a persons character supposedly "good" or not. He first explains his idea of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics are committed by virtuous people, and will help lead someone into living a good life. Appiah says that people should be searching for virtues that they have, and virtues that they could have to further improve their life, a term also known as eudaimonia. He includes a list of 3 claims the philosopher Hursthouse stated. He says "The right thing to do is what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstances", "A virtuous person is one who has and exercises the virtues.", and "A virtue is a character trait that a person needs in order to have edaimonia." The second type of ethics talked about is situationalist ethics. Situationalist ethics explores the idea that people help others when they are feeling happy themselves, and want to spread the joy to other people. Situationalist ethics comes from the questioning of whether a truly virtuous person even exists. Overall I found this text to be very confusing and hard to read. Even though I tried my hardest to understand it, I feel like I still misunderstood and misinterpreted some aspects of the reading. I look forward to discussing this in class so I can try and understand it better.

This week I read "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight" written by Clifford Geertz. The story describes Geertz's trip to Bali with his wife, where they intended to learn more about the Balinese people and culture. At first they had trouble understanding the Balinese culture, specifically their traditional cockfights. Both Clifford and his wife are anthropologists that did not understand why the people were so obsessed with cockfighting. But after they observed a fight for themselves and ran from the police just like one of the Balinese people, they started realizing what the culture is all about. They began realizing that cockfighting is something that the Balinese  people did for more than just entertainment, it meant more. Cockfighting is a way of showing your manhood in their society, the stronger your cock, the manlier  you are. The people go as far as to bet large amounts of money on their  cock, not particularly for any monetary gain, but just to get themselves pumped up for the match. It was through the cockfighting that Geertz an his wife discovered the true aspects of Balinese culture. Overall this story was very interesting to me, as it was very easy to spot the differences between their culture and ours. The idea of fighting animals for money in America is very much frowned upon, and only practiced by very few people in our country. The concept of betting money on a fight only for the reason of getting pumped up is also foreign to American culture, as most gamblers in America look only for monetary gain. Overall the read was very interesting to me because it gave me knowledge of a culture i knew very little about, and the way in which it compares with our own.