thoughts.

After having to write a (very forced and poorly written) response to Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, I had a thought that I've been having a lot lately. I've also recently watched Dreamworlds 3 and Generation M (Misogyny) and this has contributed to similar thoughts. College has definitely been a soul-searching learning experience for me. After interacting with so many different individuals and being exposed to all this different material, information, and viewpoints-- I've grown a lot as a person, and my thought processes have definitely developed. I now realize how much of our world is controlled. What we like, what we know, what we think all controlled by someone else. Usually intentionally. How scary is that? What thoughts and feelings are our own? Although it seems like a silly question, when you think about it-- it's really difficult to discern between what thoughts we have come up with "ourselves" and what thoughts someone else has knowingly implanted in our heads.

Dreamworlds 3 and Generation M both opened my eyes and disgusted me at the same time. Another thing that I learned in college was how the equality between men and women seems to be declining rather than leveling out. Women are nowhere close to being treated as equals to their male counterparts and the double standards that exist cannot be more prominent than they are in college. I always loved looking at music videos and pictures of "hot girls" and I suppose the reason why is because I somewhat idolize them. After watching those documentaries and realizing how demeaning these images have become, it makes me question whether or not I should be striving to look like them after all.

In addition, Sontag's argument about whether or not there is "collective memory" makes me really evaluate a lot of the things I've learned in "history" or seen in the news. After IB History of the Americas in high school, I began to more critically read "history" and have tried not to be as "trusting" as I used to be when it came to learning those topics from textbooks. I agree with Sontag's argument though-- memory is so limited and it can be so unreliable. Pictures are great, but they only tell a piece of the story; and when they are the only piece that a person sees, it can be a dangerous thing.