Stephen Vincent Benet's Nightmare Number Three

Civilization was created to contain social structure. However, in utmost circumstances, it is possible for instinct to triumph over civility. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is a plane evacuating a group of British schoolboys that crashes over a tropical deserted island. Once they crash on the island, they pick Ralph, the protagonist of the novel, to be their leader, and Ralph chooses Jack, the antagonist of the novel, to be the leader of the hunters, establishing somewhat of a civilization. Then when Jack comes upon a mother boar and kills it, that’s when their makeshift civilization slowly diminishes and the boys become savages. In addition, loss of social structure within a society can lead to the absolute destruction of the civilization. The author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding, uses man vs man and man vs nature conflicts to develop the theme of loss of social structure leads to savagery. Golding reveals this theme by exploring the conflicts of

This Fleeting World is a small summary of ‘big history’. David Christian’s book is a mere 92 pages long with an included 9-page prequel (on topics during the first years without humans such as Earth’s creation and more) and 16-page appendix on the book’s use in school, historical periodization, and a 4-page list of sources. With around 120 pages, this short book seems to be the perfect size to represent how our species’ history is only miniscule fraction compared to the history of that around us. In a world that has been around for over four and a half billion years old (6) in a universe that is 13.8 billion years old (1), homo sapiens have been around for only approximately 250,000 of those years (9). It seems impossible, though, to fit those hundreds of thousands of years into the modest text. However, Christian does the impossible and makes a well written short ‘big history’. Where many other historians before him have failed at making one, Christian’s book, This Fleeting World, summarizes history from the big-bang all

The human behavior is one that will haunt humanity forever. A Long Way Gone, written by Ishmael Beah, is an original non-fiction story based on Ishmael’s personal experiences in warfare. But, shockingly, he witnessed warfare from the small eyes of his teenage years. Having to experience one of the worst things in history, at such a young age, is terrible. War, in this case or in any case, relates to both human condition and human nature. Human conditions, in short, are things that that defines the human existence (birth, death, etc.) Human nature, close to human conditions, are how humans act naturally to their environment and others. The theme of A Long Way Gone ties strongly with both of these with a passion. It describes war as an art, with human condition as a canvas and human nature to paint in the fine details. The question asked is what Ishmael Beah’s experience tells us about the meaning of the human being, and to answer we have to poke at some topics that we’ve covered. The answers to the sole question include the hypothetical existence of pure evil, the important keys of human social life, and how war affects one’s own mind.

"Fear is the enemy for civilization; fear prevents construction and progress." Discuss the fragility of civilization against the destructive powers of

Humanity constantly brings life and destruction to the world every day. In the novel A Long Way Gone, the protagonist, Ishmael Beah, constantly endures simple acts of charity, even in the cruelest environments of that time; however, what goes around comes around. Even though Beah does receive a minor variety of kindness, he still encounters the face of death everywhere he goes due to mankind’s hostility, whether it be in a deserted village or the everlasting depths of the forest. Throughout the majority of the novel, readers can find themselves praying for a miracle for Beah in addition to knowing about the violence of mankind. For the human condition project, groups are to cite a minimum of ten quotes from both the novel and previous articles

We are only a brief second in the long history of the universe; many things have preceded us to make us the most complex creatures that ever walked the Earth. We are a “new level of complexity” which makes us different from all other creatures that have come before us. Our species has only been around for 250,000 years, a short time compared to the formation of the Earth at 4.5 billion years ago and the creation of the Universe at 13.7 billion years ago, but the time we have had on this Earth has greatly affected the outcome of history. In an attempt to provide an overview of human history in his book This Fleeting World, David Christian introduces it in the context of the history of the universe and then systematically breaks it down

After reading “What we have to lose” By Theodore Dalrymple, I can conclude that it is a defense of civilization from barbarism. Dalrymple puts forward his main arguments which many come from his own experience with details and examples. Also, the article helps convey to the reader that the greatest threat to our great society comes from within. Dalrymple's article helped enlighten me that today's society has grown so used to civilization that it seems impossible to conceive that it is actually a delicate thing. Dalrymple’s article gives us an important lesson that even though we have countless amount of resources and technology in today's world, society is not unconquerable, and it can vanish.

Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the topic of white America often throughout his book, Between the World and Me, as well as the struggles he has as a black American. The dream he portrays in his book consists of maintaining a well-paying job and eventually striving to become a wealthy, upper class citizen. Little do people know that the dream is not obtainable by everyone, Coates asserts that the American dream revolves around being white. Often times, blacks will begin to “act white” in order to achieve this American dream or achieve happiness in White America. Black people leave their natural physical appearance and language form in order to achieve this idea of “being white”. Personally, I find this to be bothersome. Still to this day we are

<br>I. Kurt Vonnegut has a great awareness of the destructive social impact of science and technology.

The critique of Victor’s carelessness mirrors the new technologies that humanity tries to innovate upon society. Shelley reflects on the demise in the progression of humanity because this will only further remove us from our compassion and identity [p. 266- Mary Shelley bio]. Thus, science in Shelley’s novel offers no hope, only death for both mankind

Stephen King’s insight on dreams are all based on personal experiences. King begins by comparing the functionality of a dream to a mirror “I’ve always used dreams the way you’d use a mirror to look at something you couldn’t see head on”. By using this idea of dreams being like mirrors, King is able to alleviate his writer 's block by depicting his dreams directly onto paper. An example would be when King had already written seven to eight hundred pages of his novel which he could not seem to finish. Then later reveals how a nightmare provoked the ending, he states how he woke up frightened yet at the same time relieved he’d finished the book. According to King all he had to do at this point was to take his dream and transfer it to paper. Without a doubt, King’s personal experiences can justify why he believes “dreams are a way that people’s minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrates the answer to their problem in symbolic language”.

In the era of technological advancements, one can not help but fall into its trap. It is starting to replace our ability to question, reason and even think. The works of Ray Bradbury in his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 portrays the devastating effects of technology in the face of mankind. It follows the life of Guy Montag, a fireman whose job is to burn books instead of putting fires out. As he develops a love for books, he starts to question and notice their technology-dependent life. His worries take him to Faber, an English professor who explains him a great deal about the why the society is the way it is. Using juxtaposition and personification, the author demonstrates that technology restricts knowledge and creates ignorance in society.

Albert Einstein once said “It has become appalling obvious that technology has exceeded our humanity. The short story By the Waters of Babylon written by Stephen Vincent Benet is written around the effects of technology. In this story, the son of a priest discovers that they had destroyed their entire world with the overuse of technology. As the son himself said, “perhaps in the old days they ate knowledge too fast”. This caused them to create negative effects which destroyed their world, and caused them to live a different life. Technology can have detrimental effects on the Earth, which can lead to destruction but there is still hope for new beginnings.

“Not forever… It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase.” “The Last Question,” a short story written by Isaac Asimov, is comprised of a series of small “chapters” which chronologically catalog the gradual collapse of the human race over several trillion years. Each of these “chapters” has a similar feel to them; each is written in a very succinct manner. In his short story, Isaac Asimov divides his composition into small “chapters” and uses succinct grammatical structure as well as character dialogue to represent the incredibly simple and finite thing that is human life.

Another idea presented in this week's readings which I found compelling was the brief discussions on technology and the impact this has on our sense of morality. Merton obviously speaks about technology to great lengths in his poem about the atomic bomb. In this piece Merton seems to take the position that technological advances are not always a good thing. In many ways, I would agree with Merton, especially when it comes to technological advances in weaponry. I believe, as I think Merton does as well, that many of these advances allow us as a species to dehumanize various groups and therefore enable us to destroy them with little conscious thought to the moral implications this destruction has. On the other hand, Haidt takes a different approach at the end of his article, "The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology." He states that with technological advances we become more aware of people in the rest of the world, not only aware of their achievements but also of their tragedies. As this happens, our concern for others expands "and we increasingly want peace, decency, and cooperation to prevail in other groups, and in the human group as well." (Haidt, pg. 1001) I found this statement particularly interesting because, like many others, I often assume that rather than uniting us as a human species, technology often isolates us and we become more disconnected from our immediate groups as well as our wider groups. I often,