The Dead Mind By Don Miguel Ruiz

Immigrating to America is a process in which many people all across the world entrust as their one way ticket to a better life. Whether they do so legally or illegally, coming to the United States ensures better opportunities, economically, politically, and so on, to people who would have otherwise been worse off in their countries of origin. Even so, the common understanding of being “better off” can be considered a misconstrued concept when it comes to living in the states. Many families that choose to immigrate to the U.S. fail to realize the cultural hardships that newcomers tend to face once on American soil. Anything from racial discrimination or bias at work, in neighborhoods, at school, etc., can all be challenges that people encounter when making a move to the U.S. Such challenges are described by Richard Rodriquez in his autobiography Hunger of Memory. In this passage, he explains how cultural differences between Mexican and American ways of life have shaped him into the person that he is today. He also chooses to highlights the problems that he faces growing up in a predominately white neighborhood, while attending a predominantly white institution. Much of his writing consists of the cultural differences and pressures he feels to assimilate to Western culture and how this process, in turn, changes him into the person that some may find to be unethical, but nonetheless, someone he is proud of.

When individuals have previously experienced a saddening, painful past, their desire to retain these past memories allows them to temporarily stay away from the hurtful reality. Their preservation of former events deludes their consciousness as they are unwilling to confront reality and wish to permanently live in a seemingly happy, satisfying illusion. In The Underpainter, Jane Urquhart suggests that when individuals are unwilling to move on from the past, their desire to maintain their past memories causes them to create a long-term irrational illusion since the reality they are currently living strongly contravenes with their illusion. As a result of their unwillingness to embrace with reality, others who unexpectedly are able to perceive

A hero is not only someone with superpowers but can be anyone. It can be anyone like you or me. A hero is someone who is willing to stand up for other people. The book, A Lesson Before Dying, takes place in Louisiana and is about an innocent Black man convicted and sent to the electric chair. In the story there are real people that Ernest Gaines alludes to. Ernest Gaines makes an allusion to Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson. Beside these two, Mamie Till also stepped up and was audacious. They were all fearless and gave hope to many other people because of what they were doing. These heroes took a stand against society and changed the world for everyone.

Social change comes from a societies understanding and acceptance of controversial topics, laws that enforce social norms and the politics that play a role in such change. The author Gerald Rosenberg of “The Hollow Hope” believes that the Supreme Court is able to bring about social change. Rosenburg main argument seemed to be questioning if a courts ruling that had once been accepted and had standing for several years were to be over turned, would the environment outside of the courtroom suddenly change and be accepting of their division.

For petty issues and difficulties human do not build a defense system. People are incapable of predicting their emotional response, because they are unaware of how their brains work; therefore they choose to be self-deceptive. We humans have the tendency ignore the facts in front of us, because we are afraid of what the facts have in store for us. Gilbert displays examples of how denial can be beneficial to one’s happiness as he states, “The deception was elaborate and effective, but it was perpetrated unconsciously, and in this Osten was not unique (Gilbert

Ghostly representations of “the other” imagine a social evil that has not been put to rest. These images reoccur in the Western canon, marking the persistence of slavery long after its abolition. Haunting, ghosts and skeletons in Benito Cereno act as a vehicle through which the suppressed return to the stage with a message. The ghosts carry with them all that the imperialists wanted to control, including emotions, and more precisely, the emotions of the oppressed. I argue that ghosts and skeletons comprise an area of tension in which the appearance of the “other” reveals that the dominant party’s control is incomplete. Yet, the presence is merely ghostly due to the constant policing and lack of respect for the Other. These ghosts also break through the boundaries of the dominant culture’s paradigms and identities (Harpham 17), signaling potential political crisis. This text signals the fear of the retaliation of the Other through ghostly representations by projecting on to the other, their own identities of brutality and irrationality. “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville overturns the racist images of the colonized by relocating evil in the order of slavery. Hauntings carry the perspectives and powers of the slaves by preserving the dead amidst the living and the past amidst the present, they muddle up the concept of time and therefore defy the Western dream of complete control.

Political scientist, Gerald Rosenberg, author of The Hollow Hope, argued that the Supreme Court, and courts in general, have far less influence on policy than what is commonly believed. Rosenberg affirmed that it is practically impossible to create significant policy reform through litigation itself. In his opinion American courts are quite powerless and unavailing. Rosenberg covers two types of judicial behavior: the Dynamic Court model, in which Supreme Court decisions are extremely influential and the Constrained Court model, where limits on the Court’s power cause decisions to have little impact. To support his claims he discussed the direct and indirect effects of major court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade on policy. He claimed that Congress, the White House, and social movements have done far more to advance policy changes than the Court has. Rosenberg also addressed the fight for same-sex marriage rights as a current example of the Court’s weak influence on policy change and emphasized the importance of social movements to policy change. It’s clear that Rosenberg believes that there is very little that the courts can actually accomplish on their own. I would have to agree, people create social change, not the courts.

My younger brother, Treasure is four years old and ever since birth we have introduced him to three languages. My parents predominantly speak English, but my grandmother came from Nigeria to take care of him and she predominantly speaks Yoruba, which is a Nigerian dialect, but she can also speak English, but she chooses not to. During a period of Treasures life, we had to get him a nanny because my Grandma was going out of the states to go and visit some of her other children. So, the nanny began teaching Treasure sign language when he was just three months and he’s still very fluent in it. In fact, he started teaching the language to my one year old niece and she's also starting to understand the language. It's so cute to see them have conversations together just using signs. Treasure now goes to Montessori and they are teaching them Spanish and he’s loving learning the new language. It's amazing to see that he has never confused the languages. One day, I

When children think of darkness they think of lack of light which causes them to become scared. As we grow older, we begin to not only realize the lack of light, but the objects inside the dark which can be more frightening. We start understanding how darkness makes us feel. Darkness makes one think of unusual scenarios that are not real, but seems so real at that moment. Once we start believing in those scenarios, they start to overcome us and we no longer stay ourselves. There are multiple definitions of darkness and they all go with these two authentic stories, Heart of Darkness and The Dead. In the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, darkness is defined as: partial or total absence of light, wickedness or evil, unhappiness, secrecy and lack of spiritual or intellectual enlighten. Comparing, Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad and The Dead written by James Joyce, each author brings out darkness and the living dead into the main character and shows how much it changes them for the worse and/or for the better.

“Every good citizen makes his country’s honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense and it’s conscious that he gains protection while he gives it.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez bases the novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, off of a true account of a murder that occurred in Sucre, Columbia. In the Columbian culture presented in this novel, he portrays the theme of honor as a fundamental value and important value that everyone is obligated to respect. Marquez does this through repetition to highlight the idea that actions taken to preserve one’s honor are never questioned, symbolism to illustrate that women are expected to stay pure until marriage in order to bring honor into their family, and the use of the double standard to emphasize the relationships between men and women and the different roles they play within society.

A therapist instructs his patient to visualize a person that they do not particularly favor. The unfavorable person is imagined to sit on the chair in front of the patient; this is a type of technique called directed visualization. An effect like the behaviorist’s Systematic Desensitization is the objective of the activity and not the emotions of the patient. The exercise reduces the fear and avoidance of the patient towards the unpleasant experience hence; the patient is becomes less frightened of the said experience. The patient expresses his or her sentiments and thoughts towards the imagined person seated on the chair, as if the person is actually in the room. The patient talks how he or she would really talk to the person in reality; this

In “Mortal Questions," Thomas Nagel attempts to show that some human experiences are completely beyond understanding. Nagel attempts to justify that even though your life has ends, the choices one makes will not influence the end result. Nagel first clarifies his position by defining a few terms. Agent, as Nagel describes it, is defined as being in control of one’s life. Nagel states that end results are influenced by a combination of factors and that it is not in the agent’s control. In this paper, I will describe Nagels reasoning for believing that one cannot control their ends and fates. Fate is the event beyond a person’s control. Then, I will provide two reasons to object that the idea that one’s actions do not influence the end results is false.

Denial is how we pay attention to everything today; we are constantly making unconscious choice about what to notice, and not to notice. It means when something happened and the person lies to cover up or used to escape from the truth, According to the book, Denial is the unconscious calculus that if an unpleasant reality were true, it would be too terrible, so therefore it cannot be true. Denial today is all around us, if we ignore the obvious at a certain moment because we simply don’t want to confront it, it might lead to more problems. The longer we ignore it the more serious it

In Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto it is split up into three different stories: “Night and Night’s Travelers”, “Love Songs”, and Asleep”. All three of these stories are centered around sleep, dreams, death, and two women sharing love for the same single man. This plays a big part in how these women approach everyday life. The theme of death is consistently being persuaded in all three of these stories, but it shows how the characters deal with the loss differently.

The novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a journalistic account of a historical murder, is written by author Gabriel García Márquez. Continually through his career “Garcia Marquez employs journalistic writing techniques in his fiction, and particularly in Chronicle of a Death Foretold in order to produce a seemingly more authentic and credible work”( Gardener 3-4). This particular novel reads as if it is fictional. However, readers are interested to know that the account is based on a factual event. It is based on an event involving some of the authors closest friends thirty years before the novel’s date of publication. It is believed to be “A perfect integration of literature and journalism”(Gardener 1). Marquez tells readers he uses