Globalization- Taking No Prisoners

After reading Russ Rymer's call for attention of these disappearing languages in his piece "Vanishing Voices", I was left in a little bit of a inner conflict on whether I support his cause or not. Yes, all of these tragic stories of cultural uniqueness through languages dying is a depressing situation that deserves some sympathy, but I do not think it is all terribly bad. These languages are losing its speakers due to globalization, which is basically the movement towards a common culture or way of life that is shared throughout everyone on earth. Between television, the internet, and many other technological advances, globalization is a very fast paced movement and the seemingly irreversible movement is making people like Russ Rymer and the speakers of endangered languages worried. However, is this something to worry about? I believe it is not. If all of these people learn the more dominant langages in the world, I believe their chances toward a better more developed life rises drastically. The more developed societies can influence these people who live in desolate parts of the world to improve their way of life. Whether it be diet, medicine, judicial, or cultural improvements, globalization can only better the life of the people it affects. If these isolated people were to learn the more commonly spoken languages, they could adopt the other benefits of the culture that speaks this common language. In addition, they do not even really have to let go of their sacred language, but it will be hard to control not losing it once the children of the group learns the more dominant languages. Globalization is a powerful movement and whether many of these small language groups like it or not, globalization will get to them. It is up to these small groups whether the peacefully accept it and just try extra hard to keep their future generations educated on their sacred languages or try to fight globalization and eventually lose because, in the end, the fate of a language lies in the hands of the children born in the language. The children have the fate of language in their hands and it is only a matter of time until globalization reaches them too.

Where are the new stories?

After reading the book, Miss Peregrine's House for Peculiar Children, all I could think about was how I have heard this type of story before. After wondering about where I heard this story, I noticed that it seriously resembles the X-men storyline. They both include an outside mutant man that is introduced to many more mutants like him after years of struggling with the feeling of lonliness. Jacob and Wolverine both are shocked when introduced to the other mutants and both choose to live with the mutants instead of the outside world. The place where the mutants reside are both in desolate places, the X-men live in a big mansion in the middle of the woods and Miss Peregrine's house is in a time loop in a random European area. In both stories, the mutants are frowned upon and are labeled unwelcoming freaks that should be destroyed. The stories both include a group of people that want to annhilate their existence and it is up to the main character, Jacob and Wolverine, to save the mutant population. The amount of similarities are endless so I am not going to point every one out but it kind of worries me. Are we running out of ideas or stories for mass media? Books and movies have been around for the longest time and after all of these stories and adventures have been written, I think that the hardest job these days is for a writer to come up with a totally original plot. It is not like Ransom Riggs planned on having a story similar to X-men but it still happens. I feel that the amount of original ideas are shrinking and reptition amongst movies and books are becoming more and more noticeable. I do not know if I am necessarily worried that we are running out of new ideas or excited for the coming of the next big, new idea. Nonetheless, originality is more and more rare to find and awaiting the coming of a new genre is making me anxious.

First Blog Experience

I am going to be honest, when I first heard about the fact that this class would require us to blog and find a blog and do whatever else with blogs I was not happy. I am a very anti-blog person because my mother, would always tell me “Don’t care about what other people are saying unless it directly affects you.” So what I got out of that was don’t really care about other people’s opinion if it is on unimportant topics and I did not think my personal viewpoint of blogs would change after this assignment.

After reading Sullivan’s essay and reading this sports blog, however, I had a whole new world open up to me. The seemingly endless knowledge that came out of this site about baseball players, football scores, and any other big sports occurrence was quite eye opening. I learned a lot of new facts about my favorite football team, the New York Giants, and I read some comments from followers that really got me into the idea that blogging was a great way to learn about the world’s view on a topic. As I kept looking at this blog, sbnation.com, I found that there were some sports that I thought nobody even truly cared about. I did not know that people would be commenting on blogs about minor league baseball and/or mixed martial arts fights.

            This website was a gateway to over 300 different blogs made up by writers, sports fanatics, and everyday people. All I had to do was click on one of the 322 links and I could be receiving updates and opposing viewpoints on any sports event. Whether it was a trade between baseball teams, final putt in a golf match, or the reigning world MMA champion being challenged to a cage match, I could find it and read what people think about it. Yes, some of the comments were ignorant and mundane but overall I was intrigued and wanting to know more.