The hardest part of writing can be summarized within the first 30 minutes. Within that half hour is the most excruciating thought process when you're drawing blanks and aimlessly searching for a silver lining, an idea – even if it's absolute garbage. I wasn't exactly a writer, to begin with, so the monotonic undertaking to every [...]
The Vietnam War, Ken Burns Documentary (Resolve – Ep. 4, January 1966 – June 1967) Moogie, patriotic and believed in "individual freedom” "We tend to fight the next war in the same way we fought the last one. We are prisoners of our experience." – Sam Wilson (1:48:12) "Very, very difficult to dispel ignorance if [...]
When I look back to the Vietnam war, I can see that within less than half a century, the values that are rooted in the very fabric of American society have become threadbare. In order to further elaborate my argument, I examined three core aspects that have drastically changed over the past forty odd years: 1) [...]
It comes as no surprise that winter quarter flew by considering how four books, 400 pages of reading, and 20 odd lectures were all crammed into a mere ten weeks. I can't say I miss those days of downing 5-hour energy drinks and coffee, heart palpitations, and a 4-hour sleep schedule. But one thing I [...]
In the final act of The Tempest, Prospero renounces his magic by casting his books – a figurative representation of his power through language – into the water. By this point, Prospero's character had evolved so much that he no longer needs dominion over a number of subjects, but for static characters like that of Caliban, [...]
It’s interesting how Europeans claim to be god-fearing yet at the very first opportunity they will place themselves on the very pedestal they swore to never breach. I suppose it’s all derived from their superiority complex. In the previous quarter, Professor Lazo mentioned that the Spaniards were coined as Latins – more specifically Latinos and [...]
I guess old habits die hard because the first day of class I sat at the very front row, in the very first seat munching on a bag of chips – naturally, I was stress eating. I mean it was the first day of class. Humanities has always been a topic of interest for me, [...]
It’s pretty obvious America is going to turn into a shithole. It’s already en route. The most ironic part is that America is not an ignorant country nor a totalitarian state. The reason being is the influx of information in which Americans lack the motivation to filter through these sources but would rather rely on [...]
One of the most notable references in Steintrager’s Tuesday lecture was the idea that “ruination and its inevitability can be projected onto anything”. In the painting above, Hubert Robert’s infamous View of the Grande Galerie of Louvre (1796) is an oil on canvas capriccio depicting the Galerie of Louvre in absolute ruins. The functional and [...]
Outlining the Pitfalls of Empires There is a long-standing charm to empire ruins – the beauty and elegance of a once-prestigious and advanced infrastructure of society. But such charm lies beyond the reminder of something that once was; rather, the question always posed is ‘what happened’? To begin dismantling a civilization as great as the [...]
the reason behind the crumbling of a civilization 