Response to Shiyun

"Does our image really matter that much in our lives? I think that we are too focused in our appearances rather than our who we really are. I started to realize that most of us care about being liked by others around us or wants to be praised for their looks."

I got this from Shiyun's post.
     I've written a few blogs about image and it's affects on society. From a society standpoint, beauty is a way to advertise. The beauty industry itself is huge simply because of the drive to become pretty and beautiful. From a society point of view, the craving for image and for perfection in looks helps the economy.
     From a social standpoint, perfection in image is very needed. If you aren't beautiful or pretty, you are isolated, automatically labelled as "unpopular" or "uncool". What is this?? It's understandable that if someone wants to become more pretty, it's their own choice, but when people don't want to change themselves, it's their choice to accept themselves for who they are. You don't have the right to look down on someone who accepts themselves instead for spending all their time trying to look better. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean any offense to anyone who does pay attention to what they wear and those who put on make up or dyes their hair. The people I am criticizing are those who look down on others who don't care as much about the way the look or about their outer appearance because they are comfortable with who they are already.
     This brings a totally different and separate topic onto this: judging. But I'll do another post on that some other time. Back to image, I realized that judging people about their looks is completely wrong.

Ender's Game Blogpost #3

     In today's last discussion about Ender's Game with my group, we talked about many things, but the one thing that caught my attention most was about how the Bugger's offered Ender a form of redemption.  When Ender goes to Eros and explores, he sees the Fantasy Game he played in Battle School turned into a real landscape. Eros is a planet where the buggers used to live and is now being inhibited by humans. The buggers built this Fantasy Game landscape to prove to Ender that they knew him and that they know him better than anyone.
     A question was how did the buggers know about Ender? Ender answers this question by saying that through his dreams and the computer system he used, the buggers grew to know Ender's mind and what his motives were. The buggers realized that even though Ender had killed their whole species, he did not do it on purpose. In fact, he was tricked into doing it. Building this for Ender proves that they were not ignorant to the things that he had been forced to do.
     After Ender defeated the buggers, he didn't want to face anyone again because he was ashamed of what he did even though it wasn't his fault. He felt like because it was him killing anything, it was automatically his fault it had happened. When the buggers built the place for Ender, Ender went to explore it. When he reached the End of the World, he normally just dies or the game continues and continues with no where else to really progress, but on Eros, when Ender reached the End of the World, he finds something else. At the End of the World, Ender always see a mirror where he sees either Valentine or Peter and then he opens the mirror and finds a snake that is there to kill him or at one point, become Valentine. In Eros, when he opened the mirror, he found a new beginning for himself and for the buggers. He found a form of redemption and forgiveness for himself that the buggers offered. Behind the mirror was the queen bugger egg. To start a new life for buggers, Ender has to take care of the egg and keep it safe. After killing their whole species and absolutely regretting every bit of it, Ender finds a way to redeem himself fully by helping the queen start bugger life again.
     Redemption is always given when someone makes a mistake. There isn't a mistake made that is completely unforgivable. No matter how people look at it, there are ways to redeem yourself when you make a horrible mistake. This is whether or not you prove to yourself and the other person that you are not this person who continuously makes mistakes. Ender finds redemption within himself and for the buggers.

Ender's Game Blogpost #2

     In this week's discussion with my reading group, we talked about how the process of Graff's decision to make Ender progress so quickly, how it has caused Ender to lose all his friends, how a new launchie named Bean has much more confidence than Ender, how there will always be competition in the real world no matter what, and how Battle School is like school in the US.
     I think that there is one main idea that is very important that we talked about and it is the combination of Ender losing his friends because of being too smart, and the competition in the world. Ender loses his friends because of how smart and how talented he is. Because Ender is considered with such high respect by everyone, people who used to be his friends don't think that they have the place or the caliber to be Ender's friend. They also think that he may be too dignified to have friends like him. Ender's consequence of being such an excelled student is that he cannot have friends. It isn't that he is incapable of having them, but it's a combination of people unsure of being his companion and his own awkwardness and his lacking of knowledge of how to created friends.
     Ender's situation is similar to those that people experience in the real world. In the world we live in, everyone has a goal they want to reach, whether it is winning a game or getting the best grade. Those who are the best, who are above anyone else in acquiring this goal, will be hated, respected, envied, and avoided. Because of this isolation, even if they wanted to make friends, they would become socially awkward and wouldn't have the ability to communicate or incorporate themselves into conversations like Ender couldn't.
     These were the two main things I wanted to add to the conversation we had, but wasn't able to because of time issues.

Response Post

" I personally do not like the idea of forgiving people because once someone messes up, they will do it again and again so to forgive them would be like stabbing your own body twice in the back. I hate how people say those who do not forgive are cold hearted because we are not. It is called being wise"

     I got this from Rokhsor's post about whether people who make mistakes should be forgiven. My views are completely different from Rokhsor's. If someone makes a mistake and realizes that what they did was wrong, then they should be forgiven because they are sorry for what they did and realize that they had done something wrong. 
     Last year, there were many things that people had done to others. This year, everyone forgave each other to a degree that allowed friendship. If everyone had stayed hating each other and held grudges because of mistakes that only caused drama, then everyone would be divided. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, whether it is talking smack or telling someone's secret or anything else. If you never forgave anyone, who will you have in the end? Even the truest friends make the mistake of hurting you in a way, but they would realize their mistakes and would try their hardest to make it right if you gave them the chance to. 
     Its impossible to forever be angry at everyone and everything because they made a mistake. If so, you would never even be able to forgive yourself for the things that you have done to others. Maybe it was unintentional or maybe it was with the complete intent of harming that person, but whatever you did, you forgave yourself, so you can't you forgive someone else who made the same mistake as you?

Ender's Game Blogpost #1

     In my group's first socratic seminar we talked a lot about Peter's , Ender's brother, affect on Ender throughout the book. An idea that came up was the Ender was afraid of being like Peter and is afraid of Peter because Peter is the only real evil Ender has ever been exposed to. When Ender is asked if he wants to go to Battle School by Graff, the man who tries to recruit Ender, Ender thinks of everyone he has to leave, but doesn't mention that he is leaving because he wants to get away from Peter. It shows us that although Peter is such a prominent figure in Ender's childhood, Ender tries to never think of Peter.
     Another thing we talked about was what Dink Meeker had said. Dink is a toonleader in the Rat Army.  Dink talks about how no matter what happens in Battle School and no matter how many fights they win in the  competitions, all the teachers are doing is making each army build hate for each other and nothing real is coming out of this hate. Dink talks about how the fat that the buggers are still attacking Earth is not actually real because the first and second invasions were so long ago. He even talks about why these people are keeping it away from the people on Earth and it's because if people start to know about this fraud, the people will lose control of the government and will end up not having as many resources and other things.
     Although our group didn't talk much about this, I think this is significant in Ender's growth. Ender doesn't realize that everyone around him are kids, but are acting like adults. He doesn't realize that Battle School and the government are changing him and other kids to be much more mature and much more developed than even an adult can be. Ender doesn't believe what Dink says that the third invasion may not be real even though there is a lot of logic behind what he had  said. This proves that even though Battle School can change the maturity of a child, it can never change the personality of one or the belief system that a child will always have, something like naivety.

Response to Christy's post

"My parents always tells me that I am fat, It brought me down so much that it lowered my self esteem. I would cry myself to sleep knowing that I will never be beautiful compared to other girls. It affected me so much that I would starve for the rest of the day and only have something to drink."

     I got this from Christy's post What is the Definition of Beautiful.  Although the subject that Christy is discussing is incredibly important, I can't bring myself to ignore this section of her post. When I write this post, in no way am I trying to offend anyone.
     How would you react to a parent or even someone who you consider your friend to say this to you? I would feel put down, a lot like how Christy says she feels. I would feel so hurt and would completely break down, trying everything i can to become the perfect person, so that this person I care about will accept me and compliment me instead of sending these verbal attacks towards me. What kind of parent does this? Parents should be supportive and caring and be that person that a child can turn to when they have no one else to go to for help. What kind of parent are they when they are the ones who make their children feel so bad about themselves? Who can these children turn to for support when they look towards their parents for it?
     Again, I mean no offense to anyone who disagrees with my views or my comments, but look any person who is someone that people turn to for help should be there for those people and should be the ones who support and raise the self esteem of their friends or family, not the opposite of that.