All posts by Cristina

History

History as a AOK

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History is a way of knowing that studies the documented past. It also raises questions to understand, for example, whether it is possible to speak in a serious way about an historical fact based on something that has happened and what that fact might consist of, or to what extent we can speak truthfully of anything that has happened in the past. Studying history also deepens our way of understanding human behavior, since everything reflected on the past can help us to understand our present.

History is important. If you don’t know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.
— Howard Zinn

History raises many questions, this ones inform us and help us to cope with the present with less possibility of falling into error than in the past, since thanks to history we have the answer to most things. Historical documents that have been collected over time also play an important role in history, leading to questions based on whether or not such information could be considered reliable.

“History is for human self-knowledge… the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”
― R.G. Collingwood

It is true that historical writing could be subjective, since historians are influenced by the social and historical environment in which they write, and this inevitably affects their selection and interpretation of evidence, but that is inevitable, we are all in a way influenced by society and the times we live in. History teach us many things which, if they were not documented under history, would hinder us in the present, because everything learned from the past through history can help us better understand the world and the human beings. So History must be known as an AOK.

 

Language & Storytelling

Storytelling

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I feel that narrating and telling stories should be seen as a way of knowing.By examining the different articles, I discovered that the stories we tell and all they show us are a big part of what we know. Storytelling has earned its place as the most important tradition humans possess. The most important reason for this being that every story contains a lesson to instruct the audience. Stories teach us to love, to forgive others, to be just and to strive for better than we have.

Narrating is a way in which we can analyze data and various life problems and pass them from generation to generation. Whether you like these anecdotes or not are the basis of many of our foundations, books or even part of our story, because most of them, not everything, of what we know, believe, and the reason why we do some things is based on our own experiences or others experiences.

Listening to these stories that are transmitted to us is one of the ways in which we currently know the things we know. Since these stories help us to perceive details of life that one has not been able to see and another has, and many of those stories teach us great lessons. From reading the narrative articles carefully, my perspective is that narrating is a solid and meaningful WOK. We have been telling stories and broadcasting for many years and it is an approach to transmit data and details that may be useful to someone this time or perhaps in the future.

There are stories of all kinds, difficulties teach us different things on different perspectives on life, adapted to educate in a certain way from the smallest to the most adult.

“ Thought flows in terms of stories – stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best story tellers. We learn in the form of stories.”

—Frank Smith, Canadian psycholinguist

It is also true that many stories do not resemble reality as they should and speak in a way of how they want the world to be rather than what it really is. “It does not describe the world as it is but as it should be.” But no matter if there are real or not, every story has it meaning, showing us different points of view, good and bad things, and thanks to the narration we know things that if in the past none of them would have written maybe at present we would not know anything about it.

But if I am sure of one thing, it is that the literature, as well as the history in general, are about stories, real stories, studied and specific but stories in short. What we read is about the story of something or someone that someone once wrote. We just have to analyze the word narration which means: the act of telling a story or the conveying of events in words, and images, often by improvisation or embellishment, now let’s analyze the word history: the study of past events, particularly in human affairs or the whole series of past events connected with a particular person or thing. For this reason, narrating is important, capturing, analyzing and writing, because that is what our history and our footprint in this world are made of. All we now know about the Middle Ages was because someone left their mark and one of the many ways to make a mark in this world is to write it or tell it to someone so that it lasts in history. Many of these stories remain legends or rumors, but many others remain and become the foundations of many beliefs.

Hence, storytelling should be known as a WOK because it is absolutely a way of knowing and the fundaments of what we believe in. Most of the things we know nowadays are based in narrations of people showing their perspective on something, then after years they trust that information and nowadays, we just read them in our class books. Storytelling is a fundamental human experience that unites people and drives stronger, deeper connections. From the earliest recorded history, storytelling was a method used by cavemen to communicate, educate, share, and connect. So as it helps to go deeper and know different things into different perspectives we could say that narration should be known as a WOK

“Stories … protect us from chaos, and maybe that’s what we, unblinkered at the end of the 20th century, find ourselves craving. Implicit in the extraordinary revival of storytelling is the possibility that we need stories — that they are a fundamental unit of knowledge, the foundation of memory, essential to the way we make sense of our lives: the beginning, middle and end of our personal and collective trajectories. It is possible that narrative is as important to writing as the human body is to representational painting. We have returned to narrative-in many fields of knowledge-because it is impossible to live without them.”

— Bill Buford

Economics, Human Sciences

HUMAN SCIENCES

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ECONOMICS.

As Carl Jung said, “We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself.” That applies to all human sciences, but I’m going to talk about economics. In this science specifically, since it involves money and human beings, most people employ any type of strategy to obtain the greatest benefit even at the expense of others. Therefore, the veracity of the data is never known, since being a human science it may be driven by corruption or various deceits.

So when it comes to economics, people are forced to inform themselves from sources with very high truthfulness. It stands to reason, when it comes to money and the well-being of their own, people forget all the ethical codes and focus exclusively on their own benefit.

Also when it comes to economics, it is not as easy as it seems to discover if someone takes advantage of the wealth or if there is a manipulation and in this science, being so extensive, it is very difficult to show the credibility of the data. It is true that every economist must gather foundations on which to support his data and conclusions in case he is ever accused of fraud or providing false information, so as not to lose his credibility.

From my point of view, the economy is scientific since it studies the way to manage the available resources to satisfy human needs. In addition, it also studies the behavior and actions of human beings.Therefore it is not only necessary to study the concepts and the economy itself, it is also necessary to study those who run our economy. Since you never know when we are facing a fraud or corruption case.

 

Emotion

– Emotions –

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An Emotion is just another way of knowing as language, reason and perception. Also emotions are known as all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgements, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure. Such are anger, pity, fear and the like, with their opposites. Moreover most people think that emotions are bad because they make you do things by impulse and without reason.

So is the solution to ignore our feeling or emotions? In the modern society this is one huge problem, we try to avoid them, just to keep going and to don’t show people how are we doing. But that’s the worst we could do, beacuse then lots of problems appear like depression or anxiety  “Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.” (Oscar Wilde)  Also, we mustsn’t avoid our emotions but we cannot leave the emotions, control us. For example before reacting in bad way with someone you must know exactly what happened and that’s because “Anyone can be angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not easy.” Aristotle.

“Emotions as an obstacle to knowlege” , was really interesting topic to me, because I’m a really impulsive person, I do what I think and so on. They had always told me the positive things aboput acting that way, but I have never though too much about the negative ones. Being impulsive makes you comitt lots of mistakes as it could be, been angry with someone without let him explain you what happened.

Also about intuition I have discovered that they are not as good as we though, we must use our instict but we have to know that we could be wrong, because not always what we think or belive in, is the best option.

Hence, emotions are good, but we must control them instead of let them control us. Gaining control over your emotions will help you become mentally stronger.

Ethics

– Moral Values –

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I think that moral values still exist in the world, but it depends on the religion, culture or own thoughts. They also depends on your own beliefs because we are used to use them if they are convenient for us. For example in the past there was a moral value where all woman’s had to take care of the house and the men could work and do whatever they wanted to do. The moral values will always exist but there will always change because of the evolution. In conclusion nowadays no one cares about anything, just about themselves.

Moreover, personally I think that moral phrases have no truth values. Nothing in the physical universe tells us what makes an action a good action or a specific desirable brain state. So if something seems to as right or wrong is not because of the moral facts is just because most people think the same, that’s happen with murder, most people think that is not good murdering but that’s because human are created to think in a similar way, we have the same feelings and we react this way with this type of topics such as murder, I think this is more related with education than fact values.

Hence, the way you are educated, will be your values. Each person has there own values, but sometimes they are just similar for everyone or most people like it happen with murder. Is just a way of thinking.