jlovett@friendscentral.org

The renaissance overview

 

The first thing we talked about was humanism and liked the apparent change between the depressing belief that humans are bad and that life sucks because people want things which are from Buddhism. Humans are horrible and need strict laws to protect themselves from their own stupidity from legalism. I liked the sense that humans should be celebrated and their life should be lived to its fullest. People should not stick to one thing they are good at but they should be empowered to do a whole range of things. I don;t really like the snobbish arrogance from leon Alberti because he felt that he was the absolute best person since he had special powers that made him find who was good and who was evil, but i think that we should be humble and know that you can not be the best in everything but be the best that we are. To be honest I truly believe that I am the absolute greatest person in the entire world. Any of my shortcomings are all because I was too bored with the subject matter. I hated baseball aws a young kid even though I was able to hit the ball from one side of the Earth to the other and it would land only a foot away from me but even though I was able to out pace and man or even cheetah for that matter. Back to the topic I already talked about the papacy in my 13th blog but to summarize back then the papacy was horrible and was so corrupt but it was funny because the thing that can deny the pope was the council and the only way a council could be held is if the pope called it. The Renaissance was a great period but it is kind of stuck up and rude to say that before the Renaissance it was the dark ages even though China was in it’s golden ages where art and literature were at a high and the printing press was made which further helped spread ideas. We also learned about the Harlem renaissance and even made a monument of one of the people that we researched about. I made a monument to the father of African American art, Aaron douglas whose art has  an amazing array of color and meaning. I would have loved to make a 3d design of where I would make a man stand on a hill and hold fire but the fire would be half circles and each circle would have a different color to look like actual fire.

 

The papacy and the rest of what we learned. These past few lessons we talked about the papacy and the corruption of the church and it was fun to go back and learn more about the papacy. I knew that the papacy was corrupted by the pope selling indulgences but I never knew how far it went. I learned that the pope could have been the reason why one of the medici brother’s was killed. I now know that the pope could just rule without any opposition since the only time the pope can be overruled is only if there is a council and the only one who can call a council is the pope which is really hilarious. It is also funny that the pope had his own army to fight for him even though an omniscient being who is able to do all is supposed to be helping him. It is kind of like Constantine if something like an all powerful being is on your side then do you really need an army?  I like the Medici murder mystery because it was a long winding case trying to figure out who was the killer, but I knew who the killer was. It would have to have been the pope telling the duke to kill both the brothers. The Duke alibi was good since he wasn’t even in Florence but that was just a cover up for one of his grunts to do all the work. I bet that the Pazzi’s also had a part in this conspiracy because the Medici’s and the Pazzi’s were one of the most powerful families in all of Florence so it would be a good thing if the rival family lost some of their offspring in a mysterious way. It was a smart Idea to have the killing be on the day where everyone had to be in the same place which was the church on Easter sunday. I do not know why the job wasn’t finished. Like if you are trying to kill the most powerful people in all of FLorence i think you would have someone chase after the last Medici and finish the job. But it is still funny that the pope could have excommunicated the Medici’s from the beginning and this would have not happened. The Pope should have said that the Medici did not support the church when the church needed the funds the most. The pope could have conjured up a story of why the Medici are against the church just like how the pope went against Martin Luther saying that they are heretics and anyone on the Medici side is a heretic as well so that he could have a reason to excommunicate them and outcast them from society.

The Athens and Melos negotiation went horrible and I think that if all Melosian leaders could have talked together on stage then Melos would have come out of the deal better. The ten years thing was just a bunch of crap we kept on telling Athens that it would do nothing but I’m sorry to be mean but I don’t think they were listening they said that it would have given Melos the advantages of being in the Delian league but truly what would they help us with. Melos would have to give money and we would be scared of the Persians even though Persia would just attack Athens or Sparta since they are one of the most powerful Polis’s and if they took one out they could take the other out. City-states were forced to join the Delian league due to the bigger army that the leader has in this case Athens. How are cities like Melos only making 40 talents going to oppose Athens using the Delian league to fund their army? It was just a way to threaten us and it does not help us it just means Melosian people have to give up their hard-earned money to the Athenians so that their army can threaten more small city-states. The Athenians were afraid of us since Melos talked to Sparta about this whole ordeal but why would Athens in the first place want to attack a neutral state that hasn’t even supported Sparta in the Peloponnesian war? We have not even given support to the Spartans who are the same people as the Melosian’s. The Melosian people have no blood on their hands, no Athenian life has been stolen from the Athenians, but they still fear us. The Athenians are scared that the city of Melos will rise and become a great power but they want to stop us before that even happens. The Athenians have put no forethought into what might happen after the Spartans would see that they have taken over the people of Melos. The Athenians believe that if Melos is not with Athens then they are against Athens but that ideology only brings enemies. I could not stand watching on the outside seeing my acquaintances give up our money so that Athenians aren’t scared of Melosians. Just blasphemy The Athenians are scared and their fear drives them to try and attack a whole city. They use their fear as a way to slaughter a whole people. There was no way that they would stop trying to take from us even if Melos was a part of the Delian league.”The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”  This quote is what many empires and powers think of when they have to deal with a weaker force. Smaller countries usually are weak and have to follow whatever a bigger country tells them to do. This is an injustice to many people around the world third world countries are barely able to maintain their own army while stronger powers enforce theirs upon them. In summation, I think that Athenian leaders kinda are mean and that Melos did not deserve this.

The reason why I like doing blogs. I remember in fifth grade that there was a page of the week where we would have to write a page on what happened in school, life, or a story that we made up. I chose to write stories and in the beginning, I was motivated and had a lot of creativity since I wrote about something so nonsensical as a character named Mr. marshmallow who had a hot dog gun. I truly didn’t know what I was writing but I just wrote and even if my writing was illegible I would still know what I was writing about. I wrote to move the crowd literally if I wrote something like the crowd goes wild then the crowd would respond by going wild or if I said to turn around then the crowd would turn around and it was fun to see the crowd be engaged in the story. The real reason why I liked writing was that I didn’t need the rules of conventional writing but just to put my brain on the page and let the creative juices flow. After a while, it got a lot harder to write since I didn’t know what to write about so I would write that I have nothing and that I had writer’s block and it was all true. Most people say that the best art is fueled mainly by emotion, I say that it comes when you are pushed to your limit but truly I don’t really know what I mean by that since art is all subjective and I kind of don’t see art in paint splatters but to each their own. I like writing about blogs because I am able to get what I learned on a page and see my reaction to it, and It is much easier to remember if I am able to be engaged in the lesson.  I also like writing just to write since it is a way to get something off of your chest. For me, though I think that blogs should be done each week and what I mean is that Blogs should be due every Sunday so that no one will be behind and I know that this idea is controversial since many people have lives outside of class. I know that it is funny to say that since some of my teachers would beg to differ but I digress there should be more importance on having a number of blogs before the due date like dates that tell you how many blogs you should have but it does not need to have the exact amount but just be like one blog away from the number of blogs. I told you in a blog before that I am not so good at long-term projects but this was kind of easy I may have waited till like December to do most of my blogs but I had to also edit and proofread all of the blogs to post them though. Once I did one blog I would keep on going just because it was easy to write about it since I remember learning it.

Athens and Melos trials

 Why I think that we have won of course. After reading the Athens and Melos background I know that I was going to be biased to Melos since I was a general but truly I don’t think that Athens is in the right in this situation. Athens bases their whole case on why they should barricade in Melos which is a small island that was secluded from the rest of Greece. Melos was neutral throughout the whole war but since the Melosian people were of the same ethnicity as the Spartans. They were also politically aligned with Sparta both Melos and Sparta were proud to be oligarchies and this tradition began 700 years before. In the terms of deescalating the conflict, I believe that both sides were going tit for tat each wanting something from the other and if the request was too much for the other side then they would get a little stubborn and not budge from their statement. In these classes, we negotiated Athens’s power to keep their ships and men on the shore of Melos for the messenger to go on an Athenian boat that would know what the messenger was doing with the Spartans. I believe that we truly won on this negotiation because the Melosian people would be safe knowing that soldiers were on their beaches waiting to act while Athens is safe knowing what the messenger is doing at Sparta.  The main reason why Athens wants the messenger to go on an Athenian boat is that the Athenians are scared that Sparta would have to step in and protect Melos but I do not think that Sparta would sacrifice their peace with Athens just to protect Melos even though that Melos and Sparta are on good terms. In the whole negotiation, I say that conflict arose with Athens being scared and fearing that Melos would rise and fight against Athens. To summarise Athens was scared that Melos would rise against Athens and they wanted to invade and make Melos join the Delian league so that Athens wouldn’t have to worry. In the de-escalating conflict lesson, there was a chart showing the main reasons why a conflict arises the main reasons why Athens vs Melos happened were belief and emotion. Athens believed that Melos was going to become a bigger city-state which they fear that they would oppose Athens. Athens already did not align with Melos since Athens was a democracy and Melos was an Oligarchy Melosians were descendants of the Dorians which were the same ethnic group as Sparta.

To me, I believe that the Delian league was not an alliance but an unfair bully taking from you so that you don’t get threatened by them. This same thing happened with Melos Athens was forcing us to join so that we would give them tribute and change our whole heritage which was horrible. In the end, I like the Melos and Athens negotiating trial.

Socrates

While reading the text on Socrates I felt like Socrates was a man that was not appreciated for what he for what he did. He influenced many philosophers and was a man ahead of his time. Back then he was seen as a nuisance and most of all annoying. Even though Socrates was a very intellectual man who has influenced how people see the world today he still had some of his oddities. The truly weird thing that he did was that he would walk around questioning people about their beliefs and was so stubborn that people found him annoying. He had many pupils but one of the famous was Plato. It was inevitable that Socrates would have been questioned and put on trial for his weird antics but truly it is sad to think that such an influential person was treated so poorly in his trials. Many of his pupils were at his trial but did not care that their teacher was being unfairly put on trial for corrupting the youth. Socrates had taught many people but some have led insurrections and that is why Socrates was put on trial which is weird since Socrates didn’t tell people to hate and to decent one’s neighbor but he taught his students to question until they come to an understanding. Socrates used a method of asking questions until people were too annoyed to talk to him or they would find their truth through the questioning. What I love about Socrates is that at his trial he was given a chance to be exiled and live or to die and he chose death since if he had chosen to be exiled he would have betrayed and discounted all his teachings since he believes that his teachings are more important than his own life. Fro the beginning of his trial the jury was biased to find him guilty. One of the jurors was a general that had to fight against the insurrectionists which were Socrates pupils. Socrates was characterized as a gadfly since he would pose questions upsetting the status quo. One truly intelligent quote from Socrates is “ The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” It shows the intelligence of Socrates since he knew that people are like sheep and there needs to be someone guiding them but he did not say that he should be the Shepard but that he was a part of the herd who was no better than the person beside him. His pupil Plato has also played an important role in modern-day government and his idea that government should be just and accommodate alternative views.

If I took another option for the J term project I would of chosen the interview since truly it is fun to listen to other people and hear their point of view it is like getting a sense of what goes on in their head. In regards to religion finding the different characteristics of a religion can be essential since before this class I had no idea what Taoists believed but after I align with many ideals of Taoists. Personally not regarding the project I would love to interview many people who throughout the world especially people who have gone through many historical events like people living in Korea when the Korean wars were taking place. I would have interviewed my grandmother since she was a little kid when the civil rights movement was just beginning and I find it important to learn from a primary source who has experienced it. It is the same thing with talking to people when 911 happened because many were just unaware and not ready for what happened. One of my teachers was about to travel to New York the day before it happened but once they saw the destruction on t.v they were just shocked and horrified. Many people have gone through many events like this in their own life but no one has talked to them about which is crazy. For people I would want to interview in history I would of chose

Talking about the J term I thought about why people believe in god but I truly don’t know why people don’t believe in God or some greater force. For me, I believe that God is real since the big bang is almost as crazy as something like a god. To put in perspective the big bang occurred and a whole which created a chain of reactions that would create humans who are able to go to space and make supercomputers that fit in a small pocket so it isn’t so hard to believe that there is something making it all.

The Asia and Europe map quiz was really fun and I like always doing this. Knowing the geography of a topic is very important since it gives you background knowledge like trading trials,  diversity of biomes, religious diversity, and ethnic diversity. In 5th grade, we did map quizzes for when we were looking at different places in time. It is an easy way to learn more about each location we are studying and it is fun to do as well since it is just you doing a memorization game. For me, it is hard to connect a lot of history and the time period but it gets a lot easier looking at maps and timelines. I tried the African map just to see how I would do and I was horrible but with a few attempts I was able to get a 100% I also looked at maps for Religious population and I found a fun fact that country’s south of the Sahara is more Christian it also aligns with places that were colonized by the British and English. Places like Ghana and most of Nigeria are by the coast of Africa which were major places for slave trading. I read that Colonizers would not usually travel up North since it was almost inhabitable because of the vast desert.  The Europe map is pretty fun since many things like geographical characteristics change how a country acts. Portugal is a special example of how these characteristics affect history since Portugal is was a major trading site and had dominated trade between Asia and Europe.

Mr.Mcdonell, I am kinda horrible at planning for projects in the silk road project I didn’t do most of my project until the last week until it was due I remember that I was in 5th grade doing an Egpyt project that was due over a long period of time and I still have the same notebook where I put the due date but I always told myself that I wil do it later but later would never come. When it was the final days before the project I had done about half of my project which was just a few slides that I had to memorize some of the slides. I also had to do a visual representation which I did a model of mastaba made with popsicle sticks and clay that was painted with my sister and me. In the mastaba was a burial shaft and a little sarcophagus. There was another part of the project which was an essay that I haven’t even started but, to keep the story short I finished the project did the essay with an all-nighter the day before. Once i did the project I knew that I didn’t need the model so I did more than what the project asked me to do. The project was fun since I was able

 For the silk road I tried to set a date before the actual due date so that I would have some urgency to finish it but life happens you know most times you want to do something that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things like video games. For me it is more boring to play video games than to do my homework for some reason.  Before this project, I knew a little about the Silk road form 6th grade but after I know a lot more about how different goods were sold and transported. The project also helped me learn about the different places where the artifacts were found; in Saudi Arabia was an early alphabet that was one of the first alphabets made by a thriving comuunity that was built on trading. The silk road project also got me back into doing real school work. Over the Covid shutdown, online school was horrible and I hated almost everything about it. The whole school to me know was like a blur that I am unable to remember what happened at all and it took a toll on my work ethic. My mother tried to move the location of my work space but even then the lack of human interaction is not so fun. People talk about being introverted but truly being shut off from another person than your family is not so fun but back to the project it was very fun and was a fun way to learn.

Buddhist retrospective

 In Buddhism suffering is due to desire and a way to stop suffering is to not want. In the beginning, there was a man called Siddhartha Gautama who was born to King Suddhodana. Suddhodana brought Sidhartha to a sear who told Suddhodana that Siddhartha would become a great leader or a holy man. Knowing that he didn’t want his son to be a religious monk secluded from the world Suddhodana made Siddhartha’s life contempt with everything a man would desire. Suddhodana made Siddhartha not know of all the suffering in the world. Siddhartha was given everything he wanted but even still he wandered what was outside of the walls of his palace. There were men that were told to clear the roads of the old, diseased, and the dead but one-day this order was neglected. Once Siddhartha went out on the road he one old man haggard, with broken teeth, shaking as he leaned on his walking cane. On another day Siddhartha found a man who has been attacked by disease laying out on the road. On the third day, Siddhartha saw a stiff corpse on the road. On the fourth day, Siddhartha saw a bald monk, with an ocher robe, with a bowl. That monk taught Siddhartha a way that renounces the world. After this Siddhartha found no pleasure in the fleshy pleasures. Siddhartha is no longer attached to his desires and seeks the truth, and so he left his wife Yaśodharā, son, and his palace behind. He then shaved his head to train with Hindu masters. He then outdid his masters and then he renounced mortality and he devoted his life to thought and concentration. He sat under a bodhi tree promising not to wake until he has attained enlightenment. On the first night of his concentration Mara, the Evil tempted him with women then with flaming rocks which turned into blossom petals. After Mara left Siddhartha’s enlightenment had occurred. Siddhartha then was replaced with buddha. Buddha means enlightened one. After buddha awakened he professed his four noble truths in a deer park at Sarnath. The first truth is dukkha which translates to suffering. This truth states that life is suffering. The second noble truth is that dukkha is Tanha which means that suffering is desire. The third noble truth is that the cure for suffering is to lack desire. The fourth noble truth is the eightfold path is right intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration.

To me, the third noble truth is true and that if you expect little then you are less disheartened than if you expect more then you are worse off than if you didn’t expect at all. I don’t think that life is all suffering you can enjoy many things. In life, if you have a problem that seems that is going to destroy your life it usually goes away and blows over with time. Buddhism is more cynical and finds the bad in many things but sees a way out of all the pain and that is to leave all desire which to me seems extremely hard.