blog 5

In the essay “The Man on the Moon” George J. Annas writes that “The new ideal human, the genetically engineered ‘superior’ human, will almost certainly come to represent ‘the other.’ If history is a guide, either the normal humans will view the ‘better’ humans as the other and seek to control or destroy them, or vice versa” (236). This Annas’ argument seems to be true. People have a tendency of thinking that they are better than anything else. That is kind of human beings’ instinct. when people recognize the others who they think are inferior than them, they attempt to destroy and regulate them by justify their behaviors.We can see many examples throughout our past histories.

Annas shows a conqueror, Pizarro who was the army of Spain. He conquered the Incas in Peru. The purpose of his conquest was to change the beliefs of the native people who used to live in the Incas. Since his belief was that God is the only one we have to trust and have a faith for him, people in Incas was “the other” who was non-believer, and antagonist. By plundering Incas’ land, he wanted to change their thoughts and religion that they believed. Furthermore, he even commits an act of brutality by killing people.  Basically he tried to destroy people who he think were inferior. He wanted to control them by justifying their standardized ideas are absolutely right.

People’s tendency of destroying “the others” can clearly be seen not only Annas’ essay, but also the movie “Gattaca” which covers the future story about genetically engineered people. In the same way as the historical experience, there are a group of genetically engineered people who think they are superior, and there also exist people who were born naturally without any of genetic manipulation. In the movie, the director predicts that future society’ s appearance will be ugly since either people who are superior or inferior try to control “the others” (236). Their appearance exactly reflects our past disastrous history which I mentioned earlier. The movie shows that the superior humans, who have the best genes from their parents, control and limit the naturally born humans. The main character Vincent was the weak, and non-powered human. He always faces limitations made by genetically engineered people. The superior people made the limitations to make sure that they are better human beings by justifying that they have better genes and can do much better than non-genetically engineered people.

This serious problems come from the people’s mind of they are better than the others. Since people think that they are superior, and attempt to control the inferior people, the result will be tragedy like I mentioned.

essay 1

During we live in our life, people always live in an illusion that is either people make, or made by someone else. they believe that the illusion is totally true, but once they experience the outside of their illusion and find out that the real fact, there always are two consequences come with the truth. In the Plato’s excerpt, ”The Allegory Of The Cave,” the result was an utopian world. Even if people felt painful at the first time, they soon will be well-adjusted to a better life that they have never experienced before. However,  In The Matrix, Neo went through a miserable reality and that gave him a suffering result. As I think about two stories, I strongly believe that the consequence of dystopian world is more accurate than the happy and bliss result.

Not only The Matrix has an desperate truth, but also another story Oedipus The King has a similar content that supports The Matrix. Oedipus also had an illusion that he made. That was that he was the great king of Thebes undoubtedly and he deserves to have all of these honorable positions and govern his people and land. He also believed that he got away from his fate by making his free will. He had been living well until he realized that he already lived in his unavoidable fate. As a result of his fate, his reality turned out to be terrible. To avoid his curse of his destination, he tried harder, but he still met the dystopian world(1237). Eventually, he lost everything. Not only he lost material wealth, but he also lost his biological mother, or wife, make himself a blind, he ran away from his land, and he ended up with his life(1805).

Historically, there were people who used to live in an illusion of their world, but end up with a miserable situation. Amazon river is the world’s most gigantic and important river. Near the Amazon river, some groups of people who were named Amazon Indian lived. People did not know the existence of them. They were totally separated from outside of world. They never had any ideas except them. For them, their illusion was that their life and the world is the only one and there were nothing happening outside the world. Their life was happy and normal. As time passes, outside of people noticed that some people were living in the area of Amazon and they revealed Amazon Indians. Some Amazon Indians went to the outside of world, but they were panic about people of outside. Later, Amazon Indians had so much suffering because of the world which was all about pollution, noisy, and poverty problems. The truth was desperate for them. It was better for them not to know the reality.

In my experience, I also can prove the reality is worse. I used to believe that my parents always would support me and live together forever when I was young. However, as I grew up and especially as I live in the America by myself for the first time, I found out that someday, parents and children would have time to be separated and the children would be independent. The more I realized and knew the truth, I suffered by the fact. I even felt fearful about how I was going to earn money and support myself. The result was ugly.

I know that some people disagree with my idea. They may say that the reality could be a bliss. However, I strongly point out that many situations including the past historical experiences, and my own experience mostly turned out to be dystopian world.

blog4

There are some common similarities about knowledge in two stories. In The Matrix, Neo had something unsolved in his life and feel Something was not there where it was supposed to be. He did not have any ideas about the truth. As Neo felt, Oedipus also was curious about something about his identity, and doubted about his past. They both did not have information (knowledge) about what was going on around their lives.  

In terms of ignorance, bliss, and knowledge, Cipher thought that ignoring the truth was happiness in The Matrix. He knew the truth about terribly computerized human life and had a complete knowledge about how things are going, but living in a manipulated life got him stressed and meaningless life, so he could not deal with the situation he face. He finally went to the agent Smith and asked him if he could get him back to the Matrix which would take his memories away and govern his entire minds. Opposite of Cipher, Neo wanted to know things even if the result would be bad. He chose red pill to experience clear and precise world around his life. Even If  the prophet said that Neo was not the one who would save people’s life, Neo decided to fight for the people and turned things back to normal life.

             In Oedipus The King, Oedipus’s wife, Jocasta was the one who thought that ignorance was happiness and bliss. She convinced Oedipus not to try to find out the truth about his past anymore. She said that that moment was happy enough for them and the truth would bring him and herself suffered(1060). On the other hand, Oedipus thought the truth had to be revealed, so he denied her saying, and kept investigating the truth. He had a will about finding out the reality. The result turned out to be tragedy. Oedipus realized all the things clearly and it seems that the predict that the prophet said to the king was proved and Oedipus finally could not break his fate.

In both story, there are two ways to choose for main characters. One is ignoring the truth and living the normal happy life. The other is that finding out what the real situation is and face the negative truth.

blog3

           There are many caves that we do not realize the truth or reality. However, once you find what is real, you will face that either the real is better or worse. Plato’s story represents the better world, and the matrix shows painful world. I strongly believe that the movie, “matrix” is more accurate than the Plato’s allegory of the cave story.

         The movie Matrix shows the bad images of reality. According to the movie, in reality, people are made and even controlled emotionally and physically by Artificial Intelligence (called AI). They cannot think for themselves and cannot experience the taste of food that they are eating. They are not a real human. They are just kind of slaves of computers. From this movie, the dystopian images of real world look like more accurate, because it more resembles people's experience of real truth. Once we escape from the cave, we usually see that the real facts are worse. I want to give some examples why it is true. From what I experience, I used to believe that I live in the fast changing world. When I wake up everyday, I see many things created and developed by high computerized technology or human skills. I thought that those improvements in technology would lead a better life, but it was wrong. It seems like we are in the good environment, but, when I look at my lives, that is totally not true. Because of well-developed communication devices, I do not meet people face to face very much. Instead, I do text messaging, using social networking. A cell phone do everything.  The reality is that I live like unhuman as a result of developed society. I do not have time to talk with my family because of doing facebook or games.  Like my idea about high developed world, the reality is terrible.
           There is other example of how people's painful reality can be found. There is a story about amazon Indians of south America. Amazon Indians were found by people of outside of the world. For outside of people, they were in the cave. Before they were found, they had their own life styles. They had their strict rules which were conserved from their ancestors about marriage, sharing foods and territory. They usually live like an native human. They used to do hunting to get foods, such as catching birds, animals, or fishes for their family. They also had their party several days to enjoy themselves. They never knew about outside of the world. Therefore, they coexisted with the nature. Thet live with the nature and never badly affected to the nature. They just get what they need for a living. However, people in the outside found that there were different people who were living dissimilarly without any contacts with modern people. Once they get exposed to the outside of the world, outside of the people had a curious about tham and wanted to come to the amazon to see how they live. The result of people’s invasion to amazon was incredibly terrible. The amazon Indians got sick because of they were exposed of new bacterias carried by many people who visited them. The reality for the Indians turned out to be sad. Some of people died and some left the amazon to live with people in the outside.

     As the world is becoming more developed, there will be many factors that create a dystopian world.  I know that there are some people argue against me. However, I empasize that like I give some examples of bad realities, the reality of terrible world is more accurate.