“Eating is an Agricultural Act?” The Ethics of Food and Eating
Describe the project and some of the things you learned throughout. We learned about food and how our/others expirnces shape our connection to our food. We looked at food issues and the state of agrigulture from many differnt angles and then developed our own ideas on it. I learned a lot about the agriculutral system we have and both the positives and negatives thag come with it.
How did the interdisciplinary nature of this project impact your learning? How did studying food in both classes impact your learning? I think that if we would have been in school the interdisplianry part would have been more benifcial but the online learning just devided them a little more than what was intended. Although It was very intersting bouncing between the scince and ehtical sides of food it really gave me an intersting perspective.
Paragraph 3:What are your main takeaways from studying food academically? How has your thinking about food changed from before? My maintake ways were just how much I relized I want to be invovled with my food. From looking at the whole process it is just so vast and complex and I seem to find myself in the simplest places in that chain. The though of taking that entire process into my hands its exciting and gave me motivation.
It’s Who We Are
Sean Madden
In America our food system runs like everything else in this country. There are people at the top trying to make and make it as simple and profitable as possible. There is very little regard for quality but it’s cheap to buy and easy to find. We’ve gotten stuck in this loop and now really good food is labeled elite and exclusive. We find it much easier to just get what's advertised to us and treat it like a new phone. Many of us have lost connection to our food which I find incredible because we have detached from something so important we will die without it. It has become about exclusivity and ease. Much of our ancestors' lives were devoted just to food. All they did was hunt and farm and now it’s the last thing on many people's minds. Our ties to food come out in many different ways now. It’s a social media phenomenon it’s a novelty but for many of us it’s just a drive-through.
The thing that astounds me most about our contemporary relationship with food is how important it is and how we treat it. We need a stronger connection to our food because it’s one of the things that defines us. For a long long time we made our food better, healthier, and used it as a tool to distinguish cultures. We make meals that feed our brains as much as we do our bodies and there is something special about that. We figured out cooking our food makes it better for us. We realized we had control over the food that can grow and revolutionized nature. We add things together just because we can and it makes us feel human. Out of all of the human innovations I find this one of the most fascinating. I really feel our food is one of the things that defines us as humans.
I fall into this trap all the time. I want the thing that looks the best even now I know what I’m doing. The appeal of advertising and capitalism hooks me. I also grew up almost every night having a home-cooked meal where we all sat and one table. I appreciate the good food and felt like it was something more. It was more than just another trip to the pantry; it takes effort and the food becomes something more. There is for sure a feeling you get when you go through the effort to make something really good. Through this project one of the things I have gotten out most is my desire to have a deeper connection. I eat a lot of meat and I love it and can’t really ever see that changing but I want to understand it more. I want to hunt and fish and take responsibility for the life of the thing I'm eating. It’s so easy to just see some meat on a plate and not have a second thought of how it got there. I feel like if I can have those experiences it will just make me think about all food. I want to appreciate it more and that seems to be the best way to do that.
Finding your own connection to food is important. It gives us so much joy to have something that feels unique to us and food is an amazing vehicle for that. We all have our own tastes and things we like that are created by the experiences we have with food. Things like hunting, farming, fishing are all such primal instinctual things that give us a connection with the world and to our food. In this world those things aren’t always what we have access to and are now controversial. Farming itself is now something that is destroying our planet but there are many other ways to have a connection and importance to food. Home cooking meals can be a pain but it is so much more fulfilling. We can all find things that we love to make and make the exclusivity of food fade. There are lots of preconceived conceptions about what food should be and that's deterring for people. The great thing about food is how unique it is and the relationship you have towards your food should be just as unique
Food is one of the things that has made this place we live the place that it is. Without food we would be nothing and we have revolutionized, industrialized, and propetized it. It is now just another daily task and a money-making machine. There are a select few that have embraced it for what it is and I admire that. I wish I could independently feed myself and those around me with what we have around us but I also appreciate where it is and the access and creativity that has sprouted from our new agricultural system. Now is a better time than ever to start your journey of connecting to the earth through food. Anything we could ever want is right at our fingertips and is there for the taking. In this new age of human life we cannot forget what got us to where we are. We need to appreciate our accomplishments and respect the thing that has given it to us and that all begins with you are your food.
How did the interdisciplinary nature of this project impact your learning? How did studying food in both classes impact your learning? I think that if we would have been in school the interdisplianry part would have been more benifcial but the online learning just devided them a little more than what was intended. Although It was very intersting bouncing between the scince and ehtical sides of food it really gave me an intersting perspective.
Paragraph 3:What are your main takeaways from studying food academically? How has your thinking about food changed from before? My maintake ways were just how much I relized I want to be invovled with my food. From looking at the whole process it is just so vast and complex and I seem to find myself in the simplest places in that chain. The though of taking that entire process into my hands its exciting and gave me motivation.
It’s Who We Are
Sean Madden
In America our food system runs like everything else in this country. There are people at the top trying to make and make it as simple and profitable as possible. There is very little regard for quality but it’s cheap to buy and easy to find. We’ve gotten stuck in this loop and now really good food is labeled elite and exclusive. We find it much easier to just get what's advertised to us and treat it like a new phone. Many of us have lost connection to our food which I find incredible because we have detached from something so important we will die without it. It has become about exclusivity and ease. Much of our ancestors' lives were devoted just to food. All they did was hunt and farm and now it’s the last thing on many people's minds. Our ties to food come out in many different ways now. It’s a social media phenomenon it’s a novelty but for many of us it’s just a drive-through.
The thing that astounds me most about our contemporary relationship with food is how important it is and how we treat it. We need a stronger connection to our food because it’s one of the things that defines us. For a long long time we made our food better, healthier, and used it as a tool to distinguish cultures. We make meals that feed our brains as much as we do our bodies and there is something special about that. We figured out cooking our food makes it better for us. We realized we had control over the food that can grow and revolutionized nature. We add things together just because we can and it makes us feel human. Out of all of the human innovations I find this one of the most fascinating. I really feel our food is one of the things that defines us as humans.
I fall into this trap all the time. I want the thing that looks the best even now I know what I’m doing. The appeal of advertising and capitalism hooks me. I also grew up almost every night having a home-cooked meal where we all sat and one table. I appreciate the good food and felt like it was something more. It was more than just another trip to the pantry; it takes effort and the food becomes something more. There is for sure a feeling you get when you go through the effort to make something really good. Through this project one of the things I have gotten out most is my desire to have a deeper connection. I eat a lot of meat and I love it and can’t really ever see that changing but I want to understand it more. I want to hunt and fish and take responsibility for the life of the thing I'm eating. It’s so easy to just see some meat on a plate and not have a second thought of how it got there. I feel like if I can have those experiences it will just make me think about all food. I want to appreciate it more and that seems to be the best way to do that.
Finding your own connection to food is important. It gives us so much joy to have something that feels unique to us and food is an amazing vehicle for that. We all have our own tastes and things we like that are created by the experiences we have with food. Things like hunting, farming, fishing are all such primal instinctual things that give us a connection with the world and to our food. In this world those things aren’t always what we have access to and are now controversial. Farming itself is now something that is destroying our planet but there are many other ways to have a connection and importance to food. Home cooking meals can be a pain but it is so much more fulfilling. We can all find things that we love to make and make the exclusivity of food fade. There are lots of preconceived conceptions about what food should be and that's deterring for people. The great thing about food is how unique it is and the relationship you have towards your food should be just as unique
Food is one of the things that has made this place we live the place that it is. Without food we would be nothing and we have revolutionized, industrialized, and propetized it. It is now just another daily task and a money-making machine. There are a select few that have embraced it for what it is and I admire that. I wish I could independently feed myself and those around me with what we have around us but I also appreciate where it is and the access and creativity that has sprouted from our new agricultural system. Now is a better time than ever to start your journey of connecting to the earth through food. Anything we could ever want is right at our fingertips and is there for the taking. In this new age of human life we cannot forget what got us to where we are. We need to appreciate our accomplishments and respect the thing that has given it to us and that all begins with you are your food.
Personal philosophy statement.
For a long time I've known that I am an existentialist. From an early age I realized that we are all just atoms floating around creating this reality for us. Somehow I got lucky and instead of having some existential crisis I embraced it. I realized that everything that we hold true is just our brains trying to make sense of what's going on around us and how freeing it is. Since I figured this out life has become much more clear to me. I have realized there is no point so I can make it whatever I want it to be. What that evolved into was a frustration with the fact that many of the things I despise about our world and society is because from my point of view life is taken too seriously. I believe that we are all just here to live our lives for whatever we want because if there is no purpose for us then we can decide to make one or have none at all. People get so caught up in life and always work towards something instead of just taking it in and making it the best at every moment you can.
In this project one of the things that I found hard to grasp was the idea of eudaimonia because I felt like why would you work for happiness at the end of your life instead of trying to find it any day. I like the idea of looking back on your life and being happy with it but I believe the best way to do that is to live your life the best you can everyday so nothing is wasted. One of my goals in life is completely grasping the idea of just being happy in all moments and being completely content in the moment I'm in just because I'm there. It’s hard to be content when you always feel like you should be doing something else or that there is more.
I hear many people say that we need religion or purpose to form our morals and give society boundaries but I strongly disagree with that. I believe as humans we can understand that the simple things like not killing people and being a kind human are for the most part just innate things. People fear the freedom of existentialism and grasp onto things like religion so they can feel like they are more and that they are being directed. I really want to highlight that you can create beautiful things from a blank slate and that on a bank slate there are no rules. Life to me is blank slate but people try to put rules and direction on it because they are just afraid. In my project I want people to see that there is no reason to be scared.
In this project one of the things that I found hard to grasp was the idea of eudaimonia because I felt like why would you work for happiness at the end of your life instead of trying to find it any day. I like the idea of looking back on your life and being happy with it but I believe the best way to do that is to live your life the best you can everyday so nothing is wasted. One of my goals in life is completely grasping the idea of just being happy in all moments and being completely content in the moment I'm in just because I'm there. It’s hard to be content when you always feel like you should be doing something else or that there is more.
I hear many people say that we need religion or purpose to form our morals and give society boundaries but I strongly disagree with that. I believe as humans we can understand that the simple things like not killing people and being a kind human are for the most part just innate things. People fear the freedom of existentialism and grasp onto things like religion so they can feel like they are more and that they are being directed. I really want to highlight that you can create beautiful things from a blank slate and that on a bank slate there are no rules. Life to me is blank slate but people try to put rules and direction on it because they are just afraid. In my project I want people to see that there is no reason to be scared.
Who is Safe
Who Is Safe?
Sean Madden
"Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support the so-called 'trigger warnings,' we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own." This is a quote from a letter that John Ellinson the Dean of the University of Chicago wrote to the students shortly before the 2016 school year. The statement “Where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own” was intriguing because he is portraying safe spaces as a place of shelter for those who purely want to escape an idea. The people who argue for safe spaces have a completely different vision of them. They want them for the people who have had traumatic experiences and want people protected from things that will hinder their ability to be educated or live happily. Safe spaces themselves are meant to be productive places where people can go to feel safe and live without persecution but has become complicated issue that is now about freedom of expression and personal boundaries.
Safe spaces are a very important issue because in this climate political correctness and social sensitivity can mean the difference between being hailed as a hero or having every bit of respect and credibility stripped from you. Those who oppose safe spaces make their argument about their 1st amendment right of free speech being stripped away. They are afraid their rights are being suspended only for the comfort of a select few. Something I’ve noticed people don’t understand is that free speech doesn’t mean that you are exempt from criticism or repercussions from what they say. The same right that allows you to make an offensive statement or say whatever you so desire is the same right that allows anyone to discredit or argue your points. I think people forget this and are then feel like they don’t deserve to be criticized when they put forth an idea that is attacked.
Our own Fort Lewis College has just had some issues with they’re sexual harassment policies and has been critized by Fire “The foundation for Individual Rights in
Education” a organization created to monitor the 1st amendment right for free speech. They said that the policies are too limiting and restrictive beyond what they deem appropriate. Free speech and safe spaces are almost parallel because where free speech has limits that means that something or someone is being protected and put in a safe space. This is where the lines of safe spaces are really yet to be determined. Once you put up a rule that limits free speech people are bound to be angered by it. One of the big reasons that people are so against safe spaces is because they are involuntarily put in them and have no say in their surroundings. Everyone wants to be comfortable and when limitations are put on people they feel attacked. This is where a lot of the anti safe space argument stems from. People are uncomfortable having limitations being forced on them without their say.
The Buffalo Bills hired Kathryn Smith as the first ever female coach. One of the arguments that intrigued me was the idea of the locker room being a “Chapel to masculinity” as quoted in the article. Really this just means another safe space. I found this so interesting because in the media it seems to be portrayed that only the winey sheltered millennials want safe spaces. It’s interesting to see the pinnacle of macho masculinity be impeded upon and feel attacked by another gender in their sacred space. Will Leitch the founder of the sports blog Deadspin said “There are no wives or girlfriends. There are no agents, or lawyers, or autograph seekers, or hangers-on, or bill collectors … It may be the only place they feel safe to be themselves.” It’s important to look at safe spaces for what they do, not what they are. We all have safe spaces and to make them seem like a forign or new thing is just ignorant.
Safe spaces just like most other political issues started from a disconnect that was bred from a lack of understanding and a desire to demonize rather than understand. People don’t want to look at certain sides of an issue because they don’t want to associate with an idea or a congregation. In my view people don’t want to engage or change their feelings on an issue because they hold something against the other side. From what I have seen there is a large disconnect because the sides don’t work to understand each other. Our culture is so us against them no one wants to negotiate or come to a conclusion. Many people like myself haven’t experienced adversity that much or any effect on our day to day lives. It can be hard to be empathetic to experiences that you haven't experienced yourself. Being a white middle class male in our society gives me an institutionalized privilege. No one is really going to discriminate against me for the color of my skin or where I’m from. Being privileged as I am It can be hard for me to relate to someone who has experienced such things that would make them want to have a safe space but I do my best because I know that we are better when we work to understand. Many people are in the same shoes as me and are not motivated to understand or empathize with someone who has had separate experiences.
There are very valid reasons for someone to want to have a space where they could be prevented from being affected from experiences they have had in the past. People go through very tough things that can trigger things like PTSD. I believe that these people do have challenges like these that can greatly affect education or even daily life have good reason to be assisted. We all want to have a safe and comfortable place to learn because we all know that's when we learn best, but the truth is that isn't always going to happen. There should be a place for people that have been through things that negatively affect their lives. Everyone should be entitled to a safe, happy, and unprosecuted life. This is not always going to happen though and it is important to learn how to deal with adversity before escaping from it. The answer to this dispute lies in a cultural change where we work to understand and empathize rather than demonize and criticize.
Sean Madden
"Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support the so-called 'trigger warnings,' we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own." This is a quote from a letter that John Ellinson the Dean of the University of Chicago wrote to the students shortly before the 2016 school year. The statement “Where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own” was intriguing because he is portraying safe spaces as a place of shelter for those who purely want to escape an idea. The people who argue for safe spaces have a completely different vision of them. They want them for the people who have had traumatic experiences and want people protected from things that will hinder their ability to be educated or live happily. Safe spaces themselves are meant to be productive places where people can go to feel safe and live without persecution but has become complicated issue that is now about freedom of expression and personal boundaries.
Safe spaces are a very important issue because in this climate political correctness and social sensitivity can mean the difference between being hailed as a hero or having every bit of respect and credibility stripped from you. Those who oppose safe spaces make their argument about their 1st amendment right of free speech being stripped away. They are afraid their rights are being suspended only for the comfort of a select few. Something I’ve noticed people don’t understand is that free speech doesn’t mean that you are exempt from criticism or repercussions from what they say. The same right that allows you to make an offensive statement or say whatever you so desire is the same right that allows anyone to discredit or argue your points. I think people forget this and are then feel like they don’t deserve to be criticized when they put forth an idea that is attacked.
Our own Fort Lewis College has just had some issues with they’re sexual harassment policies and has been critized by Fire “The foundation for Individual Rights in
Education” a organization created to monitor the 1st amendment right for free speech. They said that the policies are too limiting and restrictive beyond what they deem appropriate. Free speech and safe spaces are almost parallel because where free speech has limits that means that something or someone is being protected and put in a safe space. This is where the lines of safe spaces are really yet to be determined. Once you put up a rule that limits free speech people are bound to be angered by it. One of the big reasons that people are so against safe spaces is because they are involuntarily put in them and have no say in their surroundings. Everyone wants to be comfortable and when limitations are put on people they feel attacked. This is where a lot of the anti safe space argument stems from. People are uncomfortable having limitations being forced on them without their say.
The Buffalo Bills hired Kathryn Smith as the first ever female coach. One of the arguments that intrigued me was the idea of the locker room being a “Chapel to masculinity” as quoted in the article. Really this just means another safe space. I found this so interesting because in the media it seems to be portrayed that only the winey sheltered millennials want safe spaces. It’s interesting to see the pinnacle of macho masculinity be impeded upon and feel attacked by another gender in their sacred space. Will Leitch the founder of the sports blog Deadspin said “There are no wives or girlfriends. There are no agents, or lawyers, or autograph seekers, or hangers-on, or bill collectors … It may be the only place they feel safe to be themselves.” It’s important to look at safe spaces for what they do, not what they are. We all have safe spaces and to make them seem like a forign or new thing is just ignorant.
Safe spaces just like most other political issues started from a disconnect that was bred from a lack of understanding and a desire to demonize rather than understand. People don’t want to look at certain sides of an issue because they don’t want to associate with an idea or a congregation. In my view people don’t want to engage or change their feelings on an issue because they hold something against the other side. From what I have seen there is a large disconnect because the sides don’t work to understand each other. Our culture is so us against them no one wants to negotiate or come to a conclusion. Many people like myself haven’t experienced adversity that much or any effect on our day to day lives. It can be hard to be empathetic to experiences that you haven't experienced yourself. Being a white middle class male in our society gives me an institutionalized privilege. No one is really going to discriminate against me for the color of my skin or where I’m from. Being privileged as I am It can be hard for me to relate to someone who has experienced such things that would make them want to have a safe space but I do my best because I know that we are better when we work to understand. Many people are in the same shoes as me and are not motivated to understand or empathize with someone who has had separate experiences.
There are very valid reasons for someone to want to have a space where they could be prevented from being affected from experiences they have had in the past. People go through very tough things that can trigger things like PTSD. I believe that these people do have challenges like these that can greatly affect education or even daily life have good reason to be assisted. We all want to have a safe and comfortable place to learn because we all know that's when we learn best, but the truth is that isn't always going to happen. There should be a place for people that have been through things that negatively affect their lives. Everyone should be entitled to a safe, happy, and unprosecuted life. This is not always going to happen though and it is important to learn how to deal with adversity before escaping from it. The answer to this dispute lies in a cultural change where we work to understand and empathize rather than demonize and criticize.
Personal Essay
Safe spaces.
There is a huge controversy over safe spaces place in our society. Some believe that they are a key part of all of our lives and our wellbeing. Others think that they shelter us from what we don’t want to hear. I stand somewhere in the middle. I agree that they can provide some much-needed comfort in our unpredictable world. I also agree that they can be used to shelter ourselves from what we don’t want to hear or see to a fault.
I believe that as a society we have become separated by our ideas. We subscribe to what we want to hear whether that is the news network we watch, the places we go, and the people we surround ourselves with. Our lives are filtered by our habits and removing those filters can be almost unbearable to some. Having an idea presented or seeing something that they don’t like can be jarring. We have become so engrossed in our perceptions of the world any other angle becomes immediately dismissable. I believe that if we want to be truly united, we need to be open to these things that may disturb us. I think that being exposed and open to things that you don’t want makes our ideas stronger because you either disagree and build your argument stronger or you may gain new perspectives. By getting out of our comfort zones we build our character.
In my life, it’s been the adverse experiences that I have learned the most from and that have built my ideals. I understand that my adverse experiences are probably much less intense and scarring than many others and that some things are truly triggering and too much to handle but for many of us simply having someone disagree with us is too much. We find people like us that tell us what we like to hear and make us feel how we want to feel. Everyone has places where they feel safe and everyone needs a place where they feel safe. It’s a necessity to have a place where we can go and not feel persecuted or in danger of being harmed in any way. There are things and people in life that do not want us to gain anything and just want to hurt us. When there are people like that in the world we will always need some sort of safe space. When what we are exposed to is only harming us then we need places to escape. While being put into uncomfortable experiences can give us great lessons we need to have a place to share this knowledge comfortably. Us humans need to have places where we feel supported and safe for us to grow. We need to support each other and learn from each other in these spaces so everyone can feel safe. We have become disconnected and don’t know how to communicate with the other side.
I understand that we need to have these places for people but where exactly should these places be? Is it appropriate to have them on a college campus or in an office? Where is it appropriate for someone to be shielded from what they don’t feel comfortable with. If someone being afraid of something interferes with their peers or the situation that they're in. Just because one person may be offended by something that may provide knowledge to another I feel that may be unfair. A college classroom is a great example. Many intense and controversial topics are discussed there and some people may find that disturbing, but that doesn't mean that just because it’s disturbing it’s any less important than anything else. Should we have certain classes that are guaranteed to be safe spaces? It’s hard to know exactly what to be careful of because you never know what might be triggering to someone.
I am a straight, white, middle class, male. There really isn’t much that can offend me. No one has ever deprecated me for my skin color or my sexual orientation. I have no hardships in my past that have changed me completely and that probably is a big reason for my feelings about safe spaces. It’s hard for me to empathize with someone who needs a safe space because the world is my safe space. I feel comfortable with seeing things that disturb me because I want to learn from them. My willingness to be disturbed for the sake of growth is probably fueled by my unoffendable and that is a big reason why I think people should be so open.
Reflection
For my project I decided to look at safe spaces, free speech, and trigger warnings. I wrote an op ed comparing arguments about them and worked to find what I considered a good compromise. For my visual piece I made a venn diagram with conservative views of the topic one one side and more liberal views on the other side. I represented the views with symbols and pictures that I felt represented the points. In the middle of the venn diagram I wrote my thesis that acknowledged both sides but was working for a happy medium.
I think that my perspective hasn’t really changed but I have just developed my arguments. I went into it knowing that I think people should have a place to go if the need a space to escape and feel comfortable in. I also felt like it’s important for people to put themselves out there and expose themselves to new experiences. I guess I did get a little bit more convinced that there shouldn’t really be trigger warnings because there aren't trigger warnings in real life.
In this project I thought a lot about how I was raised and how what I was exposed to affected me a lot. I compared a lot to how I was raised as a very unsheltered atheist liberal boy to my cousins who were very sheltered christians. I thought about how what they were exposed to back when we were little has affected who they are now. They really only understand what happens in their own little worlds and are not very educated on more than what they like. I compared a lot to how I feel like my parents letting me have freedom and being allowed to understand life through my own exploration has exposed me and I feel has opened my mind. I've learned that I value people being exposed and open more than comfortable. I feel that this is partly because I really haven't been through any adversity of any real substance but I have tried to be empathetic as much as I try to be logical. I don’t think that I really has an “other side” I just built my knowledge on both sides. I understood that the liberal side valued people and their feelings. They supported their argument with data supporting that safe spaces didn’t negatively affect education and that what they would miss really wasn’t that important. The conservative side used the argument that there are no safe spaces or trigger warnings in the real world so having them when you are preparing for the real world gives a false sense of security. I saw both sides and just developed my knowledge on them and it really only kept me in the middle.
What I learned about democracy in this project is how important it is to have different views and have discourse about subjects. This is a topic that I really feel that the answer too lies in the middle. If either side would get it their own way I think that it wouldn’t not be a very good answer to the problem. Usually I have fairly one sided views on topics and find that the right answer lies more on one side than the other. I feel like this was an important lesson for me to learn about democracy because now I will look at issues closer and try to find the good in both sides. If there weren’t people that could express different sides then the answers to our problems would probably not be answers at all.
I guess my views have changed in that I will be more perspective of the other sides arguments and look good in both sides but my political views haven't actually changed that much. This project really helped me identify my values and how they are shaped. It also helped me realize why some people have the values that they have. I thought a lot about how my experiences have shaped me and how others peoples experiences have shaped them and their values.
Rogerian rhetoric is very important because the answers that best suit the issue lies in between the sides. If people are going to have positive and productive conversations they need to acknowledge the other side and not just demonize them. People get so caught up in things only happening in the way they want something to happen they become blind to the positives that come from the other side. This goes right along with the willingness to be disturbed. People need to get out of their comfort zones if there is to be true democracy. They need to look at the other side even if they aren’t comfortable with it.
I think that my perspective hasn’t really changed but I have just developed my arguments. I went into it knowing that I think people should have a place to go if the need a space to escape and feel comfortable in. I also felt like it’s important for people to put themselves out there and expose themselves to new experiences. I guess I did get a little bit more convinced that there shouldn’t really be trigger warnings because there aren't trigger warnings in real life.
In this project I thought a lot about how I was raised and how what I was exposed to affected me a lot. I compared a lot to how I was raised as a very unsheltered atheist liberal boy to my cousins who were very sheltered christians. I thought about how what they were exposed to back when we were little has affected who they are now. They really only understand what happens in their own little worlds and are not very educated on more than what they like. I compared a lot to how I feel like my parents letting me have freedom and being allowed to understand life through my own exploration has exposed me and I feel has opened my mind. I've learned that I value people being exposed and open more than comfortable. I feel that this is partly because I really haven't been through any adversity of any real substance but I have tried to be empathetic as much as I try to be logical. I don’t think that I really has an “other side” I just built my knowledge on both sides. I understood that the liberal side valued people and their feelings. They supported their argument with data supporting that safe spaces didn’t negatively affect education and that what they would miss really wasn’t that important. The conservative side used the argument that there are no safe spaces or trigger warnings in the real world so having them when you are preparing for the real world gives a false sense of security. I saw both sides and just developed my knowledge on them and it really only kept me in the middle.
What I learned about democracy in this project is how important it is to have different views and have discourse about subjects. This is a topic that I really feel that the answer too lies in the middle. If either side would get it their own way I think that it wouldn’t not be a very good answer to the problem. Usually I have fairly one sided views on topics and find that the right answer lies more on one side than the other. I feel like this was an important lesson for me to learn about democracy because now I will look at issues closer and try to find the good in both sides. If there weren’t people that could express different sides then the answers to our problems would probably not be answers at all.
I guess my views have changed in that I will be more perspective of the other sides arguments and look good in both sides but my political views haven't actually changed that much. This project really helped me identify my values and how they are shaped. It also helped me realize why some people have the values that they have. I thought a lot about how my experiences have shaped me and how others peoples experiences have shaped them and their values.
Rogerian rhetoric is very important because the answers that best suit the issue lies in between the sides. If people are going to have positive and productive conversations they need to acknowledge the other side and not just demonize them. People get so caught up in things only happening in the way they want something to happen they become blind to the positives that come from the other side. This goes right along with the willingness to be disturbed. People need to get out of their comfort zones if there is to be true democracy. They need to look at the other side even if they aren’t comfortable with it.