Reflection on A Vindication of the Rights of Women

I've been doing some looking around on some other student's blogs to figure out just what to make of this essay. I've got to say, I just don't really know what to interpret from it. I mean, between Mary Wollstonecraft's extensive vocabulary and the sheer length of the text, I got lost.

I could, however, identify her 'main idea' ("...why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence?") and some of her deeper points, but the finer details that she more than likely utilized were hard to identify. One of the deeper points that Wollstonecraft was pressing was the haste for women's education. She states that, "By individual education...such an attention to a child as will slowly sharpen the senses..." Throughout the third page, she affirms that educating women at an earlier age, like men, would give women the power to "think and reason". I think that this is one of the solid points of the essay, and her overall goal has obviously been achieved through efforts of her and people with the same ideas.

I guess that it was also hard for me to understand the article because we have a different mindset nowadays as opposed to back then. We now live in a time where women have a lot more freedom then they did back then, so understanding the strife became a bit hard. In the end, the points that Wollstonecraft made were all agreeable, and the article had pressed some issues that are no longer a problem today. That's a good thing to see.

Google's Making Us Stupid?

This article is easy to relate to, as it brings up a topic that is pertinent in our daily lives. As an affect of digital tools like Google, the author, Nicholas Carr, states that, "The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle." Maybe it's just me and the time that I grew up, but I don't seem to have this effect to the same extent that the author has. Sure, if I've got big things on my mind, keeping focused on a long piece of literature can be a bit of a struggle. If I'm reading something for pleasure or for school, like this article, with a clear mind, it is much easier to stay on task.

I also thought that the author's analogy about the scuba diver and the jet ski was very interesting. They treat the thought of only skimming the top of topics quickly is a horrible thing. The author finds that taking in the literature is for the best. Don't get me wrong, it is a good way to read. I just found that Carr's opposition to how most people read nowadays to be unnecessary. The way I look at it, when we process and skim the way we do, we take in knowledge of a broader range of topics. In general, we understand more about what's going on around us.

Quick skimming is also supported by how the media is pushing out information. Carr tells about the New York Times's Shortcuts, which 'give harried readers a quick "taste" of the day's news'. With this way, readers can get straight to the point. In these fast-forwarded times, people just don't have the time in the day to sit down and deeply interpret an article. These snippets help us understand the point so we can move on to our rushed lifestyles.

I thought that the articles switch from reading to artificial intelligence was thought-provoking. The two founders of Google believe that, "If you had all the world's information directly attached to your brain...you'd be better off." I find this to be completely untrue. If everybody in the world had access to this technology, then raw intelligence wouldn't be a feat. It would simply be a commodity. We would slowly become emotionless, efficient robots, just like the people in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Taking it for Granted

Through this article, I received from Annie Dillard that she believes that we all overlook very significant things in our lives that we've always had. Once they are gone, however, we suffer and wish that they were here again.

She first expresses this when she recalls the reading about the gold miners. It is so hot in the mine shafts that the companies have to route air conditioning to the shafts. "If the air conditioners break, the miners die." The miners always expect the A/C to be there so that they can do their job, but if it were to go out, the miners would all cease to live.

Dillard, in the end, was trying to express her thoughts through her dismay about the total solar eclipse. Everybody else is fascinated that this huge scientific happening is going on while she describes the bleak landscape and the solemness of the situation. Everybody knows that the sun is going to come back, but Dillard looks at it in a different way. We see the sun everyday, and for as long as we live, it will always be there. But if it were to go, we would cease to exist. "If there would have been people on Earth, nobody knew it."

This thought is simplified through the common phrase, 'You don't know what you have until it's gone'. Her dismay is correctly showing her emotion for the momentary loss of the sun. When the sun leaves, she is showing what a bad thing it would be through her portrayal of the landscape. She's not necessarily saying that we need to worship the sun and all that it brings us, but that we all just must realize what we have and make sure that we never take it for granted.