Last Monday, I attended the Table Talk about the history of Halloween. It began as a pagan holiday, and continued to evolve under the Catholic Church as All Hallows’ Eve in conjunction with All Saints’ Day. What I found most interesting was the more recent history of Halloween in the United States, where it has become an enormous consumer holiday (second only to Christmas) and Americans spend billions of dollars on candy and costumes every year. With some of the people around me, I ended up discussing the nature of commercial holidays in the US, and how even religious observances such as Christmas and Easter have, for many people, developed into almost secular celebration centered around gift giving and Easter egg hunts, respectively. GRF Seema brought her own experiences into the discussion, suggesting that Halloween is celebrated so extravagantly because Americans have relatively few annual festivals, whereas in India there are festivals and holidays throughout the year.
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Stress is a Superpower
Last Monday, I attended the Table Talk on stress. With such a relatable and ubiquitous topic for Cornell students, it was easy for us to begin the discussion and to share all sorts of anecdotes and experiences. GRF Seema started us off by sharing some of her stresses that come along with being a PhD student, and she encouraged us to share anything that might be on our minds. This Table Talk was probably the most casual I had ever been to; it felt more like a group of people commiserating and sharing advice than a guided discussion. The people who attended had a variety of different majors, so it was interesting for me to see what people outside of my classes found stressful.
We also discussed the benefits of stress; namely, how a certain optimal level of stress is necessary for maximizing your productivity. It seemed as though people had different optimal levels; personally, I find that I am more productive when I am less stressed, but some people shared that they needed a significant amount of stress in order to motivate themselves. It was interesting to see how such a simple and common feeling can manifest itself in so many different ways.
We’ve Put a Lot of Work Into This Planet
Last Monday, I attended a Table Talk on Eco-Anxiety. Eco-anxiety can refer to multiple things, such as the predilection for traumatic climate events such as hurricanes and food shortages to provoke other mental illnesses, but we discussed eco-anxiety as a manifestation of a unique concern concerning our climate and the impact our actions can have (or the lack thereof). We began the discussion by talking about this article and sharing our reactions and criticisms of the radical suggestion put forth by the article. Someone suggested that this article ignores the economic privilege required to be able to afford a vegetarian lifestyle, both in terms of money and time (although meat is often more expensive than produce, the time required to prepare vegetarian meals may be too much for families in which the parents must work multiple jobs, and fast food is both cheap and full of meat). We also discussed the unpredictable economic and social ramifications of the entire population switching from beef to beans, including the shockwave it could send through the agriculture and livestock industry.
After agreeing the article was interesting but idealistic, we moved on to discussing eco-anxiety in our own lives. People shared their experiences, including why they chose why or why not to be vegetarian and how they sustain that lifestyle. The subject of our individual contributions to minimizing climate change came up, and one person shared a story of her friend’s choice to go vegan and how that friend in turn inspired several others to go vegan as well. It was a small but powerful reminder that an individual can make a larger impact and that we shouldn’t feel completely powerless when thinking about climate change.
Fear Doesn’t Have to Make You Cruel
At Monday’s table talk, we began with a discussion on the relationship between migration and discrimination that soon blossomed into a larger conversation on the underlying causes of discrimination and the ways we can combat it in our own lives and as a society. GRF Sam opened the discussion by showing us campaign posters from Germany’s far-right political party, the AfD. These posters were quite shocking, with quotes like, “Burkas? We’ll keep our bikinis” and “New Germans? We’ll make our own,” with images of women wearing bathing suits in the first poster and a pregnant woman in the second. Far beyond the implications of the role of women in these ads, I was struck by the blunt xenophobia expressed. Rather naively, I hadn’t considered how strongly some Germans might feel about immigrants coming into their country. Unfortunately, it was all too easy to connect this with our own country.
Over the course of the discussion, one of the other Rose Scholars expressed her frustration that we couldn’t all recognize the humanity within each other and overcome our slight differences. This prompted a further line of discussion on why native inhabitants of a country might be biased against migrants. I suggested that the people who exhibit the most bias are the people who benefit the most from the status quo, and thus they are the most zealous advocates for preserving it. The fear of change is ubiquitous, especially in tumultuous times such as now, but this fear shouldn’t divide us. Instead, it should galvanize us and bring us together, so that we can work to improve lives for native and non-native inhabitants of our country.
It’s Not the Time, It’s the Person
At last week’s Rose Cafe, Ruth Magreta shared with us her incredible life story. Growing up in a small village in Malawi, she had no reason to believe other places in the world were vastly different from her surroundings. She lived a happy life with her family and her town, making the most of her situation by attending school and eventually going off to university. It was then that she truly began to realize how different other parts of the world were, and how she could use her education and her passion for agriculture to make a difference and help her country.
Ruth was very insistent that she did not regret her childhood and that she was happy, and I believe her. It is difficult for me to imagine what her life must have been like, as I grew up in completely different circumstances. Listening to her talk about her early life and her reaction to coming to the United States helped me realize that I may have been just as unaware of other people’s lives in my childhood as Ruth was in hers. Despite the instant access to information we have thanks to the Internet, I realized that I have never seriously considered what it must be like for people to live outside of the United States. I am much more locked into my local surroundings than I had known, and listening to Ruth’s story made me take a moment to broaden my perspective. And after seeing how she has striven to make the most of her education, I am further motivated to use what I learn at Cornell for social, rather than just personal, good.
Rule One of Dying: Don’t
In the film The Martian, we see a man faced with impossible odds and who displays an indomitable will to survive. Mark Watney is an astronaut on a scientific mission to Mars. He gets left behind when his crew rapidly evacuates in a dust storm, and wakes up to find himself alone on the red planet. After only a short time in despair, he falls back on his scientific knowledge and begins working out what it will take for him to survive until a rescue mission can retrieve him. Through a combination of ingenuity and sheer determination, he begins growing his own food, exploring the surface of Mars, and eventually rigging up communication with NASA that ultimately results in him returning home.
While the GRF mentioned that we should think about the theme of isolation during the movie, I found that the story was overwhelmingly optimistic and did not delve into Mark’s seclusion as much as I thought it would. Instead, there were constant references to his relationship with his crew, their relationships with their families, and the interactions between people back on Earth. Though Mark was alone on Mars, he had the vast majority of the human race rooting for him back on Earth. This was a powerfully optimistic story about humanity uniting for a common cause. For once, everybody lives. And when Mark returns to Earth, instead of retreating into a comfortable retirement, he works to educate and inspire the next generation of astronauts. As someone who nearly died millions of miles from home, it would be reasonable for him to dissuade people from traveling into space. But he sees the intrinsic value in exploring the stars and building the space program, so he doesn’t give up. And neither does humanity.
Is Memory a Burden or a Blessing?
Last week’s Flora’s Film Friday featured an episode of the British science fiction show Black Mirror, entitled “The Entire History of You”. Having seen an episode of Black Mirror prior to this event, I was prepared to embrace the show’s cynical but inventive perspective on the possible advances of technology and how our society might adapt to them. In this episode, the vast majority of people have a “grain” embedded in their head that connects to their brain and records all of their waking experiences, to be re-watched and reflected on by both the person living those experiences and anyone they choose to share these recordings with.
This episode was unsurprisingly (for anyone familiar with the show) shocking and dark, providing ample fodder for discussions on the benefits and drawbacks of this technology. Before watching the episode, I had discussed with people around me whether or not we would want to have this technology in our own lives. I was in favor of it, while the two people I was talking with were against the idea. Based on the outcome of the episode, it’s very clear that there are very real dangers to having every moment of your life available to watch in your head over and over, ready to be over-analyzed. The main character in the episode was overwhelmed with relatable emotions such as jealousy, paranoia, and anger, but these emotions were inflamed by access to technology that we don’t have.
The episode clearly fell on the side of a cautionary tale, demonstrating the downfall of technology that would store all your memories. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see how the episode portrayed the people who lived in this society and how they reacted to this technology. One character chose not to have a “grain” and she was treated with a range of reactions, from curiosity to disdain. It struck me that this can parallel our current society very easily: how would you react if you met someone who chose not to own a smartphone, or indeed any cell phone at all? Cell phones, especially those armed with cameras and social media, can do a commendable job at recording significant parts of our lives, and people often spend unhealthy amounts of time using them.
Ultimately, I think the ability to relive any past moment at the click of a button would be an incredible gift that humans are not equipped to handle well. We have too much of a proclivity to dwell on past experiences, especially negative memories, and while personally I would be interested in having this sort of technology at my disposal, I think the episode did a realistic job of portraying how it could be misused. We are defined by our memories, as much as by what remember as by what we forget, and the ability to forget is one we should be grateful for. To paraphrase Albus Dumbledore, it does not due to dwell on the past and forget to live.