When the hurly-burly’s done

As promised.

Scottish Play Packet

As promised, here’s the link to the NPR series about class issues in Connecticut.

You’re welcome.

Some posts I’ve found around our class blogspace (I can’t stand the word “blogosphere”) that might give you something to think about as you work on your essays:

Branden is glad to find that even an “expert” has trouble explaining what evil really is:

Kanan Makiya had some interesting views on the meaning of evil.  Makiya says that evil is something intimate, and sensual, almost surreal.  People who have been through evil or have been tortured know evil by instinct.  They can’t explain it by word, but they just know when it is around.  Going through evil or being tortured gives you the intimate, kind of should-to-shoulder feeling with evil that allows you to understand it.  Otherwise, it is hard to put into words.  Having such a hard time interpreting evil myself, I am able to connect with Makiya’s definition.

Anna quotes Andrew Delbanco in her post.  She’s getting at what it means to “reassert evil”–it’s not just saying that there is evil, but bringing it into the public debate about behavior and society:

The first sentence that really stuck out to me in his response to what ‘evil’ is reguarding September 11, 2006 was, “It’s a word we don’t want to use to excuse ourselves from these characteristics by pointing the finger at somebody else and saying, ‘There’s evil. Go get it, and rid the world of that person or that point of view, and everything will be all right.’” I thought that this was what the world had been seeing evil as, and we can’t anymore. Everyone has been saying Osama is the evil in this world, and if we rid him the evil would be gone. It’s not that easy, September 11th went deeper than just being the fault of one human being.

Meanwhile, Malachai is thinking about Puritan Massachusetts, a society that really did believe in evil as something worth talking and preaching about, and definitely used its ideas about evil to regulate behavior.  His reaction to Anne Bradstreet’s poem is powerful and visceral:

The Puritan movement was huge, and each and every time they were ruined, they bowed and thanked God from the bottom of their hearts. I truly believe that this self deception, if anything, is evil. Even just the mentality, is almost unspeakable. If something like this happened to me, I would mourn to an incredible level. I wouldn’t go and write a poem about how I’m sad, but it’s ok, because God thinks so. This kind of deception, simply wrecked these people, and centuries later, I can only find myself feeling sad for them and the hardships the endured in the name of God. Truly I pity them.

So there you have it.  Check out these posts, and others, as you work on your essays.  Good luck, and I’ll see you at the end…

This is real.  Hat tip to Mrs. Skaalen for this one… 

If a psychology study claimed it would “change the way you think” for the rest of your life, would you do it? Fifteen volunteers for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s latest reality show took a risk to know themselves better, and ended up imprisoned.

The BBC’s new show is called “The Experiment” and is modeled after the famous Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford Psychology Prof. Philip Zimbardo.

Read the rest of the article here.

This is like being in 4th grade all over again, except I didn’t have to beg my parents to let me stay up late.