Exquisite corpse

1. Choose 2 quotes from pages 33-89. At least one of the quotes should be challenging. Look for metaphors, for lines whose relation to the book you just don't get, or lines which you just don't get. Copy them into a post on the blog as a comment to this post.

2. Choose another post's quotes and use them to come up with a question or discovery that would begin a paragraph. Post this question or discovery as a comment to the post with the quotes.

3. Choose a set of quotes with their question or discovery and write a paragraph. Start the paragraph with that question or discovery, and use the quotes in your paragraph. Post your paragraph as a comment to the question or discovery post.

4. Read the posts with which you were involved: the discovery and paragraph that followed from your quotes, and the paragraph that followed from your discovery. Choose something to share with the class.

MLK day reflection

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I would like you to spend some time thinking and writing about connections between his life-work and what you have read and discussed in our class. Here are two guiding questions to your free-write:

What makes humans able to create or accept injustice?

What makes humans able to stand up to injustice?

I would like you to use at least one quote from Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and reference two books we have read this year. The documentary on the Milgrim and Zimbardo experiments and our discussion of projection may provide more ideas.

from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963):

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue...I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that is was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

“History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebur has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.”

“Segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn’t segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?”

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the strive toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace of direct action...who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”