What I learned this week
I was learned more about utopia and dystopia through Wesley's session this week. About utopia and dystopia, I used to read 1984 and The Catcher in The Rye in high school. Looking back, I remember that I could not read 1984 after reading several chapters. Maybe because of my age at that time, the establishment of Weltanschauung was not completed, and I could not quite understand the ideas expressed by the author in the book. And the impression I get from The Catcher in The Rye is that it's full of negative energy. When I reread both books a few years later, for me, The Catcher in The Rye is desirable but difficult to realize, which is a way to place the hope on a utopia ideal. Holden, the protagonist, wants to watch the beautiful “rye”. He is the light in the dark but sadly exists in the fallen society. Moreover, about 1984, this book gives a chilling account of a totalitarian world. People live without thinking and convince themselves that those in power are doing the thing is all right and that those with incorrect ideas (who in the book describe having committed "Thought crimes") are to be “disappear”. Orwell, I think, is indeed a great writer who anticipates what has not yet happened. And I also think some of the details of the book are familiar to me, or it is a reality of a country at this moment. Today, I seem to live in a harmonious society, but, I think that people should always be on the lookout for totalitarian motives and utopian ideas that seem to be desirable, like those in 1984.
These are my early understandings and memories of the terms utopia and dystopia in two books. Today, I learned about techno-utopia, economic utopia and eco-utopia through Wesley's session. Utopia is a human think of the better life, I think people should hope for the better life, but at the same time also to face the reality, to rethink by dystopian, maybe we should think about what we're actually is a what kind of world, not the utopia into a pipe dream.
Creative writing
In the World building workshop for this, Lydia asked us to choose a food, a food of the future, describe it, answer some questions, and do it in small groups in the workshop. I think the goal of this workshop is to spread to our thinking, imagination, I think this is a way of speculative design. Lydia let us from the perspective of the description of food in the future to think about some social problems have occurred, to reconsider the relationship between people and food, like Lydia question: Some people exploited? Is anyone getting rich? What is the relationship between urban population and food production? Therefore, I also think the main purpose of creative writing is not to let us imagine a better life, but to provoke people to think about the problems that have occurred, such as environmental problems, social problems and political problems, through the description or imagination of the possible future. In a word, as a way of design, Creative writing is not to predict the future but to change the current social situation.
About unit 2.2
This Friday, Caitlin and I conducted tutorial, mainly discussing the research direction and presentation of my unit 2.2 project. As a matter of fact, I don't have a completed idea about Unit 2.2. I try to look at the Anthropocene, which has led to disaster. My topic is about human survival, and what I want to talk about in the post-crisis era (inspired by Wesley's HIAC class) is what human life might be like or what the world might be like. For now, my idea is too huge, and I need to delve deeper into this topic. Caitlin suggested that maybe I could design the to respond to the company the emergence scenarios, I think this is a good starting point to the subject, I will be in the following week gradually improve and refine my idea. In addition, about the content of creative writing, I think maybe I can write the end of a love story. Like I previously mentioned in the reflection, creative writing works should be thought more than content, so I think I should think more about what I want to express through the article rather than the subject matter of the article.
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