Thoreau

On Tuesday we read about Henry David Thoreau and how he went to live in the woods to escape from society. I feel that Thoreau went to very great extremes to so escape his society. He said "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life..." Thoreau was trying live life simply without the uses of modern technology from his time. He wanted to live in the moment without having anything control his life. I can relate to that completely. It seems that today technology is controling our lives. I mean look at us right now we are on our computers and using our cell phones constently. They seem to be controling us. I feel that we need to as Thoreau said "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid..." which basically means that we need to learn how to live life again without technology and reopen our lives back to socialization.

Who should take the blame?

On Tuesday we watched the video lecture or Mark Bauerlein and how he felt that our generation is the "dumbest generation". I feel that he shouldn't just come out and blame our generation because the fault isn't all our generations fault. Our generation today has grown up around advancing technology and the media. The fault should not be placed soley on us tho. The blame also needs to be given to our parents. In the past generations parents were more involved with their childs life. But now with our generation parents seem to be to busy to spend time with their child so children now use media and technology as their parental control.
Because our generation has grown up basically under the supervision of the media and technology we have become almost incapable of functioning with it. We have become so adapted to technology that if it was taken away from us we wouldn't be able to properly function.
If our parents had payed more attention to us and tried to teach us more ways to communication we may not be lacking as much of the social skills that other generations feel we need.

How the advertisement industry uses sex to sell their product

Throughout the past week we have been looking at ads and how they sell a type of merchandise. After spending some time looking at these ads I have come to realize that in all ads there is some form of sexual references to sell their product. In almost all ads that are seen today there is something refering to sex, whether it is showing the act itself, the wording that is used, or just a women that is considered a sex object. Why has our culture gotten so caught up in the fact that sex is the only way to sell a product? Not only is it not giving enough reference to the product, but it also discriminates against women.
The reason I feel that it is discriminating toward women is because the women that are seen in the ads are usually these beautiful, skinny, big breasted women that are thought to be the "ideal" woman. The issue with these kind of women being in the ads is the way it effects the way young girls think about themselves. Teenage girls seem to be most effected, they see these ads with the "ideal" woman and they think that that is how they are suppose to look. The self-esteem of a teenage girl is very fragile and just the tiniest thing can make them feel like they aren't good enough. When a teenage girl sees these ads and see how most of those women in ads look they begin to think that if they don't look like those women then they are not good enough.
The advertisement industry needs to stop using sex to sell there products. I mean it isn't sex that they are really trying to sell is it? Or has the ad industry totally forgotten about the products they are trying to sell?