The Great Lie at Troy

Everybody knows the story of the Trojan Horse. If you didn't read about it in Homer's Iliad, chances are you heard about it anyway from a different Homer: Homer Simpson, who reenacted the timeless tale of the Trojan War in The Simpsons' season thirteen episode "Tales From the Public Domain."

While we have found the remnants of the ancient city of Troy, and there probably was a war there at some point, chances are that the Trojan Horse story was just a myth. That's a real shame, too, because it is one of the best records of deceit humankind has ever produced. 

If we have learned anything from the lies made at Troy, it is that words (especially lies) are more powerful than swords. The Trojans, with superior infrastructure and weaponry, met their demise because they were thoroughly outsmarted by the Greeks. 

And then you realize, lies are just methods of outsmarting your colleague. In order to make a successful lie, one must first consider the intellect of the intended recipient and come up with a false statement which they believe as true. One can only be able to do this if they are able to predict their recipient's response. 

Lying has been around for millenia. It is a part of what makes us human. Lying helps bend the rules, making otherwise unbeatable battles winnable. It is, in its own way, a weapon of mass destruction. 

The Generalization

It's the great generalization...

Now, I'm not talking about how women are considered to be worse at math, that's an inconsiderate topic to rant about for another day. No, the reason I post this picture is that there are two major faults on display.

The first is the obvious: that women are more often generalized through specific example than men are. There are arguments out there that women cannot apply mathematics, organize businesses, or compete in sporting events as well as men can. Sure, statisticians can flash some graphs, but the truth is that factual or not these claims are not fair. Yes, males tend to score higher than females on standardized math tests such as the SAT Mathematics. And it may be that there are more male executives than female in the corporate world. And it cannot be disputed that chances are, if you're watching sports on television, it's going to be men, men, men.

But those figures, while accurate, cannot be used as justification for the generalization of over half of the world's population.

The piece of this image which is perhaps the most shocking is something that initially is perceived as too obvious to mention: the person who says that "girls suck at math" is male. Had the picture featured two girls, it only would have been "you suck at math." But the point I'm trying to stress is that if it the roles were swapped, and it was the girl correcting the boy, it STILL would have been "you suck at math."

I guess what I'm trying to say is that for whatever reason, one which probably stems from the patriarchy which has governed gender culture since time immemorial, the female population has been generalized under all-encompassing umbrellas much more often than the male. These generalizations are not fair. In all three cases which I displayed, there are huge exceptions. There are women who kick butt at calculus. There are women who dominate the workplace. And there are women who scrape up competition in a stadium. 

Umbrellas that society places on women are unfair and unnecesarry. It's not even a rainy day.

Hell

Hell.

We all may not believe in an afterlife, but we all have a hell. The place we envision as the epicenter of all things terrible. The compilation of all tortures, all horrors, which the damned are forced to experience for the sins they committed in their life.

But my interpretation of Hell is quite the opposite.

It's nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

To me, there is no devil, no inferno, no brimstone. Moreover, there is nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to taste, smell or feel. There is no anything. Absolutely nothing.

For those who grew up as children at the turn of the century, I liken my version of Hell to the Spongebob Squarepants episode "SB-129" in which Squidward breaks a time machine and falls into some kind of purgatory. There was nothing to be seen, nothing to experience, nothing to stimulate the senses. While Squidward was attempting to find a place where he could be alone, he came to realize that absolute solitude was something he feared the most.

But while Squidward was able to escape, the subjects of my Hell are damned to "live" in this place for all eternity.

It is well documented that sensory deprivation is one of the harshest forms of torture. Controversial experiments in the 1950's revealed that with nothing to stimulate any of the senses, a perfectly normal person can fall into insanity in just a number of days.  

The subjects of my version of Hell are forced to live in this complete isolation, devolving into absolute madness, for forever. There is nothing worse than that.

What Are We Missing?

I just read an article by P.J. Manney of the Journal of Evolution & Technology entitled "Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy." As the title suggests, Manney makes the conjecture that storytelling is the key to developing empathy in humans. He cites that while some degree of empathy appears to be innate in all of us from birth, the human race experienced spikes in empathy which coincided with technological developments. The first example of this instance was the development of writing, which made it possible for us to understand the thoughts and actions of others from a time different to our own. The next came with the dawn of the printing press, where printed words and stories were made available to the masses for the first time. Each of these historic developments tended to coincide with a spike in empathy among humans. So it would make sense that today, with all of the different technologies that are made available to us, empathy rates should be at an all time high.

But they're not.

On the contrary, a Scientific American article by Jamil Zaki entitled "What, Me Care? Young are Less Empathetic" reveals that Empathy rates have decreased among humans over the past 30 years. So what is it about today's technology that separates it from the technology of the past? What is it about cell phones and computers that have us going in reverse?

The answer may lie with how much time we spend with each other. Zaki makes it known that "In the past 30 years Americans have become more likely to live alone and less likely to join groups." We are living in the "Me Generation" (or as Time Magazine puts it, the Me Me Me Generation) where technology allows us to be more self-centered and narcissistic then ever before. Yes, we are connected to others in everything we do, but the content of our interactions through "social" media outlets tends to be more about the advancement of self over the advancement of community. Everything has become individualized, from Facebook profiles to email accounts. 

Modern technology has given us a sense of self which has been unavailable to those who came before us. We have become egotistical, not so much by choice, but by what has been thrust upon us. Our lack of attention we pay to others in our self-centered society is what is taking our empathy levels to new lows. Today, we can understand ourselves just fine. But without proper community and proper empathy, what is understanding anymore?

Here's an Example

Application of example may be one of my favorite writing techniques. The way that example is able to relate outside material to the topic at hand is essential to weary eyes who can't read about the same topic for pages on end. Example is prominently used in the essays "On Compassion" by Barbara Ascher and "The Human Cost of a Literary Society" by Jonathan Kozol. While the two essays use different methods of example to develop their respective theses, the prominence of example is a common link in the two, which shapes them both into essays that are easier to relate to, understand, and enjoy.

Ascher's "On Compassion" devotes the majority of its space to the examples it creates in the beginning. A thesis isn't even revealed until the last couple of paragraphs, and the rest of the essay is just sheer example. I like this in an essay. Not only does it defy the conventional Five-Paragraph Essay which we all know and "love" by placing its thesis at the end, it does so in such a way that one is able to fully digest and understand the meaning in the examples by the time the thesis is presented. This makes a thesis much easier to grasp, especially for a thesis as implausible as the one in "On Compassion." Had this essay been written in the more conventional format, I would not have believed the thesis upon its initial presentation, and I'm not sure if I would have believed it after reading the examples, either. If I learned anything from this essay, it's that placement of examples is just as important as the examples themselves.

Kozol's application of example also strays from the conventional. His examples form a mammoth list, full of everything that makes illiteracy so difficult. The sheer size of his list is what makes his thesis so impressive. Each individual point is short and suffice, so as not to overwhelm the reader. When all of these examples are gathered together, the thesis becomes very difficult to refute. After all, how can one deny a thesis that is backed up by such an ample pool of data?

Example is the key to understanding a thesis. Without examples, a thesis is left to fend for itself.