Breakthrough Writer

1A Lesson Plan for “AWOL in America: When Desertion Is the Only Option”

One: Lexicon

 

1. coercion
2. naiveté
3. conscientious objector : is an individual who, on religious, moral or ethical grounds, refuses to participate as a combatant in war
4. AWOL
5. Marginalized people: people with no education, resources, or support system who are apathetic, feeling no hope to improve their lives; consequently all their decisions are based on physical survival, nothing else.
6. Army’s manpower crisis (360) demand exceeds supply
7. Stop-loss orders (360) A commander must retain at least 85% of soldiers or he will have hell to pay.
8. Principle of Scarcity: Whenever there is a short supply of something, we lower our standards, food, mates, military, etc.
9. Docility, docile
10. Acquiescence, acquiesce, acquiescent 
11. Metamorphosis, drastic transformation for which there is often no return

 

Two. What 10 life lessons do we learn from this essay?

 

1. Morons and madmen reign in high places. Whenever you join an institution—any institution—don’t expect smart, competent, morally savory people to be on top. Expect the contrary to be true. Here you have a military system so desperate for recruits that is it yanking clueless people off the streets to fight a war that by all accounts is a catastrophic failure doomed to drain our country of all its resources and yet nearly impossible for us to leave. The Administration doesn’t even provide proper helmets, properly working gas masks, Hum-Vees and armor and parents are sending safety equipment to their children, paying out of their pockets.

 

 

2. Whenever there is a crisis, it is the clueless, helpless margins of society who get manipulated into be exploited for the uses of the higher-ups. Here we have the worse foreign policy decision every made in US history and smart people know not to get involved with it. So who gets into Iraq, mostly clueless people who don’t have the faintest idea of what they’re getting into. See page 361, top paragraph. See 361 bottom and 362 top.

 

 

3. When privileged and powerful people exploit you for their purposes, not only do the powerful not appreciate you for saving their butts, they insult you by not giving you any compensation. See page 361. Hordes of soldiers are calling hotlines for untreated injuries, mental illness, PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, violence, suicide, etc. 60 Minutes had a story about a VA hospital with sewage leaking everywhere, rats, roaches.

 

 

4. Whenever there’s a screw up, the people on top always defer the pain and punishment to the helpless underlings who don’t have a clue of what’s going on. Rather than admit their mistakes and pull out, the Administration saves face by continuing a war that results in the deaths of thousands of people, soldiers from working class America and innocent Iraqis whose casualties number in the hundreds of thousands. Another example: We bailed out big corporations who then gave their CEOs bonuses. Absurd. 

 

 

5. Bureaucrats do whatever they have to do to save their butts, usually at the expense of doing the right thing. See page 360, bottom paragraph

 

 

6. Don’t ever make a decision based on powerful emotional longing because more often than not your decision will be irrational, misguided, and work against your best interests. Jeremiah was raised by a single mother and hungered for a father figure and a positive role model of healthy masculinity. This hunger was so powerful that it compelled him to join the military even though his personality is at odds with military culture and he’s miserable. See 363 and 364 top.

 

 

7. Related to number 6, don’t ever make a decision without doing the extensive research first because if you screw up, no one is going to bail out. You need to rely on yourself to take care of your own self-interests and you had better protect your interests ferociously and thoroughly or a heavy price will be paid. People get married without knowing what the hell marriage entails other than some sentimental image they got from watching a Hugh Grant movie or listening to some crappy love song on the radio.

 

 

8. Do be an effective killing machine in the military, you have to put on a warrior’s mask that doesn’t come off easily—if ever at all—when you rejoin civilian life. See page 364 in which the sergeant says he joined the Army because he enjoyed killing and being an effective killing machine. Also see 366. We see that being an effective soldier is all about tapping into that vein of violence that exists in all of us. It’s necessary for war, to be sure, but how do you turn it off?

 

 

9. When you’re young, there is no shortage of people who are eager and willing to take advantage of your innocence and naiveté. See 362.

 

10. There is usually a complete disconnect between an institution taking appropriate action and maintaining its official policy. See page 365 in which Jeremiah is clearly having a nervous breakdown and is not useless to the military but presents a danger to others and himself, but the bureaucracy must maintain policy; doing the right thing in this circumstance is irrelevant.

 

 

Three: Qualities of a Good Thesis:

 

1. visceral, from the gut first, the brain second
2. address a relevant topic
3. avoid the obvious and self-evident
4. develop a thesis that is an answer to a compelling question
5. make sure the reader can find the thesis in your essay
6. make sure your thesis is one or two sentences and no more
7. make sure your thesis has enough substance to cover 5 pages
8. make sure there is research material to support your thesis
9. it’s often good to focus on a controversial topic, a 2-sided argument
10. it’s often good to take a contrarian position
11. has a strong voice
12. outlines your essay by being followed with mapping components or sentences.

 

 

 

Broad

 

Dobie is too harsh on the military

Going AWOL is a bad thing.

Sometimes going AWOL is okay.

 

 

Students will write a thesis for today’s essay:

 

Specific

 

The military will enhance its strength and morality if it pardons those who want to quit because __________________, _________________, _________________, and _____________________.

 

Dobie’s argument that special cases should be pardoned for committing AWOL would pose certain dangers to the military, namely, ___________________, _________________, __________________, and _________________________.

 

The Assignment As It Appears on Your Syllabus:

Write a 5-page defense or refutation of the use of enforcing AWOL laws. In your first 2 pages, explain the position of your opponents and the justifications they use to defend their position. Then in the next 3 pages, argue, point by point, why your opponents are wrong. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 4 sources.

1A Lesson Plan for “Watching Torture in Prime Time” by Anne-Marie Cusac (109)

 

 

 

Part One. Lexicon for Torture Debate

 

 

1. The Hawk Approach to torture: Be aggressive and use traditional methods of pain.
2. The Dove Approach to torture: Be cautious and emphasize psychology and persuasion while avoiding physical abuse.
3. Torture Lite, also called stress interrogation: relies on sleep deprivation, confusion, discomfort, solitary confinement, mind deception games, sensory deprivation, LSD and other drugs.
4.  “Severe” torture: any torture that results in organ failure
5.  Define your terms: are you arguing for or against all-out torture and torture lite?
6. Geneva Convention: terrorists are excluded from war prisoner rights
7. Unlawful combatant
8. Abu Ghraib: the abuses at this torture center are an exercise in stupidity, cruelty, sadism, sexual humiliation; techniques proved to harm US interests around the world; we looked like brutes.
9. Shaking: putting a dirty stinking bag over someone’s head; part of torture lite
10. Efficacy argument: different studies give different results; it all depends on the expertise of the torturer and the person being tortured; no one size fits all rule applies and this is the problem of the torture debate; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It appears torture worked against the Algerian Liberation Front but it also appears it was ineffective against the Viet Cong.
11. Duress argument; people under duress will say anything.
12. Reciprocity argument; if we torture captives, our enemy countries will do the same to us.
13. Rendition: outsourcing our prisoners to other countries to be tortured so we can officially say we don’t torture while paying other countries to do so under the radar. This is an argument against torture. Why?
14. Torture as social control in Naomi Klein’s article.
15. Anti-democracy argument; torture can be used to intimidate those who oppose the government policies
16. Lazy argument; there are more efficient ways of getting information than torture
17. Fear argument (from Mark Bowden) fear works more than pain; the torturer must use psychological cunning in addition to physical pain.
18. Language and Deception argument (fake an alliance with prisoner’s friends)
19. Good Cop/Bad Cop
20. Morons and Madmen argument; can we trust people in high power to be moral and competent?
21. Sadism argument; sadistic people are drawn to jobs that may require torture
22. Either/or fallacy to support torture

 

 

 

Part Two. Traditional Arguments Against Torture

 

1. Coercion often results in the suspect appeasing the torturer with made-up information to simply stop the torture.
2. Sadists are often drawn to the job of torturer.
3. An infinitesimal amount of people who go into the torture profession have the skill level and expertise to implement torture effectively and within the guidelines. Most in fact are incompetent butchers.
4. There is no way of knowing that the Intel was helpful or accurate until long after it was extracted, rendering it useless.
5. Governments use torture to intimidate the citizens from having contrary opinions and free speech. This is called the slippery slope argument.
6. Torture may start off with guidelines and controls but soon it becomes an uncontrollable juggernaut. Abuse is inevitable.
7. The government can widen the definition of a “terrorist suspect” to include anyone they want.
8. Torture is state-sponsored terrorism that lowers us to our enemies’ level.
9. Emphasis on torture distracts us from real solution to terrorism, which is prevention. I will use the cancer analogy.
10. Cover-ups are commonplace in torture abuses.
11. Torture is a violation of human rights.
12. There is the retaliation factor: “We torture them; now they torture us.”
13. Torture results in an anti-American sentiment which reduces international cooperation.
14. Non-torture methods are proven to be as or even more effective.
15. Terrorists will choose death over capture (knowing they’ll be tortured) and wreak more havoc—resulting in more death and bloodshed—as they fight to the death.

 

Part Three. Common Arguments That Support Torture

1. The Ticking Bomb Scenario
2. Abuse of X should not result in its elimination. Do we eliminate priests, marriage, and other things when abuses occur?
3. Proven terrorists waive their human rights.
4. “We have the right to save our lives and country by any means necessary.”
5. We accept collateral damage when we drop bombs; the same should be tolerated when we torture.
6. Unlawful combatants don’t have the same rights as do captured prisoners.
7. We have a body of evidence that shows we have gained life-saving Intel from the use of torture.

 

 

 

Part Four. Reading Questions

 

One. What do Jack Bauer and many Bush Administration officials have in common? 109

 

Two. In one word, what is the appeal of the TV show 24? See 110 top.

 

Three. In what 2 ways is 24 in conflict with reality? See 110 (impending disaster) and 111 (the efficacy of torture)

 

Four. Why does Cusac praise 24? See 110 bottom.

 

Five. What anti-humanistic and pro-humanistic messages hum through the show? 111

 

Six. Is 24 a powerful influence on Americans’ attitudes toward torture and the rules of war in general? Explain. See 112 top. 

 

 

Essay Options:

Write a 5-page defense or refutation of the use of torture. In your first 2 pages, explain the position of your opponents and the justifications they use to defend their position. Then in the next 3 pages, argue, point by point, why your opponents are wrong. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 4 sources.

 

A pro-torture thesis with concession clause might look like this:

 

While torture entails many abuses, torture is justified in certain situations, including _________________________, _____________________, ________________________, and _________________________.

An anti-torture thesis might look like this:

While the pro-torture debaters are good at drumming up all sorts of scary scenarios, their arguments for torture collapse under the weight of several fallacies, myths, and misconceptions, which include _____________________, ________________________, ________________________________, ________________________, and _____________________________. 

 

 

A thesis that “rides the middle” might look like this:

 

To embrace a “pro-torture” or “anti-torture” is over simplistic nonsense. The potential for abuse in the realm of torture is huge, to be sure. But sometimes there are in fact extreme conditions that warrant torture. Therefore, torture should be allowed in the most narrow of circumstances and stringent conditions, which include ____________________, ____________________________, _________________________, _____________________________, and __________________________________.

Suggested Essay Structure

In your first two pages, summarize the major arguments for and against torture so your reader knows you considered both sides of the issue. Then in a thesis, you might write something like this:

Having considered both positions, I feel compelled to argue that torture is (is not) viable because ____________________________, _________________________, ___________________, and ___________________________________.

1A Research Links for the Torture Debate

The Dark Art of Interrogation

Torture: The Slippery Slope

Amnesty International and Counterarguments

Torture As Policy

Balanced Politics

Torture Paper

The Torture Myth

The Argument for Torture

In Defense of Torture

In Defense of Torture from The Atlantic

The Truth About Torture

1A Lesson Plan for “Unspeakable Conversations” (92)

 

Part One. Lexicon of Terms Pertinent to Peter Singer’s Moral Philosophy.

 

One. Utilitarianism, the philosophy that we should sacrifice the individual for the greater good of the collective whole.

From Economy: Definition: Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy, generally operating on the principle that the utility (happiness or satisfaction) of different people can not only be measured but also meaningfully summed over people and that utility comparisons between people are meaningful. That makes it possible to achieve a well-defined societal optimum in allocations, production, and other decisions, and achieve the goal utilitarian British philosopher Jeremy Bentham described as "the greatest good for the greatest number."

 

This form of utilitarianism is thought of as extreme, now, partly because it is widely believed that there exists no generally acceptable way of summing utilities across people and comparing between them.

Two. “quality of life” argument: human life is only valuable if a certain “quality” can be achieved; otherwise life is better off destroyed.

Three. “normal children”: They can achieve a “quality of life” and should take priority over “abnormal children” who should be euthanized.

Four. “infants are replaceable”: we should replace abnormal infants with normal ones for the “greater good.” The moral imperative is that we are reducing suffering and adding more productive citizens to society as opposed to citizens who put a burden on society.

Five. Eugenicist, one who defends the idea that we should select what humans are desirable based on genetics and which ones should be replaced, that is euthanized, for the betterment of society. The eugenicist also develops the criteria for making these choices.

Six. Nebulous definition of “personhood.” The ability to imagine the future. What does that mean?

Seven. Intrinsic value of human life, called the sanctity of life vs. conditional value of human life based on “quality of life.”

Eight. Apologist for eugenics. An apologist takes controversial or unpopular ideas and makes them appealing by defending their validity and showing why those views are correct.

Nine. Peter Singer is an advocate for genetic re-engineering.

Ten. Market-driven and peer-pressure-driven forces for genetic re-engineering. The result will be a loss of diversity. Most women will like Salma Hayek and Beyonce while most men will look like Will Smith and Brad Pitt. See the New Eugenics. 

 

Part Two. Peter Singer’s Major Arguments

 

One. Peter Singer’s quality of life argument for infanticide:

His stated reason, rather, is that such children have diminished prospects of eventually enjoying an adequate "quality of life", in his words, and to allow them to live would take away resources from what Singer calls "normal" children. He therefore advocates killing "disabled" infants, if the parents so choose, and replacing them with "normal" ones. The terminology of "replacement" is Singer's own; his philosophy "treats infants as replaceable", in his words (Practical Ethics p. 186).

 

Why, then, does Singer argue that infants born with this condition can justly be killed? Because they are "abnormal" and do not have "good prospects" (Rethinking p. 214). This notion of "prospects" runs like a mantra through Singer's discussion of Down syndrome children: "the future prospects of life may be so bleak" (211), "the prospects are clouded" (213), and so forth. But what sort of prospects does he have in mind? On p. 213 ofRethinking he lists several activities which a person with Down syndrome will supposedly never be capable of: "to play the guitar, to develop an appreciation of science fiction, to learn a foreign language, to chat with us about the latest Woody Allen movie, or to be a respectable athlete,  basketballer or tennis player." This list reads like a parody of bourgeois myths of achievement, success, and respectability. To Singer, however, these are legitimate reasons for killing a newborn. After all, if you can't do your own financial planning, why should you be allowed to live?

 

Two. Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument for infanticide:

What counts as a "severe disability" for Singer? He intentionally leaves the term vague to allow for a broad range of parental discretion, but he has discussed a number of specific examples, both hypothetical as well as actual cases. The conditions he has explicitly named as sufficient justification for active infanticide include Down syndrome, spina bifida, and hemophilia. Here is Singer's reasoning on the latter condition, taken from his popular textbook Practical Ethics (P. 186): "Suppose a woman planning to have two children has one normal child, then gives birth to a haemophiliac child. The burden of caring for that child may make it impossible for her to cope with a third child; but if the disabled child were to die, she would have another. . . . When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the haemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him."

 

Three. Peter Singer’s definition of a “person” or someone who is worthy of the label “personhood”:

a conscious being,  a creature who has the capacity to imagine the future. This definition can apply to humans, animals, an creatures. A “person” should not be killed, but a human baby suffering severe retardation or some other handicap is not a “person.”

 

Four. Utilitarian Slippery Slope:

If we agree that we should aim for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people and that handicapped people burden the “greatest good,” at what point do we stop at defining who constitutes a “burden”? Smokers, the obese,  criminals, the handicapped, the autistic? Where do we stop?

 

Five. Peter Singer’s “Worse Off” Argument:

Disability makes a person worse off and therefore that person should be killed. And Peter Singer is comfortable judging who’s “worse off” and who’s not, a very subjective condition. See page 97 and page 106 top.

 

Six. Peter Singer’s Eugenicist Position:

The eugenicist position endorses selection according to desirable and undesirable genetic traits, and favors the elimination of the latter. Singer's argument sorts people into two categories, "normal" and "abnormal", and declares the ostensibly abnormal ones fair game at birth. He doesn't even bother to try to provide "objective" grounds on which to classify some human physical or mental conditions as "defective" (a term he used in earlier editions of Practical Ethics) and contrast them with "healthy" ones. Instead he simply welcomes whatever arbitrary social norms happen to prevail, thus turning his argument into a vehicle for prejudice. But of course there is no perfect, flawless version of the human form against which putatively "inferior" specimens could be measured.

 

Seven. Harriet McBryde Johnson’s quality of life argument:

Studies show that the public underestimates the quality of life for most handicapped people based on stereotypes. See 104 top.

 

Part Three: Essay #3 Option:

Defend or refute Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.” Here is how the assignment looks on our syllabus:

Option 1: Write a 5-page critique of Peter Singer’s philosophy as rendered in “Unspeakable Conversation” (92). In your first page, explain Peter Singer’s philosophy and the methods he uses to defend it. Then in your next page, begin a thesis paragraph that defends or refutes Singer. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 4 sources.

 

Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis One:

While Singer’s argument for infanticide is consistent with his utilitarian worldview, his position collapses under the close eye of scrutiny in which detect huge holes or flaws in his reasoning. These flaws include __________________________, ___________________________, ____________________________, and __________________________.

Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis Two:

If we accept Peter Singer's utilitarian argument as a just rationale for infanticide, then we are paving the way for genetic re-engineering as a tool to create a Super Baby that all parents will be forced to breed. This forced breeding of the Super Baby will result from ______________________, __________________________, ______________________, and ____________________________________. 

 

Defense of Peter Singer: Thesis Three:

McMahon has treated Peter Singer’s infanticide argument with gross unfairness. While McMahon is correct that Singer needs to tidy up some of his vague definitions, Singer’s general argument can be ethically defended as actually helping the human race when we consider _________________________, _______________________, ___________________________, and _______________________________. 

Part Four. Some Salient Titles

Must I Conform to Peter Singer's Definition of Happiness So I Can Live?

Be Happy Singer's Way . . . Or Die

Let Go of the Stale Past and Become New and Improved, Peter Singer Style

We Limit Ourselves By Dismissing Peter Singer So Quickly

McMahon Commentary on “Unspeakable Conversations” (92)

Peter Singer’s theories of “selective infanticide” insulate him from the reality of flesh and blood:

His theories are abstractions and as he percolates his ideas behind the university walls, he loses touch with reality. Specifically, Singer does not see the human face of “disability” and this human face is Harriet McBryde Johnson. According to Singer’s theory of eugenics, HBJ’s parents had the right to kill her since someone with her disabilities could not lead a “quality of life” and as such she doesn’t deserve the title of “person.” Nor does she possess, to use Singer’s term, “personhood.”

 

To the contrary, HMJ has a lot of richness in her life that defies the stereotypes too many people have about people with disabilities. Part of HMJ’s gifted life is her intellect, which allows her to see the “bone-chilling” theories of Peter Singer for what they are: monstrous. For example, Singer believes in “selective infanticide” under the guise of “preference utilitarianism” (96), which states that disabled babies are disposable and that is preferable to replace them with healthy babies who have a better change for a flourishing existence.

One of the horrifying qualities of Peter Singer is that during his debate with HMJ he remains affable, lucid, and logical. We can infer that Singer has succumbed to his abstractions so fully that he has lost his humanity and his sanity. He is clearly an congenial monster, polite on the outside, roiling with his murder doctrine on the inside.

One of the striking inadequacies of Singer’s theory, we read on page 97, is his belief that someone like HMJ is “worse off” (106) as he projects condescending pity for the disabled based on his ignorance and stereotypical beliefs (104). 

Research Links for "Unspeakable Conversations" (92)

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Since your research paper for this reading focuses on the ethics, or lack thereof, of Peter Singer's eugenics argument, the following links are directed to eugenics and the worthiness of Singer's defense of eugenics. 

More Research Links

Institute for Social Ecology

Club 166

Happy Nevertheless

Peter Singer's Bold Defense of Infanticide

Dutch ethicists defend infanticide

Missionaries accuse Brazil of allowing infanticide

Infanticide in Brazil Highlights Culture War

Journal Entry:

Write a thesis that agrees or disagrees with Singer's belief that we should use infanticide when the quality of life and personhood is not viable, according to Singer's definition. Support your thesis with 4 reasons. 

1A Lesson Plan for Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem 217

One. Principle of the Successful Thesis: A strong thesis is the answer to a compelling question.

 

Two. Why is starvation an addiction for Caroline Knapp and perhaps for others?

 

One. She retreats from life and withdraws into a sense of calm. She feels safe, but she is not living. When we retreat from life to defend our self, we choose death over life. I’m thinking of the woman whose husband left her and she became bitter and “undateable.” See page 217.

 

Two. Rigid routine makes her feel safe from wanton, self-destructive behavior. Of course, she’s blind from the fact that the rigid routine is a form of self-destruction.

 

Three. Starvation becomes a “silent protest” against ridiculous feminine ideals that are forced upon women. Starving both aspired to the ideal and “mocks” it. See page 218. Also see page 223 in which the Kate Moss look replaces the Marilyn Monroe look.

 

Four. Starvation alleviates the discomfort of “inhabiting the female body.”

 

Five. Starvation is an attempt to invert the food obsession as a positive symbol of nurturing and care-taking; in its place, starvation is about self-rejection and “self-inflicted cruelty.” See page 218.

 

Six. Starvation becomes a way of avoiding self-recriminations: “I’m such a hog” for having eaten that chocolate cake. See page 219.

 

Seven. Starvation has become a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the Devil, in which women trade eating satisfaction so that they can enjoy self-esteem. See page 220.

Eight. Mastering and controlling one’s appetites becomes a way of feeling empowered. This empowerment becomes a form of compensation for feelings of loneliness, self-doubt, and consuming dread and desperation. See page 221 bottom.

 

Nine. Starvation becomes a way of surrendering to the “backlash” against the rise of feminine power. See 223 and 224.

Ten. Starvation is a reaction to an unnatural hatred of fat. See page 224 and 225.

 

Eleven. Starvation is an attempt to withdraw from the overwhelming choices that are part of a woman’s new freedom: See page 227.

Twelve. Starvation is a reaction to a woman’s new freedom on the one hand and her lack of political power on the other. See page 228.

Thirteen. Starvation is a reaction to a world that “mobilizes in the service of male appetite.” See page 228.

 

Three. Lexicon

1. Addiction to starvation 217 first paragraph

2. Obsessive compulsive rituals second paragraph

3. Anorexia 217 bottom and 218 top

4. Silent protest 218 top

5. Core cause of anorexia 218 middle and 221 second paragraph and 223 top paragraph and 225 middle paragraph

6. Internalized caveats and rules 218 and 219 top 2 paragraphs and 221 middle paragraph

7. Female math 220 top

8. Dangerous form of hunger 222 top

9. Cardinal violation of appetite 222 bottom

10. New female aesthetic 223 second and third paragraph; Marilyn Monroe trumped by Kate Moss

11. Backlash against feminine strength 223 bottom and 224 top

12. Visceral knee-jerk hostility to fat women and people in general 224 bottom and 225 top

13. Buffet hostility 225 bottom and 226 top

14. Buffet as metaphor or microcosm for Knapp's neurosis 230

  

Four. Study Questions

 

One. What is the "lure of starving"? 217

 

Two. What contradiction does Knapp identify on page 217? 

 

Three. What made Knapp feel safe? 217

 

Four. What does Knapp mean when she writes that anorexia both "capitulates to the ideal and also mocks it" in the context of idealized feminine beauty? 218

 

Five. What overwhelming anxiety do anorexics suffer from? 218, 221, 223

 

Six. Why does Knapp make the distinction between "female hunger" and "male hunger"? (Good essay topic, 218)

 

Seven. Describe the "dance of vigilance and self-restraint" on page 219.

 

Eight. Explain the essay's title. 220

 

Nine. What gives Knapp a "perverse sense of pleasure"? 220 bottom.

 

Ten. How does dieting make us go crazy? 222 top and bottom.

 

Eleven. What happens when hunger is "divorced from the body"? 223 top.

 

Twelve. What does caloric intake have to do with a woman's "self-worth and power and identity"? 223, 227, 228

 

Thirteen. What is represented in the shift of feminine ideal from Marilyn Monroe to Kate Moss? 223, 224

 

Fourteen. Do you agree with Knapp that the obsession with hating fat is a "gender issue" or does the body image obsession afflict both men and women equally? To answer, consider the term "bigorexia."

 

Part Five. Reviewing Major Points 

 

1. anorexia is a "silent protest" against the draconian ideal of female beauty

2. the love of rules as a way of soothing anxiety and overwhelming fear of one's appetites (223 top)

3. an obsession with "math" that makes one calculate calories in and calories out (220 top)

4. the loss of balance between gluttony and restraint (222 and 226 top)

5. a sense of "confused hunger" (222 bottom)

6. fear of food becomes a metaphor for the fear of freedom (223 and 227 and 228-230)

7. the Kate Moss look became an unconscious way for men to control women when they were enjoying their new freedom (223 bottom and 224 top)

8. peer pressure among women, veering on meanness, to be thin (224 and 225 top)

9. self-disgust (227)

 

 

Part Six. McMahon’s Commentary on “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem” by Caroline Knapp

 

Whether they are bingeing or purging, irrational eaters are in a most damnable condition--the state of having no self-control and being helpless and fearful in the face of overwhelming appetites. These inflamed irrational passions are so devastating that binge eaters must tiptoe through life fearing that at any moment they will fall into the abyss of their avarice.

 

Most irrational eaters, especially the women described by Knapp, suffer shame for several reasons, including a sense of anxiety over the disparity of their new freedoms but limited power; their internalized "theme of vigilance and self-restraint" that often backfires and is counterbalanced by compulsive appetites that eradicate all the "gains" rendered from the meticulous adherence to eating rules; the state of hunger that "becomes divorced from the body" and becomes "loaded with alternative meanings" that have to do with unfulfilled emotional longings; and their knowledge that violating the slender female aesthetic will cause them to be held in tacit contempt by both men and women alike.  

 

 

This sense of shame and self-loathing becomes exacerbated when obesity is looked at through a religious prism which would have us condemn over-eaters as gluttons, sinners indulging their appetites, reprobates putting their desires before God, miscreants violating our space with their grotesque corpulence. 

 

Scapegoated by society for putting an undue strain on medical costs, despised for taking up our space, an unloved for not inciting the kind of desire that we associate with Kate-Moss slenderness, fat people represent the possibility of human failure and rejection that we fear in ourselves. Thus many of us, overreacting to our fears, develop a myriad of eating disorders so chronic that once ensnared in these irrational eating habits, it is nearly impossible for many of us to free ourselves from them and lead relatively normal lives. 

Seven: Back to Your Essay

As the essays in the "How We Eat" Chapter attest, I am, like most Americans, susceptible to a cycle of pathological eating evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, _____________________, ________________________, and ___________________________. 

 

Consider

One. The bad habit of consuming processed food products instead of real food.

Two. Yo-yo dieting

Three. Food industry uses aggressive marketing to children, which creates habits the are life-lasting.

Four. Eating healthy, organic foods is expensive. People get discouraged and just say “the hell with it,” languishing in apathy.

Five. People don’t have the time or will to learn how to cook delicious meals for themselves so they rely on getting punk-fed by fast-food diners, processed food products and a myriad of “punk foods.”

Part Eight. Journal Entry for Your Introduction:

Write about a person with bad eating habits. 

 

 

1A Lesson Plan for “The Wages of Sin” by Francine Prose (197)

 

Part One. Lexicon:

 

One. The Nanny State, paragraphs 1 and 2: people are dumbed-down troglodytes who are so helpless to fend themselves it is necessary for the government to be a Big Nanny that cares for the infantile, incontinent appetites of the people by imposing stringent laws and regulations.

 

Two. Paternalistic; when someone takes on a parental role. This word often has a negative meaning, for it often suggests someone being presumptuous enough to be an authority over another.

 

Three. Obesity burden; tax payers have to absorb half the medical costs incurred by obesity-related ailments. Is that fair?

 

Four. Fat Tax dilemma. If taxing fat people and putting a “fat tax” on “fatty” items were to be effective, people would live longer and old age increase would put a NEW tax burden on tax payer.

 

Five. Stigma vs. the Nanny State; see page 198: the sense of shame, which is more powerful than any government regulations.

 

Six. Gluttony: the sin of overeating as a form of self-indulgence

 

Seven. The moral case against obesity:  Gluttony shows a disrespect for the body and an excessive pandering to one’s ego.

 

Eight. Latent hostility against obese people: See page 198 at bottom: We claim to be compassionate towards the obese but in reality we are not when obesity inconveniences us. Airplane seats, for example.

 

Nine: The sin of the obese: To impose a burden on others by taking up an unfair amount of space. See 199 top.

 

Ten. Oversimplification: Attributing complex problem to simple cause: to blame obesity on sin or indulgence or ego is absurd. Obesity may be partly these things, but they don’t tell the whole story.

 

Eleven. Ubiquity of cheap, calorie-dense food: Ubiquity means “everywhere.”

 

Twelve. Either/Or Fallacy: to reduce an argument to two possibilities, either/or. For example to address the obesity crisis as either a sin or an illness is absurd. The problem is more complex.

 

Part Two: The Two Best Books and One Film about Food I’ve Ever Read That Will Change Your Life:

 

1. Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink
2. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
3. Film on DVD: Food, Inc. 

 

Both writers discourage going on a diet. Instead, they encourage eating real foods that we like in moderation. Their information is priceless. Read their books and you will never get “punk-fed” again. Don’t let The Man poison your body or manipulate your eating habits.

 

 

Part Three. The 15 Causes of Obesity:

 

1. There is an abundance of convenient, cheap, calorie-rich food everywhere we go.
2. We move less than we did generations ago. Do we chase the animals we eat? No.
3. Mindless eating; not even knowing the quantity of what we consume every day, much of it done while talking, watching TV, or surfing the Internet, all forms of Mindless Eating. See book of same title by Brian Wansink.
4. Poverty; there is a relationship between poverty and obesity. This is due to a lack of education combined with reliance on cheap fast food.
5. Parents. Children eat what their parents eat. If the parents eat a “fat lifestyle,” so will their children.
6. Friends. We eat and look similar to our friends. We often call this “social eating.”
7. Eating processed foods instead of real foods and not knowing the difference. Please see In Defense of Eating: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. In short, only shop at the far left and right of supermarkets; avoid the middle; or shop at the Farmer’s Market.
8. Super-sized portions are marketed as a “good deal.” See the film Super Size Me and read the book Fast Food Nation by Erich Schlosser
9. Boredom; stay at home with nothing to do and you’ll overeat
10. Emotional eating; eating to feel “love” or “self-esteem” or because you feel lonely.
11. Lack of sleep. The more tired you are, the more you feed your blood sugar to compensate.
12. Education; knowing how to enjoy good healthy food should be very practical but too few people know how to prepare food for themselves that they both crave and that is good for them.
13. Learned helplessness
14. Dieting; it leads to weight gain, splurging, neuroses, and messes up the metabolism which rebels and goes on “shut down.”
15. Fast food is marketed to children in an aggressive way; see Fast Food Nation.

 

 

Part Four. An "A" Paragraph Must Contain:

 

1. Topic sentence
2. Supporting details
3. Transitions
4. Passionate distinctive writing voice
5. Concrete, colorful varied language

 

Sample Paragraph 

Pulpit thumpers decry that religion is dead in America and that a revival must sweep the nation soon lest we suffer the fiery annihilation of Sodom and Gomorra. These doomsday prophets are wrong. Religion is alive and well.  As Francine Prose renders in her acute and trenchant essay “The Wages of Sin,” the Supercilious Fat Police and their acolytes who look upon fat people as a breed of bloated sinners have co-opted religious language and metaphor to divide society into two sides: The reedy svelte souls bound for heaven and the scandalously obese souls bound for hell. To reinforce this polarization, the Fat Police, and even self-loathing fat people themselves, assert big government micromanagement of “fat behavior,” so that there are fat taxes imposed on lovers of movie popcorn, colossal burritos, super-sized buckets of ice cream and soda, and other foods that pose a threat to one’s salvation. The Fat Police and their disciples have also proselytized the gospel that moral depravity, “immoral self-indulgence,” is at the root of obesity, so that it is clear that fat people are not helpless victims of the environment or genetic hard-wiring but the result of their own damnable sloth, gluttony, and avarice. Another category that insures fat people suffer the stamp of stigmatization is society’s collective resentment that corpulent fleshy souls are guilty of hogging or usurping other people’s personal space.  What kind of wickedness allows the fat person to assert his gargantuan belly into our area when he squeezes next to us on a train, a bus, or an airplane? His rude and selfish sin so egregious that he and his obese brothers and sisters should pay for not one but two airline or bus tickets to accommodate their elephantine rumps.  Finally, if fat people can be saved at all, they must resort to a Higher Power: Their countless tons of unwanted flab can only be shed if they throw themselves upon the Alter of God’s Mercy and embrace a variety of spiritual rehabilitations—Twelve Step Programs, revivalist gospel tracts,  and other motivational tools rooted in the language of God, the devil, sin, and divine providence.

Part Five. 1A Research Links for “The Wages of Sin” by Francine Prose (197)

 

Research Links 

Ten New Obesity Causes

Social Causes of Obesity

New Data Challenges Set Point

Researchers Link Obesity to Flaw in Gene

Part Five. Revisiting the thesis for pathological eating:

As the essays in the "How We Eat" Chapter attest, I am, like most Americans, susceptible to a cycle of pathological eating evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, _____________________, ________________________, and ___________________________. 

 

Consider

One. The bad habit of consuming processed food products instead of real food.

Two. Yo-yo dieting

Three. Food industry uses aggressive marketing to children, which creates habits the are life-lasting.

Four. Eating healthy, organic foods is expensive. People get discouraged and just say “the hell with it,” languishing in apathy.

Five. People don’t have the time or will to learn how to cook delicious meals for themselves so they rely on getting punk-fed by fast-food diners, processed food products and a myriad of “punk foods.”

Part Six. Journal Entry for Your Introduction:

Write about a person with bad eating habits. 

 

1A Lesson Plan for “The Wages of Sin” by Francine Prose (197)

 

Part One. Lexicon:

 

One. The Nanny State, paragraphs 1 and 2: people are dumbed-down troglodytes who are so helpless to fend themselves it is necessary for the government to be a Big Nanny that cares for the infantile, incontinent appetites of the people by imposing stringent laws and regulations.

 

Two. Paternalistic; when someone takes on a parental role. This word often has a negative meaning, for it often suggests someone being presumptuous enough to be an authority over another.

 

Three. Obesity burden; tax payers have to absorb half the medical costs incurred by obesity-related ailments. Is that fair?

 

Four. Fat Tax dilemma. If taxing fat people and putting a “fat tax” on “fatty” items were to be effective, people would live longer and old age increase would put a NEW tax burden on tax payer.

 

Five. Stigma vs. the Nanny State; see page 198: the sense of shame, which is more powerful than any government regulations.

 

Six. Gluttony: the sin of overeating as a form of self-indulgence

 

Seven. The moral case against obesity:  Gluttony shows a disrespect for the body and an excessive pandering to one’s ego.

 

Eight. Latent hostility against obese people: See page 198 at bottom: We claim to be compassionate towards the obese but in reality we are not when obesity inconveniences us. Airplane seats, for example.

 

Nine: The sin of the obese: To impose a burden on others by taking up an unfair amount of space. See 199 top.

 

Ten. Oversimplification: Attributing complex problem to simple cause: to blame obesity on sin or indulgence or ego is absurd. Obesity may be partly these things, but they don’t tell the whole story.

 

Eleven. Ubiquity of cheap, calorie-dense food: Ubiquity means “everywhere.”

 

Twelve. Either/Or Fallacy: to reduce an argument to two possibilities, either/or. For example to address the obesity crisis as either a sin or an illness is absurd. The problem is more complex.

 

Part Two: The Two Best Books and One Film about Food I’ve Ever Read That Will Change Your Life:

 

1. Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink
2. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
3. Film on DVD: Food, Inc. 

 

Both writers discourage going on a diet. Instead, they encourage eating real foods that we like in moderation. Their information is priceless. Read their books and you will never get “punk-fed” again. Don’t let The Man poison your body or manipulate your eating habits.

 

 

Part Three. The 15 Causes of Obesity:

 

1. There is an abundance of convenient, cheap, calorie-rich food everywhere we go.
2. We move less than we did generations ago. Do we chase the animals we eat? No.
3. Mindless eating; not even knowing the quantity of what we consume every day, much of it done while talking, watching TV, or surfing the Internet, all forms of Mindless Eating. See book of same title by Brian Wansink.
4. Poverty; there is a relationship between poverty and obesity. This is due to a lack of education combined with reliance on cheap fast food.
5. Parents. Children eat what their parents eat. If the parents eat a “fat lifestyle,” so will their children.
6. Friends. We eat and look similar to our friends. We often call this “social eating.”
7. Eating processed foods instead of real foods and not knowing the difference. Please see In Defense of Eating: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. In short, only shop at the far left and right of supermarkets; avoid the middle; or shop at the Farmer’s Market.
8. Super-sized portions are marketed as a “good deal.” See the film Super Size Me and read the book Fast Food Nation by Erich Schlosser
9. Boredom; stay at home with nothing to do and you’ll overeat
10. Emotional eating; eating to feel “love” or “self-esteem” or because you feel lonely.
11. Lack of sleep. The more tired you are, the more you feed your blood sugar to compensate.
12. Education; knowing how to enjoy good healthy food should be very practical but too few people know how to prepare food for themselves that they both crave and that is good for them.
13. Learned helplessness
14. Dieting; it leads to weight gain, splurging, neuroses, and messes up the metabolism which rebels and goes on “shut down.”
15. Fast food is marketed to children in an aggressive way; see Fast Food Nation.

 

 

Part Four. An "A" Paragraph Must Contain:

 

1. Topic sentence
2. Supporting details
3. Transitions
4. Passionate distinctive writing voice
5. Concrete, colorful varied language

 

Sample Paragraph 

Pulpit thumpers decry that religion is dead in America and that a revival must sweep the nation soon lest we suffer the fiery annihilation of Sodom and Gomorra. These doomsday prophets are wrong. Religion is alive and well.  As Francine Prose renders in her acute and trenchant essay “The Wages of Sin,” the Supercilious Fat Police and their acolytes who look upon fat people as a breed of bloated sinners have co-opted religious language and metaphor to divide society into two sides: The reedy svelte souls bound for heaven and the scandalously obese souls bound for hell. To reinforce this polarization, the Fat Police, and even self-loathing fat people themselves, assert big government micromanagement of “fat behavior,” so that there are fat taxes imposed on lovers of movie popcorn, colossal burritos, super-sized buckets of ice cream and soda, and other foods that pose a threat to one’s salvation. The Fat Police and their disciples have also proselytized the gospel that moral depravity, “immoral self-indulgence,” is at the root of obesity, so that it is clear that fat people are not helpless victims of the environment or genetic hard-wiring but the result of their own damnable sloth, gluttony, and avarice. Another category that insures fat people suffer the stamp of stigmatization is society’s collective resentment that corpulent fleshy souls are guilty of hogging or usurping other people’s personal space.  What kind of wickedness allows the fat person to assert his gargantuan belly into our area when he squeezes next to us on a train, a bus, or an airplane? His rude and selfish sin so egregious that he and his obese brothers and sisters should pay for not one but two airline or bus tickets to accommodate their elephantine rumps.  Finally, if fat people can be saved at all, they must resort to a Higher Power: Their countless tons of unwanted flab can only be shed if they throw themselves upon the Alter of God’s Mercy and embrace a variety of spiritual rehabilitations—Twelve Step Programs, revivalist gospel tracts,  and other motivational tools rooted in the language of God, the devil, sin, and divine providence.

Part Five. 1A Research Links for “The Wages of Sin” by Francine Prose (197)

 

Research Links 

Ten New Obesity Causes

Social Causes of Obesity

New Data Challenges Set Point

Researchers Link Obesity to Flaw in Gene

Part Five. Revisiting the thesis for pathological eating:

As the essays in the "How We Eat" Chapter attest, I am, like most Americans, susceptible to a cycle of pathological eating evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, _____________________, ________________________, and ___________________________. 

 

Consider

One. The bad habit of consuming processed food products instead of real food.

Two. Yo-yo dieting

Three. Food industry uses aggressive marketing to children, which creates habits the are life-lasting.

Four. Eating healthy, organic foods is expensive. People get discouraged and just say “the hell with it,” languishing in apathy.

Five. People don’t have the time or will to learn how to cook delicious meals for themselves so they rely on getting punk-fed by fast-food diners, processed food products and a myriad of “punk foods.”

Part Six. Journal Entry for Your Introduction:

Write about a person with bad eating habits. 

 

1A Winter 2010 Semester Lesson Plan for “Big Organic” by Michael Pollan 174

 

 

One. Lexicon

 

1. Edenic Quest: Shoppers want more than food. They want to engage in a narrative in which their buying of certain foods affords them a trip to Eden, or Paradise, in which they can return to a world that is free of corruption, cruelty, and toxins. They seek purity and bliss through “healthy eating.” They seek the tranquility of green pastoral glades and meadows over the stress and anxiety of urban life.
2. Self-Congratulatory Shoppers: They seek to massage ego buy purchasing organic foods.  Their food items have “stories” attached, little pamphlets about how cows are given shiatsu massage before yielding their milk and how chickens jog five miles a day in the crisp outdoors and hydrate themselves with spring water before squeezing out an egg. Buying food that tells these heart-warming stories empowers organic shoppers and makes them feel superior to the troglodytes who shop at Ralph’s and other pedestrian low-brow stores. Self-congratulatory shoppers exit Whole Foods with little halos over their heads.
3. Organic Shopping as Us Vs. Them Therapy: Shoppers buy organic to belong to an exclusive club that differentiates them from those Loser Shoppers Who’ve Given In to the Man, the crude Industrial Food Complex. In contrast, organic shoppers patronize small farmers and good-hearted artisans who raise food, not for profit, but to bring love and bounty to planet Earth.
4. Organic Food Hustle (177): Maintaining an image as a small operation when in fact the organic industry imitates the same business practices of the Evil Industrial Food Machine. It’s the same B.S. but marketed to look pure and superior.
5. Supermarket Pastoral: The fiction, story, or lie—whatever you want to call it—that creates the image of organic food being harvested in a way that is morally superior to the Evil Industrial Food Machine.
6. Brown Food Vs. White Food; brown symbolizes pure, unmolested food while white represents food that is processed, bleached, and contaminated . Eggs, wheat, rice, sugar, bread should all be brown. Hipsters eat brown food. Troglodytes (ignorant cave dwellers) eat white food. See page 181.
7. Causality vs. Correlation: Is organic eating the cause of good health or does it coincide with the fact that people who shop organic are health conscious in general and belong to an economic class that reduces certain health risks, such as obesity? Fact: The richer, the skinnier, and skinny means fewer obesity-related health problems. Fact: People who eat organic are healthier, not because they eat organic, but because they eat real food, vs. processed food. 
   
8. Operative word is not "organic"; it's "real" food vs. processed food.
9. Mindless eater: one with limited cooking skills, nonexistent nutrition knowledge. He tends to eat animal protein, animal fats, and processed food. The bulk of his diet is cheeseburgers, pizza, and Doritos. His beverage is soda. The Mindless Eater refers to the majority of Americans. 
   
10. Mindful eater: He eats thoughtfully, planning his meals, making his own meals and his very sensitive about being "punk-fed" by "The Man." He eats mostly real food. About 40% of his daily food intake is fruits and vegetables. Another 40% is grains, beans, legumes, and nuts; the remaining 20% is protein, either animal or vegetable. He has a wide range of cooking skills. He rarely eats in front of the computer or television, which creates a "mindless eating situation." 
11. The Self-Reliant Eater: he or she knows how to make a handful or even several good, healthy dishes that are easy to prepare and sate the appetites. If we sate our appetites, we're more likely to stick with our eating program.McMahon's eating program is semi-vegetarian and is about 2,500 calories a day. 
    

 

 

Two. What is Michael Pollan’s thesis? See 177, second paragraph.

 

The organic movement has less in common with its marketing image and more in common with the very industry it attempts to differ from. In other words, “Supermarket Pastoral is more fiction than fact.” See 178 top.

 

Pollan restates his thesis in his conclusion on page 194.

 

Three. What are Pollan’s mapping components?

 

1. The idea of cows on the farm is a myth. See 178.
2. The idea of free-range is a myth. See 178 bottom
3. Organic farming has to imitate industrial methods in order to stay competitive. See 187 and 188 bottom.
4. The superiority of organic food is in many ways negligible and not dramatic for the extra money one spends. See 188 bottom
5. Organic food is no better for the environment than other industrialized foods. See 193. 

 

 

Four. Questions

 

1. How is food connected to meaning and identity? 174 P1; 175 P3
2. How does the marketing of food confuse shoppers? 175 P2
3. How did organic food become a marketing bonanza? 176 P2-4. It communicates a story or narrative that pulls our heartstrings as the narrative has all to do with the pastoral fantasy.
4. How is organic food a good guy vs. bad guy movie? 176 P3: The story of Supermarket Pastoral makes us feel more “authentic.” 177 top.
5. What contradiction must Whole Foods reconcile and how does it fail? 177 P2; 178 top; 178 P3 in which cows “never see a blade of grass.” And “free-range” is a fraud as well on 178 bottom. Also see 187 top paragraph in which organic method more and more resembles the industrial method.
6. What is “countercuisine”? 181 P3.
7. What does the organic food movement, especially the one connected with Whole Foods, have in common with Starbucks?
8. How was food radically compromised and degraded by the “scientific method”? 184 P2 and 3.
9. What is the opposite of “reductionist science”? 186 top. “Imitating whole natural systems.” See the evolution of organic farmer Gene Kahn whose business becomes more and more like the private model he once demonized: 187 P2-end of the page. And see what he says on bottom of 188.
10. Is there definitive proof that organic is superior to non-organic? See 188-190. Consider correlation over causality: People who seek healthy foods are living healthier lives in general. Produce may be healthier. See 192 bottom.
11. Is organic food better for the environment? See 193 and 194. It appears not much if at all.

 

 Five. What are the 6 principles of effectively marketing “organic food”?

 

 

1. Create an easy to follow narrative about the food chain when in fact the food chain is very complex. See 175 bottom and 176 middle.
2. Create a good guy—the organic farmer—and a bad guy—the evil agribusinessman and make customers feel they are on the right side, namely the side of the “counter culture.” See 176.
3. Create a bond between consumer and producer that creates a sense of intimacy, authenticity, bonding, and good will. See 176 bottom and 177 top.
4. Rely on the supermarket pastoral myth. See 175 middle and 177 top. Create the Garden of Eden or Paradise when people and animals lived in harmony.
5. Use certification to create a story, authenticity, and 2-way communication between shopper and farmer: See 176 top.
6. Convince shoppers that by choosing “countercuisine” and chemical-free food (181) they are improving their health and saving themselves from the dangers of the evil food industry.

 

 

Six. Writing Options on Today’s Reading

Our Dysfunctional Relationship with Food

In page one, write a profile of someone you know, you or someone else, who has a dysfunctional relationship with food. This pathological behavior may include one or more of the following: gluttony, mindless eating, bingeing and purging, yo-yo dieting, halo shopping in order to feel superior to others.

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

Likewise, the essays in the “How We Eat” chapter render us a dyspeptic nation trapped in a cycle of pathological eating evidenced by ______________________, ____________________________, _______________________________, __________________________________, and ____________________________________.

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Acting Out Culture, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

 

Another Option

In the context of Michael Pollan’s essay “Big Organic” (174), analyze the fraud and deception the food industry uses to market foods that are allegedly “organic” and “natural.” 5-page outline: In 2 pages, summarize Pollan's major points. Then write a thesis. As my research and Michael Pollan's essay show, the idea of "organic" is a marketing fraud evidenced by _________________, _____________________, ___________________, and ______________________. Your last 3 pages would flesh out these mapping components.

  

Contrary Opinion:

 

Let’s not be so quick to dismiss and disparage those who are on an Organic Quest. While the organic food industry is overpriced and often teeming with false promises, those who embrace the organic lifestyle are better off for their efforts. Their superior wellbeing is evidenced by ________________________, __________________________, ___________________________, and ___________________________________.

 

Another Thesis Option:

Answer this question: Do the health benefits from eating organic justify the extra cost of shopping for organic foods?

 

Sample Thesis in favor of organic food:

 

While some claims from the organic food industry are exaggerated and while organic food is no panacea for good health, the research clearly shows that a diet that emphasizes organic foods will result in superior health evidenced by _______________________, _______________________________, __________________________________, and ____________________________________.

 

Contrary Thesis Example:

I concede that shoppers who buy organic are more health conscious than those who don’t, but this does not mean that organic food, per se, is worth the extra cost. In fact, healthy eating is not predicated on buying organic food. Worse, the misguided organic shopper can wreak havoc on himself when he ____________________________, ______________________, ___________________________, and _________________________________.

Alternative thesis: 

Organic food is for the Prius-driving, soy latte-drinking upper class who need to look down on nonorganic eaters. In other words, organic food is not an authentic movement but a superficial pose doomed to go to extinction as all fads do.

Contrary thesis: 

While there are a lot of organic food eating posers, the fact is organic eating represents a legitimate, healthy, and egalitarian rebellion against the evil Industrial Food Machine. 

Another Essay Option: 

Write a research paper that defines the term food literacy and gives examples of what it means to be "food literate." Consider this: You should know the difference between real and fake food; you should know how to make a wide variety of real meals that you enjoy; you should develop a natural contempt for chain restaurants and any purveyor of phony food. 

Another Option:

Argue that Whole Foods is either a champion of an alternative, healthy lifestyle or the product of style over substance. 

Resources

Food Fighter

Paradise Sold

Naturally Dangerous

Eating Organic Offers No Benefits

Buying Organic Food Can Harm the Planet

Organic Food Not More Nutritional

Organic Food No Healthier

The Great Organic Myths

Organic Milk Is Not Healthier

Is Whole Foods Wholesome? (Dark Secrets Exposed)

Seven. Documenting Sources for Works Cited Page

1. Citing an essay from an anthology: 

Dobie, Kathy. “AWOL in America: When Desertion Is the Only Option.” Acting Out Culture. Ed. James S. Miller. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 358-366

 

 

Two. If you’re using a short work from a website with an author, you use Rule 28 on page 448.

 

Mencimer, Stephanie. “Why Mercury Tuna Is Still Legal.” Mother Jones. September/October 2008 Issue. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/why-mercury-tuna-still-legal

 

 

Three. If you’re using an entry in a blog, you use Rule 34 on page 453.

 

McMahon, Jeff. “1A Commentary on the Prevalence of BS.” Weblog post. Breakthrough Writer. 22 March. 2009. http://herculodge.typepad.com/breakthrough_writer/2009/03/1a-mcmahon-commentary-on-the-prevalence-of-bs.html

 

 

Four. If you’re using a DVD, see Rule 45 on pages 457 and 458. Notice the film release date (1999) is included with the DVD release date (2002).

 Being John Malkovich. Dir. Spike Jonze. Perf. John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Ned Bellamy, and John Malkovich. 1999. DVD. Universal Studios. 2002.

Eight. Using a Personal Anecdote to Introduce Your Essay

I’ve been working out most of my life. As a kid, I remember family and friends looking at photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and other bodybuilders and exclaiming how “gross” and “freakish” these “musclemen” were. In contrast, I thought these bodybuilders looked normal. From my point of view, it was the average guy, a tomato with four toothpicks sticking out it, who looked like a woeful excuse for a man.

At 13, I was a Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion. At 19, I took second place in Mr. Teenage San Francisco. I know the confidence and satisfaction that results from looking muscular and lean and I know now, ever since my metabolism slowed down in my early thirties, the chagrin and displeasure of having a Pillsbury Dough Boy coat of flab over my frame.

No time did I experience this humiliation more than in the summer of 2003 at the age of 42. My wife Carrie and I were walking back from the brunch buffet at the Sheraton Inn in Kauai where I had just ingested a 6,000-calorie breakfast of macadamia nut pancakes, French toast made with Hawaiian sweet bread, tire-sized turkey sausage patties, and boat loads of scrambled eggs inundated with melted cheddar cheese all washed down with several tall glasses of freshly-squeezed orange juice. As I strutted my 259-pounds outside the buffet room and past a hotel window, I saw the reflection of a portly gentleman, dressed in safari shorts and a turquoise tank top, which sported the striking image of the iconic sea turtle. This unsightly man I gazed upon looked like the stereotype of the grotesque overfed American and the image produced inside me the emotions of contempt and scorn.

I walked closer toward the bloated image and I was overcome by the shock and anxiety that the reflection was not some other guy for whom I could judge with gleeful ridicule but me. I was that dude, the type of person that I had mocked and ridiculed most of my life.

This was a huge moment for me, what literary people might call an “epiphany,” and I was fortunate to have experienced it. Most people are denied, or deny themselves, such moments of clarity. It is my belief that something like 95% of the human race walk around Planet Earth with their heads up their butts and this is how they die—never knowing what the hell is really going on. But on that summer day in Kauai when I saw that the corpulent man in the window was in fact me, my head uncorked from my butt and I was able to see reality for what it really was. And this reality—me being a chubster—was totally unacceptable. Something had to be done to deflate my unhealthy and humiliating corpulence.

I am not alone. As the essays in the "How We Eat" Chapter attest, I am, like most Americans, susceptible to a cycle of pathological eating evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, _____________________, ________________________, and ___________________________. 

Essay Topic Bank for Raymond Carver’s Short Stories and Research Links

 

Option #1: The War Between the Ego and Empathy in Where I’m Calling From

In page one, profile someone who suffers “the type of swollen ego that results in solipsism and isolation from sanity, maturity, and the human race.” Then in your second page, profile someone who embodies the “sweet grace of empathy” and show how this person’s empathy connects him or her to others.

 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

The above characters are antithetical to each other. Similarly, the stories pit characters at war between their egos and the liberation of empathy. Egotism in the stories (choose no fewer than 3) of Raymond Carver has grave consequences, which include _______________________, _________________________, ________________________, and ____________________________. In contrast, empathy has a healing effect on the downtrodden evidenced by _________________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ______________________________.

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Where I’m Calling From, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

 

Option #2: Redemptive and Misguided Love

In a 5-page essay, contrast misguided love (“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “Feathers,” “Elephant”) and redemptive love (“A Small, Good Thing” and “Cathedral”) in the aforementioned stories.

Option #3: Symbiosis

In a 5-page essay explain the meaning of symbiosis or unhealthy mutual dependence in “Feathers” and “Elephant.”  Before your comparison of the two stories, write a one-page introduction about an unhealthy symbiotic you’ve observed from your personal experience.

Option #4: The Chimera

Compare Mel McGuiness’ chimera from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” with the chimera that afflicts the couple in “Feathers.”  Before you compare the chimeras from the two stories, begin with a one-page introduction in which you describe a chimera that once afflicted you or someone else you know. 

Option #5: Solipsism

In 1 or 2 pages, profile someone you know who descended into the private hell of solipsism. Then compare in 3 or 4 pages the solipsism evident in Mel from "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and the narrator (before his transformation) in "Cathedral."

Option #6: The Disaffected

In a page, profile someone you know who is disaffected. Then analyze the causes and effects of the disaffected characters in "Cathedral" and "Feathers."

Some Research Links

Cathedral

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

A Small, Good Thing

Symbiosis According to Erich Fromm

Symbiosis and the Fear of Freedom

David Foster Wallace and Solipsism

1A Winter Lesson for 1-13-10: Comma Splices, Fragments and "Cathedral"

Part One. Avoiding Comma Splices

A comma splice is the error of using a comma to link two complete sentences:

 

You CAN link two complete sentences with FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so:

McMahon drives an Infiniti M37, but he likes the similar styling on the Nissan Maxima.

 

Terrel Owens plays for the Bills, and already he is causing a controversy with his petulant, contumacious behavior.

 

The problem with comma splices arises when we use conjunctive adverbs between the two complete sentences. Some common conjunctive adverbs: however, moreover, instead, in contrast, additionally

 

McMahon is a vegetarian, however, he fattens himself up with mozzarella pesto mushroom pizza with extra thick, soft doughy crust.

 

McMahon doesn’t eat turkey on Thanksgiving, instead he eats a garden burger.

 

The Maxima borrows styling cues from the Infiniti,  its fender flares suggest the luxury of the Infiniti G37.

 

A sentence fragment is an incomplete thought expressed in a phrase or a dependent clause.

 

While waiting for McMahon’s lecture during the afternoon English 1A class. A fly buzzed around Beatrice’s head.

 

The Infiniti M37 costs $10,000 more than the similarly styled Maxima. Since the M37 lavishes the driver with far more creature comforts.

 

The Infiniti M37 should retail for about $50,000. Which is a considerable increase over its predecessor, the M35.

Part Two. Finding Fragments and Comma Splices in a Passage

Jesse’s mother was barely recognizable, her straight black hair was covered with a greenish-blonde wig she had found in the dumpster behind the Veggie Grill on the Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach. People passing by were giving her funny stares. As she stood in front of the restaurant. She was in her white spandex gym outfit, she probably hadn’t washed it in weeks. Jesse could smell her from ten yards away, now she was staring at her reflection in a newspaper rack. Her fingertips tracing the contours of her sharp cheek bones.  Her eyes were bloodshot, she probably hadn’t slept the night before.

Jesse tried to get his mom’s attention while Officer Bergdorf looked on. Feeling sorry for the mother, but even more for the kid. Geez, the poor kid’s mother was doing this more and more lately, doing her crazy “exercise walks” from Torrance to El Segundo. Sometimes twenty miles a day, and this was in addition to all her working out at the gym. Her tiny body was shriveling into a prune.

Embarrassed, Jesse looked at his mother. He said, “Take the wig off. It’s filthy.”

She wasn’t listening. She turned her head this way and that. Admiring the glamorous film star image she saw in the newspaper rack’s reflection.

“Jesus, Mother, you’re going to get lice. Do you have any idea where that wig has been?”

Finally, she recognized her son’s voice. She turned to him.

“Jesse? How do I look?”

“We’re going home. I’m already late for school, thanks to you.”

He approached her and carefully pinched the germ-infested wig before flinging it on the roof of the Veggie Grill.

“What you do that for?”

“We’re going home now. You need to take your Seroquel.”

She looked at Officer Bergdorf. His bowling ball belly spilling over his gun belt. He had asked her out on a date a year earlier. Told her he’d barbecue her the best steak she had ever had. As far as he knew, she was just some good looking divorced lady who was into exercise. That was before he found out she was bipolar. Lucky for him. She had refused him.

Now the officer was looking at the poor woman, skinny as a rail, gaunt, little more than a skeleton. She didn’t think much of him either. She studied his greasy haired comb-over. Which failed to conceal his balding pate. Then holding her nose with an air a disapproval, she stared at his bulging gut and said, “I told you to lay off the donuts.”

He patted his belly affectionately. “I’m hooked, Regina. There’s no cure for me.” He looked at Jesse. “She gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, I just need to get her home and make her take her medication. She’ll be fine.”

He thanked the officer for calling him and got his mother inside the faded red Corolla. On the way home, she complained that she hadn’t finished her walk. Jesse told her he’d miss his first two classes because of this stupid episode. He reminded her of the importance of taking her medicine. It kept her “normal,” or at least close to it.

“You don’t need to lecture me. I know all about it. But I prefer to get the same healing benefits from exercise. It’s more natural.”

“Exercise helps, but it doesn’t work like your medicine.”

When they got home, he went into the kitchen and pulled the Seroquel out of its foil packet and put it in her hand as he poured her a glass of water.

“Come on. Down the hatch, just like the doctor said.”

He watched with relief as she swallowed the pill. Thank, God, now she’ll be half normal at work. She can’t afford to lose her job, now that would really suck.

Part Three.  Reading Questions for "Cathedral" 

One. What is the irony of using a blind character in the story as a way of developing one of its major themes? See page 391 where the narrator recounts the blind man burying his wife and how “he had never seen her.” Who’s really blind?

Two. Explain the title. A Cathedral is where miracles happen. The miracle is that a dead man will be resurrected. The dead man is equated with the image of skeletons that occur later in the story during the TV show. Clearly, the narrator is dead and reborn by the story’s end.

Three. How does the narrator reveals himself in the first paragraph? He’s a defensive ignoramus and a man so isolated from the complexity of the human condition that he is a walking corpse. He’s a dead man. Later we find that he’s friendless. His wife says he has no friends. He lives inside himself, a prisoner of his own solipsism, which is fueled in part by fear.

Four. What is foreshadowed in the second paragraph? Robert’s sensitivity, tracing the wife’s face, will be passed on to the narrator at the story’s end.

Five. What is the narrator’s real source of jealousy? Dead people don’t like to see people living life fully. They want everyone to be as dead and miserable as they are. The narrator resents the blind man for living life fully.

Six. What do we know about the narrator’s habits? They’re reductionary. He does the same rituals over and over to close himself from emotion.  The TV watching, the fear of silence, the fear of conversation, insomnia, the depression, the smoking dope until he can crash in bed. The blind man represents change, a threat, an interference with his routine. Our routines comfort us, but they also imprison and eventually kill us.

Seven. What is the story’s turning point? Where Robert apologizes for monopolizing the talk with the wife. He shows empathy, something the narrator is lacking. He shows he has this quality, empathy, which evinces Robert’s maturity and gives him the credentials to be trusted as a parent figure for the narrator who is essentially a frightened child. Once that dynamic is established, the miracle can begin.

 

Eight. What contradiction about maturity do we learn in the story? The adult is relaxed enough to be a child and possess a child’s hunger to learn new things. We see this on page 397 when they’re watching TV. One of life’s contradictions is that we have to be mature enough to be children, to be relaxed enough to let go and let our child explore.

Nine. How do we know the narrator is a scared little kid emotionally? He keeps saying, “I’m not doing so well, am I?” He needs an adult’s approval.

Ten. How does the narrator change at the end of the story? In the beginning he is disaffected. By the end, gets excited, his legs become numb, he’s possessed with a sense of urgency and life purpose. He says at one point, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.”

 

Part Four. Disaffected, adjective; Disaffection, noun:

To be disaffected is to be emotionally withdrawn, disengaged with the world, depressed. Disaffection is the condition of having given up on life and in essence being a member of the walking dead.

 

Part Four. The Causes of Disaffection

1.  You lack confidence to engage with others so you withdraw into yourself. Perhaps you were hurt in the past and don’t want to get hurt again, so you avoid people.

2.  You get married more for convenience and to shelter you from the world.

3.  You become addicted to your routines, which shut out the outside world.

4.  You are reflexively hostile to anyone new because they represent a threat to your existence. You hate change.

5.  You act like a churlish (grouchy) know-it-all who has all the answers, a person who dismisses everything as a “joke” and “utter nonsense.”

6.  You are incapable of listening to others. The only thing you listen to the Cynical Voice constantly grumbling inside your head.

7.  You are lethargic in your self-centeredness and numb yourself with various addictions in order to undergo your “slow death.”

8.  You teach yourself that there is no hope for change or a better life so you succumb to learned helplessness.

 

Part Five. Journal Entry

In a paragraph, describe someone you show who has over time become disaffected. 

1A Winter Lesson for Monday 1-12-10: Essay Structure, Common Errors, "Elephant""

Part One. If I Were Writing Essay #1

 

First off, I've never so explicitly given essay instructions, hoping that these step-by-step instructions would add clarity to students and allay any concerns they have about what is expected. Wrong. Never have I been so inundated with so many questions. As irony would have it, I wonder if I would have had fewer student questions (and I infer confusion) had I made the assignments more open-ended. Hmmm. 

In any event, here's one way I might go about writing Essay #1:

In the first page, I’d profile an incurable egotist, some mega-mouth bloviator akin to Mel McGuiness. Then in the second page, I’d profile someone evoking maturity, listening skills, and empathy.

Then I’d write a transition, something like:

The above contrast of the one character languishing in the hell of his ego and another flourishing through the power of envy is evident in the short stories of Raymond Carver. The most abysmal characters are mired in egotism, prone to solipsism, symbiosis, and the foolish pursuit of chimeras. On the other hand, his most redeeming characters have the power of empathy evidenced by humility, open-mindedness, and a genuine interest in the lives of others.

In my body paragraphs, I’d discuss Mel McGuiness, Fran, her husband, the narrator of “Elephant” and the narrator of “Cathedral” to explore the private hell of egotism.

Then for my examples of empathy, I’d discuss the blind man from “Cathedral” and the baker from “A Small, Good Thing. ” 

For those of you who hate my assignment, here is an example of a more open-ended assignment that you may like:

In a 5-pages essay, explore the different kinds of love in at least 3 Raymond Carver short stories, contrasting the love that leads to redemption and the misguided love that leads to disillusionment and despair. 

Part Two. Common Student Errors

1.   Students using footers instead of headers or they’re using both footers and headers.

2.   Students writing essay titles in italics or using both italics and quotation marks. For essay titles, use quotation marks only. For books, newspapers,  and films, use italics.

3.   Students are following singular nouns with plural pronouns: When a person shops for image, they are succumbing to vanity and the myth of democracy. You should use “people” instead of “person” and change the verb of course.

4.   Students are writing comma splices: Americans bought more economy than ever last year, however, most of these buyers are experiencing consumer regret. You should have a period or semicolon before “however.”

5.   Students are putting quotation marks inside commas and periods:McMahon says in his blog that “consumerism is equivalent to a religion”. The period should go inside the quotation mark.

6.   Students are writing fragments sentences: Within the pizza box of melted cheese, savory hand-tossed dough, olives, peppers, and mushrooms.

7.   Students are still misspelling “Works Cited.” I’m getting “Work Cited,” “References,” “Bibliography,” “Works Citations,” etc. 

8. Confusing a nonessential clause, which requires one or two commas and an essential clause, which has no commas.

Essential clause: Peaches that are green taste like sour poison.

Essential clause: Cars that have direct-injection six-cylinder engines are faster than four-bangers.

Nonessential clause: The Infiniti, which has a special paint electronically bonded to the metal, has low resale value.

9. Using semicolon before which: Anorexics are masters of exaggeration; which leads to severe food reduction. No semicolon here. Use a comma.

10. Using a verb after a prepositional phrase when you should have a noun: According to the article “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” by Clive Thompson shares lots of information.

 

Correct Version:

The article “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute by Clive Thompson shares a lot of information.

Part Three: The Wrong and Correct Way to Use Quoted and Paraphrased Material in Your Essay

Wrong: Peter Singer stated that we should use selective infanticide for cases when the child has no “quality of life. (99)”

Correct: Peter Singer states that we should use selective infanticide for cases when the child has no quality of life” (99).

Wrong: Singer’s critics assert that he is immoral; such as he lives in a world of abstractions and not reality (McMahon).

Correct: One of Singer’s most vociferous critics, McMahon charges that Singer’s immersion in the world of abstractions results in an immoral world view.

 

Wrong: Utilitarianism is a great evil when twisted by the likes of Peter Singer, said McMahon in a recent lecture.

Correct: McMahon opines that utilitarianism has been twisted by the misguided ethicist Peter Singer to champion such evil causes as selective infanticide.

Wrong: McMahon warned us that stereotypes of people with disabilities lead to their dehumanization. Which is a bad thing because it results in people like Singer arguing that their lives are less worthy than “normal” people.

Correct: McMahon warns that stereotyping people with disabilities leads to their dehumanization, which is dangerous because people make the artificial distinction between the “disabled” and the “normal.” 

Part Four. Questions for "Elephant" (472)

1.  What kind of metaphorical meaning do we get from the story’s title? An elephant bears heavy burdens, it suffers, and it never forgets. This speaks perhaps to the narrator’s martyr complex.

2.  What is the narrator’s dependence or addiction? He’s dependent on people being dependent on him. He even lets his brother “play” him, like “play him for a fool.”

3.  What pattern of the narrator’s pathological behavior becomes evident on page 476? He’s giving money to everyone. Brother, mother, ex-wife, ex-wife’s lovers, daughter, daughter’s bum who fathered his daughter’s children, his son, etc. Everyone is on the “payroll.” He needs to feel wanted. His self-esteem must be in the toilet.

4.  How much threat is there when he says he’s going away to Australia? None because everyone knows he’s a junkie giver, an enabler.

5.  What is dangerous about enablers such as the narrator? They reinforce the sloth, laziness, and helplessness of others. They do in name of duty and sacrifice when in fact they are needy people.

6.  Why can’t an enabler like the narrator “just say no” and establish boundaries with people? Because he knows the truth: If he cuts off the money, he will be lonely and he cannot stand loneliness. The story shows the depths of suffering loneliness causes and the lengths people will go to in order to stave off loneliness.

7.  In addition to giving or “loaning” people money, what other kinds of enabling behavior do we see? Teachers who let students walk all over them. People who let their boyfriends, girlfriends, or spouses repeatedly cheat on them. People who do their friends’ homework for them. People who put up with any kind of abuse but don’t establish boundaries because they are afraid of being alone.

8.  How does being a martyr feed the narrator’s ego? He feels wanted. He feels needed. He feels like he makes a Herculean sacrifice for the sake of others. This in turn makes him feel morally superior. But he fails to see the truth: That he is being used.

9.  What is the bitter and ironic truth about enabling others? The people we enable do not appreciate our generosity. They hate and resent us because in part they know they will never repay us and our sick symbiotic relationship with them is forever a reminder of this gut-wrenching fact.

 

Part Five: Journal Entry

 

Write about someone you know who like the narrator in "Elephant" has no boundaries and enables others. 

Part Six. Some Research Links

Cathedral

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

A Small, Good Thing