Tasting Things With Your Eyes Closed

Lucia´s morning meeting was definitely awesome! She had two activities planned for us and they were both great. To start out, she made up pair up with another classmate. Then she gave us each a piece of paper with an emotion written down on it and we were supposed to transmit this emotion just by using our eyes, the other person was supposed to guess. So I teamed up with Carmen and she tried to guess my emotion, which was jealousy (a very hard emotion to interpret with my eyes). Carmen didn’t guess my emotion right. So then it was her turn to interpret her emotion, I got it right away, it was worry. I guess there are some emotions that are harder to interpret only with your eyes.

Her next activity was that one person in each group had to be blindfolded and given food to taste. So, I covered Carmen´s eyes and started feeding her. She tried leche condensada, an oreo, strawberry yougurt, passion fruit and olive oil.  She guessed all of them right.

Consilience 7 & 8

Epigenetic rules, are they environment or culture or genes?Epigenetic rules are not mutually exclusive of the three, although most of all culture and genes affect it the most.

During the whole dialogue we were trying to find out the true meaning of epigenetic rules, we went from the internet all the way to its Greek roots (epi meaning over or on).

To know the true meaning of epigenetic rules, we asked ourselves why Wilson even talks about epigenetic rules. We agreed that we talked about them to describe the human nature.

Epigenetic rules are predispositions that we have, or inclinations that we are born with. I believe that epigenetics are prescribed by our genes and that culture is a result from our epigenetic rules. They guide behavior. These epigenetic rules aren’t really set and they can evolve and change.

We have also inherited epigenetic rules that go against our health and our well-being as humans 

Words and Rules 3 & 4.5

Instead of a discussion, we watched a video that practically summarized what Pinker talks about in the first few chapters. The name of this videos is Linguistics As a Window to Understanding the Brain. While we watched the video we had to write down the questions that we thought Pinker was providing the answer for. These are the questions I came up with:

• What is language?
• What is the miracle of language?
• Why is language important to humans?
• What does linguistics study?
• What topics can you divide language into?
• What is the main puzzle in language?
• What are Chomsky´s contributions to the science of language?
• Why should language have rules?
• What are the rules of language?
• What is the evidence that kids are born with grammar?
• What is phonology and what does it govern?
• What is the process of speech comprehension?
• What are the principles of pragmatics?
• Why study linguistics?
•  

“Every sentence one speaks is a unique sentence never mentiones before in history.” Pinker 

Self Reliance 6

Is not necessary to look at our past?
Our memories can still teach us, but they are a dead thing. We can only transform them and learn from them. "But to bring the past for judgement into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day."
We give our own meaning to our memories.

"Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment". We believe that only by our public actions we show who we are, but we forget all the small details also represent who we are and our character; even the way we move, how we dress, etcetera. (we have to value those tiny little moments.)

Do the Best You Can

Today was Marcela´s morning meeting. She showed us a video (better said... an audio) about this motivational speaker called Jim Rohn. In this speech he gave he talked about how we are supposed to be or try to be the best we can be in everything, all the way since getting up in the morning. I can say that this video was good, but I dont know why it didnt really get to me. I didnt really feel motivated after I saw it, I felt like I had before I had seen it. Maybe its because of something I have said before. It is not the same thing to listen to audio than to watch a video, I tend to get more distracted just listening to the audio.

No Morning Meeting

Our morning meeting facilitator did not arrive today.... This shows the lack of commitment that people have and what their priorities in life are. It is not fair for the rest of us to actually have to be responsible when people aren't. But hey, life isn't fair.

APOLOGY 2

Socrates claims he is in court because he posseses a certain kind of wisdom. While his prosecutors think he is in court because he is currputing the young with new and false gods. 

Is socrates reflecting humility or is he boasting? Does he actually believe he is superior to other poeple or is he saying that he is not? According to the Oracle story, Socrates himself does not think he is the wisest of all or superior to the rest, but the oracle does believe he is, so this is the reason for his quest of searching people who are wiser than him. He is trying to make people stop thinking about him in a divine way, by saying that we are all human.

He never claims himself that he is wise, but he also mentions that he is a little wiser than the rest because he knows nothing. He mentions that the slight advantage he has over the rest  is that he knows that he knows nothing.

Relating socrates with jesus: they both died for what they believed in and they didn't really give lectures, they both let people learn implicitly (asking questions, and letting people figure stuff out for themselves. 

Now I understand why benjamin franklin describes humility as imitating Socrates and Jesus.