Blog Assignment #8

http://changethis.com/manifesto/search?search=brainwashed

Seth Godin's, "Brainwashed", explains an idea which says that we have all been brainwashed by the system into becoming eager compliant workers instead of truly educated idea-makers. I could not help but agree with this idea and was interested to read about the solution offered by Godin to "reinvent yourself", which involves several layers. One of the layers, "Be Generous", rewards those who create and give gifts without receiving anything rather than traditional giving to receive something. This will lead to an economy of individuals who support one another, Godin says. Another layer that I could especially connect with, "Make Art", stressed the importance of building a platform for creativity and explained that more markets are beginning to substantially reward art. "Acknowledge the Lizard",the layer in which Godin explains "the resistance", reveals a voice in our head that discourages creativity due to fear of being laughed at.


I found this article to be extremely interesting and thought-provoking. The idea of being somehow brainwashed by the system of public education is very similar to ideas that I have thought about as well. I have often wondered how much of the work that students do is truly teaching us something useful and how much of it is simply training us to blindly accept tasks and complete them, gaining no real benefit. After reading the directions for this blog assignment, I started to think about the layers that Godin describes to "reinvent yourself" and how these might apply to the blog that I have been creating this quarter. I realized that I could not truly connect any of these layers, which are meant to "reinvent" a brainwashed mind, with my blog entries because they were all completed simply because the tasks had been assigned to me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had completed most of these assignments somewhat blindly simply because they were assigned to me for points, very much like what Godin describes in his article as "an effort to teach you to be taught, to instruct you in compliance, to follow the curriculum"(Godin). Without thinking about what the assignments were truly gaining me, I still completed them just as the rest of the class did. However, while most of the excersises were not specific to my major, I did not find any of these exercises to be completely worthless or even a waste of time. Instead, I believe that there are better ways I could have spent this time exploring the creative process that would be more specific to my area of study. The blog assignments dealt primarily with animation and different elements of movie scenes, none of which truly gave me any more experience with my major which is music production. While I was completing the various assignments such as deconstructing a character, creating a storyboard, and critiquing an animation, I felt like I wasn't gaining any truly beneficial experience with my specific area of study. Keeping in mind that this is still one of the general media courses, I still believe that the class could have been divided into groups based on majors to receive more individualized, applicable assignments. I think that if there had been different blog assignments given to each major, students would be more motivated to spend time on them and gain more from each exercise. The one assignment that was relatable to my major and dealt with song deconstruction was the one that I enjoyed the most and got the most out of.