Also, if he’s so interested in symbols, are there sociological studies about how symbols are defined by the culture, and how symbols evolve over time? Just because the Ancient Aliens may have used the $ sign for hot interspecies reproduction doesn’t mean the current monetary association is necessarily better or worse, but that symbols are a kind of language and if you want to be understood, you use the proper word. If you want to be misunderstood, then you’re kind of a jerk, and shouldn’t be surprised when people misunderstand you. He’s chosen to investigate a symbol that, to our culture (since we are not Indians in the 1st century or whatever), means unapologetic mass genocide and hate-based ethnic cleansing on a world-wide scale (whether or not the Nazis ever got that far, the point is that they intended to).

Then there’s the point of finding something to be proud of about oneself. Does it make sense to have a blue-eyes-only club? A never-needed-braces club? A my-mother-can-speak-French club? How does it differ from belonging to a chess club, or a basketball team, or a neighborhood program? Maybe find examples of how clubs became so full of themselves that they began to victimize others, and see if you can discuss where pride turned into bullying? It’s a fine line, I don’t know if you can make him drink…but you can try to salt the oats.

Didn’t help that the Interwebs were also full of people accusing other people of not celebrating Int’l Women’s Day “right,” for whatever reason.

The thing is, the video makes it perfectly clear that its goal is to raise awareness of Kony, to get people talking about him, and to make it clear to those who might be able to help that people are taking notice of him. I know the video also guides viewers to donate or buy a kit, but that’s not what I took away from it.

What frustrates me about everyone losing their shit over whether or not 100% of the money goes to help people is how easily focus has shifted from “wow, I want to let people know about this Kony guy, and maybe by talking to others and my representatives, something can be done to help” to “ugh, this charity pays themselves salaries? and it cost money to produce a video and travel to africa? they suck”.

I’d like to think that good stuff can still come from the video, whether the charity is perfect or not, they are still the first ones who brought this to my attention. I think Hauss is correct that “slacktivism” is in general a bad thing, a way that people can pat themselves on the back for essentially doing nothing, but I think there is a flip side to that. Sometimes the biggest roadblock to progress is that no one knows something is happening. Educating people is important, and what I took away from this video is that they are trying to do just that – educate and inform the masses to spark an interest and get some more voices heard. Not everyone who watches or shares will do something, but somewhere, someone might.

Anyway, I realize I haven’t really added to the conversation, but I will say that I still feel that All Is Not Lost. Society sucks sometimes, but if people can get their heads out of their asses, they can come together to do some pretty okay stuff.

In general though, I oscillate between depression and wild optimism about “the state of the world.” Currently, more optimistic than not. I do see fundamentalists doing their damnedest to drag the world back to a time where everyone paid lip service to their cultural norms at the cost of general happiness and the freedom to exist without punishment for women and minorities. And I also see an INCREDIBLY corrupt political class trying to entrench their corruption and digging themselves in with rules and laws designed to protect themselves (for instance, trying to neuter the internet). BUT, I see that as a panic response to the basic fact that the general public is increasingly aware that shit is fucked up and bullshit, and that they can see the confrontation coming and the overall trend where people are unwilling to live by the old, hateful standards anymore. Approval of the drug war is way down, people are increasingly aware of how corrupt our prison system is, violence is, overall, way down. I guess I feel optimistic because the overall trend is towards justice, and I feel the crackdowns are a panicked response to that.

Yes, there are a lot of people out there saying up is down out there, that the world is more dangerous, not less, that things are getting worse not better, but I think they’re starting to show just how detached from reality they are and it’s going to cause a positive, progressive backlash. For instance, i think the GOP entirely shot themselves in the foot over contraception. It was a huge tactical mistake to cross the line from opposing abortion to opposing contraception (which they always have, they were just smarter about not saying so before), and I think they’re going to pay for it in November. I think history is passing them by, and they’re just being big fucking babies about it. I’m not saying we don’t need to fight, I’m just saying we’re going to win. So I feel optimistic. And I feel increasingly fundamentalists and authoritarians are revealing that they don’t have any compelling arguments, they just want you to do what they say, and I don’t think that resonates with your average, healthy adult. I think the only question remaining is, how many healthy adults do we have out there? At the very least, I think it’s going to be an interesting year.

1. Definitely not useless at the pen. Being able to think through and articulate arguments of any sort is an invaluable life skill, regardless of life circumstances.

2. Might a wiki work for groups to coordinate outside of in-person or class time? I don’t know much about them, but have a vague sense they might be useful.

3. Psychological research shows that the quickest way to form bonds within a group is to have them complete a difficult task together. I think this would lead to a bonded group (FTW)!

- I agree with others that groups of 13 or so might be difficult. I’d recommend smaller groups for a couple reasons — 1) It encourages actual discussion by making it more difficult for people to intentionally slip into the background and also making it easier for those who want to speak up to feel comfortable doing so. I think smaller group dynamics are generally just easier for discussion all around. 2) You could have a wider variety of nuanced opinions divided among smaller groups — more than just “you be conservative, you be liberal, and you be moderate”. It would be more like a parliamentary system than the U.S. two-ish party system. Which leads me into my next point…

- If you have a larger number of nuanced groups, you could say that they have to try and form a majority coalition, which would force them to decide what things they are willing to give up for the sake of ruling power and what things they are going to keep even if it means not having the ability to actually implement their closely-held ideas. Again, the parliamentary system, of sorts.

- It is going to be easier to get these nuanced opinions if you tell them what their opinions are, which is more work for you and might somewhat go against what you’re trying to do. A way of making this more simple, though, would be to assign them to basically pre-existing small parties (Green, Libertarian, Tea party (call it a separate party for the sake of the assignment), etc.). You could perhaps draw from other countries’ parties, too, if you were having a hard time getting enough parties with diverse enough opinions. Assigning them to parties might also allow them to take a more unbiased analytical approach since they are not personally vested in the viewpoints held or expressed. It would also help them see different angles on things because they are being forced to look at it from another viewpoint — for instance, whenever arguing a case I try to think it through from the other side’s point of view before actually going to court, if only so I can better predict what they might say in their own arguments. Being assigned positions might also make it less interesting for them, though. But my concern if you didn’t assign them their parties would be that you wouldn’t get enough nuance or diversity of opinion within the class.

- I think you can definitely use this at the pen. Political discourse can still be engaging aside from whether you are actually able to vote at the end of the day.

- If you have any concerns about you personally coming across as trying to impose your views or about them viewing you as trying to impose your views, an interesting little extra credit quiz at the end of the quarter would be to have them answer multiple choice questions on what they believe your actual stance is on specific issues. You could have a set amount of extra credit points to divide among those who get the right answers — that way the more people who answer correctly, the more obvious it apparently was and the less extra credit value is placed on their correct answers because they are all divding up a “pot” of extra credit. Just a side thought that might be fun for the last day of class…

I realize it removes some of the “punch” but if you shifted it away from presidential politics to some other backdrop, it might allow certain people to engage in the course material more? My best idea is a more local race. As ones stance on abortion really doesn’t matter for the mayor of WW, but a lot of the ideas you want to teach would still apply.

As a varisty level slacker of a student I believe I can provide other unique perspectives…

Groups are hard, especially large groups like that. After somebody is elected leader, usually by playing a quick game of “not it”. I would pretty much pick the path of least resistance going toward completion. One person usually ends up doing most of the work, once I learned that, I just made sure it wasn’t me. The coloabaration will be dominated by those that already have some skill and inclination toward debate. Pushing the others into will need to be done very intentionally. Also it feels very broad, which as a slacker, I always loved, as it really opened up my options for how I could throw something together quick that still seemed legit. The more you can focus this down the easier it will be to get them to focus on what you are trying to teach, as opposed to how much they hate people that want to ban birth control.

It might streamline things if you gave them something more to start from. Building political parties and platforms from scratch seems like an insane amount of work from where I sit. What elements are going to just add time and busy work vs. what will tie into concepts from argumentation? What if you just grabbed the official party platforms as starting points?

What if you left the polarizing political stuff in, but figured out what their big issue was, then made them take the other side? I’m not sure I love this…

Upon further review, the final paper would probably be a position paper (this is an argumentation class, after all) where students argue for their real candidate of choice.

I freaking love it. It would provide a perspective that most people seem to lack. Something similar should be in the curriculum everywhere. It seems to expand on an area covered, to some degree, in a logic (philosophy) class that I took. It might be beneficial to start the course by covering some of that material as a foundation, or possibly have it as a prerequisite, although I guess it would have to be a 200 level class in that case.

I agree that getting 13 people to work together, particularly in areas which can become emotionally charged, might be challenging. It occurs to me that it might be beneficial to provide a semi-fictional political environment and fabricated issues for the candidates to address in order to avoid some of the emotional issues with current topics. Perhaps with the tools in their toolbox, the students could then apply them to real current issues in their papers, without having it affect the group dynamic negatively or “turning them off” before they’ve really acquired the critical thinking tools I assume you’re trying to provide.

I’d take that class (and everyone would hate me).

You all make good points about the group size; perhaps I would divide the class in half along traditional liberal/conservative lines, then have, say, a “primary” where there are two liberal groups and two conservative groups each presenting a collaborative candidate. I do think we need a wider range of papers per group so each group of 5-6 students isn’t just looking at 5-6 issues. So perhaps two larger groups for sharing research on issues (e.g. the groups of 13) and then four subgroups to devise candidates….? Or perhaps the groups of 13 are unnecessary and we could have 26 different researched issues that are shared with the class at large…? That’s a lot of issues, though.