Learning how to be Biased: writing a biased article

The following is an attempt at rewriting this article: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/tripped-refugee-heading-spain-football-academy-150916142230899.html by portraying an ideology different than the one portrayed in it.

Syrian Refugee Crisis a Hoax?

Recently Osama Abdul Mohsem, the refugee who was tripped by the Hungarian camerawoman Petra Laszlo was discovered to be a football coach back in Syria and was taken in by a football academy in Spain to come and work as a coach. This wonderful humanitarian act would not have been possible without the media's constant repeated reporting of the seemingly awful story of the Hungarian camerawoman's actions. However, how many people have stopped to think about why the camerawoman tripped the man in the first place?

The Syrian refugee crisis is perhaps the most reported and continued news story that we've had in a while. But is the way that the media portrays the crisis actually truthful? Is the tale of the “Syrian refugees” truly as sad as we have been demonstrated it is? Part of it is. It is undeniable that Syria is right now going through a time of crisis and that the conflict has caused large displacements of the population both within the country and outside of it. But is the flood of refugees in Europe we've been hearing so much of actually made up of fleeing families?

It turns out that the media has been skewing our perception of the refugee crisis in Europe. While it is true that tragic stories like that of Osama Abdul Mohsem are a reality, the media focuses far too much attention on stories like this.

Out of all the “Syrian” refugees arriving at Europe, it is quite often that as many as 90% of the refugees claiming to be Syrian do not actually have the documents to prove it. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of Syrian refugees that are interviewed by the media state that the thing that they want the most is to return to Syria, so that their lives can go back to normal. If that is the case, then why are there so many refugees making the perilous journey all the way to Germany, when the UN's convention relating to the Status of Refugees states that countries are obligated to grant asylum to anybody who declares a refugee status in the first country that they report in? Clearly Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt are already over-saturated, with refugees, so then considering that the Arab Gulf states don't want to offer any help to their Muslim brothers, the next option in line is Europe. But why go all the way to Germany when all the other countries are capable of providing asylum? Eastern Europe may not be economically developed enough to provide optimal conditions for refugees, but neither are Lebanon and Egypt, at least in comparison to the likes of Germany. It is obvious that these “refugees” are looking for more than just a place to stay in until the conflict subsides. They are looking for a country where they will be showered with money.

Despite this, countries like Hungary have received a tremendous backlash in the media for not accepting refugees. But with a real calamity waiting behind the floodgates, one can truly understand the reasoning behind Hungary's decision. The culture that all these refugees carry with them is completely opposing to the standards of European culture. It would be extremely difficult for any country to not be gravely affected by the sudden massive influx of refugees. There have even been reports of a school in Germany close to a refugee camp having to ban miniskirts for the fear of possible rape by refugees. And this is in fact not as far fetched of a statement, considering that there have already been rapes of women and children within a refugee camp in Europe.

The massive, rapid influx of refugees means that the refugees are not having to adapt to Europe; Europe is having to adapt to the refugees. These refugees, who could easily be Pakistanis or Jordanians who threw their passports to the sea and then claimed to be Syrian upon arrival, are bringing in a massive and abrupt change to the European way of life. Perhaps it is about time for the media to begin to understand that Syria is not the only country with problems. As the saying goes: “You can't take care of others if you can't take care of yourself.” Perhaps it is time that the NATO affiliated countries stopped complaining about Russia and Bashar Al Asad, and found a way to stop the violence once and for all so that the senseless mass migration can stop and Syrians can go back to where they truly want to be: “Home.”





Rationale:

The article was meant to go against the ideology of Al Jazeera regarding the Syrian refugee crisis about how the refugees are victims and anybody who doesn't want to offer them help is the enemy. The article is a continuation to all the series of news stories regarding the reporter that tripped the refugee, so it is following the ideology of the refugees being victims and the non-conforming Europeans being the aggressors.

The main idea of my article is to shift that focus and, while still keeping the idea that refugees are victims, show that the European states have a point when they say they don't want to accept refugees. The ideology in my article does not go against the Syrian refugees, but rather it goes against Western media in general, by claiming that their focus on the problem is not only ignoring the negative aspects of that the refugees are bringing to Europe; but also portraying their focus in the media as "wrong" and not focused on where the real issue lies: in the governments' incapacity to cooperate together.

This is English

Here I sit, intrigued at the fact that I will actually post this before sundown and pondering why on Earth did our teacher ask us to a simple literary analysis of such a... speech... that only goes to how does this guy develop his thesis and how does that thesis relate to the question “How can literature develop empathy and emotional intelligence?” Although personally to me it seems that the speech is so good and blunt that there isn't really a need to explain the concept(s) exposed. So on with the typical English stuff:

https://vimeo.com/68855377

He starts off his speech with a humorous and rather unlikely metaphor that really captures the audiences attention. He then explains what the metaphor means and then goes on to explain what it really means. He talks about the whole routine. About how people just get up, go to their difficult jobs. Work. Get stressed. Work. Get back home. “Unwind.” Then go sleep to do it all over again. Then he goes into what happens when you run out of food. And well, “you have to drive to the supermarket.” And then suffer like I think pretty much everyone does while trying to get all you need and then pay (the queues..!). And etc etc. So in this first part he goes on using a simple description of this deadly routine and uses a simple form of it, so that everyone can relate. He goes on it in a very sulky and depressing tone so that people really get the idea that the routine is depressing and annoying.

Then he takes a tone shift as soon as he says “But that is not the point.” He goes on to explain how it's all about choice. Making emphasis on the whole “choice” part. He talks about how it's our default setting to think that everything revolves around us and uses the example that maybe everyone else around us that is stressing us out is just as equally stressed. Basically saying in a very long way that life isn't as depressing as we see it all the time in our default setting, but that it's up to us to make it seem depressing.

He finally wraps it up by saying that even though the speech isn't inspiring like homecoming speeches tend to be, it is a lesson to be assimilated by anyone. The end, pretty much... Shout outs to the people that made the video above for recognizing these three sections of the speech.

Now then, how does this relate to the inquiry question? Well simple. When we read we get to consider perspectives of people different to us. We get to consciously go through the thought process of other people. Do that in real life and well, you've made the conscious choice to not perceive life as the monotonous depressing routine it might be. In other words, literature consists of doing precisely what this guy says it's good to do in his speech. Isn't that nice?

On a side note, I'll just leave one of the things I've learned from a friend. A thing that in my opinion counters the whole depressing atmosphere of the video.

Keep things interesting.

Practice IOC: Boys and Girls by Alice Munro

Don't judge too harshly...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6ZfRT_ZZ7MbeGlKd01mUDdoc0k

Alice Munro: Capturing the subconscious struggle (of women?)

For a slow reader like me, trying to read through half a story of description only to get another 20 extra pages of actually interesting things, well... puts me to sleep most of the time frankly. But that usually happens to me with all books unless something interesting's happening. But when I really get into it it's very... interesting. It reminds me of the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. Something that probably has to do with the fact that they both choose rural settings (at least in the Márquez stories I've read). But something about their writing styles just feels very different... Maybe it's because Márquez is in Spanish and Munro in English, but Márquez is kind of like in sepia, while Munro is in a combination of dim and melancholic colors... still similar though, wouldn't you say? It probably has something to do with me perceiving the Canadian countryside to be much more lush, foresty green than the Latin American one, but well who knows. Point is I only just recently realized that and I found it interesting. Interesting that halfway through the Alice Munro stories that I've read I am subconsciously captured by the action of the story and the sleepiness no longer creeps in...

So how does that work? Well, my thought is that Munro (and I won't talk about Márquez anymore, because I haven't really read much of him anyway, much less analyzed his work) writes about the human subconscious. But she doesn't do so in a direct way. Instead she explores the human subconscious and perhaps more specifically, the female subconscious through her short stories of melancholic stories and seemingly uninteresting first halves that are spent mostly on descriptions and on some past event (jks, she gets creative with these descriptions and keeps it interesting. No way she would've gotten a Nobel prize with lousy half-half short stories). So back to the point I wanted to actually talk about in this paragraph: it would seem that (for me) halfway through the story some subconscious happening takes place within the universe of Munro's story that secretly captures me and makes me want to find out more. The passionate and often irrational decisions that the characters take without knowing why. The apparent suffering of not understanding why everyone behaves the way they do. I find it quite interesting, even if it's subconscious, to try to understand what on Earth is happening inside the heads of these characters Munro has created. Now that is real life complexity captured in a few thousand words. I take away any bad comment I might've said about Munro before this. 

Now then, since obviously this blogpost can't be all my personal experience and I have to eventually relate this back to the title and the foreshadowing of the theme of feminism I attempted to do on the last paragraph. Truth is, for some reason it seems that either men haven't realized that they are powerless before a woman or women haven't realized just how much power they actually have in their hands (sorry, I know , because it seems that when we talk about "Women's Literature" minds tend to be filled with the idea of the oppression of women by the more dominant male a-bit-less-than-half section of the population and the heroic story of Feminism and how it has helped women claim the position they deserve. But the thing is, all of this social oppression on women is something that has been recognized far and wide, and I mean, I never saw a single person in Venezuela tell a girl or woman to go to the kitchen or whatever if it wasn't to crack a joke and have a good time. Western society has caught on to the whole unfairness of the issue, and slowly but surely the entire world is making progress toward that so cherished social equality. But Munro shows us a different aspect of the picture. 

Alice Munro doesn't really write about Feminism, and if my memory is wirkin beter tahn my typing skills at this hour in the morning, she doesn't identify herself as a Feminist writer either. Alice Munro writes about humanity, about issues that we can all identify with. But her being a woman who grew up in the 20th century, she has a lot of views on the world that have been shaped by her experiences as a child. The expectations that people had of her and all other women. The inevitable ignorance of countryside folk. And as any good artist should do, she writes from her heart about the things that have happened in her own life. The things she knows the true emotions of and thus is able to so skillfully portray them. And included among all this is the subconscious struggle of women in society. And even though this struggle comes as a repercussion of the way women have been treated by society, these struggles stretch far deeper than simply trying to achieve equality in society. Alice Munro writes about those mental struggles. She writes about the incomprehensible, those impulses of the heart that we can't put into words but that she can put into stories. Short stories. The deep and complex realism of her stories is simply the perfect tool to convey the mental struggles that women go in their lives. Whether they are related to Feminism or not is, I believe, up to personal opinion. Then again, an author can easily convey meanings that weren't intended. After all as videogames (the type of "book" that I grew up with (some videogames have good stories, trust me (don't judge))) have taught me, you can never fully understand another human being. So in that sense it is impossible for us to ever fully grasp the full length meaning of Munro's stories with our souls. But there are things we can learn. About struggles. And even Feminism. Maybe. Maybe I should just generalize it and throw everything into that box popularly labeled "life." Because maybe, women's struggles are more related to life than female oppression... which is then again a part of life anyway... ok I'll just stop there. 

The Power of Stories

During my stay at the Art Monastery, there was a person who brought to my mind a certain idea that I had thought of before but never in so much detail as he showed me. This idea was how powerful stories can be. He showed us how some of the best filmmakers create storyboards so detailed that the producers and editors could not mess around with their ideas too much. In other words, the story was so well set that they could not change it, and so the original story came out fully. He showed us how he had implemented this concept into a financing app he was creating; I didn't fully understand it, but it has to do with laying out the company's “story” into the app to ensure that things would go as planned. A bit more complicated than that obviously.

This being an English blog though, I thought it'd be a little out of place to talk about how good storytelling can be used to ensure something is carried out in a certain way. I thought it would be more interesting to talk in this case about how stories connect to language and cultures. About how stories are able to evoke emotions and teach lessons in a very effective ways. There's a reason why all of the abstract art (especially in areas like writing, theater and music) is not the “mainstream.” And that's because people will always find the relateable format of a story much easier to deal with than the tough-to-grasp, more abstract forms of art.

The reasons why stories are so powerful have to do with imagination and empathy, both innate human characteristics. Through imagination, we are able to suspend our disbelief of something and, to some extent, make ourselves believe that the stories that we are being told are real. And that's precisely what allows empathy to kick in and make us feel for the characters in the stories. In psychology there is a theory of something called a “Flashbulb Memory” and it is the idea that when an event is accompanied by a strong emotional reaction it is much more likely to be “burnt” into our memory. This is what happens with stories. If instead of listening to a boring lecture about moral behavior, you read/hear/watch a story that teaches about those moral behaviors, you would be much more likely to remember them and apply them, especially if the story involves you emotionally. Even more if you are able to identify with the characters in the story, which is the main reason why stories remain more popular than abstract art. It leaves less to speculation and thus makes the characters and the plot more relateable to the audience.

Despite that, stories are not the perfect medium for communicating ideas. Despite not being an abstract art itself, when attempting to teach a lesson through a story, as many cultures have and still do, the story becomes a sort of abstraction of the lesson. One must be told what the lesson underlying in the story is, or otherwise that will be left to speculation, just as if it were an abstract piece. That's precisely where the fun part starts though. Stories can be more than just a fun read or something to relate with; they can be a completely unpredictable thing. With every person's individual interpretation of the events that take place, misunderstandings included, a completely new intention or purpose can surge out of the story.

And by intention I don't mean the author's intention; rather, I am referring to the intention of the story itself. The one that varies between readers. The one that makes a single story fan out into so many different faces. Stories are a powerful and unpredictable thing. Almost behaving like a living being. Changing its intentions and stuff... Funny, it sounds similar to how we described language at the beginning of the course. And with good reason I suppose. After all, stories and language are quite strongly intertwined. They compliment each other, granting each other powers they would not have otherwise.

Humans and their imagination...

Exploring the universe one story at a time...

Writing from the Heart

So, uh… how do I start this… Maybe I should start by analyzing how that list sentence should’ve been a question but wasn’t? Well I guess this awkward thing I’m writing right now is probably stupid enough. I think I’ve broken the ice enough, probably should get to what I wanted to get to now. Question is, whether to do it artistically or just be straightforward about this “general musing…” Nah, that’s a pretty stupid question to ask actually. It’ll just be what it’ll be. Well, here it goes. Just gonna let it flow now.

Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to use language without any involvement from the brain? Well ok, obvious logical answer is no. But have you ever thought about what it means to write “from the heart?” Trying to figure out what that meant was extremely difficult. Maybe I should start with the whole story though, some context never hurt any story.

So, I spent the entire first week of April in a small medieval mountain town in Italy called Caramanico as part of a summer program organized by something called the Art Monastery project. Sounds kinda cool, doesn’t it?? The program was essentially a combination between relaxation, contemplation, exploration and creation (by creation I mean art). Among the many activities that we did, there was one creative writing workshop that we did. First one I’d ever done actually (that involved some actual writing). I have absolutely no memory of what she called the thing we were doing, but essentially it was writing from the heart. We read this (translated) poem from the Persian poet Rumi and she told us to pick a word/phrase/verse/section/whatever we wanted from the poem that caught our attention and just write stuff using that as an inspiration. But the most important thing was that we had to write “from the heart.”

And that simple command got me absolutely baffled!

In fact, I don’t even remember what part of that poem I had chosen or anything, because when I got to writing what I did was basically discuss with myself in three different languages how on earth to start writing something that came from “the heart.” However, that was under stress conditions, so I never really thought about what I was doing… I just kept on discussing, thinking that analyzing a poem was definitely something that came from the mind and not the heart and therefore was not something I could start the piece with. But now that I have time I really wanted to ask myself: what does it mean to write with the heart? Is there a way to use language in an entirely intuitive way that does not involve the use of the mind?

Well as I said before, there most likely isn’t. I mean, language is a thought process, right? In that sense, there’s no way to use language without thinking about it. I mean, language is used to convey ideas and those come from the mind. The conscious, “civilized” mind, that is. But what about the other part of the mind? The impulsive one responsible for emotions and things like that? Is it possible to use language using ONLY that part of the brain..? Well, if it’s not impossible I guess it must be extremely difficult for me at the very least, considering how much I overthink stuff. I mean, certainly letting emotions run completely free on a blog meant to be read by my entire class is pretty dangerous… But what would have been the problem with unleashing those emotions onto the sheet of paper back at the monastery? Something just didn’t feel right back then. Like everything I tried to come up with didn’t seem to come from the heart.

It’s a funny thing actually. It makes me question to what extent can language actually convey emotion. Sure, language can create scenarios that one can imagine and then we can immerse ourselves into whatever emotion that scenario produces within us, but that’s not really the language conveying emotion. It’s an idea with the power to produce emotions in others. And of those I’m very sure that there are many. What IS it then, to write from the heart??? Does that actually even exist?

I remember hearing in theater that some theater forms like Absurdist Theater and Theater of Cruelty often worked on the basis that language was a failure as a means for communication. Especially the latter one, which essentially believed that true emotion could only be experienced when one detached from all social stimuli. Language probably being one of them. Language can clearly communicate ideas, but when it comes to conveying emotions it is absolutely useless. Emotions are just such a personal experience. And everyone perceives them in such different ways. The same event can cause completely different reactions on two different people depending on their own memories and personality. And then they might try to communicate the emotion to the other person, but will they ever truly, fully understand what the other person was feeling only through language? Even though they both know all the details from the event firsthand? Language may be a very powerful tool, but when it comes to conveying emotion it certainly falls short…

However, and here’s where it gets interesting, in spoken language it might, just might, be a different story. Especially in personal interactions with other people. At one point in my trip, the person who was my travel companion, a friend from Resuscitation Theater here in Abu Dhabi, said that Spanish and Italians are very passionate people. When we spoke some more about it he mentioned that these languages usually involve much more breath and the sounds tend to come from more within the body than a language like in English. Like saying that when one is a native speaker of these languages there is a lot more from the person’s body that is involved in the communication. Almost like it’s coming straight from the heart..!

And call me crazy for talking Physics in an English blog, but there’s actually still a lot that we possibly don’t know about the things we can’t see. It might be possible that when we speak there is more than just air vibrations that travel the air… There’s something I was read: “Any sound can shake the air. A voice can shake the soul.” Maybe when we speak there’s more than just those vibrations going across… And maybe it’s language that allows us to encode that “something else.” But well, it’s not like I know anything about that stuff. It’s fun to imagine it might be true though 

How to write about Venezuela

For starters, there is no such thing as a Venezuelan. In Latin America everyone is Mexican. If not, then you speak Portuguese. And before you get the idea, allow me to tell you that it is pointless to try and explain to your readers what the difference is. About 60% of them don’t really care about your country, so just go straight to the point. However, if you do want people to realize that it’s Venezuela you’re talking about, then here are a few things that will make everyone understand more easily.

Firstly do not, EVER, speak badly of the government. Chávez was a great hero and everyone loved him. Thanks to him the country is in a “decent state.” It’s important to mention what a kind and gentle soul he was. And never say anything about giving away practically free petroleum to other countries. All the money the government makes goes toward helping the poor people inside the country and toward giving power to the people. His successor, Maduro, is of course a wonderful man too. Talk as nicely as you can of these great men and your readers will love your work.

Always remember that all of the women in Venezuela are what defines beauty. The women are the only good thing that comes out of the country. Don’t mention Gustavo Dudamel or Maikel Melamed, because you will lose your audience. Always make sure that you include a lot of women in your story, because that’s the only thing people know about and will be able to identify with. And don’t try to make your women smart, because you’ll confuse your audience.

If you want to include a guy in your story then you have two options: either he’s a fat guy that drinks beer all day and deals drugs, or he’s a skinny guy that robs places and deals drugs. And of course, never try to bring up those malandros that work for the government on the streets killing people. Remember that anyone who’s come out of the Chávez regime is like a sacred figure. These men do not exist, and any good men can’t be round characters. And every now and then make sure your male drug dealer fails horribly, like crashing a plane with his cargo of cocaine on the mountains. And always remember that everyone is poor and living on a shanty house. Yeah, this doesn’t contradict the fact that the government still helps the poor people more than anyone. Deal with it.

When it comes to music it is important that you note that the only thing people can dance is Salsa. And you pronounce that with a swallowed L. You can also mention Reggaeton and how popular it is. People love that kind of crappy rap. Don’t worry, nobody will understand all the swear words, so you won’t go get criticized for putting Reggaeton lyrics in your writing.

One of Venezuela’s most interesting points is its wide diversity in landscapes, which includes plains, beaches, islands, many green mountains, a desert, a snowy mountain, nice cities with lots of trees around and the ever amazing Amazonian Rainforest with its Angel Falls. When it comes to writing though, using all of these will be at your disadvantage, because people will not understand where the action’s taking place. Always set your story either in the gray downtown area of a violent city or in a messy jungle where the only inhabitants are antisocial natives. Sometimes you can let the natives have a magical shaman among them, but you should avoid such clichés and leave them to the Africans. And remember the jungle can’t be the Amazonian rainforest because that is only in Brazil and Guyana. Oh, and don’t mention the Angel Falls, unless you want people to think of the Disney movie UP which copied the waterfall.