Blog 10 Nobodiness

Nobodiness is when someone feels like a "nobody". Feeling like a nobody occurs when you feel your life is unimportant. When your life hasn't affected the world in any particular way. Not doing anything special to have people remember you. Having no friends with also make you feel like a nobody. Basically someone that has not influenced the world they live in, is a nobody.

Blog 9 Tuesdays With Morrie

Reading Tuesdays With Morrie made me realize how unimportant materialistic things are. When you die you cannot bring any materials with you, so you must have a happy soul to die happy. Having a happy soul comes from good memories with friends. Friends and family are key to a happy life. Have close relationships with your friends and family because they will help you through hard times. Materials can't help you life a good life.

Blog 8 Gullible

Describing a person as gullible is definitely not positive. When people think of gullible they think of someone that is easily deceived. Someone that could be tricked or be persuaded to believe something. How did this word get such a negative connotation though? Isn't a synonym for gullible, trusting? They both have a relatively same meaning. It's just that one is much more positive than the other. A person that is trusting, believes what people say, and that is a good characteristic. However gullible is when someone believes people, so that means they can be easily deceived. It's interesting how some words can mean the same thing, but have a different connotation within a society.

Blog 7 "Guns Germs and Steel" Argument

The book Guns Germs and Steel takes the argument that Europeans were not smarter than any other civilizations. They were just a little luckier. That is why the Europeans were able to dominate over the rest of the world. The author Jared Diamond provides us with examples of tests were they show that undeveloped countries are not less intelligent than developed countries, they have just been unlucky.

Jared Diamond uses examples such as it was a little easier for crops to diffuse throughout Europe because it is the widest continent. (It has the biggest ratio of west to east compared to north to south.) Since it is so wide, the crops could easy diffuse on the same latitude, and areas with the same latitude have very similar climates. That makes it very easy for a crop to diffuse, because it is the same climate. A crop from the Fertile Crescent couldn't survive in cold climate, but could easily survive on climates of the same latitude. Once Europe was had a surplus of food, because of the crops, they were able to spend more time researching other things, other than hunting food all day. This is when "specialists" started coming into play, and different people had different jobs.

Since Europe didn't have to worry about food anymore, they were able to make guns. This made conquering other civilizations very easy. Also since Europeans were around so many domestic animals, they were able to domesticate them for an extra food source, and being around the animals led them to contract diseases, but then become immune to them. That is why when Europeans went to conquer other continents, such as North America, millions of Native Americans were killed by diseases that the Europeans carried. Based on those two things, people can see why Europeans were able to conquer many civilizations, and it is not because Europeans were smarter than the rest of the world.