Finding God on the Web
Almost overnight, the electronic community of the Internet has come to resemble a high-speed spiritual bazaar, where thousands of the faithful and equal numbers of the faithless- meet and debate and swap ideas(Ramo p.181). As far as history goes back, religion has been a very present, powerful force bringing people together to rejoice and celebrate and at the same time driving them into wars of hatred. On a much smaller scale, a similar circumstance of today is the argument that technology both brings people together and tears them apart. Technology's first big leap was Gutenbergs printing press, which printed the first Bible in 1456. At that time there were less than 30,000 books in all of Europe. Just fifty years later there were over nine million; most devoted to religious themes. By 1926 radio stations across the United States were broadcasting the good word, and by 1950 religion had flooded television. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century God has become a massive topic on the Internet, proving the theory that technology affects everything it touches, including us; our beliefs and ways of life.
Just as we wonder now how we ever lived without cell-phones, we will soon be asking that very same question about the Internet. When Joshua Cooper Ramo wrote his article Finding God on the Web in 1996, he believed we were at the start of a new movement: the marriage of God and the global computer networks (Ramo p185). That was almost seven years ago. When an Internet search for God was run in 1997, He was found 410,000 times. Since, those statistics have increased 5 fold. Now God has an impressive 2,206,667 references and they will continue to multiply with each passing day. In his article, Ramo st...
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...ge is technology. Technology has already broken down so many barriers and allowed us to grow as people of a more diverse world. But no matter what, extremists will believe what they will, as will conservatives; and the faithful will believe what they will; as will the faithless. As strongly as I dont believe in changing God to suit our needs, I do believe that in finding God on the Web we can connect with others and enter into a whole new cyberfaith where we share our cybersouls and become more aware of our spirituality.
Works Cited
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Knowledge in the Electronic Age. Richard Holeton. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998.
Ramo, Joshua Cooper. Finding God on the Web. Composing Cyberspace: Identity, Community, and Knowledge in the Electronic Age. Richard Holeton. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998.
In “Modern Romance,” Celeste Biever describes romantic relationships in the Internet community. She describes how people can romantically be involved on the Internet and how the Internet teaches one to learn about a person from the inside out.In “Cyberspace and Identity,” Sherry Turkle also expresses her interest in the Internet and how it allows for the act of self-exploration. Even though their focus on what the Internet is used for are different from the perspective of one another, Biever and Turkle both see the Internet as a place for exploration in a general sense.
In the novel, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison begins the novel by apprising the audience on his protagonist’s, Invisible Man’s, graduation night. Under Ellison’s guidance, Invisible Man recounts his graduation night, a night filled with racism, hatred, and psychological conditioning. Throughout the vivid account, Invisible
Brennan, Timothy. "Ellison and Ellison: The Solipsism of Invisible Man." CLA Journal XXV (Dec 1981): 162-81.
For our last assignment in English 253, the major essay, we were assigned to analyze some of the concepts and concerns involved in a novel from the past semester. Our task at hand was to select from a topic and develop a more in-depth understanding of the chosen novel, and exactly how the literature involved in the novel is significant. I decided to choose the first option available in order to complete this essay. Since we’re supposed to investigate the accuracy of the represented ways in the chosen novel, I decided to write about the novel Invisible Man. I chose the novel Invisible Man because it is literally perfect for this assignment. I am fully appreciative of the fact that it is extremely hard for any author to publish a novel that does not sway from the “real” history being referenced. Also, I do not believe that Ellison necessarily wrote this novel with intentions to include exact characteristics of the past, or in an ahistorical way. However, throughout the text of the novel Invisible Man, there are several examples, references, and symbols that Ralph Ellison respectively included on purpose. In this essay, my investigation will prove why or why not the real-life social and political ideology involved in the literature of Invisible Man, is accurately or inaccurately depicted.
With the publication of Invisible Man in 1952, Ralph Ellison brought to the African-American novel a stature and dignity never achieved before. For the first time, a African-American writer, with creative verve and freedom, was able to overcome the self-consciousness of a minority culture, to realize the opportunities for greater awareness and fulfillment that are latent in a borderland existence. Ellison convincingly depicts the richness and beauty of African-American culture and tradition in the United States, and clearly shows the inappropriateness of neo-African nationalism. More significantly, he establishes the essential place of African-American culture in American society, and demonstrates the immense prospects that accompany marginal life in a modern world. Alienation becomes a condition of vision. Invisib...
The pro-choice and pro-life debate has been going on for years and is much of a controversial problem in society. Don Marquis, author of Why Abortion is Immoral, argues against abortion and speaks to the reader in terms of the basic feature of why killing is wrong which applies to a fetus based on personhood. Marquis starts with an opening question to figure out on fundamental grounds why killing is presumptively wrong. Normally, one would conclude that killing is wrong based on two reasons. The first reason is destroying a human life is wrong. Although this is supported by endless examples, it entails too many properties that can fall under this category. This factor shows that even cancer cells of a human being should not be harmed or killed since it is a bacterium that is both living and human. The second reason individuals think killing is wrong is because taking away ones personhood is wrong. Personhood is a narrow term that describes a person as having rational thought, feelings, desires, goals and dreams. This theory discredits infants and mentally ill and disabled individuals given that they do not possess these cognitive processes, thus killing these individuals is permissible. Both stances are problematic. This concludes that killing is wrong because it destroys a human life and because taking away ones personhood is wrong, yet it does not lead individuals to become anti-abortionists. One needs to dig deeper into the issue of why it is wrong to kill.
Smart, Ninian. "Blackboard, Religion 100." 6 March 2014. Seven Dimensions of Religion. Electronic Document. 6 March 2014.
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"Finding One's Own in Cyberspace." Composing Cyberspace. Richard Holeton. United States: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 171-178. SafeSurf. Press Release.
Ellison scrutinizes society’s inability to see past race; therefore the narrator’s attempt at becoming an individual leads to his invisibility. “I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand because people refuse to see me (3).” The narrator is still in existence but it is the failure of others to see him as an individual. “He has been invisible because he is black, his invisibility has been exacerbated by his skin color [Whitaker].” The main character as a young man was optimistic about his opportunities and education based the content of his being. As he matured and witnessed the hatred and exploitation of race, he attempted to make change through an activist organization. He found that even there, “anyone who enters structure of power tends not to be seen by those who wield power [Whitaker]. He was invisible to those in power. He laments, “You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the rest of the world (4). Ellison illustrates the disillusionment of the “invisible man” and his realization that “every individual is alone in deciding his identity [Turner]. Society can only see interest groups, consistently blind to the individual components. Therefore many communities are filled with invisible citizens. “The metaphor of invisibility speaks for all of us – blacks,
"Synesthesia and Mirror Neurons." Weekends in Paradelle. 2 May 2010. Web. 24 May 2010. .
In the article “Why Do They Teach? - And Why Do They Leave?” Carol Curtis asks people from who are potential teachers all the way to teachers who have left their profession. This article is a survey in which asks potential teachers, why they would want to teach for the rest of the rest of their lives? And discusses the major points in which teachers leave this profession and the reason they felt un-supported in the school environment. When asking college aged students they asked, why do you want to teach? In response seventy one percent of these students said “for self-fulfillment” and a continued seventy percent said “they had a mentor or teacher who influenced them in a positive way” (780). So this shows that these teachers are going into this profession knowing for a fact this is what they want to do, and obviously are not giving up on their dreams. Teaching is much more to these potential teachers; it is being able to change a life. Not by teaching them what happened in the Civil War but by being a male/female influence when they do not have that at home, or just being the teacher they spend talking to twenty minutes after class about the small th...
So, how is love brought about? Love can be created through emotions that two people share together. In order for a good structure to be built, there must be a good foundation. Love can be seen as a jigsaw puzzle in correspondence to how every piece must be put together in order for the entire image to be complete. Once complete, it cannot be changed unless a piece is taken away. A good foundation of love is built by people getting to know one another and creating strong bonds. Unity is important because it builds a trust bond between two people. Though love can be strong in person, there are still people that can confuse it because of objects or even words. An example of this confusion can be shown in the novel “The...
Lillard, Stewart. "Ellison’s Ambitious Scope in Invisible Man." English Journal. 58 (1969): 833-39. Web. 2 June 2015.
Ralph Ellison painstakingly crafted a separate world in Invisible Man , a novel that succeeds because it is an intricate aesthetic creation -- humane, compassionate, and yet gloriously devoid of a moral. Social comment is neither the aim nor the drive of art, and Ellison did not attempt to document a plight. He created a place where race is reflected and distorted, where pithy generalities are dismissed, where personal and aesthetic prisms distill into an individualized, articulate consciousness -- it is impossible, not to mention foolish and simplistic, to attempt to exhort a moral from the specific circumstances of the narrator, who is not a cardboard martyr and who doesn't stand for anyone other than himself: he does not represent the Everyman, nor does he epitomize thesufferings of his race. The narrator can prompt questions about and discussions on both themes precisely because his is an individualized experience -- unassailable, apolitical1 and ultimately aesthetic. Ellison succeeded by projecting his words through several funhouse mirrors, and particularly by carefully layering the valences and meanings of specific images -- any aesthetic experience, specially the written word, is inherently a distortion of reality.