Announcements
- Braver Angels Debate: Is the American Dream Still Achievable?
- Wednesday, April 9th, 3:30pm-5:30pm
- Food is at 3:30pm; event starts at 4:00pm
- Student Union Room 200
- Food!!! Registration link
- I will give you extra credit for attending. If you’ve missed (or plan to miss) more than four (4) classes,* it would be VERY good for you to show up.
- American Forensics Association Nationals
- Recap on the Weekend
*Please review the syllabus Attendance policy for more information on absences.
Plan for the Day
- 1A on NPR: “The advent of artificial general intelligence”
- Very interesting discussion of AI because they actually have a real computer scientist who tempers the sci-fi speculation of sentient computers.
- Overall, the guests assume General AI is going to be here soon.
- No humanists were guests on the show (unless I missed something during the 15 minutes of the episode I wasn’t able to see)
- Octavia Butler’s Dawn, Parts I & II
Octavia Butler’s Dawn
Octavia Butler is probably best known for Kindred (1979), which is more of a magical speculative novel. It explores systemic racism through a time traveling protagonist dealing with contemporary (late-1970s) racism and early 19th-Century American slavery. As you read Dawn, consider these questions:
- What does the benevolent overlord plot communicate?
- Although DNA knowledge is much more advanced today, Butler extrapolated on DNA science. What comment might be made by having the Oankali manipulate human DNA?
- Why was Lilith chosen to lead this group of humans?
Part I: The Womb
- Ch. 1, p. 5: “She did not own herself any longer.”
- Ch. 2, p. 11: “She was not afraid. She had gotten over being frightened by “ugly” faces long before her capture. The unknown frightender her. The cage she was in frightened her.”
- Ch. 2, p. 14: “Humanity in its attempt to destroy itself had made the world unlivable.”
- Ch. 2, p. 17: “That sounded like a horrible existence–not to be able to close one’s eyes, sink into the private darkness behind one’s own eyelids.”
- Ch. 3, p. 20: Why did the Oankali leave a scar on Lilith?
- What other out-of-this-world text does this remind you of?
- p. 21: What is an ooloi?
- Ch. 3, p. 22: “…overwhelmed by panic….a true xenophobia…”
- Ch. 3, p. 25: “Maybe they’d heard the part she hadn’t been told about yet: the reason for all this. The price.”
- Our lives are better left to chance
I could’ve missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance (Garth Brooks, “The Dance”) - “Hope I never see the price of my freedom” (Better than Ezra, “Cry in the Sun”)
- Our lives are better left to chance
- Ch. 5, p. 30: “…Lilith could see color and light–green, red, orange, yellow…”
- Ch. 5, p. 39: “…a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics….If [humans] had been able to perceive and solve their problem, they might have been able to avoid destruction.”
- Ch. 5, p. 40: Jdahya tells Lillith, “…intelligence does enable you to deny the facts you dislike. But your denial doesn’t matter.”
Part II: Family
Besides being important to Vin Diesel, what’s family got to do with this?
- pp. 49-50: What do you think, metaphorically of course, the point about the Oankali being able to neutralize poisonous substances and “learn to eat” unfamiliar foods is?
- p. 60: “And what useful tools would they modify human beings into?”
- Are we useful tools?
- pp. 61-62: Lilith wanted to catch the Oankali in lies and figure out why they wanted to breed humans in captivity.
- p. 66: “…but somehow the illusion of freedom lessened her despair.”
- aj Dinso: the way the Oankali name family members
- “The Dinso group was staying on Earth, changing itself by taking part in humanity’s genetic heritage, spreading its own genes like a disease among unwilling humans…Dinso. It wasn’t a surname. It was a terrible promise, a threat.”
- What’s in a surname?
- p. 75: Changing brain chemistry to learn better.
- p. 85: Nikanj needs Lilith “to help me through my final metamorphosis
Finish Up Dawn
Finish Dawn on Thursday, 4/10.