Connecting to Society Across the Centuries

As someone who is nearing the half century mark, I look at the world differently than I did when I was very young. For example, I remember muttering, "Why do we have to study history?"

My life guides rose to their full height and told me what so many kids are told: "We can learn from the mistakes of the past so we don't repeat them." Their voices were strong and their demeanors were intimidating. I believed them.

Now, as I look back across four decades, I realize the lessons we can learn from history are about much more than mistakes. Studying history is about coming to understand the lives of humans who came before us.

Voltaire said, "All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon." Why do we create fables about our ancestors? Aren't fables lies for children? If we think of fables as short allegorical narratives, then we, as humans, must need to have a central moral compass to our society, right?

History, or more precisely, the stories of the lives of humans who have lived in decades, centuries, and even millenia past, provide some of that moral stability we seem to seek. What narratives of the recent or even very distant past help us to form meaning for contemporary life today? And how do the life stories of humans from the past instill in us so many of the customs and conditions of our mode of living today?

Post to this blog with your ideas about society, history, morality, fables, and narratives. Draw in real stories of real human experiences from the past and help us to figure out more about our human society today.

Welcome to our Society, Issues, and Identity Blog

This blog is dedicated to persons who are curious about the ways humans behave as part of society. A group of us will be using this space to share our thoughts throughout a series of weeks and conversations.

We began by brainstorming a list of all the groups to which we belong. Our examples illustrated many different types of groups – academic level, GPA rank, gender, ethnicity, hierarchy of age in family, number of siblings, race, social groups, religious affiliation, socio-economic status, among others. We realized that each of our groups is like a "piece" of who we are. As a metaphor for those pieces of self, we created a pie graph of our various groups.

Afterward, we composed free verse identity poems (no rhyme, no meter) that combined lots of information about ourselves. We remembered that interesting poems use rich description; imagery; alliteration; metaphor; simile; assonance; and, allusions. We titled our poems, suggesting overall themes about our unique identities.

We thought about and defined culture as shared ways of thinking, viewing, and knowing the world. We talked about how culture rises from a combination of family, friends, life experiences, schooling, groups, media, and societal connections. This combination of influences causes each person to view the world in different ways.

We have chosen to read print texts that interest us, too. Our texts reflect more than good narration, however; they each involve issues in which we have interest. Our early investigations into our issues of interest involved extending our own points of view to think about how other people in groups might feel about our issues. We read some position papers in Teen Ink magazine, and then we wrote early position papers. We may change our initial opinions about the issues as we learn more, but that's okay. We will continually reflect and grow as thinkers and knowers of our worlds.

To understand why different people interpret issues in different ways, we're considering a wide variety of cultural influences on individuals. Importantly, as we do so, we learning both about ourselves and each other. We shared important cultural artifacts with our interest groups.

This blog will allow us to share our ideas more fully than if we just wrote in journals or chose a few significant friends or peers to listen to our thinking. This blog is evidence of our participation in a social network of learners.