"Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see"- Benjamin Franklin

Christian Donald

cd341620@ohio.edu 

 

 

In today's world where there is political-polarization and almost everyone has the technology to create or alter news, it is only fair to be skeptical of what you hear and what you see. The articles that we read this week went a long way in proving to me that one must keep the Benjamin Franklin quote, used as the title of this post, in mind when reading or watching the news. Something that appears to have a negative connotation, or possibly positive, can be taken out of context in order to make the viewer believe what the illustrator or journal wants them to. I posted a clip from the movie A Few Good Men for the first blog assignment where the famous quote "You cant handle the truth" is spoken. Perhaps there is some truth to that saying. Perhaps what we prefer is something fake than reality. I think this has a deeper meaning, I think what we are actually talking about is social aesthetics.

In the last blog post I talked about a class I took in summer 2020 at Ohio University, VICO 1000. In this class we talked about what makes aesthetics, the study of what makes something of value, or beautiful, in a society. The book said that the three key elements that determine a societies' aesthetics are technology, economics, and politics. I would like to dive into those three elements a little further.

Aesthetics in cars surely have changed.

Technology

I think that this element is the most prominent when talking about altering photo's. Perhaps boredom sets in and with all the advanced technology we have today people feel obligated to change things about reality. Things that seemed pretty or wanted previously, seems outdated today. I believe the rise of technology plays a big part in that.

Economics

The element of economics plays a factor in aesthetics, at least in our society where we tend to take things for granted, or perhaps the fact that we can prosper more by changing things. We are simply never satisfied for whatever reason.

Politics

Lastly, politics. In our democratic society we are led to believe that there should be two sides to every issue, which gives way to everyone having a voice in the topic which inevitably allows for tension amongst people and propaganda to settle in.

This post may have gotten a little off track at places, but I believe that aesthetics plays a major part in what we were talking about, and that the information we covered in VICO 1000 went hand-in-hand with what we were talking about.