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My topic is in the title. I’ve added a few articles from my school’s database to use for sources.
For your third and final major essay, please write a three-page, double-spaced essay (in Times New Roman 12 pt. font) on the following theme. Please include at least two outside sources that you have
found through the UAB library database.
I. Topic Overview
In our society we like to make distinctions between facts and opinions, or between “truths” and “beliefs.” For example, we generally accept mathematical/scientific principles as “true” because they’re based on such principles as objectivity, rationality, verifiable evidence or proof (and so on). Conversely, phenomena such as culturally specific spiritual practices, folk healing rituals, food tastes (etc.) are usually associated with beliefs or opinions, primarily because their relative merits can either be argued for or against, or because they’re based on a collectively agreed upon view of the world. For example, the idea that the world is round and not flat is regarded as a truth; if I want to believe it’s flat I either have to adopt that view as a sort of weird personal quirk, or the people who surround and influence me have to believe it also (thereby shielding me and themselves from the knowledge that it’s not flat). One thing history has shown us, however, is that what counts as “true” can change over time. Or worse, the idea that a belief or principle is “true” can be used as a weapon to reinforce existing power relations
or to marginalize some groups of people while promoting the interests of others. Pro-slavery advocates in the early 1800s, for example, argued that science and Christianity didn’t just condone slavery but mandated its legality; to oppose slavery, they argued, was to go against the will of God and/or the clear scientific revelations of the bogus experiments and social hierarchies they promoted. See, for example, the book Types of Mankind by Josiah Nott and Charles Gliddon (1854) or the various pro-slavery speeches of such Confederate dignitaries as Jefferson Davis, Senator James Henry Hammond, and so on. For your third essay, you will consider an idea or concept that (in your opinion) people generally regard as a truth, but that you perhaps do not. In other words, write an essay about something that’s widely regarded as true, but that you think is perhaps a cultural construct – not a truth but a belief, opinion,
bias, etc.
II. Topic Examples
Competitiveness
In United States culture we almost always celebrate “competitiveness.” Famous athletes are praised for it, we attempt to nurture it in our children, we mostly believe it’s part of “human nature” and lament its
supposed decline or celebrate its resurgence, and so on. We sometimes even go so far as to critique or at least express curiosity about individuals or groups who seem to lack competitive spirit. In sum, our
society collectively upholds as “true” the idea that humans are competitive, and that competitiveness is
a virtue.
If I were to write on this topic, my essay might question the truth value of this idea. Is it really “human nature” to be competitive (and not, say, cooperative)? What specific cultural interests does the “truth” of human competitiveness support or reinforce? Conversely, who is marginalized or what cultural practices are negated when we say that it’s bad to lack competitiveness? What are the social, economic, or environmental consequences of the promotion of competitiveness?
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