Final Essay

Please post a final essay for the course. This essay should be 700+ words and is due June 12th at 5pm. Due to the constraints of the school process and orders from Director Fanning this essay will not be accepted once the grading is over. And the grading begins June 12th at 5pm.

The topic for AWOL students is - "How I make sense of the American Way of Life". You should address some specific examples of US practices (government, capitalism, birth, health care, economic inequality, food, energy) and connect them to each other and to deeper underlying patterns.

Some starter suggestions and questions:
You should share your orientation towards the American Way of Life - do you resist it? Enjoy it? Enjoy and resist different aspects? What aspects of the mainstream American Way of Life account for its global dominance and dominance here in the U.S.? What aspects of the American Way of Life are particularly tragic or dumb? How did the essential aspects of the American Way of Life develop and where are we headed? Please include some quotes from your own or others' earlier work that expresses strongly what you believe or what you don't (any longer) believe.

The topic for LDH2BM students is - "What makes life meaningful?". If that is too hard, feel free to tweak that topic - perhaps to - "What makes my life feel meaningfuler?" You should connect to specific areas we've investigated - including dominant and marginal corporate messages, your own thoughts, the elderly, animals, physicality, health, food, and the fundamental energy basis of our society. Please include some quotes from your own or others' earlier work that expresses strongly what you believe or what you don't (any longer) believe. Feel free to include an explicit quote like, "This is the way I'm (mostly) thinking about this topic now - but my understanding is evolving!"

Some starter suggestions and questions:
You should share your own orientation to living a meaningful life. Contextualize your point of view in terms of the dominant perspective, other individuals' perspectives, and your own evolving understanding. Is meaning possible given death, infinity, and the Universe? What's your stance on happiness (the dominant easy answer for a meaningful life) - what is it, how important is it, what causes it? What about the other dominant answers - family, success, self-improvement? How about the "marginal" answers - authenticity, creativity, physicality, or deep understanding? What is the significance of the social - should we strive to be "above" our desire for acceptance and affirmation or should we accept our desire and channel it (how?)? What is the significance of our animality - of our physicality and desire for touch and sensation? Feel free to include a disclaimer like, "This is the way I'm (mostly) thinking about this topic now - but my understanding is evolving!"