A More Modest Apocalyse

             So the apocalypse… We’re getting very close to what the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world, December 21, 2012, a day most are dreading and do not want to talk about. I, unlike that large majority, believe this very scary, yet realistic idea. There are various signs of why I believe that the world is going to end. Maybe if the students of Norton High School actually experienced a snow day all year, I wouldn’t be so inclined to thinking that global warming is going to kill us all. But because we did not, and one of the only days we actually accumulated snowed occurred in March, gives me reasons to believe the global warming mayhem.  And no, I’m not one of those crazed people who run around trying to save the trees and “go green” necessarily, but I do think that global warming to going to have an impact on if we see the years to come or not. I don’t know it the day the Mayans predicted is actually going to be the day the world ends, but I do believe it will be someday soon. I could be tomorrow for all we know. Maybe we should take matters into our own hands. . .

            When people ask me, “do you really believe the world is going to end in 2012?” I respond with, “well, yes actually I do.” And when asked what my reasoning for this belief is, I tell them, just think about it. It goes from being freezing to being 70 degrees and sunny the next day it’s in the lower 80’s the day before spring starts here in New England as it’s snowing in Arizona during the same time. I really believe that this will be the year when we get a foot of snow in the middle of August, and if so, we’re all, unfortunately, done for. I do not tend to look at the negative side of a situation but in this case, I think it is better to somewhat humor the idea rather than avoid talking about it at all costs. With all of the hype in the media and the movies and documentaries that have been done to showcase the idea that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012, has people scared of the topic and don’t want to even fathom the idea because of similar scares in past years, that clearly did not happen because we are all here today.

            You could die, anywhere at any time due to any cause imaginable. So the idea that we will one day all die at the same exact time on the same day is not that scary to think about because, well we will no longer be here, unless you’re Will Smith of course. But wouldn’t you rather die with everyone you know and love than to die suddenly and leave all of your loved one behind? For example, next period someone could get their finger caught in the pencil sharpener, not realizing it and continue to sharpen it until they die instantly due to blood loss or a girl could be walking through the hallways and accidently walk out the back doors into the construction zone just to be run over by a bulldozer… You never know, these are the things we should be scared of, not the world blowing up into a million pieces so there is not one ounce of human life is left in existence. We live our lives every day not even thinking about the possibility that we could die in the next second, but when someone poses the idea that we could all die together on the same day when the world blows up, no one believes it. Why?

            I’m not insisting that we all live in fear until we get past the day that the Mayans predicted our world’s destiny to be, because for all I know it won’t happen. But when I’m out and about with my friends and I see something very odd occurring, all I can think to say is, “that’s definitely another sign that the world is going to end” and I say this to get a comedic response but when in reality it could be true. It is a situation like this where we don’t think about everything that goes on around us every day, there are people dying every second and we’re all worried about when the whole world blows up, what’s going to happen? NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN BECAUSE WE WILL ALL BE DEAD! Not just the civilians of the United States, the ENTIRE WORLD will be gone; which for some is hard to wrap their heads around. The idea that EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING in the entire planet will be completely vanished, weird right?

In the past few years, you may have noticed, the new “eco-friendly” water bottles, the new cars trying to cut down on the amount of gas we used and using reusable shopping bags in order to help our planet, but clearly none of these things are doing anything for our climate change. I give people credit for at least attempting to change things in our world to increase how long our environment can put up with us. But I honestly don’t think that any of those things have made a significant difference, whatsoever. No one wants to believe it or admit that they believe it, but at the same time there are millions of people trying to conserve energy in various different ways, but does anyone see these things making a huge impact? I don’t. And do you think little things like these are going to save the world from blowing up someday, probably not considering that people are still continuing to litter daily and also the pollution poisoning our air, will sadly, most likely, never be resolved.

            What I think that is what people really don’t think about and understand that there is much more going on around us than what we see in the United States every day, people are dying due to many different causes every second, and those people suffering now will be dead along with the rest of us, come December of 2012. One major concern of scientists about the issue of global warming is water vapor. The amount of water vapor that is produced is the Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface. Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small perhaps undetectable effect on global climate. So something such as this, is something that us, as the human race occupying our beloved planet, is something that we could potentially help fix, but will we ever get to that point? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Going about solving this universal issue, is difficult. One solution could be if we just went about ending the world ourselves and just blew up the entire planet as a joined force. It would be much better and easier; we could plan it out so everyone does it at the same exact time, leaving no one left in the world. Just imagine if there was some possible way for a single red button, think like the overly obnoxious Staples ‘easy button’, where once someone, somewhere on this plant touched this one button, the entire world blew up from the inside core out, killing all of us before global warming suffocates our land any longer. Going about this and getting the entire planet to get involved and end it sooner, rather than later. We would first need to form a committee to get this process underway, and decide exactly how we would pull this off, we need to do it in a timely fashion before Mother Nature does her job and does it before can even finish planning how we will. The internet has become a way of life in every corner of the world, in some way or another, even in third world countries, there is a way to make it possible for them to access other parts of the world, it might just be a little harder to accomplish. But taking advantage of what we have, putting out a mass Service Announcement to get this idea out to the world and get as many people involved as possible. And we know that we’re going to many people that will be again this idea and try to protest it and say that it is unrealistic and ridiculous. I would say, that based on the weather we have been experiencing lately and the economic downturn in the past few years… IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN SOON ENOUGH PEOPLE, so let’s go and get it over with now so we know when it’s coming, can say goodbye to those we love and be done with it, this would kill the anticipation, pun intended. Instead of anticipating the day Mother Nature is going to choose for us, we can choose it ourselves and have power over the world for just one second before it all crumbles down.

Modest Proposal Analysis

            Balancing between a morbid and sarcastic tone in A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift employs obscure sarcasm, sardonic satire and pragmatic inflation to depict the idea of overpopulation throughout the world is due to the fact that people are irresponsibly having “bastard children.” And Swift’s solution to this problem is to eat the unwanted “infant flesh.”

            Swift further depicts the problem of overpopulation with both statistical information and a sarcastic undertone to get his arguments across and his exaggerated solution to this international issue. By talking about such a serious topic in a very comedic way gives the reader a way to view this issue in a much different way rather than just preaching the face that we are overpopulated. Swift points out very obvious things that most people may think but don’t want to be the ones to say out loud, in fear of pissing society off. The type of sarcasm Swift employs to convey his theory is used in a very obscure way because the things he says does have a comedic tone to them but at the same time, the reader can hear the seriousness throughout the piece. By pointing out “infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after”, is a statement that would be taken as a joke to most, yet may irk the other half of society.

            The use of sardonic satire future enforces Swift’s point because he takes a topic that is very serious, and then ridicules the problem in a very bitter and under toned fashion. If Swift had gone about this solution in a more “essay-like” response, it may have not been taken the way he had intended it to, so by him writing it in more a satirical way, gives it that sense of humor and seriousness that he clearly meant to incorporate. Swift is mainly concerned about how “some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed” and we are bringing in more babies every year that, aren’t necessarily, “unneeded” but at this point in time, the economy was not equipped to provide for all of these “bastard children.”

            Swift’s use of pragmatic inflation makes his proposal more realistic and understandable. By taking this situation and blowing so much out of proportion opens people’s eyes to make his readers realize what is really going on around in the world. Without exaggerating this problem, this topic is a rather difficult topic to discuss. But by approaching this in such a humorous and outrageous fashion, makes it easier to relate to. Using this writing technique makes the piece much easier to read; even though the language may be hard to understand but the topic itself is easy to interpret.

            Over population is a economic downfall, but by depicting in it such a comedic way, leaves the reader thinking about this problem and what can be done about it, besides eating these unneeded babies. Well that could be a solution, but it probably would not be at the top of everyone else’s list, of how to control this exaggerated issue.

Kiss and Tell; Thesis & Supporting Paragraph

            By producing a comic effect in the British novel, Kiss and Tell, Alain de Botton utilizes perspective characterization to embody the idea that no matter how much we want to be disjointed from our parents and be nothing like them, there will always be a part of us that mirrors that of our parents.

            The narrator further characterizes his girlfriend and her parents by illustrating them as he saw them, when he and Isabell spotted them in the theater. By the couple coming in contact with her parents is ironic because it shows that even though Isabell will do everything in her power to prove she is nothing like her parents, she is in regards to the fact that they are both at the same play, on the same night, due to common interests. When Isabell first realizes that her parents are there, she can predict what they are doing just by looking at them from across the theater, “this is prime argument territory for them, Mum will be asking Dad where he put the car park ticket and he’ll get flustered because he’ll just have dropped it into a bin by mistake” and once her parents notice their daughter and her boyfriend in the venue and go over to talk to them, what Isabell predicted, is right on point. This further implies the characterization of the family because it depicts the relationship ties between the family and just how predictable they may be. One particular conversation between mother and daughter about what Isabell was wearing, “oh, well, it’s very nice, pity you don’t have more of a cleavage for it, but that’s your father’s fault”, this suggests the certain type of conjunction between the two, which presents what seems to be a rather unrefined relationship.