Address to the Party

OldSpeak

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Newspeak

"Four score and seven years ago, big brother brought forth on this continent a new nation eurasia: conceived in ownlife, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are ownlife oldthink.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that eurasia, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

 We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live in the party. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave party men for Big Brother, living and unpersons, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or unperson for ungood. The eurasia will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the party, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us and Big Brother. . .that from these honored unpersons we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these unperson shall not have unpersoned in vain. . . that this nation eurasia, under Big Brother, shall have a new birth of the party. . . and that Big Brother of the goodthinker. . .by the crimethinker. . .for the doublethinker. . . shall not perish from the eurasia. "

Ignorance is Strength.

She was born in the 40’s. Everything was so different back then. Segregation, not much technology, and so life for her was pretty basic. As time progressed she stayed the same. The years only changed her appearance not her life.

She repeated herself. Day after day doing the same things she did the day before.

Morning: Coffee, cereal, and banana.

Insulin.. Snack

Lunch: Sandwich, chips, and a diet dr. pepper

Insulin.. Snack

Dinner: Baked chicken, squash, baked potato, (anything else she had that was in the kitchen.) and a diet dr. pepper.

Insulin. Bath. Bed.

Her life depended on the predictability that she had come to know. She did watch television quite a bit. Watching the same shows, news at 5 am, price is right at 9am, her soap opera at 10am, Maury at 1pm, and later on watching one her favorites wheel of fortune at 5pm.

I believe that she did this because she did not like change. Technology was just too much to understand for her, she liked the older days where life was easy so she keep her life to revolve around how it had always been.

She was so full of knowledge. When she talked I always had to listen even if she wasn’t talking to me. Everything that came out of her mouth was with reason and experience. Every time it rained it was always “Make sure Destiny is covered up she doesn’t need to be getting pneumonia.” I always loved how older people always assume everything will cause pneumonia. But we would always listen every time she would say that and when it rained or snowed I always had something covering me up. To this day my mother and I will find us saying, “Oh granny would be happy if she saw you all covered up, or granny would have a fit if she saw you not covered up.”

One thing she really did not like was the atm or paying debit at the grocery store. Something about it was just so hard for her each time she went she would need help or if she couldn’t find help she found that writing checks were a lot easier. But that makes sense. Writing checks has nothing to do with changing technology like how using a debit card and having to put your pin in to pay for things did.

She found comfort in older things. Not the finer things, they could keep that. She found comfort in things that have been familiar to her since she was a younger girl and that was quite some time ago. She found comfort in reliability. She knew what was right and wrong. She was ignorant to changes in her life. When I think of “Ignorance is Strength” I automatically think of my grandmother. She very much disliked anything about technology. Up until her death she was still using the same go phone she had for years and still needed help sometimes to understand it. To me that is the real definition of Ignorance is Strength. She was able to block out all the unnecessary material things in life and she was able to focus on what life really was. Technology and innovations didn’t block her from her life she was able to live out her life just as she wanted to.

Ignorance is Power. Ignorance is Strength.

How about some chips..?

The clock: 3:00 am. The darkness, just as ominous as the half lit moon sitting on the left and fog so white and so deep blurring the view. The sign above the very lit building reads 24 hours. Many people, women and men walk out left and right to designated cars. Not many children out at this time. A mysterious man dressed in all black wearing a hoodie just above his eyes appears from the side of the building. Another man more normal looking walks up to him and just as he pulls his hand out of his pocket handshakes the man and he walks away. A couple at pump number 2 hurry as they are afraid something is going to happen to them. The man dressed in slacks and a button down darts out of the car to the pump. Takes it out, retrieves the receipt, and speeds to about 100 mph just to get out of the parking lot. A woman about twenty years old, but with the looks of a 50 year old sat right across from the car. Dressed in a bit too tight and too small mini, mini, mini skirt and a bra top. So stressed and so worn out looking she sat right next to the pay phone. A car pulled up and she hopped up and right into the car she went. It speed out of the parking lot and directly into the darkness. The door opens and a familiar face appears out the side of the door, displaying two different chip options. 

What's your fate? (Cards of Darkness)

Everyone came into class wondering why the chairs had changed from rows to groups. My group had no clue about what we were about to do and what we were about to understand with a simple card game. The name of the game was Cards of Darkness, just like the book we were reading, Heart of Darkness. Throughout the game we had to make decisions that would either make or break in the game. We had to decide whether to press for resources and have the natives hate us or not have anything other than the one resource we started with. It took us some time to finish because we were really thinking about each move we made throughout the game. So in result we did not win but that wasn’t our goal it was truly just to understand what we were doing.

As we started to get closer to the end the more bad cards came to us. I picked up the ace and things just went downhill from there. We had a monsoon that caused us to have rain for 2 months following. If we didn’t have those bad cards at the end and had them closer to the beginning I believe we could have ended the game with more resources. We did end up with one more resource than we started with, which wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t press the natives for more resources. Also, when we had the bad weather we had to take away a card from native relations and give them one of our force cards meaning we had one less peace with the natives.

The factors that influenced the choices we made were to end up still having resources at the end of the year. We thought about pressing but that would make the natives upset at us. That was something we really didn’t want to have because we needed to have resources at the end of the year. If we would’ve started off with the rainy months I think that would have pushed us to change the choices we made about pressing and not pressing. I believe that my group made really smart decisions about the choices we made and we didn’t try to be so forceful at the beginning, which left us with a lot of force at the end to use. It was a realistic experience because people actually went through these types of things.

Overall I think this game helped us in a way to understand the book. We were new on someone else’s land, demanding for stuff. If I were one of the natives I would be pretty upset as well, that’s not their land to control. Just as the book “Heart of Darkness” does. We learned how to work together to finish the game with resources and learned how to understand what overall happened inside the book involving the characters of the book. It was a fun experience for us all even though we didn’t get to have cookies. :(