Blog #18

10/17/19

Modern Mythology 2020

Anling Chen

PD1

Aim: How can we explicate the flower-myths to derive morals?

Today in class, we covered the pages that were assigned for reading that was about flower myths in Greek mythology. I thought the reading was very interesting because I wouldn't normally associate flowers with having to do with human-like Gods contributing to its existence. Of course, mythology is just that, mythological stories, but I really liked creating a human creative element to go with natural beauty.

For the do now, we shared in our groups what we thought were major morals EXPLicated (or EXPLained) in a few flower myths. Then we all came together and a representative from each table went up to write a moral on the board. They were:

Persephone: Beauty can be deceiving; don't be too safe in an unfamiliar place.

These morals meant that Persephone was so tempted to touch something beautiful that it triggered Hades and his chariot to come flying from the underworld and take her into his home to be his queen. In addition, Persephone thought that she was safe next to her mother, Demeter, and in her role as a Goddess of spring that when she ate the pomegranate seeds, she did not think of the consequences or who could've been trying to trick her.

Narcissus: Be careful in indulging; never place your ego above others.

A classic Greek myth! Narcissus was so in love with himself and thought about nothing or anybody else that all he did was sit by the waterside and gaze at his own reflection lovingly. However, as in many Greek tragedies, his own ego killed himself and he died by the water, never looking away even to eat or drink, and wasted away before. His remains turned into Narcissus flowers decorating meadows today.

Echo: Don't focus on things you can't obtain.

Echo admired Narcissus almost to an obsessive level. She was also beautiful, a lovely nymph who unfortunately caught the eye of Zeus. Hera, Zeus' neglected wife, saw her husband fall into a lustful pursuit after Echo and condemned the poor nymph to a lifetime of only speaking the last words of others. Echo's voice left her, but she still watched Narcissus until her own death, a slow fade into a shell of a previously beautiful maiden. The moral in here is that Narcissus never would've even paid her attention, but Echo was so fixated on him that she neglected to protect what was most important: herself. Thus, she was the one who paid the price for her own neglect.

Hyacinthus: Cherish the time you have with friends.

A tragic story, Hyacinthus died in the hands of his friend, Apollo, because of an accident during playtime with Apollo. Apollo was devastated. Therefore, Apollo made his body turn into a lovely flower, the hyacinth. This was my favorite moral because it was the most positive one. We oftentimes forget who is there for us and instead focus on what else is there to do. But when our loved ones are gone, the loss is too great to even consider moving on at the moment.

Adonis: Be wary of what you are capable of; be careful of ruining delicate things for your own gain.

Adonis was the muse of both Aphrodite. and Persephone. One day, Adonis was killed by a boar charging at him and Aphrodite, in despair and wanting to share intimacy, kissed him. This was a fatal kiss by a God. Therefore, that last kiss sealed his fate into death. The moral of being careful of your own abilities correlate with Aphrodite's response to Adonis slipping away, as if she had not interfered, perhaps Adonis would've died on his own body's accord.

Reflection:

Today's lesson was one of my favorites because it covered such a wide range of stories that followed a commonality: beauty in the face of tragedy. When the whole table comes together to discuss how we interpret the tragedy and its aftershocks on the Gods, it feels like it's a whole group philosophical debate that makes you think. Especially when we created our own flower creation story about how the poppy flower came to be after Hera condemned the Poppy God to sleep forever after catching the eyes of Zeus, the whole family tree of Gods and personalities came to life. These stories feel like living, breathing records of something tangible and beautiful, like a flower.

Blog #17

10/15/19

Modern Mythology

Period 1

Benjamin Zhu

Blog #17

Aim: How does the Greek mythological story of creation highlight the troubles between the family structure, the sexes, the struggles for dominance and control, and the child paying for the sins of the parents?

Do now: How does the Judeo-Christian Story of the garden of eden compared with Greek creation? How about Eve and Pandora? Why are women always the “root of all evil?”

Both are around the fact that, the world was good and just as God had planned before Pandora or women were introduced. Women are the root of all evil mainly because these stories were created by men and they were created by their own agenda. Also both eve and pandora were shown to be easily tempted. Eve took the apple and pandora opened the box. Both showed that because they were tempted and wanted something, they both caused trouble for everyone else. Pandora was meant to be used by Zeus to get back at man. Another correlation between the two characters is that they are both the first woman to appear. 

The most popular theory of our universe's origin centers on a cosmic cataclysm unmatched in all of history is the big bang. This theory was born of the observation that other galaxies are moving away from our own at great speed, in all directions, as if they had all been propelled by an ancient explosive force.

Before the big bang, scientists believe, the entire vastness of the observable universe, including all of its matter and radiation, was compressed into a hot, dense mass just a few millimeters across. This nearly incomprehensible state is theorized to have existed for just a fraction of the first second of time.

The Big Bang would often be compared to the creation of Greek stories because like chaos, the Big Bang started everything, from planets to humans similarly to chaos who created titans and gods. 

GROUP WORK

Heaven (as a father) – Mother Earth Cronus (as a father) – Mother Rhea

1. What overwhelming similarities do Heaven and Cronus share? 

2. Why is it significant that Cronus repeated the same atrocities to his children that Heaven did to his children?

3. Aside from the prophecy, why was Zeus’ usurping of Cronus inevitable?

4. What can be understood about the relationship between mother and child compared with mother and father? Why is this important for understanding culture?

1. Heaven doesn’t like his kids because they were too ugly while cornus killed his kids because he was afraid of being overthrown. Also, they were both supreme rulers before their kids were born.
2. It is significant to show that they repeated the same atrocities because it shows how these titans or beings treat their kids which could cause them to do similar actions to their kids. It shows these beings as humanize, not learning from their mistakes. 
3. Because they prophecy proclaimed that One of Cronus’s kids will overthrow him so the only one that survived was Zeus. His actions were inevitable for cornus’s downfall. Zeus was also probably furious about his eaten siblings so he would often try to save them. Also, since the titans were causing chaos, it will be sooner than later that someone would come upon and clear the stage for humans to appear. 
4. The mother and child is shown to care much more than the father. The mother loves the kids and do everything in their power to protect them, which is the complete opposite of the fathers. This shows motherly love which is adopted in many cultures. Mothers usually tend to care more. This saying doesn’t really work in today’s society because now both parents show just as much care rather than just the mother. 

WHOLE GROUP DISCUSSION 

Does the fondness of Prometheus to mankind warrant Zeus' anger? How could the Greeks explain why Zeus sometimes wanted to help man, and sometimes was irritated by man?

Zeus was being petty that Prometheus helped man. This shows human nature in itself in the sense that humans would often shows hatred towards one another and this also shows the theme of son killing father. Zeus was somewhat scared and concerned that he might be overthrown in the same way that Zeus overthrow Cronus. Since Prometheus gave the humans fire, we can survive longer and this broke us out of zeus's grasp. Since we can live longer, Zeus can’t really control our path of survival. 

Reflection: 

Today I learn about the relationships between father and son which is apparent with zeus and cronus as well as cronus and heaven. Furthermore, i also learn about how mothers in greek mythology tend to care more about their kids than fathers, yet women are viewed more as a catastrophic figure which can be seen with pandora and eden. 

Modern Mythology 2020

10/10/19 Modern Mythology 

Blog #16

Period 1

Belinda Zhang

Today we combined classes with Ms. Fusaro’s first period mythology students.

Aim: How does the Greek mythological story of creation highlight the troubles between the 

family structure, the sexes, the struggles for dominance and control, and the child paying for 

the sins of the parents?

Do Now: “First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.”

The class was asked to read this quote and then through observing the diction and mood of Milton’s quote, discuss how it creates perspective on the origins of the universe. 

Most of the class immediately jumped to the concept of order and authority, with someone pointing out a notable use of diction in Milton’s quote: capitalizing the C in Chaos. Moreover, the use of words like “dark, wasteful, wild” conveys that the world prior to life and the Gods was disordered and turbulent, similar to the nature of the stormy, mysterious sea— vast and unknown. Until the Gods established order, there were no laws at the beginning of the universe and there was no society or civilization— the monsters of Greek mythology were able to roam free unrestrained. As one of our classmates noted: “Before order, there has to be disorder.”

 This Do Now led to a related, thought-provoking discussion about the true definition of “chaos.” As said previously, most of us immediately associated chaos with unrestrained living or a lack of order and balance. However, Ms. Fusaro pointed out that what chaos TRULY is— is nothing. The universe originated from nothing.

A classmate followed by humorously challenging the picture of a stormy sea that Ms. Fusaro used to depict chaos on the slides, questioning how that picture could possibly embody “nothing.” Ms. Fusaro responded by asking the class to try and pinpoint exactly what we would illustrate as “nothing.” Many proposed that it would be a picture of pure black or white. But what’s to keep it from being orange or purple? One of our classmates further challenged us to “close one of our eyes, and describe what color we see in our closed eye.” Just like attempting to envision nothing, it produced nothing but indefinite and arbitrary guesses. 

We then read an article about the Big Bang Theory, asking ourselves what it has in common with Greek beliefs about creation. Although the Big Bang Theory is a notion of advanced science and astronomy, it proposes that our world basically erupted from nothing, just like how the Greeks believed the world originated from chaos. And just as these ideas are referred to as “mythology,” the Big Bang is also just a “theory.” This all just goes to show that we’ve always been curious about our origins and emphasizes how much is left unknown about our universe. 

Jun shared an alternate creation theory— that it originated from a previous universe. But where did the previous universe come from? Ms. Fusaro explained it well when she noted that we are left with nothing but a “chicken or the egg” situation. 

Student Reflection:

Our later discussion about the Big Bang Theory in relation to the Greek creation story particularly resonated with me. And it is exceptionally mystifying to accept that we will most likely never be completely certain about how the world came to be and what happened before this timeframe, if anything did happen. Even in our present day, with our advanced technologies and equipment, we are basically at the same level of understanding as the ancient Greeks when it comes to discussing the origins of our universe. And our attempts to comprehend creation are not much different in that they are the product of human curiosity and our inevitable desire to understand and have a sense of control over the unknown. Moreover, we credit it to a split-second explosion of matter while the Greeks referred to it as chaos, but both theories essentially express the same idea of nothingness— they are just labeled with different names. Much like our attempts to envision nothingness, no matter how much scientific terminology is thrown into it, origin theories are simply arbitrary guesses. This concept of nothingness itself also presents a frustrating paradox. We seek to understand our origins but if we originate from nothing, what is there to understand?

An important application of today’s lesson, especially in the current political environment, is the acceptance and understanding of all religions and ideologies. Throughout history, countless wars have been fought over religious conflicts and differences. However, much like the Big Bang Theory and Greek creation story, all religions seem to share the idea that the world emerged from nothing. In reality, our beliefs are all very similar and it is when we realize this, that we can learn to not only be accepting of other’s beliefs, but also be willing to learn from them.

Modern Mythology 2020 #15

Modern Mythology 2020 Blog #15
10/8/19
Timothy Yao
Period 1

Aim: How do the stories of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus demonstrate coming of age, sexuality, and indulgence?

Group Discussion: How is morality evident in the story of Dionysus? What is the duality in his relationship with humanity?

The morality in the story of Dionysus is that the mistreatment of others has dire consequences as every time in which he was mistreated, his aggregators had faced some form of retribution with the pirates who kidnapped him being turned to dolphins and the king who imprisoned him becoming a monster and later on killed, Dionysus in both these cases was more or less an everyman who hadn't wronged those who wronged him. Dionysus' duality with humanity is the balance between moderation and excess, which humanity is unable to find a balance between. 

Main Points:
Balance between moderation and indulgence
Acceptance that greatness can be anywhere
Self-destruction through denial of others

Reflection:
Today we learned, in the story of Dionysus, that the greeks had values inline with respect to the common man, Dionysus' story was one of the consequences of mistreating others who are seen as lesser in power, every case in which Dionysus was mistreated had him appear as an everyman, someone who seeming had no power, but with a hidden greatness that only those who would attempt to accept him would see and understand, even in his punishments he was mild, something which is pointed out that the other gods were not, further extending his trait of moderation and being closer to humanity.

Modern Myth #13
10/4/19
Victoria Pimenta Reyes
PD1
Vocab Games! Yay!

10/7/19
Aim: How do the stories of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus demonstrate the human qualities of coming of age, sexuality, and indulgence
DN: Vocab Quiz
After reading the stories of Demeter & Persephone - what do you believe would make an ideal "AIM" question for today? (TIP - How/Why for high-level questions.) (on classroom)

How does the story of Demeter and Persephone highlight the relationship between mother and daughter?

Pair share: after moving out of your parents, when does the new place become home and parents' house is just your parents'?                                                                                                                        When my parents decide to redecorate my room                                                                               When you get your own house (not dorm)                                                                                                When you start your own family                                                                                                               When you adjust to living separately 

Think-Pair Share: Purpose behind attributing seasons to stories fo Demeter and Persephone? Who is wrong Demeter or Hades                                                                                                                           Demeter is wrong for being bitter because Persephone died and theres no reason to make other people miserable

Hades was wrong because if he didn't kidnap Persephone there wouldn't be a problem. 

the purpose of using Persephone to explain seasons is to show her growth

                  spring- childhood

 

summer- young adult fall- adult winter-elder

 

Modern Mythology 2020 Blog #13

Modern Mythology 2020 Blog #13
10/3/19
James Pannone
Period 1

Confidence/Timid

Truth/Dishonesty

Reason/Insanity

Valor/Cowardice

Bravery/Fear

Love/Hatred

Justice/Injustice

Beauty/Ugly

Charity/Selfishness

Mercy/Cruelty

Athleticism/Unathletic 

Brawn/Weakness

Innovation/Stagnation

Nurturing/Neglect

Cunning/Naivety

Purity/Impurity

Today in class we went over qualities that were addressed in yesterday’s reading. We then had to rank them from most to least important from your personal perspective. Next we discussed our top 5 answers and compared with our group and class. My group had very similar top 5s with at least three the same for between each of us. Then we tried to see if we could find opposites or antonyms for each term we listed. After we discussed it answers we, asked questions about the reading. We talked about how every God/Goddess was described as gorgeous or handsome except for one, Hephaestus. A question of how the Gods personalities were brought up and how some gods were said to have no personalities. How could Hades, the god of the underworld, not be a mean guy? Well, he didn't wrong people. He only righted what they wronged, even if it was too cruel, it was his job and was what they deserved. 

So today, I learned how, the Gods were described in the homework. They were given admirable qualities that we ourselves wished we had. When we were asked to list the top five traits, most of our lists were what we wished we had ourselves, not what we seemed to possess. This shows how aside from how we learned that great ways in which the Gods were looked up to, but we learned a bit about ourselves, and our values. Making the list in order, and then finding sets of antonyms, showed us how loosely related the traits are. They fall into each other in both sides of the spectrum. Using this information, it will help with further readings of the gods, looking at their personalities as discussed in class and the novel. I'll be able to pin point how their descriptions match their actions, and other peoples actions towards them. 

Modern Mythology 2020

Blog #12
Andrew Ou Period 1 
10/02/19

Aim: How does Greek mythology highlight the values, principles, and apex of human-kind?

Today we started the class with a ten-minute quiz on the pages we were assigned from the book Mythology by Edith hamilton. Shortly after we played kahoot in our teams. The kahoot was on the mythology book. We learned how Edith Hamilton defines Mythology.

After we talked about how Edith Hamilton defines mythology we moved on to how Zeus cared for the people. In class, we discussed that Zeus began to recognize the needs of the people. He became the father of the people and he intervened a lot to help and save the innocent.

Group Work: 
Aristotle wrote about mythology "Excellence, much labored for by the race of mortals"
1. According to what we've read thus far, what does "excellence embody"?
2. What does "excellence" not include?
3. Why did the Greeks make the gods in their own image?
4. How does this differ in perception to ancient Egypt? How does it actually share a philosophy?
5. How do contemporary religions mimic the mythology of ancient Greece?

Reflection:
Today's lesson was important because we learned the beginnings of mythology. By learning this we can appreciate the life of the ancient Greeks more. For example, we learned how some Greek gods such as Zeus were extremely caring to the people.