The modern world has witnessed a grand shift in the primary societal outlook.  Previously, the western world, and the United States in particular, harbored a skeptic and fact-based outlook, ‘look to the science’ was the maxim of the age.  The current paradigm dominating society is one that is quite the opposite, the new age is governed not by an obsessive reliance numbers and data, but the narrative of individuals.  The modern world accepts, by and large, the subjective reality, truth belongs to the beholder and bends to the will of individuals.  This is called by researchers Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, specialists who work at the RAND corporation, Truth Decay.  Such radical shifts in the foundations of society’s general outlook are surely problematic at the very least for the sole reason they are so opposed to the previous paradigm.  But is the change worth it?  Is this ‘progress’ truly beneficial to society?  Does it remedy some broken system?  No.  This resolute answer is reached through a simple argument and its reasoning; objective truth is better for society than subjective truth because it allows for the use of societal discourse, which is harmed and ultimately rendered ineffective by the acceptance of subjective truth by society as a whole.  In order to properly develop this argument a series of definitions is in order.  Objective truth will herein be defined and discussed as the positive relationship between reality and the narrative of an individual.  Conversely, subjective truth shall be considered as the relationship between reality and an individual narrative that subverts reality in favor of the narrative.  Subjective truth often takes the form of Poetic Truth, a term which warrants its own definition and was coined by Dr. Shelby Steele, a leading academic at the Hoover Institute specializing in race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action.  As he describes it, poetic truth is the personal distortion of the truth an individual creates that appeases some emotional desire in order to levy for power or control.  Lastly, societal discourse is defined as the institutions and conventions of interaction in a society, this is a broad definition that covers societal aspects of government, commerce, and social interactions.  For the purpose of exploring the primary argument, the inherent objective nature of social interaction will be explored, followed by each of the facets of societal discourse mentioned above being appraised under a subjective truth system and compared to the conventional, albeit idealized, system that proceeded it.  Next several counterarguments will be assessed and subsequently rebutted, all finally delivering the final argument that objective truth is the preferable modus operandi for society.

The primary argument herein is that the subjective truth makes societal interaction useless and therefore an objective truth outlook is better for society.  This statement comes from the fact that all interpersonal discourse requires an positive relationship between the narratives of both parties and the reality in which they both coincide.  While this portion of the argument is much more philosophical and might appear to have little bearing on the reality of the argument, the very consideration of a positive relationship between this facet of the argument and reality proves its necessity.  If one is to communicate any concept or desire to another, they must use the medium of reality to do so.  The examination of truth began as far back as the Greeks, the likes of Socrates and Plato contemplated truth and the nature of reality on a routine basis, but the birth of the dilemma of subjective truth came from the great enlightenment thinker Rene Descartes.  Descartes like many of his contemporaries sought to gain a better understanding of every aspect of the world they lived in, applying science to all areas, in fact what is referred to as philosophy today they called natural science.  What Descartes turned his sights on for examination were the most basic assumptions of philosophy, he employed his new Cartesian method, which is simplified into the idea of doubting everything in an empirical method, to discover how truth and reality were related.  In his meditations he logically arrived at the conclusion that all of our senses are untrustworthy and do not accurately interpret our surrounding environment, reality (Descartes).  It is from this deduction that philosophers like Nietzsche and Kant began their assault on the foundations of a shared logic and supreme reality, arguing that an individual can determine reality, or at least force others to accept theirs by being the dominant power in a system.  However, Descartes’ final conclusion was not one of subjectivity, as he came to believe that objective reality can be reasonably assumed through our interaction with new phenomena and building assumptions upon the few undoubtable realities, an individual can know to be true, such as the existence of self (Descartes).  But it is in these new phenomena from a reality outside one’s own self that individuals sketch narratives and communicate with others.  If an objective reality beyond personal narratives did not exist there would be nothing inside of that narrative other than the individual, and without a common reference, narratives could not be shared.

In light of necessity of a common and thereby objective reality for interaction it is alarming that one of the most important points of contention for this issue of subjective truth lies in the social discourse in government, branching from the policy making side to the judicial, and making a grand appearance in politics.  Subjective truth is highly problematic in this sphere, on the policy making side there has been in the last few years a gravitation toward allowing the personal narratives of individuals to take precedence over reality in favor of appeasing their ego, a perfect example of poetic truth.  This is of course a reference to the transsexual movement.  Gender dysphoria is a legitimate medical condition, in which and individual is plagued by a belief or confusion that they are the gender opposite to their reality.  However, it becomes problematic for society when the government begins passing laws allowing inflicted individuals to live out their fantasy narrative by forcing others to accommodate them, not only in referring to the individual by their desired sex but allowing them to use services specifically designed for those who are in reality that gender.  By forcing others through laws to bend their perception of reality into absurdity to accommodate the narrative of individuals it is becomes harmful to the actual governmental system, which oppressively forces people to ignore reality on pain of legal action and divorces itself form reality and makes room for frivolous and unfounded lawmaking.  On the judicial side of government there arises another problem of poetic truth, if objectivity is spurned in favor of narrative how can a fair decision be made in the courtroom, what now is the metric for determining whose testimony is more valuable?  Such was the case following the death of Michael Brown, a young man of African descent who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.  It was determined initially that there was no foul play in the incident and that Brown was killed in self-defense by the officer who had been called by a local shop owner to remove a belligerent patron.  However, despite this ruling which was supported by all video evidence, the locals and family of Brown told a different story, in which Brown was shot down in cold blood.  The people were in great emotional stress and so their alternative narrative drove them to call for some sort of reparation (Steele).  There were riots all over the country as people embraced the false narrative.  By the end of it there was millions done in property damage, the shop which had been threatened was closed down and even more people had been hurt.  When society is incapable of setting aside their emotionally driven narratives and work against the judicial system for being too tied to objectivity, they cause more real suffering not less.

Another arena of social interaction under assault by society as it drives forward with its acceptance of subjective truth is education.  Education and academics are highly dependent on truth, these two are primarily concerned with discovering and spreading understanding, which simply put is truthful comprehension; a positive relationship between what an individual knows and what really is.  If education or academics were to divorce themselves from pursuit of the objective truth then they become ineffective in their benefit to society, except perhaps as entertainment.  In a comprehensive article Sarit Barzilai and Clark Chin examined how within education, there is a discussion over how people know things and how fallible those ways are, but there is also a certain apathy that educators have taken in answering or providing information on these debates, which leaves no real grounding for young people to understand the complex and difficult terrain of the subject, instead accepting subjectivity.  In an even more egregious assault on objective truth it has become popular among educators to call out objective mathematics as racist.  In the new teacher’s guide for elementary education it insults teacher’s assumption of objectivity and says that if a student makes an error, they should treat it as correct, because objectivity is simply derived by white capitalists who don’t want the subjugated masses to succeed (Stride 7).  This is incredibly dangerous, as it forces the validity of all narratives into an area that is only useful through its constancy and objective nature.

Though a strong argument, not even objectivity is above scrutiny, the example of Descartes can be drawn on again.  One criticism that might be levied against the presented argument is that requiring people to prescribe to a single objective reality, you are devaluing their own experience and narratives.  Contrarily, if there is no objective or shared reality then there is no way for individuals to interact with one another, making each narrative worth nothing to anyone other than that individual, and furthermore it makes said individual useless to society as they are unable to interact effectively with others, unwilling to accept the universal medium and attempting to force their own separate reality on each other.  Another counterargument is that those in power often alter the determine the “truth” of any given situation, using their narrative to determine what is true regardless of its relationship to reality.  Arguing that by forcing an objective point of view society makes itself vulnerable to the whims of those in power.  The fault with this argument, however, is that the entire issue is that individuals in power are forcing people to accept a truth that does not have a positive relationship with reality, or in other word, believe something that is not what actually happened.  By operating based on objective truth society must recognize a single reality which actually protects individuals from false narratives.

It is impossible to maintain a functioning and interactive society when subjective narratives are forced upon the populace.  The societal discourse begins to crumble in all its facets when the medium of reality, a necessarily objective thing, is disregarded in favor of narratives that align with emotional and personally advantageous perversions of the objective world.

Works Cited

BARRETT JR, JOHN A. “Free Speech Has Gotten Very Expensive: Rethinking Political Speech Regulation in a Post-Truth World.” St. John’s Law Review, vol. 94, no. 3, 2021.

Barzilai, Sarit, and Clark A Chinn. “A Review of Educational Responses to the ‘Post-Truth’ Condition: Four Lenses on ‘Post-Truth’ Problems.” Educational Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 3, 2020, pp. 107–119.

Blackburn, Simon. Truth : A Guide. Oxford University Press, 2006. VMI PRESTON LIBRARY, public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=281154. Accessed 14 Feb. 2022.

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Infomotions, 2000. VMI PRESTON LIBRARY, public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=3314469. Accessed 01 Apr. 2022.

Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Michael D. Rich.  Truth Decay.  Rand Corporation, 2018.

Searle, Joshua T. “Prophecy, Protest and Public Theology: The Relevance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Prophetic Mandate in Today’s Post-Truth World.” Journal of European Baptist Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2020.

Stride.  A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.  2020.

What Killed Michael Brown?.  Directed by Eli Steele, written and narrated by Shelby Steele, Man of Steel Productions, 2020.

The modern American society is under threat from the widening gap between acceptance of evidence as objective reality and subjective emotional based interpretation.  Many authors and academics have attempted to address the subject, what it means for the current political and societal dialogue, and how it might be remedied.  Truth Decay, a book “that examines how the diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life has caused an erosion of civil discourse and political paralysis, among other problems” (RAND), was published by the RAND Corporation and authored by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich.  Truth Decay is one of many works that seeks to address the central issue of growing subjectivity in the political and civil national discourse.  Kavanagh and Rich approach the issue from a definitional standpoint, defining the erosion of accepted objective truth as Truth Decay, convincing the audience to consider the issue from a more-meaningful angle on the issue based on the foundational understanding that the book provides.  This state of consideration is effectively reached by the audience through Kavanagh and Rich’s use of three rhetorical strategies, all of which are interconnected by a theme of accessibility, and are derivatives of the three appeals – logos, ethos, and pathos – and draw the audience to the desired state of mind, those strategies are organization (logos), context (ethos), and diction (pathos).

First among Truth Decay‘s rhetorical strategies is the logical appeal created by Kavanagh and Rich: organization.  The simple and well laid out format of the book provides the audience with not only a road map of the overall argument and main definitions but also a quick guide of reference for their argument.  Truth Decay’s road map starts with a brief overview of the concept and a four bullet-point definition of Truth Decay’s trends, which are as follows:

1. increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations

of facts and data⁴

2. a blurring of the line between opinion and fact
3. the increasing relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion

and personal experience over fact

4. declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information. (Kavanagh 3)

Within the next sixteen pages Kavanagh and Rich discuss their terms and definitions, their methods and goals, and the organization of the rest of the report.  This lends them great ethos, as their organization and clarification make the audience fully aware of the topic and how it is going to be assessed in the following chapters of the book.  This is highly effective in creating the desired foundation for discussion that the authors set out to foster, as it aids the audience in comprehension by feeding it to the reader in piecemeal simplified sections.  The subsequent chapters of the report discuss the four trends of Truth Decay, its historical context, root causes, consequences, and potential solutions.  This basic organizational pattern follows a logical process of introduction to an issue, as each chapter is the answer to questions that follow the revelation of the previous chapter.  The introduction of Truth Decay prompts the discussion of its characteristics, in this case the four trends, which in turn prompts the question of how Truth Decay came to be and what continues to cause it, and it continues in the same fashion until all the questions are answered.  Once this is done the audience is effectively delivered to a place of competency on the issue that allows for the desired discourse that Kavanagh and Rich set out to foster.

While Kavanagh and Rich reinforce their argument and drive to their goal through logic, their intentions are heavily aided by the credibility of their work.  This credibility is supported in its ethos through context given concerning the authors themselves, the history of Truth Decay, and the naturally integrated discussion of their methodology in constructing the work.  The authors, Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, lend credibility to the argument of their report through their previous work and the reputation of the publisher of the book.  The RAND Corporation has produced many different articles, reports, and books on various topics with the intention of developing solutions to public policy challenges.  The Rand Corporation’s publications range from subjects such as voting to things like military coalitions.  Jennifer Kavanagh has written many such articles at RAND and has even addressed the topic of subjective truth in her other works, making her somewhat of an expert on the subject.  Michael D. Rich brings years of experience to the table, he has been conducting research for RAND since the seventies and is now chief executive (RAND).  Another form of context which provides credibility to Truth Decay is the wise use of historical context.  The authors take the initiative and observe in depth three different time periods which show the trends of truth decay, remarking that “a closer look at U.S. history reveals several periods—three in particular that share many similarities with today along a number of dimensions: the 1880s–1890s, the 1920s–1930s, and the 1960s–1970s” (41).  Within each observation, Kavanagh and Rich give deep background on the historical events leading up to and during the time period, following it with an assessment of Truth Decay present, like on page 45 of Truth Decay, where the authors write, “Evidence of Truth Decay, as we define it, in the 1880s and 1890s is mixed. There is fairly strong evidence that yellow journalism, which disseminated sensationalized and exaggerated news and information, both blurred the line between opinion and fact and increased the amount of opinion in the mass media of the day.”  The third kind of context provided by Kavanagh and Rich is their discussion of their methodology in creating the report.  Kavanagh and Rich dedicate and entire section of their report to this topic in which they discuss the various sets of 8-10 person groups they utilized for the discussion of Truth Decay in its definition and facets, the guiding questions provided to help cultivate the discourses on the subject, and the various outsourcing of previous material to cultivate discussion.  All three techniques of context effectively lend credibility to the book in different ways.  Author backgrounds make the audience feel as if the report is an authentic piece of work which can be trusted, which advances the argument.  Historical context works on a more internal level and allows for the audience to become more certain of their own thoughts on the issue.  The discussion of the methodology used to create the report being enclosed within the report itself makes the audience feel confident in not only the validity of the argument, but also of the studies generated data.

Diction is the third of the rhetorical strategies, and while the least obvious of the set it is the most inclined in its basic role to accessibility, a task which it effectively accomplishes.  In that it fills the pathos appeal, one that appeals to the audience and their sensibilities directly.  From the beginning Kavanagh and Rich demonstrate their desire to make the report an accessible work, as they included a chart in the front with a list of abbreviations that are common in the book and might need interpretation.  This makes the book accessible to those who might not be familiar with terms commonly used in political and civil discourse, inviting the audience to be led to the place of competency that the authors are aiming for.  Kavanagh and Rich make Truth Decay even more accessible to the general audience by defining the terms used throughout the book and providing examples of each term, “Analysis[:] A detailed and thorough investigation or study of a specific topic designed to deepen understanding or identify component parts” and the general example, “Articles in top ranked academic journals that assess the effects of insurance-premium increases on the number of people with health insurance”.  (Kavanagh 8)  What this does is introduce a higher level of clarity, effectively educating the audience in the topic and making them more confidant in their own knowledge.  Yet another way that Kavanagh and Rich improve the effectiveness of their report through diction is by using common topical terms which they have further defined for clarity, but the audience is familiar with from every day life such as ‘fake news’, “legal and policy responses that would make the spread of “fake news” or libelous content illegal, as has been done in Europe.134 However, implementing such legislation while protecting individual civil rights could prove challenging, especially given partisan  disagreements about what constitutes “fake news”.”  (Kavanagh 130)  This helps to directly connect to the audience through what they are already familiar with which is a highly effective tool in making the audience invested in the topic of the work.

Kavanagh and Rich successfully accomplish their goal in Truth Decay of creating a basis of understanding from which to seriously discuss the erosion of factual acceptance in political and civil discourse through the effective implementation of rhetorical strategies.  Using organization as a way of logical presentation, historical context as an appeal to ethos, and selective diction to promote accessibility, Kavanagh and Rich have written a masterful work which simply accomplishes its goals and directs the audience to a place of discussion.

Works Cited

Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Michael D. Rich.  Truth Decay.  Rand Corporation, 2018.

“Michael D. Rich – One Page Bio.”  RAND.org, Michael D. Rich – Profile | RAND.  Accessed 28 February 2022.

Within my rather short lifetime there has been a monumental shift in societal thought, traditional morals and societal values have been put under increasing scrutiny over the past decade, leading to the growth the transgender movement, the widespread implementation of abortion, and a resurgence of racial enmity based on the perceived systemic racism.  The widespread societal embrace of these ideas and movements is concerning to my personally as I believe that they are all potentially harmful and in the indulgent state of modern society a legitimate threat to the wellbeing of our nation down to the lowest level.  What has caused this societal shift in though, I believe, can be directly attributed to how society approaches truth.  A great divide in American national thought is the nature of truth.  In the past it was generally accepted that truth was objective reality, grounded in the physical, however, in recent years the notion that truth is subjective has become commonly held.  Initially based on the imperfection of physical senses, the notion of reality being grounded in the psyche of each individual became a widely accepted as a legitimate philosophy.  This individualized truth influences far more than just individual perception however and can become quite dangerous to the society as a whole.  The application of a reality which can be bent to the interpreter’s motives and feelings effects the political and social world in ways which are so detrimental that in order to protect society, the philosophy of subjective truth must be wholly rejected. So the central question then is; what are the imminent dangers of subjective philosophy when accepted by society?

Shelby Steele is a leading academic of the Hoover Institute that specializes in race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action.  In his recent documentary What Killed Michael Brown?, Steele revisits the killing of Ferguson, Missouri resident Michael Brown as he dismantles the series of lies and agendas that muddied the truth and led to a national series of riots and destruction in outrage.  In the riveting retrospective Steele not only shows the objective facts of the situation, but also digs into the underlying factors and contributions of the last several decades in society that made the unfortunate death a reality.  In this in-depth examination Steele touches on one of the factors that led to the fallout of Michael Brown’s death and ensuing riots, something he calls poetic truth.  Poetic truth as he describes it is the personal distortion of the truth an individual creates that appeases some emotional desire in order to levy for power or control.  Steele discusses this through the example of the residents of Brown’s neighborhood, and to an extent his own family, who refuse to believe the facts as of the Brown’s death and instead hold an inaccurate view of the deceased and claim that his death was racially motivated.  They do this to satiate their grief and fuel their false perception of victimhood, and by doing this they secure themselves a place to make demands, as society is unwilling to force their acknowledgement of the truth. I believe that poetic truth is an increasing problem in out society and as evidenced by Mr. Steele’s research, individuals will continue to take advantage of society’s acceptance and push their own agendas without real repercussion.  The people of Ferguson motivated completely on emotions justified by society as their version of the truth caused thousands of dollars of property damage in riots and looting, and people across the entire country did the same.  A similar standard can be seen in the summers of 2020 and 2021, in which the media sang out these kinds of people’s poetic truth and used it to loot, lobby for political power, and demand privileges not their own.

The examination of truth as a concept began as far back as the Greeks, the likes of Socrates and Plato contemplated truth and the nature of reality on a routine basis, but the birth of the dilemma of subjective truth came from the great enlightenment thinker Rene Descartes.  Descartes like many of his contemporaries sought to gain a better understanding of every aspect of the world they lived in, applying science to all areas, in fact what is referred to as philosophy today they called natural science.  In the scientific search for understanding, Descartes turned his sights on the most basic assumptions of philosophy, and employed his new Cartesian method, which is simplified into the idea of doubting everything, to discover how truth and reality were related.  In his meditations he logically arrived at the conclusion that all of our senses are untrustworthy and do not accurately interpret our surrounding environment, reality.  This conclusion was reached because of the errors our senses often give us, the mind altering what we remember experiencing through our senses, and the inability, while in a dream to tell that the difference between reality and fantasy, that unmistakable feeling of tactile reality quickly lets us know our waking moments are within a physical reality, but while in a dream this feeling holds just as much perceived weight.  However, Descartes musings did not end with uncertainty and a divorce from reality, but instead found the most basic principles that could not be doubted and built upon that through rational assumptions and trust in the authority of others’ experiences and words, in his mind, Descartes had just scientifically proven that reality can be relied on, and it can be proven through the power of the mind.  While researching this I found that Descartes’ initial problems seemingly undermined my stance on objectivity, but in a paradoxical way, Descartes’ ultimate conclusion that we could believe in a few things objectively, and then reasonably assume the rest reinforced my stance on the matter of truth.

Descartes’ theories, however, did not stay with him, they became incredibly popular among the rising minds of centuries following, and the likes of Nietzsche embraced the ideas of subjective reality.  Focusing on the failure of senses to accurately relate reality to the cognitive mind and the ability of the memory to change how a scenario is recollected.  This opens up a whole new avenue of questions and doubts with reality.  Descartes was able to justify his belief in reality, by building it upon notions he could not divorce, and ultimately, because in order to live his everyday life he had to accept that his perception and senses gave a mostly accurate interpretation of a concrete and independent reality.

Descartes realized that objectivity was necessary to exist in a society, the public realms of politics, education, and commerce all require that objectivity to effectively interact as a society.  I believe that truth is an essential part to each of the afore mentioned public realms, without it they are ineffective and inoperable.  Politics, while often full of lies and deception require a truthful foundation for continued operation.  What is meant by this is that in matters of governance and policy which affect tangible issues and directly affect the lives of citizens requires an understanding of the reality of their situation.  Subjective truth is a legitimate danger to the Political world, in the book Truth Decay, authors Kavanagh and Rich touch on misinformation, and use statistical data to show that people are outright rejecting facts that don’t fit with their own narrative.  I believe that this will continue to be dangerous and already has been as seen with the political denial of people like we saw these past summers with the media continuing the narrative of  narratives of Jacob Blake and Kyle Rittenhouse to meet their own agendas.  Education and academics are highly dependent on truth, these two are primarily concerned with discovering and spreading understanding, which is simply truthful comprehension.  If education or academics were to divorce themselves from pursuit of the objective truth then they become ineffective in their benefit to society, except perhaps as entertainment.  In a comprehensive article Sarit Barzilai and Clark Chin examined how within education, there is a discussion over how we know things and how fallible those ways are, but there is also a certain apathy that educators have taken in answering or providing information on these debates, which leaves no real grounding for young people to understand the complex and difficult terrain of the subject, instead accepting subjectivity.  I can personally attest to this lack of care and easy indulgence in subjective truth shown by my teachers and peers in high school.  Commerce is the least susceptible to subjectivity, as it deals far less than the other two public realms in thought, and trades in tangible products and payments.  Commerce is governed by general laws of human interaction and the reality of resources and production.  Limited in any society by its government, commerce does not escape subjectivity as political failure to adhere to objectivity will inevitably influence the societies commercial policies.  All the public realms of societal interaction are fundamentally built on truth.

As previously established, societal interaction functions on the assumption of an objective reality, so then it follows that diverging from this fundamental assumption would be dangerous.  This is the problem presented in our current society, just like Descartes we cannot function in a wholly subjective world, but we can implement subjective philosophy into public realms, however, doing so is ultimately harmful.  In government and politics subjective philosophy has become extremely prevalent, it has begun to degrade public institutions by allowing those in power to create policy that rejects reality and addresses fictional issues.  This causes an unnecessary series of limitations on society and distracts from the more pressing issues of reality.  My research and readings on this topic have made my view on the subjective truth as a danger to society even more solid, as these academic minds outlined and undermined the weakness of such a philosophy.

Works Cited

BARRETT JR, JOHN A. “Free Speech Has Gotten Very Expensive: Rethinking Political Speech Regulation in a Post-Truth World.” St. John’s Law Review, vol. 94, no. 3, 2021.

Barzilai, Sarit, and Clark A Chinn. “A Review of Educational Responses to the ‘Post-Truth’ Condition: Four Lenses on ‘Post-Truth’ Problems.” Educational Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 3, 2020, pp. 107–119.

Blackburn, Simon. Truth : A Guide. Oxford University Press, 2006. VMI PRESTON LIBRARY, public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=281154. Accessed 14 Feb. 2022.

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Infomotions, 2000. VMI PRESTON LIBRARY, public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=3314469. Accessed 14 Feb. 2022.

Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Michael D. Rich.  Truth Decay.  Rand Corporation, 2018.

Searle, Joshua T. “Prophecy, Protest and Public Theology: The Relevance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Prophetic Mandate in Today’s Post-Truth World.” Journal of European Baptist Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2020.

What Killed Michael Brown?.  Directed by Eli Steele, written and narrated by Shelby Steele, Man of Steel Productions, 2020.

Every writer paints a picture of themselves in their writing.  This picture is crafted through purpose, either some release of expression or a drive toward a particular goal.  In art this is seen in free form styles of painting, an artist sees a beautiful landscape and tries to capture on their canvas, working from no real scaffold or with any drive other than free flowing inspiration.  Mirroring this, artists also work in commissions, crafting masterful works to capture a specific idea in specific aspects.  Writing reflects these two approaches in a reactionary free form style of writing, having no in-depth framework,  focusing on letting the creative “juices” naturally create the ideas of the work, or alternatively, using a powerful outline to guide the creative process to a predetermined goal.  Through these processes a writer’s portrait is created in their works and fleshed out in the improvement and development within each work and between works.  I have seen the evidence of this in my own work, especially over this past semester, by analyzing and observing my writing I have come to understand my portrait as a writer.

Of the many aspects I have seen in my writer’s portrait in my own process of writing I have noticed that one of the greatest difficulties I encounter regularly in my work is getting the process of writing actually started.  In each of the three essays I wrote this semester I found my self struggling to get the initial formulation of the paper and put words down at all.  This is linked in part to my process of writing and how I approach the idea of constructing each work.  As I learned through an invention sheet done in class, when I begin an essay, I read the prompt and pertinent material, searching for some sort ideas and themes from which to sketch a framework for the essay, next I find more specific delineations of those ideas and check them against the scaffold I have created, then letting the creative process carry me through.  I had to adapt my initial writing style of free form writing into this more structured process in order to make that jump from conception to writing.  Without the framework I was unable to find what to say on a topic because I didn’t even understand the different parts and pieces of the topic yet.  Understanding plays a very large role in the writing process and its development.  Understanding is based in large part on cognition, the way one thinks about things and approaches it.  It is my cognition that gears me more toward the structured process than the free form, I struggle to guide my creative ideas into an effective work that meets the goal of the writing assignment, but with a bit of logical work around and scaffolding it becomes much easier as there is a clear objective with benchmarks and outlines to paint across.  What this reveals about me as a writer is that I am an objective thinker that thrives more on structured outlines than free form writing.  This objective mindset can cause problems in getting started and other areas of writing, but it is characteristic of myself and my writing.

In a very similar manner, one of the greatest struggles I encountered while writing this semester was the first-person style of writing, it challenged me continually on both the conceptual and grammatical fronts, even in one of my critical reflections I noted that “I was also, and still am frankly, not used to the first-person form of writing, … but it also presents difficulties in regard to tense and diction” (1).  I found that writing about myself was difficult to get started and to maintain any real analysis of myself, this time not because there was a lack of a framework, but because I found that the subjectiveness was made worse by my own lack of self-understanding.  “I find that writing about myself can be difficult much of the time.  When I tell someone about quick overview of who I am and what to expect of me  it is easy to simply layout a series of facts, real life events and occurrences, that provide a broad scenario, but go deeper and discuss what makes me tick, what drives me, or what in my life has made me who I am, and it gets really difficult” (Crouch 1).  While grammar and diction are aspects of first-person writing easily adapted to through simple repetition and practice, personal introspection and examination are much more difficult when you don’t know who you are to begin with.  This block in my writing has been mostly overcome at this point in the semester, or at least greatly improved, in large part thanks to the essays and critical reflections I have written, as seen in this snippet form my essay Acceptance and Accommodation, “[w]hen I moved to MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) New River near Jacksonville, North Carolina, it was a very different existing community than the one I had come from in Oceanside, California.  The people of North Carolina carried a much more laid-back outlook and had a lexicon to match.  Living out in the woods and swamps of North Carolina there was not much in the way of urbanization” (1-2).  Likewise, my personal writing in journals both in and out of class have made me more comfortable with the style and introspection.  In constructing these different works of writing it has given me the personal insight, through practice and retrospective analysis, to be able to write about myself and make an essay like this possible, revealing myself to be a writer who is learned in this particular writing style and more importantly one who understands their work as it relates to themselves and is drawn out from their experiences.

Personal insight alone does not make a writer.  Part of being a writer is translation, translation that takes place between one’s own thoughts and the formation of a work of writing, as well as translation of source material and concepts into well written works, something that was discussed in my third essay of the semester.  While translation was not so much a challenge to me like the other two topics discussed in this essay, it did present a great opportunity to study my cognition and my writer’s process, further painting the picture of myself as a writer.  When I wrote the third essay of this semester, I titled it “Textual Translations”, and discussed the conscious decisions of a writer when translating a scientific journal into a more palatable work for the general audience.  During this essay I noticed patterns between the scholarly work and the magazine article on which I was performing a rhetorical analysis.  It was through these patterns of writing that I began to understand not only both articles, but to understand the conscious work of translation put in by the authors.  This sparked in my mind the idea of authorship and general translation, “This also led to the introduction between myself and a new idea about authorship, while writing this I realized that we can’t know anything outside of our own experience except through translation, whether that be by spoken or written word, or even visual, and the author of that translation guides the narrative and content both consciously and unconsciously” (Crouch 2).  What I have been able to discern about myself from all of this is that once again I rely on some logical and structured technique to guide my writing and gain further insight into the material at hand.

The varying disciplines of writing are equally valid, they are applied on an individual basis and paint each writer’s story of style and improvement.  A writer may just start from a point of pure inspiration, latch on to an idea and just write, crafting a beautiful work of literature or construction a powerful essay.  For my own part, the work conducted and constructed in this past semester has shown me that I am a writer who relies on objective ideas and logical frameworks as a basis of writing, that I am a writer who understands their personal style and struggles in writing, and that I am a writer that uses logical processes to evaluate and create works of writing.  My picture is one of frames and logic and self-understanding and retrospection, and it is just as valid as the portrait of any other writer, its composition may be different, and its process of construction may not be objectively superior, but it is just as valid a painting as any other.

Works Cited

Crouch, Philp T. “Acceptance and Assimilation.”  2021.  Virginia Military Institute, Unpublished Paper.

Crouch, Philp T. “Critical Reflective Essay.”  2021.  Virginia Military Institute, Unpublished Paper.

Crouch, Philp T. “Critical Reflective Essay 2.”  2021.  Virginia Military Institute, Unpublished Paper.

Crouch, Philp T. “Critical Reflective Essay 3.”  2021.  Virginia Military Institute, Unpublished Paper.

Crouch, Philip T. Invention Worksheet.  2021. Virginia Military Institute, Class Activity.

Crouch, Philp T. “Literary Sponsors Final Draft.”  2021.  Virginia Military Institute, Unpublished Paper.

Crouch, Philp T. “Textual Translations.”  2021.  Virginia Military Institute, Unpublished Paper.

Downs, Doug, Elizabeth Wardle, editors. Writing About Writing.  4^th ed., Bedford St. Martin’s, 2020.

Everything outside of a person’s direct experience is translated to them through some other medium and author.  When this happens, it is changed from its original content and form, how this happens, and to what extent is in large part caused by the author of the translation.  This takes place both consciously and unconsciously, as authors are limited by their own experience, or they tailor the translation to a specific audience.  When approaching a specific audience authors make conscious decisions in how they craft their work.  This includes everything from diction to what information is discussed.  This is especially true of the established media, writers for newspapers, TV, and even government spokesmen.  When engaging an audience the author decides what to include, how to display the included information, and with what specific words to discuss the topic at hand.  This has its uses as it allows for translation of broad ideas into simple terms and truncating of longwinded discourse into short and attractive discussion.  This is important in making the work of scientists and other field specialists approachable to the common man, like the discussion of the newly machined CRISPR systems derived from bacterial clusters, modified to a eucaryotic format, to ameliorate the effects of DMD, or rather, the use of new gene editing techniques to fix wasting muscles in young men.  In 2018 the Medical Center at University of Texas Southwestern published a journal on gene editing procedures that were put through trial on dogs to help develop a cure for Duchenne, an often-fatal form of muscular dystrophy most prevalent among young boys.  Dina Fine Maron of the popular magazine Scientific American wrote an article addressing the Duchenne study by a research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center.  In her article Maron exercises the ability of the author to translate an event outside the audience’s experience, in this case a work of authorship itself, by making her article significantly more attractive to the casual audience through purposeful selection of discussed material, diction within the article, and the format in which the information is encountered, as well as crafting the narrative of the article to promote her view on the material.  These deliberate decisions made an informative and accessible presentation of information on a highly technical and complex issue now readily accessible to the common man.

The Duchenne study performed by faculty at the UT Southwestern Medical Center was led by Francesco Chemello, an instructor in molecular biology, Dr. Rhonda Bassel-Duby, a professor of molecular biology, with graduate programs in genetics, development and disease, and Dr Eric N. Olson, the professor and chairman of molecular biology.  These highly trained individuals provided the study’s results to The Journal of Clinical Investigation in an academic and detailed manner that was in need of simplification for general audiences.  Dina Fine Maron is highly qualified as a writer, and was perfect for the truncated and succinct transfer of material from a scientific journal like The Journal of Clinical Investigation, into an article that everyone can read.  She holds a master’s degree in Public Health and has won awards during her time as journalist, working for news outlets such as; National Geographic, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Time.com, Scientific American, Science News, and more.

In pursuit of making the Southwestern study truly accessible Maron carefully selected the pertinent material from her source, choosing to stray away from discussing how the gene modification takes place, and instead focusing on what exactly is being accomplished.  While the Southwestern study spends nine pages discussing everything from the origin and variation of different muscular dystrophies along with their treatments to exactly how the new treatment works on a sub-cellular level and why that makes it most effective, the Scientific American article written by Maron focuses on what information the general audience will understand and is relevant to their interests.  There is no need for Maron to address the variations in DNA and RNA type treatments development because the readers aren’t necessarily interested in what went into creating the treatment, but rather what it can do, like her subtitle refers to “editing dogs’ genes to correct a common form of muscle dystrophy” (10).  Maron’s brief and concise magazine article focuses on the CRISPR gene therapy and how it can hopefully soon be applied to children in need, noting how far the study has come, from being mildly effective in rodents to being viable in the Southwestern tests on beagles suffering from Duchenne.  Maron further focuses her article by using select data, like the 92% increase in protein development seen in the dogs treated with CRISPR, “[i]n cardiac muscle, a crucial target for treatment” (10) while the study performed by the team at UT Southwestern is far more pedantic, covering the statistics and results in the field of muscular dystrophy treatment to meet its broader goal.  Simple statistics for the effects of Duchenne become, in the journal from Chemello et al., a detailed list full of highly specified terms, “DMD mutations include exon deletions (68.8% of DMD patients), exon duplication (11.2%), point mutations (10.4%), and small deletions/insertions (9.6%)” (2769).

Maron’s focused message and goal of creating a brief overview of the study is furthered by her deliberately focused adaptation of vocabulary from the scientific journal into the more informal magazine format, ensuring that the threshold for understanding her article was open to a much wider audience.  The team of Chemello, Bassel-Duby, and O’Neil presented their research with several diagrams, an expansive overview of the actual sequence that takes place on the biological level, and a hefty share of jargon to match, using technical terms such as “homology independent targeted integration (HITI) or intercellular linearized single homology arm donor mediated intron targeting integration (SATI)” (2769), both specific and highly complex approaches to edition genomes.  This is in stark contrast to the deliberately brief overview provided by Maron which takes the time to explain the more advanced ideas.  “[A] molecular biologist at UT Southwestern, and his colleagues engineered viruses to act as delivery trucks, stripping out some of the viruses’ own DNA to make room for gene-editing machinery” (Maron 10).  Maron artfully puts everything in layman’s terms, providing the audience with an intriguing and topical article that is accessible to all.

Much like both the selection of material and vocabulary, the format that Maron presents the information is important to not only making the material more understandable, but also more attractive to the general audience.  As discussed above, most of Maron’s choices when writing the article had to do with accessibility, a large contributing factor to accessibility is actually attractiveness.  By making something appealing an author opens it up to a broader audience, it catches their eye and piques their interest.  This was displayed by Maron’s diction and title, “Fixing Wasting Muscles, scientists edited dogs’ genes to correct a common form of muscle dystrophy” (Maron 10) as they seemed more open to the casual reader than the title provided by the UT Southwestern team, “Correction of muscular dystrophies by CRISPR gene editing” (Chemello 2766).  Maron’s title is engaging, opening with a mission statement and then providing well-chosen words for a slight description of the study being discussed, the Chemello journal on the other hand has a very bland title that has an unknown scientific term in it.  However, where the attractiveness of Maron’s article really shines is in the formatting.  It starts with the problem and proposed solution, “Duchene muscular dystrophy is a life-threatening muscle-wasting illness”(10) and “scientists used a gene-editing technique called CRISPR/ Cas9 to pump up muscle protein levels” (10), and then smoothly guides the reader into how it is accomplished, “engineered viruses to act as delivery trucks, stripping out some of the viruses’ own DNA to make room for gene-editing machinery.  A number of the viruses were then loaded up with the Cas9 enzyme, which acts like “scissors”; this was used to cut out the DNA sequence that hinders dystrophin production in muscle cells” (10), finally ending with potential applications, “Olson and his colleagues hope the intervention might be durable enough with a single dose, but they need further results to get a clearer idea” (11).  This simple arrangement keeps a casual audience engaged and enables their comprehension.

Maron, in casual discussion of the work being done to promote a gene editing based cure to Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as presented by the medical center at UT Southwestern, beautifully fulfills the role of a translating author.  She delivers information outside of the audience’s personal experiences and keeps their attention while doing it.  The author of a work makes deliberate choices in how to convey their information to a specific audience.  Choosing what to say, how to say it, and in what order it should be said, all in the interest of delivering the desired material to the audience in a clear and informative way, this is best accomplished by making the material approachable and appealing through selection of material and formatting and easily understood through provided information and diction.

Works Cited

Chemello, Francesco, et al.  “Correction of Muscular Dystrophies by CRISPR Gene Editing”.  The Journal of Clinical Investigation, vol. 130, no. 6, 2020, pp. 2765-2773.

Maron, Dina Fine.  “Dina Fine Maron.”  Linkedin, www.linkedin.com/in/dinafinemaron. Accessed 17 November 2021.

Maron, Dina Fine. “Fixing Wasting Muscles.” Scientific American, Nov. 2018, pp. 10-12.

UT Southwestern Medical Center.  University of Texas Southwestern, www.profiles.utsouthwestern.edu. Accessed 17 November 2021.

I am part of the military community and have been my whole life.  Being a member of the military community has informed my values and goals, holding me fast into the discourse community.  Discourse communities are “groups that have goals and purposes, and use communication to achieve their goals” (Swales 546).  This is an idea developed by John Swales, a linguist and professor who created the term to describe the communities with common established goals that uniquely communicate amongst themselves to the end of achieving those goals.  The military discourse community has brought me into contact with new communities every time I move to a new place.  Each time I am confronted by new cultures with their distinct discourses, each of these communities have their own thresholds for entrance of members of the military discourse community based largely on the support systems offered by the community to military members and their families, integration based upon the values of the community, and the existing authority structure of the community.

When I move to a new community it can be hard to adjust to the community because of the different discourses, characterized by distinct ways of thinking and attitudes.  What can make this transition to a new community easier are the support systems in place by the existing community, specifically those catered to the military community.  When I moved to MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) New River near Jacksonville, North Carolina, it was a very different existing community than the one I had come from in Oceanside, California.  The people of North Carolina carried a much more laid-back outlook and had a lexicon to match.  Living out in the woods and swamps of North Carolina there was not much in the way of urbanization, and as a result, my direct contact with the existing community was highly limited.  This made integration hard.  For school I was homeschooled which kept me separate from the community, the sports community offered few options to integrate except for the public-school system’s sports teams which were not available to me, the religious community was much more open, as years of proximity to the series of Marine bases had acquainted them with the military discourse community and equipped them with outreach programs and meal donations for newly arrived families and those of deployed service members.  While we may not have been members of the local community, they were certainly hospitable and accommodating (Crouch).  This aspect of outreach helped to integrate my family into the community of Jacksonville when few other systems of support offered integration opportunities.  Though the religious community excepted us readily.  It took much longer to integrate into the other aspects of the community.  Conversely, my experience at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, was one in which my family quickly integrated into the community.  The family services department had support systems in place which allowed for integration in all aspects of the community, school, religious community, and integration with the outside community.  The education department at Humphreys had large open houses and provided tours for new families, making it easy to become a member of the school community there.  The religious communities of Camp Humphreys all provided outreach and gifts to prospective members and kept their doors open as often as they could, promoting quick and dedicated integration into the religious community.  The non-military community and accompanying services of Pyeongtaek advertised themselves to the military community through easily translated interfaces, anything from menus to commercials, and friendly and understanding staff familiar with the military community.  All of these different outreaches and systems in place allowed my family to integrate into the Camp Humphreys community in only a few months.  As my father noted, “You [kids] have already made better friends here in only two months, than two years in Norfolk” (Crouch).  A testament to the effectiveness of support structures.

Integration from a military community into the many different communities around the world that I have lived among can be difficult as the two different discourses have different goals and values.  Part of what makes a discourse community is its set of goals and how those are achieved, these are created by their values and determine the entrance threshold for new members.  Taking the example of the community of Jacksonville, North Carolina again, integration was made more difficult by the lack of support systems, however, the similarity of goals between the communities allowed a much better integration than my experience in Norfolk, Virginia.  The people of rural North Carolina place a lot of value on individual hard work, religious reverence, and tight familial bonds, all of which inform their goals of providing for their extended families and pursuing honest work.  These values and goals are complementary of the military community, as they mirror the values of individual hard work and unit cohesion.  The goals of the military community are likewise similar to those of the Jacksonville community, the military community values duty and service toward and for the nation.  Because of these similarities my family was able to integrate into the community in spite of greatly differing lexis, forms of communication, and the lack of support a system because the goals and driving values behind them allowed for my family to integrate into the community at the neighborhood level and beyond.  I found it much more difficult to integrate into the community of Tidewater Virginia in Norfolk, however.  Though Norfolk has also spent years next to a large military population it is not so similar as the Jacksonville community.  This is in part due to urbanization, but more so than any other factor it is caused by the difference in goals and the values behind them.  While the communities of the military and Jacksonville hold the values of individual hard work to the end providing for some larger unit, I found that the community in Norfolk was much more focused on achieving a revered status based upon education and wealth which they valued more than the ethics which are exemplified by the Marine Corps community.

Every community has an authority structure, no matter how casual, this structure plays a key part in the integration of new members.  The community of Norfolk, Virginia was hard for me to integrate into not only because of its differing goals, but also because of its authority structure.  Just as the goals of the community are informed by its values so are its authority structures.  Because my family was coming in from a military community we were not very readily accepted, we did not fit the right idea of what they valued.  The members of that community were all very well-educated people who had been to the right Virginia schools, such as UVA, William and Mary, and Virginia Tech.  The members were also historically from the area and were quite well off.  The authority structure was based off of where one was educated, their heritage, and wealth.  My family is one of middle income which did not make us not candidates, my father is also very well educated, but not in a Virginia or Ivy League school, which precluded us a little.  More important than both of the previously discussed aspects, my family struggled to integrate because we are not Virginians.  In the eyes of their community we were not worthy of any kind of authority because we did not fit their expectations,  making them feel arrogantly entitled (Crouch).  On our end we felt entitled to more respect and resented the way many people looked down on us.  An opposite example can be found in my family’s successful integration into the community of Oceanside, California, near Camp Pendleton.  In Oceanside’s community the authority structure is built on personal merit and standing, paying little to no attention to heritage and where one acquired their degree.  As a result my family became well integrated into the community in Oceanside, making lifelong friends and becoming respected members of the community.

My time in the military community has put me through many regions and forced me to try and assimilate to the existing discourse communities.  This search for acceptance into a new community was not always welcomed with open arms and aides, but at each new place some part of me was influenced by the discourse there.  Discourse communities are very different form community to community, but all of them carry thresholds for entrance based on the offered support systems, the goals and values of the community, and the existing authority structure of the community.  Integrating into communities is contingent on these different aspects, though not necessarily all at once, as integration can be achieved through compromise in one area when the other threshold categories are met.

Works Cited

Swales, John.  “title of selection”. Writing about Writing. 4^th ed., edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.  Bedford St. Martin’s, 2020, pp. 546.

Crouch, Matthew.  Personal interview. 09 October 2021.

Literacy is more than just learning to read and write, as I understand it literacy is marked by the ability of an individual to learn and utilize a specific, productive skill.  Operating under this definition, the development of literacies is not restricted to the classroom, but it is instead grown through the work of sponsors in one’s life.  Deborah Brandt, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and scholarly author, defines sponsors of literacy, saying that they are “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way”(Wardle 247).  These literacy sponsors show themselves through events, choices made by individuals or happenings beyond anyone’s control, or through individuals, either form of literary sponsor creates a lasting effect based on the individual’s reaction.  In my life I have had many such sponsors, both positive and negative.  The varied and constantly changing nature of a military lifestyle that I have lived opened up plenty of opportunity for the influence of literacy sponsors, exposing me to people who came from all different walks of life, allowing me to experience multiple cultures, imbuing me with values, and holding me in a life of constant motion.

My unique experience growing up in a military family has certainly influenced my personal literacies.  Born out of the same hardworking western spirit that drove my family before me, my narrative of literacy development has encompassed many varied experiences and individuals that have directed the story of my life and shaped me into what I am, in values and ambition.  This shaping has come through many people who influenced different facets of my life.  By way of that shaping, I feel that I have become adept enough in a few areas to call them my literacies; I have a vast cultural understanding, I have many hours of practice in manual labor and trades, I have a great love and affinity for athletics, and I am an avid reader and functionable writer.  These particular literacies have been most heavily influenced by individuals who have nurtured those talents, but events and timing have also played a great role in my literary development.

Of all my literary sponsors I am proud to say that they have been mostly positively constructive events or individual interaction rather than negative.  The foremost of these positive literacy sponsors would be my interaction with other cultures.  At two key points in my life I have lived in Asia, each time a different country and a different shaping experience.  In my younger years I spent almost three years as a resident of Shanghai, China.  While there I lived in the city and interacted with its native populace on a daily basis, taking trips outside the city limits regularly and building an understanding and appreciation for not just the Chinese culture, but foreign culture overall.  That time in my life built the foundation for my continued appreciation, interest, and interaction with other cultures.  The Second time I lived in Asia I was in high school, this time in Korea, and for only a year.  Despite the short timeframe, my second stint in Asia has bolstered the lessons of my first experience, but the timing of the second stay allowed me to evaluate and understand the cultures of Eastern Asia like I had not before, something that has shaped my interactions and interests since, making me, as I believe, adept at interaction with and accepting other cultures.

Another fantastic positive sponsor would have to be my family patriarchs, who, aside from relentlessly drilling their values and discipline into me, have trained me in simple trades work and manual labor.  With backgrounds in logging, carpentry, the military, home improvement, and more, my grandfather and father have always taken their skills and personal values from their work.  From my earliest memories I can remember sitting in the bed of my grandfather’s truck while he told my brothers and me stories of his logging days, showing us even then proper handling of all the tools that accompanied the work.  Not quite as far back, but still in my younger days, I can remember my first-time using power tools to build my dad’s new work bench after a move, and as I grew, each place I went my father and grandfather taught me new skills, how to build a foundation, how to lay tile, how to rewire and insulate old homes.  Their pasts and own literacies were handed down to me to make my own as I came to the proper places and moments in my life.

Like most kids I spent a considerable amount of time playing sports throughout my childhood, from county run little league to backyard football I always found time to do something athletic.  I can remember specifically in middle school, while I still lived in North Carolina my weekly routine consisted of backyard baseball from 0900-1000 and football from 1600-1900 Monday through Friday.  Likewise, during high school, if I wasn’t on the diamond or the mat I was playing spikeball at the local park.  But that love and aptitude that I nurtured over the years into a literacy didn’t just come from nowhere, it too had sponsors.  In my youngest years I can remember first being taught to play catch by my dad, not much later in life, listening football and baseball games over the radio with my grandparents, as I got a little bit older I remember my uncle taking me to watch the Kansas City Royals for three days in a row, and most influentially in recent years family friends took me back to their garage/dojo conversion opening me up to a whole new set of athletic pursuits.  But I never would have won any of the medals or titles I have now without the imprint my sponsors left on me.

The most influential literacy that was developed in me is certainly my love of reading and my ability to clearly communicate through writing.  This particular literacy was nurtured in part by a series of events and in part by an individual.  My mother had spent her youngest years in a town without a school and was resultantly homeschooled.  That was important, because years later when she had three sons and seemed to be moving every 18 months or so she decided to homeschool my brothers and me.  Why that is important is because my mother held the firm belief, that the best way to learn anything as a child is to read a story about it.  What this meant is that for every subject I would read a novel or biography to accompany it.  Studying the American Revolution? Try historical fiction.  Learning about medicine in science? Read a speculative biography on Galen.  Though tedious initially, all of that reading has created a deep love for learning through that medium and, I believe, sharpened my writing skill.  Home schooling with a literature-based curriculum is a keystone of who I am now, both academically and beyond the bounds of scholastic pursuit.  Without the vast library my mother created over the years to teach us simple subjects better, I do not believe my literacy would have thrived the way it has, and I do not believe I could so confidently pursue the path I have set myself on now.

At this point in my narrative I would be remiss to not mention one of the most prevalent uses of my time during childhood.  Starting before I could even read, I was watching cartoons.  My father first introduced my brothers and I to superhero cartoons, an event which has created a long lasting and thriving intrigue in all of us, but most certainly myself, with the genre.  From cartoons I quickly moved to comic books and from there to graphic novels.  My fascination with the fantastic world of those characters was at first based on the flash of colors and action any child finds entertaining, but I eventually found myself more intrigued by the deeper underlying philosophy and “aesopic” nature of the characters and their world.  I have spent countless hours reading, discussing, and analyzing the medium with other.  While my love of comic books and all things related certainly isn’t the most influential piece of my literacy story it is an important one, one that continued love has spurred me to seek more proper works in philosophy and fiction to read and analyze.

My literacy narrative is full of many sponsors of different types, influenced in their effect by the time and situation that accompanied those sponsors.  My experiential sponsors occurred at points in my life that were momentous, while my individual sponsors provided essential guidance in and introduction to the literacies that have steered the narrative of my life.  All my literacies and the sponsors thereof have crafted my skills and personal outlook on life, making me what I am today and driving me into the future.

Works Cited

Wardle, Elizabeth and Doug Downs, editors. Writing about Writing. 4^th ed.,                           Bedford St. Martin’s, 2020.