The Human Planet

The Human Planet

Planet Earth was unexpectedly one of the Discovery Channels most entertaining and thrilling shows to watch on television and no, it wasn’t just because Oprah Winfrey was the narrator. Planet Earth gave us a new in-depth look at everything that we believe to be not as important or not as advance as we humans. People sat down for hours and gazed into to the unknown world of any animal that you could imagine. People quickly learned that animals too have traits that can blow our extremely capable but slightly governed minds. People for a long time believe that we, humans, are the perfect beings. Forgetting that we are animals, and for some people still denying the fact that we ever came from animals. With this insanely beautiful and well-put together trailer from the BBC, I think those thoughts can be thrown out of the conversation. The trailer gives us a scary glance of how animalistic we actually are. We see bird’s eye views of our tallest most prestigious buildings and if juxtaposed next to an ant colony would bare strikingly similar attributes. When we start seeing ourselves and everything we do as mundane is when we need something like this to reiterate the fact that we are still the most interesting and capable species that walk to this earth, but also not to forget that we are too species and are very capable of disappearing one day if we are not careful…

O Rotten Gotham

As I read this essay assigned to us in my language arts class I grew extremely fond of it and started to look closely into this idea presented by Tom Wolfe. In this essay Tom speaks about a variety of issues that affect the entire human race. This is probably one of the most in depth and interesting essays that I have ever had the privilege to read. Tom Wolfe wrote this in 1968, and has a very “recent” tone about him. He most talks about the over crowding of the great New York City. It is amazing to me that a man back in this time period could have such wisdom about everything, people, the world and future problems.

Many of the ideas that Tom speaks about seem to relate to the one of the lowest animals on the food chain; rats. This man described all of what he thinks about humans, in rat terms. This is perfect even if we, as humans, don’t like be compared with these creatures we behave social and fundamentally a lot alike. This is maybe an eye opener for some of the people in the world that forget we are animals too and ferocious ones at that. One of the most interesting techniques this author uses is the way that he refers to humans as animals, like I said before. He always calls them humans, like we are some sort of strange creature you can find in the swamps. This is a very affective way of making a point.

This was almost a disturbing essay to read and analyze. It was one of those essays where I read in and every point that is made I can relate it to something that had happened or is happening. One of the best sections of the essay is when Tom Wolfe talks refers to “behavioral Sink” that we all live in. I take this sink to be symbolizing the world that we all live on. He talks about the over crowding of this sink and the damaging affects it has on every single living thing that is in ceramic prison. This essay was written so long ago but now comes into play more than it ever has. There are so many fundamentally wrong things with us humans right now it makes me sick. This just points out more, the fact that we are reminding ourselves of rats. It is a tad scary to think about, the one animal (us) at the top of the food chain, and the one at the bottom (rats) are starting to become similar in so many ways…