Comparing Foundations

          If you’ve ever participated in a debate, you know that you have to prepare for not only your side of the argument, but for the opposing side’s argument as well. If you are prepared for what your opponent might say, you can build up a counter-argument to refute their claims and, hopefully, win! Come on, everyone likes winning. But first, young grasshopper, you must be well rounded in the topic, knowing every possible attack and weakness.

Similarly, Aristotle was all about understanding things to their greatest extent. One of his topics (or ways of understaning things) is called:

COMPARISON.

This specifically targets understanding similarities and differences between one subject and another. You probably do this on a daily basis: you compare yourself to other people, you compare lunch options, you compare the pros and cons to doing your homework versus watching TV, et cetera.

"Maybe if I just eat half...?"

The point is, we make comparisons in just about every aspect of our lives. This is the only way we can measure things against each other, allowing us to make decisions. Some of the biggest decisions we must make are those surrounding our belief systems.

For Composition 1, I created a flipbook comparing different sources of  where our beliefs come from. The sources become more and more questionable as the viewer turns each page, starting with family and ending with Adolf Hitler. There are countless comparisons we can make between these two sources alone, but my flipbook also compared sources that directly oppose each other (democrats vs. republicans) and those that are fundamentally similar (the media vs. Glenn Beck and John Stewart).

If we compare democrats and republicans (0:28), we notice their similarities in that they are both political parties that a large number of people choose to affiliate with. However, the symbol for democrats and the symbol for republicans are an effective comparison for my flipbook to make because of their differences. A true republican will never agree with a true democrat on anything, and vice versa. Their ideals are distinctly different on virtually every topic, making them opposites. Not only that, the democratic elephant and the republican donkey raise very different emotions depending on each person’s affiliations, the degree of their concern for politics, and so on. By using two opposing symbols, I demonstrate their obvious similarities and differences based on their definitions as well as the emotions they will raise in different people.

On the other hand, my flipbook looks at comparing sources that are seemingly very similar. The second image that appears is that of the media (0:15). Immediately following this is Glenn Beck. Although Beck is obviously a part of the media, what sets him apart is his profound ability to offend people. Beck is continuously quoted for his outrageous comments and opinions, whereas one of the media’s chief priorities is to keep everyone happy in order to keep ad revenue coming in and viewership up. By avoiding any chance of offending people, the media is often a rather passive source of belief. In this sense, Glenn Beck is completely the opposite.

Immediately following this contradiction comes John Stewart, the comedic host of the satiric “The Daily Show.” Stewart has hundreds of thousands of fans and followers (as demonstrated by the 250,000 attendees at his Rally to Restore Sanity last October) and a vast population of today’s young adults claim “The Daily Show” is their main news source. Despite all this, Stewart has publicly and openly declared that he is not a journalist. When we compare Stewart to Beck, we see that they are both highly trusted sources of opinion, yet Glenn Beck has been quoted in the USA Today, calling himself “a journalist…without formal training.” Based on their self-definitions, we see that Beck and Stewart are different based on more than their on-going feud.

By visually creating a comparison between varieties of sources of belief, I drive the viewer of my flipbook to look at the whole picture of belief without knowledge and the wide range of where those beliefs come from.