Mark Bauerlein implies that meaningful connection is important, yet interferes with our education if not handled well, while the myth of Echo and Narcissus states how it is important not to focus on a single connection due to the problems that follow along with it. My position states that meaningful connection is necessary in life, yet needs to be handled well to be effective. Body1: Mark Bauerlein’s “The Dumbest Generation” states that being meaningfully connected is important, yet significantly interferes with our learning.
The excerpt explains that we need to tone own our social connections in favour of education in order to excel in life, evident in Bauerlein’s statement, “Kids need a reprieve and retreat. For them to grow up into mindful citizens, and discerning consumers, then, adolescents need to break the social circuit and think beyond the clique and the schoolyard. ” Bauerlein also holds the opinion on how “Maturity follows a formula: The more kids contact one another, the less they heed the tutelage of adults.
When peer consciousness grows too fixed and firm, the teacher’s voice counts for nothing outside the classroom. which showcases the effects of taking meaningful onnection too far, and how it can impede our education and put a mental roadblock on our knowledge due to ourselves being too focused on our social lives. In fact, Mark Bauerlein saying how meaningful connections are important, yet interfere with our learning is also evident as he shows how he thinks that being too connected to our peers can divert our attention away from knowledge, with him stating how “Every hour own Myspace, means not practicing an instrument or learning a foreign language or watching C-SPAN.
Every cell phone call interrupts a chapter of Harry Potter. These are mind maturing activities… These three sections bring together an idea on how being meaningfully connected is important, yet should not interfere with our education and knowledge. Body2: The Myth of Echo and Narcissus states how it is important not to focus one connection, due to the consequences that follow. The myth exhibits such catastrophic consequence by having Echo lose her* one connection.
In this case with Narcissus crushing Echo’s heart by aggressively forcing her love away,* which in the end resulted in Echo’s heartbreak and grieving death. This is evident in the line, “Echo left the woods a ruin, her heart broken. Ashamed, she ran away to live in the mountains, yearning for a love that would never be returned. The grief killed her. ” Narcissus’ suffering also portrays a deep look in such consequence, as in the myth, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection, which through his eyes thought was a water spirit.
Every time he touched his reflection in the water, it disappeared, frustrating Narcissus. Because of this, he could not let go of his reflection and dared not to lose sight of it, resulting in him sacrificing any other connections he held in his life to focus on one connection instead, causing Narcissus to suffer, ventually leading to his tragic death. Such events are evident in the section, “Frightened to touch the water, Narcissus lay still by the pool gazing into the eyes of his vision. He (Narcissus) cried in frustration.
As he did so, Echo also cried. He (Narcissus) did not move, he did not eat or drink, he only suffered. As he pined he became gaunt, losing his beauty” Yet another example connects to the importance of not focusing on one connection due to the consequences that follow. One which implies that the reason Narcissus died is because he clung on to one connection, which shut him out from the outside orld just so he could focus on such connection, resulting in Narcissus disconnecting to everyone except for the one person he loved.
Evident in, “He was transfixed: He wanted to stay there forever. Narcissus, like Echo died with grief. ” Since Narcissus’ lover was nonexistent, he never got what he desired and died in grief, all for the fact that Narcissus decided to abandon the rest of his me gful connections, just so he could chase a single one, which in this case was nonexistent. Due to Echo and Narcissus’ decisions of attaching themselves to *one connection they thought was meaningful*, both ended up uffering from the desolation that followed, which in the end lead to their grieving deaths.
Body3: My stance on the importance of being meaningfully connected to others are that they are critical in life, yet need to be handled well to be effective. I say this because connections open you up to peers that help and support you in everyday tasks, for example: homework. Such peers can assist you on simple problems, such as opening the door for you when your hands are full of textbooks, up to the point where they are there to talk you through the hardest times of your life. Such connections are ritical, although do need to be handled well to be effective.
If you end up with choosing bad peers to connect to, *then you will not get much out of them besides a faulty friendship. * Having this critical connection absent in your life results in you not receiving any support from anyone besides yourselves, neither taking in any other perspective on certain topics besides your own, leading to my next point on why meaningful connection is so citical and beneficial in life, and that is how it gives you a glance at multiple perspectives, opening you up to diverse viewpoints on problems and issues.
This benefits when you are on the offense, tackling people’s problems head-on and helping them get through them, as you can take your peer’s personality and perspectives to relate to this certain person’s problem, making it a lot easier to solve, due to the fact that the meaningful connections you make give you more experience with a wide range of personalities, and cover a wider range of perspectives.
Being meaningfully connected to others is a critical part of life, yet need to be distributed widely, and handled well to be effective, mostly because if you only focus on one eaningful connection, you will end up tunnel-visioning it, and as a result, the rest of your connections will dim up and eventually break loose from your life. I end up using love as a fine example since this specific connection is a common occurrence in relationships.
It is evident in couples that cling on tight to each other like a pair of atoms, and wherever they go cannot leave each other’s presence. The phrase “You are my everything” comes in play in this as most of these relationships end up in both sides sacrificing the rest of their meaningful onnections for one, placing their significant other in the position where they are literally “everything they have in life”.
This has a great potential of ending up in a full-blown disaster once a breakup occurs, shattering their one and only connection and ultimately losing their “everything”, which in the end leaves both sides in absolute grief. You can view what I am trying to say as some sort of bridge as well, with the deck being yourself and your connections being the supporting pillars. With one single connection, your bridge is stable, yet can only hold so much tress, once you lose your only pillar, your whole bridge collapses into dust.
With many connections, or even just a few strong ones, your bridge can hold a high level of stress. And if one pillar collapses, the rest are there to hold you up, making sure you do not topple. These types of meaningful connections are critical in life, especially when it comes knowing yourself, as well as gaining knowledge on the rest of society. Such meaningful connections are bright benefits in living a good life, yet need to be handled well to be effective. And if not, problems will arise.
