Liberal Arts Humanities

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Liberal Arts Humanities

• Persons of Mean Vile Dispositions
• Tyranny is Tyranny

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Bacons Rebellion

• Anti-Indian sentiments
• Anti-wealthy sentiments
• The clash of two ruling class egos Nathaniel
  Bacon and Sir William Berkley

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Richard Lee

• The zealous inclination of the multitude to
  support Bacon was due to hopes of levelling.
• Levelling meant equalizing wealth.

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Ruling Elite -- Servants

• Laws later reflected in Constitution written to
  provide for masters rights over servants
• Indentured servants imprisoned before setting
  sail from England
• Many died in passage, many abused upon arrival.
• Colonial system of governments set up to preserve
  ruling elite

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Indentured Contracts
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• Servant women were raped.
• Servants could not marry without permission.
• Servants could be separated from families.
• Children could be declared bastards and weddings
  outside of masters consent deemed invalid.
• Punishments whippings,, branding, stocks,
  pillory, bilboes, dunking, nails through tongue,
  chained till starvation

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Boston Statistics

• 1687 the top 1 percent of population owned 25 of
  the wealth
• 1770 the top 1 percent of population owned 44 of
  the wealth
• 1687 poor males without any property made up 14
  of population
• 1770 poor males without any property made up 20
  of population

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Four Groups Outside of Elite

• Poor white farmers and workers
• Indentured servants
• Native Americans
• Slaves
• Fear that these groups would combine to challenge
  existing authority

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Cherokee Indian Village
Creek Indian Village

• Policies put into place to stop escaping blacks
  from joining Indians.

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• Racism between blacks and white poor became
  useful policy

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After Bacons Rebellion by 1760

• 18 uprisings aimed at overthrowing colonial
  governments
• Six black rebellions
• Forty riots
• Class divisions and exploitation continued

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Two Documents form coalition between elite and
enough middle and lower class white males

• Thomas Paines Common Sense.
• Declaration of Independence

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Still . . .

• Four days after the reading of the Declaration
  the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered
  townspeople to show up for military draft. Poor
  had to serve the rich could pay substitutes to
  serve for them.
• Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may.

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IDEOLOGY

• Cultures are structured in ways that enable the
  group holding power to have the maximum control
  with the minimum of conflict.
• Done in large part through mystification

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IDEOLOGY

• An experience or event or thing is mystified when
  a broad cultural meaning obscures the particulars
  of that experience, event or thing this
  obscuring usually covers up or 'disappears'
  contrary or inconvenient facts. To demystify, pay
  attention to the particulars, the specifics, the
  concrete reality, with all its blemishes and
  contradictions.

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IDEOLOGY

• An experience or event or thing is mystified when
  a broad cultural meaning obscures the particulars
  of that experience, event or thing this
  obscuring usually covers up or 'disappears'
  contrary or inconvenient facts. To demystify, pay
  attention to the particulars, the specifics, the
  concrete reality, with all its blemishes and
  contradictions.

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HISTORY STORY
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HISTORY

• Written by people who make history
• Billion Dollar Textbook Industry (10 Companies
  control bulk of books
• Technology tells the history of the companies
  that produce the technology
• Schools as tools

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IDEOLOGY

• Idea
• Ideal

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IDEOLOGY

• What are the assumptions about what is natural,
  just and right?

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IDEOLOGY

• Look for binaries, oppositions (good/evil,
  natural/unnatural, tame/wild, young/old). Which
  term of the binary is privileged, what is
  repressed or devalued by this privileging of one
  term over the other?

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IDEOLOGY

• What (and who) do these assumptions distort or
  obscure?

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IDEOLOGY

• What are the power relations? How are they made
  to appear as if they are normal or good? What
  negative aspects are excluded?

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IDEOLOGY

• What people, classes, areas of life, experiences,
  are 'left out', silenced?

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IDEOLOGY

• What cultural assumptions and what 'myths' shape
  experience and evaluation? What is mystified?

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IDEOLOGY

• An experience or event or thing is mystified when
  a broad cultural meaning obscures the particulars
  of that experience, event or thing this
  obscuring usually covers up or 'disappears'
  contrary or inconvenient facts. To demystify, pay
  attention to the particulars, the specifics, the
  concrete reality, with all its blemishes and
  contradictions.

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