This I can get on board with. Our society definitely does seek authenticity, but there's a strong juxtaposition wherein we also seek utopia, and we see that through much of social media.

This is wild. To claim that people working in the service industry and intentionally being friendly has changed our entire societal belief system on natural emotions, and that it has a major effect on our society is crazy. Wow.

Why? I know a lot of people who are just naturally, excessively cheerful. Only when you're having a bad day would you really be forced to act at all.

This is excessive! This is not the end all, be all, the dooming fate that awaits flight attendants. The very simple solution to this problem is to hire people who are naturally very friendly and welcoming, and who therefore really aren't acting so much as having an outlet to express their friendliness in a setting where it's usually very well-received.

This is really unhealthy, and I think our author is right here, but I also think that those kind of people are really not suited to be working in service industries. If you do not have the emotional capacity to make a distinction between the business environment of a workplace and normal everyday life, that becomes an issue, and you are definitely not the best person for that type of job.

Having flown Delta on about 6 flights in the last 6 months, I can definitely verify that this is true. The flight attendants and even the pilots are almost always smiling, and they're very likeable and friendly. I'm sure they do receive some training in that area.

I think the author's tone here is getting to the point where he is really saying that this use of emotional capital in business is a bad thing. He's not saying it outright, but given his tone and what he implies, I can feel it. I don''t really necessarily think it is a bad thing. In service industries, I think it's really an expectation in society that you should be treated well, especially when you're spending significant quantities of money. This isn't a new idea. In service industries "emotional capital" or quality of service is highly valued.

This chicken and the egg presumption seems far-fetched to me. If people weren't living the culture that country music reflects, if they didn't find the music relatable, it would never have grown to be popular. I think it's a very dangerous game to play to begin to claim that people's culture was artificially produced by musicians, that their culture isn't authentic. I can't say that I agree.

This seems like evidence that is not in any way credible. They're claiming that all of the Charley Pride fans out there were ignorant to the fact that he was black, else they would not have listened to his music? I think that's quite a claim to make with a complete and total lack of evidence.

This is the heart of country music. I think Bush captures it well.

Citation of political strategies surrounding populism and a recent example.

Citation of examples of populists

Key Term

One of Trump's primary vote-getting methods.

Getting a bit too philosophical for my engineering brain...

One very noticeable thing about Taylor's writing is that he constantly references other authors and philosophers. He does this to back up his argument and to make him appear more reputable.

This paper has officially reached the point where I would typically write it off as overly philosophical crap that contributes nothing to society. But for the purpose of studenting, I'm going to finish reading.

French lawyer and political philosopher of the 1700s

Excellent. Precisely as I said before, this self-depreciation becomes a force in their own oppression, because it creates a mindset of helplessness.

This form of self-victimization is where a distinct difference appears. A lack of personal initiative and self-confidence should not be blamed on society. Claiming that society as a whole induces women to adopt a lesser image of themselves as a whole may or may not be true, but using this as an excuse for a lack of self-responsibility and initiative is just sad. This form of self-victimization implies an inherent helplessness that's entirely untrue, and it's a mindset that helps nobody to be productive.

I agree, this paragraph is very true. Whether that demand stems from true lack of recognition or more from personal insecurity is a different matter, but these movements do present themselves in a need for attention and recognition.

Nature seems to be a very common theme in much of Wordsworth's writing. He definitely enjoys discussing natural settings and the emotional effects that they have on people. Coming from Michigan and being an avid sailor and backpacker, this is completely relatable for me, and I think that this is much more relatable for the common man that Wordsworth was trying to reach than for the traditional literary audience of his time.

I see where Wordsworth is coming from. At what point does a poem become prose, or an essay, or something besides poetry? Having read some exceptionally long poems myself, I think this is a reasonable question to ask. Poetry in contrast to prose is typically much shorter, but I think the characteristic that distinguishes poetry is its rhythmic structure. If a poem is not written in verse, with some sort of rhythmic pattern or rhyme scheme, I think that it can hardly be called poetry. This is a very valid question Wordsworth brings up about how we distinguish prose from poetry, but I think that there are ways to make that distinction, and it doesn't all fall in the same pot.

This pursuit truly is admirable. In Wordsworth's time, poetry and literature were not meant for the common man, so his pursuit of writing in such a way to connect with the common man is really ahead of his time. I don't think that many poets of this time would make the steps that Wordsworth is making, not only for fear of judgement from other writers, but because there is a clear social bridge that Wordsworth is trying to cross.

This is really the foundation of Wordsworth's argument. The belief that feelings should inspire action and situation, and that poetry should focus first on delivering a feeling, an experience, rather than focus on events. His claim is that other poets focus on content too much, and they lack the power of emotion in their works. In large part I agree with him, mostly because poetry CAN convey emotion, it can artistically draw a picture of an emotion, portray feelings that other literary forms would struggle with. I agree with Wordsworth that this kind of poetry provides more literary value than an action/content based poem.

Will our essay prompts all be focused around authenticity and keeping it real? Will there be a single prompt or are there usually multiple options?