Something that has been an underlying theme as well as a constant anxiety for myself throughout the semester was expressed concisely by Ben in class on Thursday in light of Latour's Black Box idea. Within a black box we have achieved so much specialized knowledge that proves we do indeed know so much, yet it doesn't acknowledge all that we have forgotten. That all of our knowledge about life and human nature and sex and food and art and science is all seen through the lens of technology and our Cartesian reality. This certainty that we live by and dedicate our lives to is founded by empirical ideas that we have just taken as truth and formed our lives around. We live in the future, and are constantly analyzing how the past has formed us. The obsession with ontological commitment is deeply unsettling when considering the black box theory applied to history and how we decide we know...anything for that matter. The episteme of our age, or metaphysical platform, or technological chaos, or hybrid of ideas, whatever you want to call it, the context that new ideas from our time have been created is so removed from the triumphs and failures of thought that it took to get us where we are today that we have no doubt, as a species, forgotten so much.

With this being said in a very unclear manner, what I find deeply upsetting is the motivation behind education and learning and living life day to day. Everyone is so focused on some sort of goal, some sort of guarantee that they can count on with life. I am just as much of a culprit as the next person, but this class wasn't as shocking to my knowledge about things as it was for some. The irritation of ideas and facts about the way we know the world is awesome, as was expressed on the last day of class, but why is it then that all people are looking for out of an education is a job, is money, is x-y=z. Has it always been that way? Are we just placing our minds into a black box that is inescapable? I see it sort of like watching a tv that has someone watching something on tv and so on. I am in a large way extremely stuck by this notion of history being lost, of intellectual thought being harnessed by our historic context, by the black box of expression. We might be numbed to the most obvious necessities of our reality because the larger agenda that was here before us has put blinders on our ability to see clearly. With a Bachelor of Individualized Studies, CSCL ANTH ENGL, and much more in between I have thoroughly confused myself and said multiple times that I held more grounded opinions about the world 4 years ago than I do now. Maybe I should go do the whole science thing to figure out a way to reallllly understand the world, or something. . . . To end with a topic we didn't get into really, but a quote: Simply put, when there is no home birth in a society, or when home birth is driven completely underground, essential knowledge of women’s capacities in birth is lost to the people of that society—to professional caregivers, as well as to the women of childbearing age

themselves. ( Ina May Gaskin)