...As Gandhi disappeared into T-shirts and Apple advertisements, it was easy to forget that this big-eared, cuddly icon of popular culture responded to an unprecedentedly violent and unstable period in human history, beginning with the intensification of imperialism and globalization in the late nineteenth century and continuing through two world wars. “Politics encircle us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries,” Gandhi once said. “I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.” ...
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Gandhi's Seven Social Sins
In 2000, Time named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) as one of the three most influential persons of the twentieth century; the other men honored were Albert Einstein and Franklin Roosevelt.
One of the enduring legacies of Gandhi is his written record and the force of his moral philosophy. Though, now considered apocryphal to credit him with the origin of these points, he is often acknowledged with at least advancing the Seven Social Sins, or the Seven Blunders as a philosophical platform. A modern re-invention of the Seven Deadly Sins of medieval Catholicism, these these seven areas of focus articulate, as he and others have come to see them, the central problems of modern twentieth and twenty-first century society. These seven sins are: |
"A person cannot do right in one department whilst attempting to do wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole. " |
For most of the rest of the year, you will be expected to participate in a regular research, reading and analysis of contemporary topics and media as they are happening. To guide this examination, we will use the Seven Social Sins as the lens through which this effort occurs. This examination will include a review of textual and visual rhetoric and will culminate in a research and presentation project that you will design and develop over the course of the remaining year.
Independent Reading Assignments |
Research and Synthesis Paper |
Social Sins Presentation ProjectsProject One [50]
Project Two [100]
Documentary Film Rhetoric |