After reading the excerpt “Theory
for Beginners.” from Michael Ryan’s An Introduction to Criticism, I came to the
conclusion that he feels, as do I, that most of our society’s feelings and
opinions come from the cultural "norm" that he describes in this text. We as a
society tend to agree with and take the opinions of things made popular by the
mainstream propaganda. Whatever at that time is the main discussion on
everybody’s lips seems to be all anyone can discuss at that moment. Along with
radio, television and news our opinions seem to be based on what those sources
are feeding us and those sources are how we educate ourselves on that topic.
Rather than learning the whole situation or all the information, our culture has
made a society that is one sided and takes on the opinion of the information
they feed us. Thinking back on what Michael Ryan had to say about our society’s
view on terrorism brings up a good point that we are told what to be scared of
and how to interpret things whether we interpret them as good or bad all comes
from the media. Our fears, our concerns, even down to our moral beliefs all comes
down to what we have been fed as right or wrong since the day we were born. In
conclusion to reading this excerpt, I am now very interested in reading the rest
of Ryan’s book and other writings of his. It seems he has a good view on how we
should perceive things ourselves rather than how our society or culture wants
us to perceive them. We should all more often educate ourselves on the topic at
hand, creating our own opinion from our own morals and beliefs rather than only
knowing what is told to us about that subject, & trying to having a discussion
over it.
