Grade 10 – Page 10 – Sophia Elahi RPC Blog

English 10, Lesson 40 – Hesiod’s View About Mankind’s Past and Future

This week in English class, I read and finished Hesiod’s epic poem ‘Works and Days.’ Hesiod was a famous Greek poet who lived between 750 BC – 650 BC. He wrote ‘Works and Days’ for his brother, Perseus, in a way to convince him to give him (Hesiod) their deceased father’s land after the court ruled in favor of Perseus. In the poem, Hesiod talked about his beliefs of mankind’s past and future. In this essay, I am going to briefly explain his views.

Hesiod believed that there were five races of men created by the Greek gods. The Golden race, the Silver race, the Bronze race, the Demi-gods, and the Iron race (supposedly our race). He believed that as time went on, the races became even worse than their predecessors.

The Golden race lived during the reign of Cronos, before his children (e.g. Zeus and Poseidon) overthrew him. This race lived seemingly perfect lives. They never had to deal with depression or hardship. The prospect of old age did not bother the Golden race, and they spent their days surrounded by wealth and luxury. The Golden race worshipped their gods, winning their good graces. In Hesiod’s eyes, the Golden race was the best and most pious of all the races. When they died, they became spirits, watching over the future races of men.

The Silver race came after the end of the Golden race. Like Hesiod believed, they were far lower than their forefathers. They stayed as children for years and lived short lives. They did not participate in the sacrificial rituals and worshipping of the gods, which led to their death caused by an angry Zeus.

The next generation was the Bronze generation, who were violent people. There is not much to say about them besides that they loved power and violence. Eventually, their love for aggression overpowered their love for their fellow man and they destroyed one another.

After the Bronze generation perished, the gods created the next generation known as Demi-gods. This term may sound familiar for any Percy Jackson fans. Demi-gods were half man and half god. This generation was considered to be heroes by the regular men. They were noble and strong, and fought in many well-known wars. Most notably, the Trojan War. However, their constant participation in these wars caused the death of majority of the race, making Zeus take the remaining Demi-gods away from the regular men to a place called the “Blessed Islands,” where they lived happy and carefree lives, much like the Golden race once did.

The final race is us, known as the Iron race. Hesiod believed the Iron race to be the worst out of all five that existed. This race will always be sorrowful and unhappy, and will extremely evil and unjust. Hesiod was convinced that the Iron generation was doomed by Zeus, and one day, he will exterminate them like he did the Silver race. Hesiod believed that the main reason the Iron race will be so much worse than all the others was because the Iron race will be the only one that has females in it, causing this generation to be at a disadvantage (how rude).

As you can see, Hesiod had a very depressing view of the future. But it is obvious he had a lot of respect for those that came before him. I cannot help but wonder if Hesiod was a happy man. After all, if you believed that the mighty god of sky will wipe you out because of the sins of your generation, wouldn’t you be living in a perpetual state of doom?

Western Civilization 10, Lesson 20, Essay 2 – Plato’s Perfect Society

Plato was an avid follower of Socrates before his death. After Socrates’s execution, Plato’s passion to join the Greek government diminished and he instead became a philosopher. In one of Plato’s works, he talked about what he considered to be an ‘ideal’ government and society. In this essay, I am going to be summarising his ideas.

Plato believed that the best government has to be based off of the best soul. He also believed that the soul has three parts: spirit, rational, and appetite. He considered appetite to be the worst part out of the three. It always had to be tamed by the spirit and rational parts of the soul. Plato also thought that there are four cardinal virtues of the spirit: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.

In Plato’s perfect society, there would be three classes: the guardians, auxiliaries, and everyone else. The guardians would represent the ‘wisdom virtue’ of the soul. The auxiliaries would represent courage. Temperance would be the social classes and the justice of the state would be that everyone keeps to themselves and solves their own problems.

While the lower class would live a relatively normal life, the guardians and auxiliaries would live a life that we would consider to be odd.

Auxiliaries would not be allowed to own private property and should live with their fellow auxiliaries. This would be so the lower classes would not have to worry about their superiors overthrowing them. The highest two classes would not be able to have families in a way that we would consider ‘normal.’ They would reproduce at appointed times with a person chosen by the state (for eugenic reasons), then once the child is born, he or she will be placed in a government nursery and raised there.

As you can see, Plato’s idea of a perfect society seems quite alarming compared to the lifestyle and society we live in today. I believe we should consider ourselves lucky that modern-day Western Civilization did not follow Plato’s idea of a perfect society.

Western Civilization 10, Lesson 20, Essay 1 – Socrates and the Sophists

This week in class, I spent a lesson learning about Socrates and his views. He had a very unique teaching method of going up to strangers and asking them questions, somehow educating them in the process. One of Socrates’s opinions, that Mr. Woods focused on what his disagreement with the Sophists’ worldview. In this essay, I am going to be talking more about this disagreement and how it eventually led to Socrates’s demise.

The Sophists believed in a worldview called relativism, which is a worldview that states there is no absolute truth and that one standard law should not be enforced on everyone.

To demonstrate this, here is an extreme example. I am opposed to murder, like the government, and I will never do it and I think those that commit the crime should be punished. But another person believes that murder is okay and it is not a crime. Therefore, the state (or government) should not be allowed to enforce punishments on those who believe murder is not a crime because there is no absolute truth.

I am sure you can see how twisted this worldview can become and also how it contradicts itself. If there is no absolute truth, then how can we know that this worldview is the correct one?

Socrates was strongly opposed to this worldview. In fact, his own worldview was the exact opposite of the Sophists’. Socrates believed that everyone had a soul, meaning that there have to be absolute rights and wrongs.

Eventually, enough people, mainly the Sophists, complained about Socrates to the government and he was trialed for “tainting the minds of the youth.” The government eventually decided that he should be sentenced death by poison.

As you can see, Socrates and the Sophists had two very different worldviews. In today’s society, we follow Socrates’s worldview. We were raised knowing that there are absolute morals, unlike what the Sophists’ believed. But if we were raised in a Sophist worldview, what would we think of Socrates’s ideas?

Business 10, Lesson 50 – Possible Business Opportunities

This week in Business class, Mr. Emmons went over four different small business ideas that are viable for students. All four opportunities looked very interesting, but the one that piqued my interest the most was book publishing. In this essay, I am going to talk about why this opportunity appealed to me the most.

Before I talk about the business opportunity, I would like to quickly discuss my own business idea first. If you have been reading my business essays for a while, you may already know that my small business idea is to write and publish my own e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Naturally, I was very curious about this business opportunity when I clicked on the lesson. Mr. Emmons talked about how I can help other authors who do not want to go to a traditional publishing company, or do not want to deal with the hassle of publishing their books.

During the lesson, Mr. Emmons said something that made me think that this business opportunity can be very good for me after I publish my own book. Mr. Emmons said that if you have already published other people’s books, then your new customers will trust you more. But if I have already published my own book, new customers will feel confident in my abilities, especially if I start as a teenager.

As you can see, book publishing is a business opportunity that ties into my own business idea. At the moment, I am only certain that I want to publish my e-book as my business and nothing else. But it is good to know that I have other business opportunities if I ever want/need them.

Math 10, Lesson 19, Problems 12-15

Biology 10, Lesson 20 – Adrenaline

Imagine, you are walking through the corridors of an old, most likely haunted, house. The floorboards creak every time you step on them and there seems to be an unpleasant energy in the air. Your heart is pounding and you get shivers every time you pass a door, expecting something to jump out at you. Right as you are about to turn a corner, a figure jumps out of the shadows yelling “Boo!” You scream and see your whole life flash before your eyes. But then you realize, it was only your friend trying to play a trick on you. The two of you laugh it off and you place a hand on your heart, which is now racing faster than it was before.

You know that the sudden increase of heart rate is due to something called adrenaline, but do you know what causes the adrenaline?

Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, is a hormone that triggers your fight or flight. This hormone breaks down your glycogen (a large molecule that functions as a kind of energy), which explains the sudden burst of power you feel.

Going back to my example from earlier, when your friend jumps out at you, three big chemical reactions happen inside of you in a matter of microseconds. When your body gets the shock of seeing a figure lunging at you, a chemical signal is sent to your cells. This signal then triggers a series of chemical reactions inside of the cell, preparing it for the epinephrine. One of these chemical reactions activates the breaking down of glycogen, giving you the energy you require to run out of there if you really need to.

As you can see, adrenaline is a lot more than something that happens when you get scared. It is a whole process that can get activated and completed in a matter of seconds. Even though I have not reached the anatomy of the human body in this course yet, I am constantly learning about the chemical reactions our body can do.

Thanks for reading!

English 10, Lesson 20 – Long-Term Optimism in the Psalms

This week in English, I continued looking at the Psalms. Throughout the Psalms, one message is repeatedly stated in different forms: God will always deliver justice. In this essay, I am going to talk about how that one message should give humans long-term optimism.

In the Psalms there is not a paragraph that states “you should have long-term optimism because…”, but the Psalms does give you certain pieces of information that should make you have long-term optimism.

The Psalms state that God will defeat the evil-doers, but will never desert those that stay on the righteous path. This is promising that God will serve justness to those who are deserving. It also states that God will always reign supreme. This tells us that we do not need to worry about another power overthrowing Him like we would worry with human leaders who promise justice.

As you can see, the Psalms give multiple examples for us to understand why we should have long-term optimism. If we know that we are following the right path to the best of our ability, we know that God will reward us for it, meaning we always having something to look forward to.

Western Civilization 10, Lesson 15 – The Cyclopes from The Odyssey

This week in class, I spent a lesson going over the incidents of The Odyssey by Homer. The story is about a man, Odysseus, coming home from war and the trials he faces on the way. One of these trials is his encounter with a Cyclopes.

Judging by the description of the Cyclopes (plural), they did not have a civilization formed. In fact, it seemed like there was zero interaction with one another. They were described as tough and mean creatures, only taking care of their animals and keeping to themselves and their caves. In my opinion, the cyclopes were stupid, for lack of better verbiage. They did not have the mental capacity for our definition of civilization.

The story of the incident between one of the Cyclopes and Odysseus is very interesting. If you are a fan of Percy Jackson or a Greek enthusiast, you may already know this story. But for those that are neither, like me, here is a quick summary of the story.

It begins with Odysseus and his men arriving at the island where the Cyclopes live. Every night, Odysseus would lose another man from his crew to one of the Cyclopes’s insatiable appetite. Tired of losing his men, Odysseus and his remaining men come up with a plan to escape the island without losing another man.

Odysseus offered the Cyclopes a glass of wine, and right before the monster fell asleep, he asked for Odysseus’s name. The latter then told the beast that he was “Nobody” right before he fell into a drunken slumber. Once asleep, Odysseus’s men plunged a heated wooden stake into the Cyclops’s eye, blinding him.

The Cyclopes, furious and in pain, tried to find Odysseus and his men, but they were escaping to their ship by tying themselves to the underbellies of the Cyclops’s sheep. After all, why would the Cyclopes hurt his animals?

Enraged, the Cyclopes calls upon his father, Poseidon, god of the sea, to curse Odysseus and men with a rough and stormy journey home because of what they had done to him.

As you can see, the tale of Odysseus and the Cyclopes is very interesting. There are more details to the story, which I left out to keep the summary brief. If you find the story intriguing, I recommend going online to find the full version, which is a lot more entertaining than my brief summation.

Thanks for reading!

English 10, Lesson 15 – Historical Sanctions in the Psalms

This week in English, I looked over Psalms 1 – 15. In each one, I noticed a recurring theme, ethics and sanctions. This seems to be a common theme throughout all of the Bible stories I have looked at in this course so far. In this essay, I am going to be talking about the importance of the sanctions in the Psalms.

If you read my last essay about the ethics and sanctions of the story of Noah and the Flood, you would know that I compared ethics and sanctions to cause and effect. In the case of the Psalms, I can do the same.

The Psalms stated that disbelievers and wrongdoers would face God’s sanctions. Those that chose to not believe in God and those who strayed from the up righteous path would face His punishments.

The threat of God’s sanctions is something that is present in every story. In the story of Adam and Eve, God punished them by sending them to Earth. In the story of Cain and Able, God punished Cain for murdering his brother. In the story of Noah and the Flood, the people of Earth were punished with a flood.

I am sure you can think of more stories from the Bible where God enforces his sanctions on those who disobey Him.

As you can see, sanctions are extremely important in the Psalms and stories from Genesis. I have no doubt that sanctions are also important in other stories. God’s sanctions are the basis of every story. If you do wrong, you will be punished.

Biology 10, Lesson 10 – Metabolism in Simple Terms

Metabolism. I am sure you have all heard of the word. Before this week’s lessons, I only knew it in the term “high metabolism,” which to me meant “something the human body does that can make people thinner.” But after this week’s lesson, I now know why it “makes people thinner.” Would you like to know as well?

The definition of metabolism is “the chemical process of your body turning food and drink into energy.”[i]

The process of metabolism has two main functions, catabolism and anabolism. Catabolism is the breaking down of molecules causing a release of energy. Anabolism is the opposite, the building of molecules causing the buildup of energy. Catabolism makes the body lose tissue, and Anabolism makes the body gain tissue.

If you ever hear someone say that they have “high metabolism,” that means that certain person’s body catabolizes more than it anabolizes, which makes them naturally leaner than others.

Even though metabolism is a natural thing that your body does, it can be managed. For example, to speed up your metabolism you can drink more water than sugary drinks. It is also advised to not skip meals as your metabolism will adapt to it quickly and will start breaking down your muscles to provide your body with the energy it needs.

Fun fact about metabolism: men tend to have a higher metabolism than women because “they have more muscle mass, larger bones and less body fat.”[ii]

As you can see, metabolism is a really cool function your body can do. If you are like me, and have never studied biology or the human body, you probably knew what metabolism was, but did not actually understand what the use of it is. Hopefully after reading this essay, you have a better idea of what it does.

[i] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21893-metabolism

[ii] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21893-metabolism