Thursday, October 8, 2015

Xenophobia And Alien Planets?

As you viewed the Alien Planet Projects created by your peers, what did you notice?  How do these projects help us delve into the concept of xenophobia?  Please comment, share, argue, and critique the trends or ideas that you noticed.  Please complete this blog response during class today.

31 comments:

  1. Most of the planets that I looked at had a lot more water than land and had more primitive beings instead of advanced civilizations. Most of the planets also had intelligent life living in the water as well. Only one of the planets that I saw had humanoid creatures living on it which was surprising because everyone else made such creative beings that it was almost unbelievable. This develops the concept of xenophobia because seeing what other people considered as alien is what they may consider to be on other planets and what they could be afraid of. Finally, the most common trend I saw was each planet was smaller than earth, had water, had primitive technology, and an ecosystem like the one on Earth.

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  2. They represented xenophobia because a lot of the creatures were vary abstract crazy looking animals which is what we probably think of aliens. To be honest I think I would be more scared if I showed p to a planet that had human like creatures vs crazy abstract ones because that is what I would be expecting.

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  3. I noticed on a lot of the planets the indigenous life forms are all primitive compared to Earth. I also observed that most of the planets I observed had inter species rivalry's. These projects helped me delve into the concept of xenophobia by showing me that if a human were to run into any alien species it would be primitive compared to us which could be quite the opposite.

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  4. As I looked around I noticed that many people had similar animals, climates, and planet sizes. Many projects also had human-like creatures These projects help us delve into the concept of xenophobia by forcing us to think about what could be out there in the universe. Many people made very friendly species and human-like creatures. Will that always be the case? Maybe because we were made to think about different planets, we presented what we as a species would be okay with discovering.

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  5. I noticed that a few of my classmates chose to make planets somewhat close to Earth. In terms of being able to supporting life, having water on the surface, a breathable atmosphere and life forms. The concept of xenophobia is further explored in this project by having indigenous life forms that are aggressive and very hostile towards humans. Some common trends that I saw were the use of a food chain/pyramid for the planet.

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  6. The Alien Planet Projects that we created very accurately illustrated human thoughts on alien planets and how our thoughts can connect to xenophobia. Lots of the creatures had names or physical forms that were similar to creatures we have on Earth. They had similar characteristics and behaviors that mimicked the characteristics and behaviors we have grown so accustomed to. This shows that we think that aliens shouldn't be too different than what we know, but unique enough that they should be recognized as different. We are comfortable with our world and the creatures within it, so our "creative" aliens and life forms are based on ideas and concepts we understand today.

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  7. I thought it was interesting how the sizes of the planets didn't change, they were always the same shape and size. If it be a lack of creativity or a sense of not needing to do so, I still think it was a big part that affects the way we look at the planet as a whole. I liked the landscapes people were explaining because everyone's was different we all have a planet in our heads unique from everyone else.

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  8. Most people did stuff that was really close to earthly like things. Such as one group just mixed the names of animals on earth already which I guess is xenophobic but I didn't find it scary or anything. Also no one really did anything out of the ordinary most planets were just versions of earth. Which I also found kind of interesting. But overall it was really interesting to see how peoples ideas differed and what they thought of for the different planets.

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  9. Something that was common among the alien planets was very strange looking creatures living on it. Different types of organisms are there because of the different environment. On planets with not ideal living conditions for humans, they would have to live in a strange way, different than the natives on the planet do. This shows xenophobia because when organisms live differently and just look differently in obvious ways, they would tend to be xenophobic towards one another. Many of the alien organisms kill humans, therefore they are xenophobic towards humans. It also goes the other way around because humans would see strange aliens as beasts that aren't as good as them.

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  10. As I watched my classmates' Alien Planet Project, I noticed that most intelligent life forms were humanoid. This helos us find the concept of xenophobia, as most humans can't imagine an intelligent life form other than humans. I also noticed that many had pets or pet-like creatures, and that many intelligent beings had religion and similar cultural pieces. This helps explain xenophobia, as it shows that humans would only be comfortable with a planet with similar customs. Myself included, many of the intelligent life forms were almost what a human would be had they evolved on a different planet's atmosphere. This was an interesting trend, and shows little bits of internalized xenophobia. It would have been interesting to see more obscure intelligent life forms. These pieces can really help one understand xenophobia.

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  11. Something that I found that was common with the alien planets was the various lifeforms that were implemented on their planets.These projects help us think about the concept of xenophobia as we think about lifeforms from other planets that are different from us humans and asking the question of "Is there life in our universe than humans?"

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  12. As I browsed all of the planets there as a common theme of humanoid dominance on almost every planet. People seem to like what is similar to them and we are all humanoids. Why Did most of the class have human-like creatures dominating their planets -- Because it is all we know. If we all really designed alpha species based on our planets' conditions I doubt that we would have so many similarities between our races

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  14. Many of the alien planets reflected life on Earth. I'm not surprised because that's all we humans know. The creatures that inhabited the planet mostly had cephalization, eyes in the normal position (maybe a few extra eyes), and pairs of arms and legs. This proves that it is human nature to be xenophobic. We can't even imagine what an alien would look like, but since we think of ourselves as high-intelligence beings in the universe, we base it off of resembling the human form. I wonder if the human race would be ready to see an alien from one of my peers planets.

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  15. The planets were very creative. The idea people had were amazing. it's always cool to look at what other people have done to see new ideas and thinking. Now i think some of them (like my own) could have been a little bit more specific. One thing i did notice about almost every planet, there was at least one or two creatures that were based off ours here on earth. we would never know what animals might be like on other planets. but if you came up to one of these animals that are similar. what would we do? kill it and study it? or just think it's an experiment gone wrong

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  16. As I was walking around the classroom and looking through the various Alien Projects, I noticed that a trend was that most of the animals extrapolated were Earth like and humanoid. I think that this trend is acceptable if the planet they created is much like earth compared to in size, shape, and gravity. While in some planets I saw a great diversity of animals, including sea life, and also life on land, showing that the animals had time to evolve. While most of everyone's planet was unique there was some overlap in terms of how they were presented, and I think I liked the repetition but I would like to see some more diversity, include myself. I need to ass some originality

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  17. It was basically every species was split (at least the ones I saw, there very well could have been some that had entirely peaceful planets, mine was half peaceful). This helps us see that even on the same planet, xenophobia can exist. Yes, half of my planet was very peaceful, but the other half was terrifying and hateful. Therefore, I and others who chose to have creatures competing with other creatures prove that we are aware that xenophobia exists, but we may not know how to solve it.

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  18. Looking through the different projects, the main thing that I noticed was that there were no real similarities between any of the lifeforms on the planets, showing the great diversity in the universe and just how vast it is, with an infinite number of things to be found in it. Xenophobia is, as we have discussed in class, the fear of people and creatures from different parts of the world/galaxy/universe. This project helps us delve into the concept of xenophobia through the fact that most of the universe is, as of yet, undiscovered by humanity, and any or all of the creatures seen in the class’s could very well be real, and I must say, they would be very terrifying to come across at any point in time.

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  19. I noticed that as I went around the class and looked at what people had created mostly everyone’s was in some way similar to Earth. Many of the creatures were like animals that currently or a one point lived on Earth. The features of many planets were similar to Earth's, the amount of water, land, layout of planet, ect. I think all of these help drive xenophobia without us even knowing it. While creating this project I doubt that anyone was trying to be xenophobic. But it is almost hardwired into human nature. That's why we didn’t really see any creatures that were weird or disfigured. We didn’t see any planets with crazy features or characteristics. Almost every planets, had a rodent, bird, mammal, reptile, and fish. And if there was intelligent life it was almost always humanoid. Because xenophobia comes naturally to us.

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  20. As I viewed the Alien Planet Projects created by my peers I noticed a few similarities between many projects. The first was that Humans were typically bigger than the creatures. This can relate to xenophobia by showing humans as a dominant, and bigger race. It could be a thought of humans being scared of things, such as creatures, that could be or are bigger on average than humans. The second commonality between the projects was that they didn’t talk about the issues on the planet, but rather all the good information to make the planet seem a lot more warming or enjoyable. All things have a good and bad side and sometimes one must talk about both sides of the story. This also goes along with xenophobia by proving humans are scared of things that are bad, or seem harmful to them, so they leave them out. This is what I noticed about the Alien Planet Projects.

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  21. I noticed that there were a good mix of planets. Most of them had ideas very similar to earth. The creatures were very well thought through and often very different from any animals we know of. Some trends showed that there seemed to be a common idea that there should was one race or type of animal that seemed to be better than most. This shows how we think we are superior to other things in general.
    This ties to the concept of xenophobia very well. It shows what our imaginations can think of when given little direction. So when humans think about aliens we think of all these possible things that can be out there. Some are good and some bad and scary.

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  22. I noticed that many of the crazy looking creatures would probably cause humans to be xenophobic if they ever came to Earth, but because they were on their own planet, there was no xenophobia towards them. I also noticed that many of the planets that were created were Earth-like, with more water then it had land, and many different types of weather varying due to the time of year. Not many people created humanoid creatures, they rather created other forms of life, like some of the non-intelligent life on Earth.

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  23. I noticed that most of my classmates created planets with extreme temperatures and had a very different approach than me, by making their planet as dissimilar to Earth as possible. I also noticed there weren't any races similar to humans, mostly just animals - perhaps with a subconscious intent to make Earth seem superior or perhaps validate that we are the only planet with an advanced species.

    In each project, aliens resembled bugs as though there was a collective agreement that aliens would not be able to grow fur or resemble mammals in any way, even if they'd come from icy planets.

    I also noticed that the maps were similar to blobs and didn't portray any characteristics that could provide any variation besides "hot" and "cold". Speaking of, there seemed to be no cities and capitals or countries. There was no form of currency. No depiction of behavior for any life forms, simply descriptions of appearance. No consideration for habitual or dietary habits for their life forms.

    The life forms and planets collectively seemed two dimensional.

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  24. After looking at the Alien Planet Projects, i learned that xenophobia was present in the way humans imagined extraterrestrial life and the culture that they lived in. Most of the life forms were portrayed as scary and funky looking. Along with that, they usually unusual cultures and were perceived as weird. Doing this project really shows the xenophobia that the students of the science fiction class, and how they perceive extraterrestrial life.

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  25. What I have notice while I was viewing my peers projects was that the planets were a lot more extreme from our gentle earth. Some were extremely close to the sun, but still had life. Others had huge tsunamis, and yet had beings walking on the land. I think that those projects are a good example of science fiction because what was put on the slides was out of the ordinary. One of the creatures had a mole-like creature that uses its tail to whip it's attackers. These projects help our concept of xenophobia because there were human-like creatures that were very similar to us, but were very different.

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  26. I noticed that a few of my classmates chose to make planets somewhat close to Earth. They were able to support life, have water on the surface, a breathable atmosphere and life forms. The concept of xenophobia is shown in this project by having indigenous life forms that are aggressive and very hostile towards humans. Some common trends that I saw were the use of a food chain for the planet.

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  27. What I saw when I looked at other peoples projects, a lot of people hod Earth like planets. They had more water than land, and a good amount of lifeforms that come from water. Most of the lifeforms that I saw were humanoid. This helped with the idea of xenophobia, because we were doing it ourselfs, with a lot of the species being humanoid.

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  28. I noticed that planets were all similar to earth and had similar life forms and vegetation. The land masses were about the same in the way relating to earth with water and different types of land masses. This helped with xenophobia because we were able to pick what we wanted and if we didn't want something on our planet then we didn't have to put it there and put what we wanted.

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  29. I noticed that planets were all similar to earth and had similar life forms and vegetation. The land masses were about the same in the way relating to earth with water and different types of land masses. This helped with xenophobia because we were able to pick what we wanted and if we didn't want something on our planet then we didn't have to put it there and put what we wanted.

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  30. I noticed that a lot of the features were ones like earth. For examle land masses and oceans and lakes and features that earth has on land like forests and deserts. The lifeforms were close to ones on earth like needing oxygen and water and food. This helped me understand xenophobia because we were able to put what we wanted on our planet and if we didn't want that then we did not put it on our planet.

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  31. To me, Science Fiction is a type of writing that not only scares the human mind but also makes one think of the future and what it holds. I am reading 1984 in English right now and it makes me think of how different things would be if America had not won some of the battles we fought in the past. We may not be free today had it not been the things in the past. So, to me, science fiction is the part of our mind that holds the "what if's" and the "have beens" of the past.

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