Tip or Trick?

During the weekend, my family and I decided to go out for dinner at Olive Garden. In that restaurant each part of the restaurant has waiters that are assigned. Our waiter was nice and he did his job right by taking our order and giving us what we needed to have a good dinner. So when we were done eating and we were about to leave my dad gave a tip to the waiter for his services. Once we were out I started to think of why my dad and most of the people give tips to the waiters. I mean why it is that when we go to a “fancy restaurant” we give tips to the workers but when we go to a fast-food place we tend not to give anybody a tip for their service. Think about it both of these places take my order and give me my food. They are basically the same thing as each other and yet we think that a fast-food restaurant worker does not deserve a tip like the worker at Olive Garden.

It has to with ideology. According to Webster Dictionary, ideology is an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation. It is basically an unwritten rule of some sort that we, humans, follow like the one of tipping at a restaurant. There is no written rule that states that when we go to a restaurant you have to tip them for their services. But still we tend to do it because we were taught to do it by our parents and so on. Since we were kids we have seen our parents do it therefore we believe we should do it as well because it is the right thing to do. It is also a way of thanking them for what they did for us.

In my English 155 class we read “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1968) by Louis Althusser. In this chapter the author, Althusser states what he thinks about ideology and how it came about. He states that ideology is manmade and that it is imaginary. He also said that ideology is material existence because we depend and live around materials in order to be happy. He thinks that it is material existence because we use “I” but what is I then. Althusser says that ideology is an institution state apparatus. An ISA is an institution that propagates an ideology, like my example of tipping a waiter.

Tipping someone is something that was man-made, we were taught to do it by generation to generation. We believe that if do not tip the waiter then we were ungrateful for their service. Even a waiter believes that if he does not get tip then he did not do a good job. Therefore the waiter always has a smile on their face and an uplifting attitude towards the customer. Now in day we live more in material and money base object then in what really matter. Instead of tipping someone we could just say thank you but we believe that money is more gratifying than a simple thank you. I guess the way society is made has led us to believe that money is more important.

Birth of Venus

I remember being in my English class when I was in 9^th grade. My teacher was Mr. Gam and he was teaching us about Greek Mythology. My teacher was very passionate about the Gods and Goddess that that was mostly what we learned in the class. I remember that he showed us a picture about the Goddess of Beauty, Venus also known as Aphrodite, and of how she was born. This painting is one of the most treasured masterpieces of the Renaissance. For those who do not know the Renaissance is the era of the revival of the Classical nude. According to the sixth edition of my humanities book, The Humanistic Tradition, renaissance is accompanied by a quest to understand the mechanics of the human body.

Since I liked this painting I decided to analyses it to discover and comprehend what the painter, Alessandro Botticelli wanted to get across. In the painting you have Venus in the middle of the painting nude but covering her parts. According to suite 101 the pose that Venus has is traditionally the pose held by Virgin Mary. Also if you look at her face you could see someone shy and vulnerable because she is not looking directly in front but she is looking to the side which gives it a sense of vulnerability. Another thing is that her head is tilted which makes me feel that she is innocent.  Since this painting is the Birth of Venus it makes me think that the painter wanted to give Venus a sense that she was innocent because people believe that babies are innocent when they are born because they do not know anything, making Venus innocent. The setting is on the ocean and she is standing on top of a shell that is being float to shore. It is set to believe that that is how Venus was born. She was floated on the shore of the island of Cythera by that shell.

In the painting you could also see three people set to be gods. On her right there is a man and a woman holding together in a sexual way. These two Gods are flying aside her which gives an illusion of power. You could see wind coming out of the Gods mouth. The wind is being blown towards Venus and it is making her long blonde hair move in the air which makes it sensual.  There are also flowers surrounding them while the wind is being blown. The flowers are pink which to me it means love and beauty. On her left we see another god set to be Pomona. It seems like Pomona is trying to cover her with an orange blanket. This action is considered to be a gesture of welcoming. The color of the blanket is orange which is an element of nature and earthly. Since Pomona is the Goddess of fruit trees and fecundity it makes sense that she gives it to Venus.

The colors of the painting are soft and earthly which gives it an element of warm and love. I think the artist did that to emphasize that Venus is the goddess of love. The sense of the art all together gives it an element of lust because all the objects there are seductive and beautiful. The Birth of Venus truly emphasize that she was born to be the goddess of love.