A Penny for My Thoughts

If Gilgamesh gives insight to us about the Babylonian culture and society, what does a penny say about American culture? Its really hard to take yourself away from the situation and regarding a penny as just that, a penny. I find it really difficult to NOT use background information for once. Prior knowledge is what any student or person uses to assess situations, ideas, and actions of others. It is basically pounded into your to make connections with other areas of your knowledge every day. But what I would really like to discuss is a hypothetical situation.



What if in 5000 years, archaeologists dug up the remains of America (acting like it was destroyed and kind of built over in various places as Babylon was). My first thought was, what if Harry Potter turned into an Epic. If archaeologists dug up various copies of only these books, what would it tell them about our society? We would look ridiculous! On a more realistic if I had to chose one specific story for archaeologists to find in 5000 years, I would chose a children's story. These stories show the morals we value and what Americans love most about life.



In 5000 years, I would want archaeologists to learn about our civilization but how would they learn about the superficial things we love? What about our cars and homes that we cherish and spend too much money on? It makes you think about what should be important in your life. I would want our society to be remembered for its greatness, not consumerism. This is all off on a big tangent, but, seriously, how would you like to be remembered?

Overall, I really enjoyed looking closely at something that just flies in and out of peoples pockets each day.