The Evolution of your Thoughts

(1) Read the comments on your previous post. (2) Read the posts and comments on three classmates assigned to you. (3) Read or review your original index card, your class notes and homrwork, consider Kennan, Stalin's Election Speech and the Iron Curtain Speech, and think about the origins of the Cold War. (4) Create a new post which explains your progression of thinking: what you originally knew and believed, what insight or information has caused you to modify your thinking, and what you are currently thinking.

For those of you who are thinking, "I haven't changed my mind", that is okay. Still, your thinking must have evolved over the past few weeks.  If you haven't changed your mind, your reasoning must have been strengthened. Explain this process.

I am genuinely looking forward to reading your posts and comments.

Owning your thoughts...

First, create a blog post which explains why the Cold War occurred. Before you do this, consider that your response is something that belongs to you, something that you believe in, something that you will defend until you hear something that causes you to reconsider. This new reconsideration will then become your thoughts, that once again belong to you, and only you. You may find people that agree with you, and that you have the same thoughts as others, but your own personal thoughts and viewpoints are still your own. This is what (I think) it means to be a thinker; you are strong in your convictions yet open-minded, knowing that open-mindedness is the surest way to strengthen your convictions. Before you create a blog post, ask yourself if you actually believe what you are writing, if you do not, or only partially, then stop to revise your thoughts. Synthesize all of the arguments presented in class, draw your own conclusion. Do not treat the notes from yesterday like a shopping list, deciding which one(s) is(are) most easily supported. Combine and revise them as necessary, eliminating redundancies, so that as you read your post you honestly feel like you own something, your thoughts.

Then, comment on a minimum of 3other blog posts, or as many as you are willing. How do these posts compare with yours? Have they thought of something that you did not consider, and does this make your own blog post incomplete or inaccurate? Or are they posting something that you consider to be incorrect, faulty logic, or only partially correct? Be polite, since you are commenting to help them and yourself, not to disparage them.

Finally, go back to your own blog, having read the posts and comments of your classmates, and add a comment to your own blog, either modifying your original thoughts or justifying why you cannot modify your original thoughts. Please, please, please; don't just write it, believe it.