Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk:

In her account of how she came to discover her true cultural voice, Chimamanda Adichie expresses concern that we can have a serious misperception of another person or nation if we only hear one account about them. I loved this TED Talk because I related to the struggles, stereotypes, and prejudices placed on people when they are narrowed down to a single story. A time when I was reduced to a single story was going into my sophomore year of high school. Some friends I made over the Summer reduced me to the basic Mexican stereotype. To explain, I’m from California so for most of my life people have just assumed because Mexico is so close, but I’m actually half Colombian and half Bolivian. Anyways, it was always the jokes they would make that made me feel annoyed and somewhat angry because in a way they were stripping me of my identity, that my ethnical background was something to make fun of. It made me realize how there were so many single stories of immigration, racially motivated jokes/stereotypes towards Hispanics, and the underrecognition of a whole continent filled with various different countries with their own cultures and communities.

Paradigm shift #1: Music

• Music follows cycles. Styles for musical aspects change with time. New sounds arrive out of nowhere and disappear just as swiftly. When discussing the paradigm shifts in music over the past 50 years and how our popular music artists, such as Elvis Presley or Kurt Cobain, influenced the media culture music can be compared to the changes in social movements that have occurred throughout history and led to new inventions, discoveries, artists, and musical genres.

Paradigm shift #2: 911 airport security

• After 911, airport security came under great scrutiny, and steps were taken to ensure that similar attacks wouldn’t occur in the future. Only those having tickets for flights that day would be permitted to pass the security checkpoint, according to one of the new rules. There would be a prohibition on sharp objects in carry-on luggage. Only for both active loading and unloading were vehicles allowed to pull up curbside.

Paradigm shift #3: Evolution

• Charles Darwin’s innovative theory of natural selection upset traditionalists in the nineteenth century. It allowed people to reconsider their ideas about the universe, humanity, and the beginnings of all other beings. There would not be an area of evolutionary psychology without this paradigm shift in biological science, which also sparked revolutions in other fields. A change to evolution from creation occurred. Darwin demonstrated that all animal life, even humans, is linked by having a common ancestor and that people are a part of the natural world, not above it.

Work Cited:

Orszulok, Alice. “The Evolution of Music.” The Evolution of Music, Science Illustrated, 12 June 2012, https://scienceillustrated.com.au/blog/culture/the-evolution-of-music/.