Lauren Winter September 19, 2011 Period 5 The Boiling Frog Mr.

Quinn has a good point about his boiling frog theory, however his argument is pretty lacking. It is true that people are competing over dwindling recourses, even today as seen on the news. It is agreeable that this lack of recourses can lead to fighting and escalate to further worse means, like a frog in boiling water. However, Mr. Quinns words are hard to trust. He begins to talk about how signs of distress began to appear in society, how the fire has been burning under the cauldron for quite some time now, the violated ethics of totalitarian agriculture, the development of war-making machinery, and the creating of kings and armies. These could have been valid arguments to help make Quinns point, but he did not give actual historical proof or actual evidence that all these things are true and have happened. He talks about the signs of distress that can lead to a boiling frog, however he does not state what these signs are or where they have been found in our history. The fire under the cauldron he says that has been under the cauldron five thousand years agowhat is it? He does not explain what the fire under the cauldron until his essay skips over and starts explaining agriculture. The jump in subjects is confusing and does not seem legitimate. He proceeds to explain the ethics of every creature, and how they have been violated by practitioners of totalitarian agriculture, claiming that they will do anything just to obtain everything for themselves. Quinn does not know this though. How does he know that this is what the practitioners think and he gave no examples from history of how this idea was pushed. He discusses the creating of war-making machinery, political machinery, like armies and kings. This is difficult to understand because people associate armies with the mechanical machinery of war, not in the political sense. He continues on to discuss kings and their relationships with their armies, however this has nothing to do with the boiling frog theory. It could possibly, but he fails to connect this topic with his overall thesis. It basically becomes a random paragraph about how kings are just windbags without their armies in an essay about how society is in trouble. It could be possible that such events could lead to worsening conditions, because in history, Europeans have traveled the world and conquered several societies in order to gain their resources, which could ultimately lead to Quinns idea. Per contra, the thought cannot be proven by the details the he provides in this essay. He lacks the historical proof needed to predict that it would actually happen.