Mikayla Murphy - Final Blog Post

Intro Unit

    “What is a Myth?” from Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth explained why we have myths -- how they were designed to help us cope with “the problematic human predicament.”  Myths provide comfort, making the human experience a little easier to enjoy.  Nigel Spivey’s Second Nature also reveals something that makes the human experience easier.  In it, he explains the “picturesque” and how it points to something greater than us.  Without something greater than you or I, humans have less reason to live.  Chapter three of Leonard Shlain’s The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, “Right Brain/Left Brain,” discusses the differences between the two hemispheres of the brain and what each one controls.  Then chapter 5, “Nonverbal/Verbal,” talks about the left and right hemispheres’ parts in processing oral and physical forms of communication.  The gist of the two chapters is this.  The left hemisphere is about “doing” while the right is about “being.”  Speech and written language are done using the left hemisphere.  Music, processing someone else’s speech, body language and emotions, etc are understood using the right hemisphere.

Humans, Nature, and Sacred Space

    Grizzly Man showed the importance of having humans in one’s life.  Timothy Treadwell went a little crazy having minimal human contact.  The movie also revealed how dangerous nature can be, no matter how in tune with it you are, or even if it’s your sacred space.  In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Caliban displayed why the way people, in this case natives, are treated is significant.  Humans need to be treated as if they are humans because they are in fact human.  Montaigne’s Of Cannibals is very similar to The Tempest.  There is even one passage that Shakespeare almost quotes verbatim.  It romanticizes the lives of natives, basically saying that they are “noble savages” living in a conflictless utopia.

Love, Beauty, and Art

    As shown in The Picture of Dorian Gray art is very powerful.  It can completely change the human experience.  Art destroyed Dorian’s life, and art was Basil’s life.  Ancient Greek poetry, such as “Seizure”, very clearly showed how great an effect love can have on the human experience.  “Seizure” compares the pains of lost love to a serious physical ailment.  The twinge of love can also be seen in All the Mornings of the World, as can be seen the role (auditorial) art plays in one’s life.  Because of love, Madeleine committed suicide, and Sainte-Colombe fell apart.  The only reason Sainte Colombe didn’t completely lose himself and his touch with reality is because of his music.  

Law, Ethics, and Human Frailty

The Ten Commandments discusses the basic rules by which Christians and Jewish people live.  They are believed to be the laws of God.  They affect the human experience by guiding the individual.  “Basic Teachings of Buddhist Ethics” talks about the main goal of Buddhism (to reach freedom from suffering) and the Ten Non-Virtues.  The Ten Non-Virtues and the Ten Commandments are very alike.  They share five commonalities: don’t murder, lie, steal, covet, or partake in sexual misconduct.  They provide a base for other laws and taboos that change an individual’s experience in life.  The Sermon on the Mount has more Christian values instructing one to be righteous, merciful, pure of heart, peaceful, etc.  For centuries these teachings have helped govern the human experience.  They direct it a certain way, away from things that are mostly viewed as bad.

   

The Inner Journey and Meaning of Human Reality

    The entirety of Siddhartha was about the inner journey.  Through Siddhartha’s struggles to find himself and to find enlightenment, we came to understand the difficulty of the inner journey, as well as how great an impact it has on one’s happiness.  Similarly to Siddhartha, in The Epic of Gilgamesh the main character, Gilgamesh, goes on a long journey to save his friend, and finds tranquility when coming to terms with his mortality.  Unlike Siddhartha and Gilgamesh however, Hamlet, from Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, fails to complete the inner journey.  Suffering from mental illness and deaths of loved ones, Hamlet never reaches that deep seated peace that Siddhartha and Gilgamesh have found.  He never achieved happiness because of his incomplete journey.

Brittany Santo Final Exam

Humanities, summarized, is the study of human culture. There are many cultures that humans have created over different parts of the world, however, humanities covers all cultures and societies as a whole. This is because all humans essentially experience and need the same aspects of life, no matter the culture or society. Some of the aspects are, but not limited to, the brain, symbolism, writing, oral language, storytelling, experiences of time, other humans, nature, sacred space, love, beauty, art, laws, ethics, human frailty, the inner journey and reality. The human experience does not have to include all of these aspects, however, it is impossible to for the human life to be without some of them, for example, other humans and reality. In this post, I will discuss how each of these aspects affect the human experience.

The human brain is considered the most complex and developed out of any other species on earth. This brain has two hemispheres, a right and left, in which do specific tasks in understanding aspects such as symbolism, writing, oral language, storytelling, time and many more. As said in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain, the right brain is nonverbal, meaning it comprehends the language of crying, gestures, grimaces, touching and body stance. It expresses being, the complex meshing of competing emotions that constitutes our existential state at any given moment. The right brain also deals with feeling states like love or humor, of which are non-logical. The left brain, however, it the right's opposite. It deals with specifically doing, rather than being. Speech, action, analysis, numeracy and abstraction are all the left brains primary functions. The text From God: A Brief History by John Bowker defines each of these aspects that the left and right brain hold. The left brains function of speech also deal with symbols and signs. Music, rituals, myths and art, are all aspects that the right brain comprehends, and are defined as emotion based ideas. To define down these functions of the brain further, the text Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain defines that the right side of the brain is non-verbal, but this means it is intuitive, spatial, holistic, non-rational and analogical. The left brain is, yes, verbal, but this also means it is temporal, digital, linear, and rational. All of these aspects from each hemisphere bring together one brain, in which defines a being as human. This is a important role in the human experience because to be able to use these functions of the brain is the way to have a human experience. Without the brain, humans would not be a functioning being.

Nature, along with the human brain, is a very important aspect of the human experience. Nature surrounds everything, it is the basis of life and without nature, life itself would not exist. In Of Cannibals by Michel De Montaigne, he explains that mother nature is great and powerful. She creates all, but humans have surcharged her beauties and riches with inventions far beyond mother natures makings. Since nature is the basis of all life, it is impossible for humans to not have it in their human experience. Nature is so powerful, it can be considered a sacred space. Sacred space is a space defined beyond other in which holds significant meaning. In the poem Stone Fish Lake by Yuan Chieh shows how nature, stone fish lake, is a sacred space to someone who finds joy and happiness in all the things the lake has to offer. This is also heavily defined in the film Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog. The "Grizzly Man" was Timothy Tredwell, who believed that the grizzly bears of Alaska need him to save them, and protect the grizzly bears essentially sacred space. This further explains that sacred space and nature go hand in hand, and are important aspects in the human experience that humans can not avoid. Nature is everything, and humans can never ignore it.

Love, beauty, and art are all aspects of the human experience in which interlock with each other. Love, as defined in Philosophies of Art and Beauty From Symposium by Plato, is of the everlasting possession of the good. Plato also explains that love is of immortality, but always coming and going. This relates to beauty, as said in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Aristotle and Beauty, in which Aristotle believes that beauty consists of an arrangement of part such as proportion, harmony, symmetry, and similar notions. But, this concept brings the question of natural beauty. From the Internet Encyclopedia: Kant's Aesthetics, Kant explains how natural beauty is borrowed from nature in fine art. Art, according to Kant, can be tasteful, but soulless because it lacks the criteria that would make it more than just an artificial version of beautiful natural object. Therefore, as shown, love, beauty, and art can not be experienced with out, essentially, the other. Humans experience love as apart of the daily life. Humans love objects, family members, friends, significant others, and many more. Love is an emotion part of the human experience, in which follows the experience of beauty in natural objects, the art of those natural objects.

Ethics and human frailty was a unit which heavily related to the human experience. Ethics are set rules held by a particular person in which they follow by in their daily life. In Basic Teachings of Buddhist Ethics, there are ten non-virtues in which Buddhists follow by as their ethics. Things such as, taking a life, stealing, lying, harsh speech, and more define the means of ethics and the importance in the human experience. Humans hold ethics to help steer away from wrong doings and thoughts. Human frailty relates heavily on ethics, and hold a lot of the same reasoning. Human frailty means moral weakness. Ethics deals with the aspects of moral weakness, as to finding rules to prevent morally wrong doings and feelings. In The Ten Commandments, they similarly hold the same sayings as the ten non-virtues in Buddhism. Lying, murder, and stealing are all aspects of ethics and human frailty in which the ten commandments and the ten non-virtues hold similar. Ethics and human frailty are both apart of the human experience that prevent the daily life of an individual from wrongs and bad behaviors.

The inner journey and the meaning of human reality are both part of the human experience that are not as much covered as the others. The inner journey is usual spiritual or religious, however, it does not have to be. The inner journey can be a journey of self discovery, as shown in Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Siddhartha went on a journey to discover himself, and although having a tough road, with considering suicide, he becomes wiser with his experiences with the life around him traveling with the Samanas. Discovering yourself as an individual comes with the discovery of the real aspects of yourself. Human reality, as shown in The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, shows that not all reality is real. In this story, it shows humans living in a cave in which display shadows of objects in the real world. These humans are forced to stare at these shadows, making it their reality. It is only when they finally come out of the cave do they realize that their reality was not what was actually real. This shows that each individual can have a different reality of life, however, there is only one right reality. Human reality is also heavily shown in Hamlet by William Shakespeare. The main character, the prince of Denmark, Hamlet, is turned mad by the reality of his fathers death and betrayal of his mother towards his passed father. Hamlet's reality was when he was mad with grief, however, the rest of his friends and family did not see his mad reality. This further shows that human reality is apart of the human experience in all different forms, for each different individual.

Humanities has been a gain in knowledge of all the aspects that the human can experience. All of these units discussed have defined a sense of understanding as to where and why we experience the things we do, and as to what exactly makes us human. To be human is not only to experience one of these topics, it is all of them. The human experience is contained of many different aspects, in which is different for every individual. However, the study of humanities defines and summarizes all of these aspects as a whole. The study of human culture has been a challenging ride for me, although, I am grateful for the knowledge I have gained on understanding what makes me human.

Casey Koziara - Final Blog Post

In our humanities class, there has been an overarching theme throughout each unit. Balance. Balance within ourselves, balance within our life, and balance with our views all contribute to a healthy human experience.  Balance is essential. Without balance in our lives, our human experience is diminished. However, it appears that most areas of our human experience show imbalance. And unfortunately, these imbalances come in some of the most important aspects of our human experience. We see imbalances within society dealing with our right vs left brain, relationship with nature, emphasis on beauty, view on ethics, and the inner journey.

From the reading The Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, Shlain told us how our left and right hemispheres within our brain work together. The balance between each hemisphere has helped the human species survive throughout time, especially in one of the most essential tools we use, communication. Our right brain is the more creative side, it helps us interpret symbols and icons. On the other hand, our left brain is more analytical, it helps us make sense of written word and computing numbers. Language has been a tool used by humans, and it has evolved in many ways throughout time. In God: A Brief History by John Bowker, it is discussed how in earlier times, symbols and signs were used to represent objects. “The power of symbols is that they form a common language that all people understand” (Bowker 39). Because symbols became universal, our right brains are able to dissect meaning from them. Symbols became common in religion and ritual due to their versatility; people who spoke different languages could still come up with the meanings behind symbols. Bowker talks about how myths emerged in cultures to explain how the earth came to be. This is where Shlain argues life turned from heavily right brained to heavily left brained. In A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong, she talks about the evolution of myths. Myths first started as an oral tradition and were passed down through oral storytelling. This oral storytelling way of communication played to the strengths of the right brain as the right brain can pick up on the gestures and facial expressions of the storyteller. However, as communication evolved, they began to be written down and recorded, and no longer told orally. This created a left brain dominated human experience because reading and comprehending the words became a more common form of communication. Shlain has argued that the imbalance of being a left brain heavy society has created a human experience where men are superior due to the fact that men tend to be more left brained than females.

In a different battle for balance, humans try to straddle the line with nature. Nature is the most beautiful things here on earth, yet it is powerful. Today, we find ourselves living on the extreme ends of interaction with nature. Society tends to live with very little harmony with nature, while those from earlier times and a select few from today’s society try and live in complete harmony with nature. The most accurate depiction of modern society, I thought, came from Albert Goldbarth in his poem History as Horse Light. The poem talks about how modern society has turned its focus to war and power, so now the beautiful things in life such as art and nature are being overlooked and destroyed. This affects the human experience in that we complicate life and make it unfair. Not everyone can have power, but everyone can appreciate good art, which is why it is such a shame that these beautiful things within our lives go unnoticed. On the other end of the spectrum we have Timothy Treadwell from Grizzly Man who lives entirely in nature. This appears to have no harm to nature; however, Timothy trusted nature so much that it took his life. Most of us don’t live a life where we are living completely isolated with nature, but if we did, we can see that it affects our human experience because we can end up having our experience taken from us. This is not to say people can’t live in nature, but we can not, like Timothy, overstep our boundaries. It is not a life of balance if we try to act with nature if it is not how we naturally should behave. One group of people I thought that lived with the best harmony in nature were the Australian Aborigines. We first learned about these people in Nigel Spivey’s How Art Made the World Journey to the Origins of Human Creativity - Second Nature. The Aborigines take what they need from nature, but they know the boundaries that exist. They do not try to interact with creatures that they know are dangerous. The Aborigines have the perfect balance with nature because they are able to use its resources without causing it any harm. This balanced relationship with nature enhances a positive human experience because they are causing any harm to themselves or to nature.

There is also a lot of imbalance within beauty in our society. When our class wrote our first thoughts about beauty, it was clear that most believed a person needed inner beauty in order to be beautiful. In Pygmalion, inner beauty was what Pygmalion was after. He was unimpressed by the other women in the town he didn’t present themselves in a way that demanded respect. Pygmalion then sculpted an ivory statue to represent a pure and beautiful women who was beautiful on the inside and the outside. This is how society should view women. However, our society rewards outer beauty more than inner beauty. As displayed in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, we saw how damaging an obsession with appearance is. In addition, we saw how physical beauty doesn’t always correlate with inner beauty. Over time, as people began to realize that Dorian wasn’t that great of a person, his portrait began to reflect his inner self. If you looked like the way act, would you still be beautiful? Although it doesn’t work like this, it is important to act with good inner beauty rather. As much as we all love to be beautiful, physical beauty goes away and all that will be left is the person you are. Because of this, balance between physical and inner beauty is necessary. I believe that this emphasis on physical beauty is damaging to the human experience because it takes away our ability to love. Love is something that we all want when we grow up. In the poem A Prayer to Aphrodite by Sappho, we see a letter begging for love. Love is such a desirable feeling, which is why it is necessary for us to develop good inner beauty, because that is why people truly love us. With balance between the inner and physical beauty, and removing the emphasis on physical beauty, the human experience can be better because we may no longer feel pressure to look like the ideal form that is created by societal standards. In addition, we will be able to focus on the person within ourselves, which is the only beauty we can actually control; we can’t control the physical beauty we are given.

It is important to have a good balance with ethics and law in order to create fairness and equality within society. Some ethics have become universal, as we can see comparing The Ten Commandments and The Ten Non-Virtues from Basic Teachings of Buddhist Ethics. The Ten Commandments and The Ten Non-Virtues both advertising against killing, stealing, adultery/sexual misconduct, lying, desiring what others have, and they both advertise respect. The balance that needs to be found here is within the respecting others portion. The golden rule most people are taught is to treat others the way you want to be treated. This means people need to respect those with different beliefs than them. Ethics, in my opinion, is the trickiest aspect of the human experience because everyone has a different set of beliefs, yet there needs to be a universal code of ethics in order to maintain order and limit chaos. This gray line between right and wrong was clearly illustrated in Guests of the Nation by Frank O’Connor. Here, two men are forced to execute POWs, which whom they have grown to like as people. However, the soldiers were ordered to kill the POWs. Although the universal code of ethics seems to agree that killing is a violation of ethics, the soldiers were given no choice. This is where there is an imbalance and confusion involving ethics. Ethics play a huge part in the human experience because we learn them as we grow up and it impact how we behave. In addition, for the most part, if everyone followed the universal code of ethics, the human experience would be a much more positive experience.

The last aspect of the human experience to dissect is the inner journey. Everyone's inner journey is different, and everyone has a different end goal. In the book Siddhartha, the end goal for Siddhartha was enlightenment. In order for Siddhartha to reach this point, he had to go through a rollercoaster of emotions. These emotions and experiences are where I see commonalities with the inner journeys. Siddartha experienced personal pain through becoming a samana. This experience wasn’t what lead to Siddhartha’s enlightenment, but every experience is necessary in leading to the destination. This personal suffering is similar to the pain felt by Hamlet. Hamlet felt pain, and struggle in dealing with it, due to the murder of his father. Lastly, in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov struggles with poverty. All these sufferings and experiences of pain are eye openers. I believe pain is an essential step in achieving your goals for your inner journey. Next Siddhartha was driven by desire and the want to love, which he learned from Kamala. However, drive for desire often leads to dangerous ends. Desire is taught to be the root of suffering in Buddhism, and I agree in that desire derails you from your inner journey, yet I still see it as an essential step in leading you to your end goal. Unfortunately for Raskolnikov and Hamlet, they were driven by the desire to kill, and it ultimately prohibited them from reaching any type of enlightenment. Luckily for Siddhartha, he was able to escape desire, and he ended up working the fields and the ferry with Vasudeva. Here, Siddhartha experiences more pain when he son rejects him, but this pain leads to self reflection, and that is what I believe to be the final key to achieving your inner journey. With a little pain, Siddhartha was able to reflect on himself. He realized that he too had ran away from his father. With pain, desire, and self reflection, I believe it is possible to achieve your inner journey. The inner journey impacts the human experience because it is what gives our life a purpose to ourselves, and we are only living our lives for ourselves only, so I believe if we can achieve our inner journey, it presents us with a positive human experience.

Balance within life is what creates a positive human experience. If we can, as humans, create a society where we use both sides of our brain it will create a better experience as humans because right brained and left brained individuals can equally contribute. Balance within nature is also necessary. We need to live in harmony with the planet to a point where we aren’t causing the planet any harm, yet we still keep ourselves out of harm. Balance with beauty is another essential key to life; we should strive to be beautiful people on the inside, not just physically. With ethics, balance is hard to find, but the human experience is more positive when the gray area between right and wrong is limited. Lastly, balance within ourselves is the most important balance that is necessary in life because it is what allows us to achieve our goal and create a healthy human experience.

Megan Dille - Final Blog Post

Humanities has opened my eyes to the broader aspect of what it means to be human. They way in which we think is shaped by our communities, childhoods, experiences, and morals. Everything we do and say has a meaning, and it truly is based on those factors that meaning stems from. Looking at many different cultures and religions had helped me understand where people and ideas come from and how it influences the lives of others. Humanities studies the connections between important human affiliations such as language, art, music, philosophy, and religion, while questioning what it means to be human and live a “good” life. This semester I have gained a much greater understanding of humanity and am more aware of my interest in the differences between communities, religions, and morals.

The first unit was on some background information such as mythology, the concept of time, and how the right brain and left brain differ. In “A Short History of Myth” by Karen Armstrong, the concept of mythology is talked about. What is interesting about mythology is that, similar to religion, it offers a way of idolizing other beings that will push humans to be good people. Mythology in itself is just a collection of stories. Yet, it is essential to human beings to encourage them to work, live a plentiful life, and strive for a goal. This can be seen in The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, who spoke about “Dreamtime” and the Aborigines. In a sense, mythology is tied in with “Dreamtime” because it is specific to a group of people or culture, but has not been physically proven to be true. The concept of “Dreamtime” is that those who believe in it, the Aborigines, do not live on the same clock as we do in our own lives. They live on the clock of the “Dreamtime”, which puts them at the bidding of the Spirits, or their gods. They don’t count days, or hours, or have appointments in the same way we do. Everyday is different in that they do important tasks first, but not at any given time. The mythology of the Aborigines has been tested in the past years as writing had taken away from many of the spiritual power. The Aborigine people were strictly based on oral tradition, and when Europeans had discovered the area, writing had been adopted. The stories that had once been strong due to only a few elders understanding and telling them were now on paper for all to read. People who did not respect or believe the stories were now taking away from the weight it has on the Aboriginal community. The Aborigines did not have the same understanding of writing as the Europeans, but they had great memories. Leonard Shlain talks about the differences in the left and right brain, in which he explains the left brain is known for memory, analytics, and movement. The right brain is of emotions, music, and dance. Though writing is of the left brain, and memory is also of the left brain, writing has to be interpreted, which is a right brained concept. The Aborigines, though seemed to be more left brained, were big into song and dance within their rituals, which allows for them to utilize both their right brain and their left brain in the essence of their mythology, or “Dreamtime”.

The Aborigines believed in the idea of “Dreamtime” in which the Spirits live within the earth and the living work toward keeping it healthy to please their Spirits. Their creation story is built upon the idea that the Spirits forged the Earth and then turned into specific elements of the Earth. This is a great contrast to how Genesis portrays the creation of the Earth, as God had created a place for man to live, things for man to eat, and then created man. The world was essentially created for man to thrive and live. Compared to the Aboriginal creation myth, this gives the impression that humans are much more selfish and they focus on their own health before anything else. What does this say about us as humans? It seems that those who had been touched by Genesis shared many of the same qualities as the myth portrays. How is it that one savage can be better than another? Montaigne expands upon this question in his work “Of Cannibals”, explaining how those of South American only went to war if they needed land, or needed resources. Within those wars, there were no prisoners of war, but heads on stakes and bodies on plates as they were seen to be a sign of power and dominance. Though, they were always quick deaths. Cannibals are much worse than “noble savages” as the Europeans were considered. They took land and went to war out of greed and power, not of necessity. They murdered for fun and tortured out of boredom. Montaigne takes a jab at his own community as he talks about how a “noble savage” is not noble at all, and has no reason to believe they are better than the tribes in South America. It is in our human nature to test our boundaries, but it is not in our nature to murder our own kind and torture the souls we could learn from. It poses the question whether we understand our place in this world, or even in nature. We feel as though we are the superior beings on this planet, and so we find that all communities are our own communities in a sense. Herzog shows us the end results of not knowing our limits in his documentary Grizzly Man. Treadwell was a lover of grizzly bears and had set out to protect them by emerging himself in their environment. The wild is a dangerous place for humans because we do not understand our place within it. Treadwell lost his life as he had tried to be the dominant species with the grizzly bears, and even as he said he understood the danger he was in, he got too comfortable being in the danger zone which blinded his judgment. Human beings have a hard time realizing their is a time and a place for everything, but we are not always meant to be apart of certain things in this world.

Though our place in nature is very finicky, there is no question that humans are meant to be around humans. The way in which we act in society is very dependent on the type of person we are and our physical characteristics. Sometimes, it is our physical characteristics that shape the type of person we are. This concept is explored in both The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Adam and Dorian are similar to each other in the same sense that Evelyn and Lord Henry are. Adam and Dorian were pure characters; untouched by the effects of society. It wasn’t until Evelyn and Lord Henry had come into their lives that they began to change. Evelyn had taken an out of shape Adam and turned him into a fit, handsome man. This had changed his character for the worse as he started to receive extra attention, which made him more confident. Possibly even too confident, as he cheated on Evelyn. Dorian is dissimilar to Adam because he already had beauty, Lord Henry just exposed him to the power his physical beauty can have on others. Dorian had become a greater influence on himself than Lord Henry, as he continued to think only of himself throughout the novel. Adam and Dorian saw their own reflections at the end of their stories when Adam was called out by Evelyn and Dorian saw the results of his picture. Physical beauty often leads to a less than beautiful character, which is a lesson the two had learned the hard way. Though beauty is important to society, it is not always a key factor of love. The Romance of Tristan and Iseult by Beroul tells the tale of two Sir Tristan, who is gravely ill, and Iseult, his lover who has the ability to heal his soul before his death. Iseult traveled rocky seas and nearly died herself before she made it to Tristan’s bedside, only to find him dead of heart break. The most compelling part of their love tragedy is the sole fact that their love was not based on one of physical desire like that of Egyptian love poetry and stories, but of a love of character and being. Iseult only wanted to be by his side and be there for him emotionally. Their love goes beyond the beauty that Adam and Dorian had desired and fell for, but of a real love that both Adam and Dorian could never have.

In the Unit of law, ethics, and human frailty, moral structures are explored. “The Ten Commandments” and “The Four Noble Truths” have dissimilar purposes and expectations of their moral structures. Within “The Ten Commandments” that that followers are to live a structured life based on the word of God. Though they are in place to allow people to do good things, the commandments are really just a way for the church to never question the word of God. Many of them are not moral truths, but protection of the power of God’s word. “The Four Noble Truths” believes in doing good to benefit the community and to stimulate personal growth. The Buddhist understanding of morals allows for more forgiveness and understanding, which leads to greater growth. These moral structures were tested in Crimes and Misdemeanours as the characters struggled to maintain relationships and follow their moral guidelines. Morals help us to understand what other believe to be good and bad. If we are more aware of what others find to be moral, we should be able to take the time and reflect on ourselves. The characters in Crimes and Misdemeanours had reflected upon their situations, but not necessarily their morals in general. If they had taken the time to truly look at their moral structures, they would have been able to think of better ways to deal with their individual struggles. “The Four Noble Truths” would have been a great moral structure for Judah and Cliff, because it allows room for personal understanding in relation to difficulties, and encourages growth.

Within the stories of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, The Story of Siddhartha by David Grubin, and Hamlet by William Shakespeare, there is an overarching theme of purpose, either in life or in soul. Oedipus faces a prophecy that he only became aware of nearing the end of the play. It was of his nature to reject the idea that a greater being or power had bestowed upon him this future, a future that was not pleasant. I find it hard to believe that one’s path can be predetermined, which is why I took such a liking to Siddhartha’s journey. When he was young, Siddhartha had believed he had a plan in life to become just like his father. That changed when he decided he wanted to go out into the world and explore who he wants to be, for himself. Siddhartha was very spiritual and so he worked on finding his own personal Nirvana. It is interesting to me to look upon the characters within The Story of Siddhartha because only a few of them had reached Nirvana, despite practicing for so many years. I find that personal growth and reaching one’s own purpose in life is to explore and experience as much as possible to become a well rounded, understanding, compassionate person. Siddhartha had taken many falls throughout his time in the city, and even at the river with his son. But his suffering was what eventually led to his final practices at the river and aided in him reaching Nirvana. Creating one’s own purpose in life is something that Hamlet had done after the death of his father in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Everyone deals with grief differently, and for Hamlet it was creating his own purpose, to find justice for his father’s death. Though Hamlet understood he was in line for the throne, he didn’t necessarily find the position appealing because it didn’t have any meaning to him. Hamlet found that his purpose in life was to do what was right and do what he felt was just by finding his father’s killer. Having a goal in life is just as important as living it. It gives meaning, encourages, and rewards those who strive for it. Oedipus may have had a purpose he didn’t ask for, Siddhartha found his purpose through emotional suffering, and Hamlet found his through grief. Not only do the three have in common that they had found their purpose, their destiny, but they all found it through suffering.

Living is much more than studying, working, and remaining healthy. Living is taking in every aspect of the world, and taking those aspects and adjusting them to better who you are. The right and left brain aid us in analyzing data, reading, writing, dancing, and caring for others, which is the baseline of all of humanities. It is the study of being human and aspects of human culture. From studying the differences between mythologies, understanding our place in the world, understanding our purpose, to understanding our morals as they relate to beauty and personal growth, humanities has covered nearly everything from the basics of how we think to which ethical philosopher we match up with best. The broad knowledge of these many topics has allowed me to discover what I believe in the most, and how I want to live my life.

Danica - Final Exam Blog Post

Humanities is defined as “the study of how people process and document the human experience… [involving] philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to understand and record our world” (stanford.edu). We learned about the connections between each aspect of the Humanities through various writing pieces, movies and documentaries, and art. These materials gave us a basic idea of what the Humanities are and why they are important to study and understand.

Our first unit was about cognition and knowing. Human cognition is an important part of the Humanities because they are all about why we experience life the way we do, and challenging our own thoughts and cognition. We as humans enjoy thinking about thinking, and analyzing why we think what we do. One of the most influential readings in this unit was Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. The main idea of this book is how human’s extreme capacity for cognition hinders our ability to enjoy life and be fully functional and productive. The story follows a small boatload of people in attempting to salvage the human species. The characters face many difficulties due to their intelligence and emotional abilities impeding their ability to simply reproduce and survive. Another important material that introduced the scientific element of human cognition was The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. This excerpt explains the difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and how they facilitate our cognition of words, emotions, music, visual art, etc. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess explains how our right and left brain work in harmony to perform different tasks, but also how they can conflict and cause contraction in our thinking/knowing. This connects to Galapagos, in which the hemispheres of the characters’ brains often “disagreed” and held them back. Jill Bolte Taylor’s Ted Talk My Stroke of Insight is about how the stroke she has that disabled the left side of her brain, the side that controls emotion and creativity, and how it affected her cognition when she could only use the analytical, methodical side of her brain. Hearing about how Taylor’s daily performance was affected so strongly by only being able to use one side of her brain just proves how important the two independent sides and their partnership are. Vonnegut, Shlain and Taylor all explore how our brains and cognitive ability affect our daily lives and our experience as humans.  

The second unit was about nature, human beings and sacred space. “Nature” in this unit meant both human nature, as in natural tendencies, and also the earth’s nature. A sacred space is a place that has deep spiritual and emotional significance to the inhabitant of the space. Grizzly Man, a documentary about a man who goes to live with bears, perfectly embodies both “human nature”, and “humans in nature”. Tim Treadwell, the man who goes to live with bears in their natural habitat because he feels like he is “meant to be with them” is defying both human nature and the creatures of the natural world. The bear sanctuary was considered a sacred space for Treadwell because he felt that he felt very connected with. Though Treadwell may have been happy living with the bears, his mission to live as “one with the bears” was frowned upon because he was considered to be tampering with nature and the naturalness of earth without human impact. How Art Made the World by Nigel Spivey was a piece we used to learn about nature being “played with” by humans, similar to Grizzly Man. Spivey talks about landscape paintings, timeless renditions of nature, and how humans alter nature to appeal to their artistic styles/aesthetics. Both of these works show how it is seemingly human nature to tinker with nature’s tendencies. In contrast, the Australian Aborigines show us that not all cultures intend to overtake or possess nature. We read Aborigine stories and creation myths, revealing the importance of their surroundings to these people. The Aborigines are an indigenous tribe whose mission is to cohabitate with nature and respect the natural world, which they regard as their ancestors. These three works, among many others we explored, showed us different perspectives on the idea of human nature and the human relationship with the natural world. How humans interact with nature and other animal species’ is an important part of understanding the human experience.

For our third unit, we learned about love, beauty and art. Love is widely regarded as one of the most important “missions” of the human existence. We explored the interconnecting concepts of love and beauty, and beauty and art. One of the most meaningful readings was The Picture of Dorian Gray, about an artist and his philosophical ideas about beauty’s role in falling in love, and beauty’s role in his art. Oscar Wilde is the author of this book, and he shares his aesthetic philosophy through his characters. In addition, we read many speeches and sermons by other aesthetic philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, two very influential Ancient Greek men. Their works taught us why love is important to our existence and how/why we are so emotionally driven towards love. Plato and Aristotle write about our interest in physical beauty, and what makes something beautiful. The two also taught us a lot about motivations for art and what art essentially is. The ancient love poetry that we analyzed gave a more raw and wholesome perspective on the ideas of beauty and love. The poems that we read demonstrated the powerful influence love has on us, and how it has impacted humans through time. The works we read from various philosophers, poets and authors of different time periods showed us what love, beauty and art are, and why we pursue these things so passionately in our lives.

Our next unit focused on ethics, law and the frailty of the human existence. Ethics are our personal set of ideas on why we exist and what our human/life purpose is. Ethics has an important role in law, because our values affect how we choose to govern ourselves/each other. With ethics comes the idea of the frailty of human life; the fact that we are delicately sentimental and curious creatures. This unit proved that the human existence is just the epic rhetorical question. For this unit, we returned to concepts first encountered in Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut.  Galapagos touches on the monstrous contradiction that is the human experience, and why we exist. The characters in the story find themselves desperately scrambling to maintain the human population on earth, and the story ponders what purpose our lives really have. Why were those characters trying to help the human species survive after all? In Galapagos, emotion gives great meaning to the lives of the characters. Similarly, The Ten Commandments, guidelines for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, also asserts that the purpose of our lives is emotional connections with others. The commandments focus on how we as humans shall interact with higher power(s), ourselves and others. The three religions that practice these commandments show us that many humans throughout time have believed that humans exist for their unique emotional capacity. We also read multiple philosophical readings on ethics, like Nietzsche, Kant, Wilde, Aristotle and Plato. These philosophers deeply explored how fragile we are as humans and our fear of not existing. Their dramatic stories show how our curiousness and confusion motivate us to try to understand our existence. The human emotion that these ethical philosophers write about, in addition to the religious codes we read, helped us to understand how humans throughout time have built their own ethical codes through religion, and how our quest to find meaning for our lives is an important part of the Humanities.

Our last unit involved the inner journey of humans and the meaning of our reality. Siddhartha was the main novel that we read during this unit. The story follows a young man on the path to enlightenment, and his journey within himself. Siddhartha shows us how he gives his life meaning by trying to improve and find himself. He also learns during his journey that desire is the root of suffering, and how strong human desire has caused him to struggle in his life. Night Journey, the story of Oedipus presented through dancing (Martha Graham) was a fascinating piece of art that showed many parallels to Siddhartha. Martha Graham’s dancers show through their bodies the intense emotions and struggles faced by Oedipus and his kingdom. Oedipus’ suffering in life due to guilt, prophecies, love, etc. make his story what it is and give significance to his personal existence. We also read Shakespeare’s Hamlet, following a similar ruler to Oedipus. Young Hamlet lives a life of displeasure and disappointment. These experiences shape who Hamlet is. Siddhartha, Oedipus and Hamlet all prove the importance of suffering, struggle and self improvement in the lives of humans.

The diverse collection of work we read, listened to and watched in Humanities opened our eyes to the meaning of being human. We were able to learn many different opinions and ideas about one confusing topic. Our wealth of knowledge gained from the many men and women who have philosophized the human experience has brought us a step closer to answering the rhetorical question we began this class asking ourselves: what does it mean to be human?

Alyssa Kordana final exam

Each individual goes through a similar sequences of events throughout their life. Every experience that occurs forms an individual and how their mind works, which includes that person’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, actions, general attitude towards life, interests and more. We are all unique, and the human experience is very complicated.  We may classify it as good or bad, hard, amazing, a blessing, anything really. I believe that what we learned about throughout this course is the human experience and what it is truly about through different perspectives of others.The human experience entails many aspects, such as all of the unit topics we have discussed and learned about.

Our introductory unit contained many topics of everyday life such as the functions of the left and right brain, symbolisms, forms of storytelling and much more. All of the topics we had dissed is part of the human experience. On one of the handouts we first received titled “The Two Sides of the Brain and What Each Does,” explains biologically what side of the brain forms what function and why we, as humans, do what we do. In theory, the right side of the brain is responsible for seeing the whole picture, making connections, memory of symbols and much more. The left side of the brain is responsible for verbal and mathematical functions, anything related to time and planning , excels at seeing the pieces of a situation and much more as well. The right and left side of the brain is what makes each and every one of us compel us to live our lives biologically. Speaking of symbols, symbols are also another aspect of the human experience. In the documentary, The Day Pictures Were Born, Dr. Nigel Spivey discusses how symbols came to be and how they are so commonly used today in modern day. And he is absolutely correct! Symbols are all over the world, whether it be an emoji or a sign on the highway that tell you where the food is at. Some symbols are even universal, which is pretty cool.

The second unit includes humans, nature and sacred spaces. As we all know, all three of these things are included in the human experience as well. In Genesis, it is described how the earth and nature came to be, which in the story, came from a higher power. Many individuals, or humans I should say, live and breathe for this belief. This belief of how the earth came to be connects them with the earth and one another more. Humans, such as Grizzly Man become one with the earth in a different way. Living in the wilderness with the bears was his sacred space. He loved to be there, as he devoted 13 summers of his life to the wilderness with them. Nature as a whole could be a sacred space. Just as mine is the ocean, or Olivia’s is on stage or Maddie's is with her horse. In the AAA chart that we filled out, we discussed the Australian Aborigines. The Aborigines were extremely in touch with nature as well. They based their whole lives and cultures around nature, as they relied on it heavily. It was their only way of having resources for food, clothing, art, etc. We still rely on nature for those same things in modern day, as they are part of the human experience as well.

The third unit pertains to love, beauty and art. Each and every one of us has found something beautiful. We have all loved something or someone. We have all created a form of art in one way or another. We have most likely not created art in the same way that Lord Henry thought he did in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lord Henry created a whole other person. Dorian Gray was his human canvas. In modern day, we make art in many forms, it could be through a poem, glassblowing, an awesome English final *winks @ Ms. Levin* or even a painting, such as Picasso’s painting we saw in The Private Life of a Masterpiece: Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’avignon. This piece of art was beautiful to him. He loved creating art, which is why Picasso always put 150% of himself into his work. Love can come in different forms as well. Anyone can love anything. In the packet, What Classical Myth Tell Us About Love and Beauty, there were many examples of this. In the myth Pygmalion, a man falls in life with a sculpture he made while in the myth Myrrha and Cinyras, Myrrha slept with her father without him knowing and had her father’s son. Love comes in all form, shapes and sizes. This is still the same case for modern day. Anyone can love anything and have it be accepted more so than it was a couple years ago.

Laws, ethics and human frailty is part of the human experience as well. Laws come from all over the place! Mostly from local law enforcements, but there are also unwritten laws or rules within society. On the Ten Commandments packet, all the commandments were listed (obviously). But one of the commandments was “Thou shalt not murder.” This is mostly universal. Although the Ten Commandments come from a religious standpoint, you do not have to be religious to believe in and abide by them. I don’t think most of us would murder anyone unless you are a sociopath and can’t feel anything or involved with human frailty, much like Judah in Crime and Misdemeanors. He got away with murder and because he felt confident enough in the fact that he got away with it, he continued to live his life the way he felt was right. He never told anyone about the murder except Cliff and even then he never directly said that he did it. Human frailty is everywhere and it most definitely isn’t always as serious as this situation. Everyone does not have a good moral standpoint or make the best decisions such as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. He murdered an old pawnbroker, but gradually his ethics had kicked in. He knew it wasn’t right at all. The murder still occurred, yet his mental health rapidly declined and guilt got the best of him until he finally confessed. People in fiction and in reality make horrible decisions and think back on it or regret it. It’s all part of the human experience as well.

The last unit included the inner journey and the meaning of human reality. Not everyone has an inner journey throughout their life, or maybe they do and they don’t even realize it. Siddhartha's inner journey was incredible. By the end of his life he had gone through amazing experiences and finally found peacefulness within himself and within his life as a whole. Others, such as myself have only lived for so long and haven’t gone through such a drastic journey, and that’s okay! Gilgamesh also has an inner journey, but it is influenced by Enkidu. Both of them are the threshold of adventure. One individual can help another figure themselves out. Who they are and what their purpose in life is overall. Hamlet was one individual who found what the human reality is on his own as opposed to with someone else. His own meaning of human reality was dark. It was filled with lies, murder and twisted family relationships. Many of us, as young adults, can relate. We are figuring out what life is all about, whether someone is guiding us along the way or not.

The human experience is complex. It entails so many things, but all of the unit topics cover a very large range of what it includes. As I said before, everyone is unique. What they go through in life is what shapes their entire human experience. We all go through loss, love, hatred, human frailty. We all have ethics, we all create art, we are all human. The unit topics that we discussed are a majority of what make up what we all go through at one point or another. This is all part of the human experience.