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.