Ashleigh Krenzien Final Exam

Throughout Humanities, I feel like I grew as a person and a student. I learned a lot of new things and read a lot of books that I never knew id love so much. I became a better writing, and I opened up out of my shell and become more comfortable expressing my thoughts and opinions. When we first started this class I would have never imagined all of these units, texts, and visuals all coming together. During my time in Humanities I made a lot of new friends and met a teacher I grew to love, when I walk into humanities everyday, we feel like a family.

In Shlain’s The Alphabet Versus the Goddess he talks about right and left brain behavior and thinking. The right side of the brain is the side that develops first and it is the feeling side. It integrates feelings, recognizes images, and appreciates music. While the left side is the doing, speech, abstraction, and numeracy side, it is the logical side. The right side attributes the act of being, such as love, humor, or aesthetic appreciation and facial recognition We can connect the right and left sides of the brain to the human experience by the parts of speech, numeracy, feelings, appreciation, and doing, are all things that make up a human. We as humans use these things in everyday life, we use numbers, and logic, feelings, and doing in all tasks, even the simple ones. In Bowkers ‘s A Brief History he talks about symbols and their different meanings and uses. He defines symbols as a visual expression of the feelings and thoughts that humans have had about their world and about their situation. Symbols are a universal language that all people around the world use. Symbols are important to being human because symbols represent not only God and attributes of God, but they are believed also to carry something of the reality of God in themselves. He also talks about the representation of rituals in everyday life. A ritual is a learned and repeated behavior that people in a particular group or religion practice, either individually or together. These connect to being human because not only do we use symbols like the peace sign, numbers, signs, and other things in everyday life, we also have our rituals or routines, everyday we wake up and have a plan of what we are going to do everyday. Lastly, in Armstrong's “The Paleolithic Period” it states that men and women regularly reach for the sky, and devise techniques of trance that enable them to put their ascension stories into practice and to achieve a higher state of consciousness. We use this idea in being human because we, as humans, always try to do our best and achieve everything we want in life. We always strive to be the best and have the best.

In Herzog’s Grizzly Man it is a story of Treadwell’s actual footage of his time living among the grizzly bears in Alaska. He believes he has bridge the gap between human and beast. When Treadwell dies, due to a bear attack, it shows us the understanding of nature and its realities. This is used to demonstrate being human because, us as humans, have a natural instinct that we should be scared and careful of wild animals because they can hurt us. Throughout the documentary there are signs of him being mentally ill, this is essentially what caused him to have this theory of bringing humans and animals together. Treadwell not being well, altered his living experience and ultimately caused his death. In Genesis it describes the christian ways in which humans were created. In Genesis (1) It says that human and woman are created at the same time, after all nature and beasts are created. In Genesis (2) man creates all nature and beasts and then creates woman. This shows the state of being human because, the human experience has been around since the beginning of time, the state of being human was a concerned always. In Australia’s Aborigines, it describes how humans use things such as, water, trees, and other natural items to describe other things. For example, water might be God’s tears, and trees, might be his arms and legs. This connects to being human because, we tend to use other things as a way to describe things. For example, we use the word “sick” to mean cool, or “wicked” to mean awesome.

In the unit Love, Beauty, and Art we talked a lot about the aesthetic philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Wilde, and Kant. We discussed this philosophers and their purpose on humans. Philosophers such as Plato believed the real world, was just a copy of the real world that exists in a different realm. Aristotle believed in evoking strong emotion, while Plato did not. Augustine believed that only intellectual things were beautiful. Ficino says that evil deeds are ugly, and good deeds are beautiful. All of these things connect to being human because, us as humans tend to think that being smart, and having strong views and emotions makes you powerful and beautiful. Also, we as humans know that bad things are wrong and good things are okay. In many of the greek myths we read such as Pygmalion, Myrrha and Cinyras, and Aphrodite and Anchises are all myths that depict love, beauty and human nature. In these myths they all talk about a kind of love that is forbidden or not acceptable in some way. Even in today’s society we still have times when we feel like people won't accept us for who we love or won't approve. Lastly, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde tells the story of Dorian, a young man who essentially falls in love with himself and becomes over confident. He begins losing sight of the more important things in life such other than materialistics and looks. This connects to being human now because, we all have those people we know who are just so overly confident that they are mean to others and don't know what is really important.

In the packets we read about the Ten Commandments of Judaism and Christianity it talked about the 10 most important things in the lives of these religions. It was interesting to see how the two were so similar, they both have no murdering, no stealing,no sexual misconduct, no malice, and no lying on their lists of the 10 rules to follow by. I think it is very interesting they relate so closely together. In both packets about each religion it talks, in more detail, about the exact origin of these beliefs and why they are so important. These relate to being a human because, in both cases we, even now, believe and follow a lot, if not most of these. In the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors it talks about moral relativism and objectivism. Moral relativism is the view that what is morally right or wrong depends on what someone thinks. Subjectivism is what is morally right or wrong for you depends on what you think is morally right or wrong. Conventionalism is what is morally right or wrong depends on what the society we are dealing with thinks is right or wrong. These themes show up in the movies but also in being a human now a days because there are some people who always follow the rules, know what is right and what is wrong, and never get in trouble, then there are the people who do the exact opposite. Also, many people tend to think different things are right and wrong than their family or friends.

In our final unit we read three books, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Hamlet, and Siddartha. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu became Gilgamesh’s best friend, and when Enkidu dies Gilgamesh becomes heartbroken, Gilgamesh spends many days and weeks traveling trying to figure out a life without him. Trading, stealing, and mourning as ways to cope with the loss of his best friend. This relates to the human experience because when people lose someone so close to them become numb, closed off from all contact and tend to think of all the good times reminiscing on all the good. When we loss people that are close to us it helps us better understand how much life is taken granted for and how precious it is. In Hamlet, him being the main character, we learn about his mental illness and his struggle with love, self identity, and death. Hamlet has trouble forming, and keeping relationships due to his lack of trust for the world and people. He also struggles with his own identity, he struggles throughout the whole play to learn and figure out who he is and what he wants. Also, he struggles with death, when Ophelia dies, Hamlet becomes so depressed, also after seeing his own mother and uncle kill themselves, he ultimately kills himself. This connects to being human now, especially to us as teenagers because, we often struggle with finding ourselves, and knowing who we are and what we want. Also, we struggle with trust and love at times. Finally, in our reading of Siddartha, we learn of Siddharth and his journey to become enlightened in Judaism. Throughout the novel, we read of his struggles of connecting with the outside world. Then becoming self motivated, and he then begins to realize that his past is the past, and it should not dictate his life now. He learns that he does not need friends to be ultimately happy. In the book he does have down days and begins to forget his humble, important values. But in the end his finishes his journey and becomes enlightened. This connects to being a human even now, because we all struggle with finding our path in life. We graduate high school and most of us don’t even know what we want to study in college. Life is a rough time filled with happiness and sadness, but just like Siddartha, we ultimately learn and grow from that.

Taking this humanities class has really taught me a lot about myself, my views, and my values. I feel like I have a better understanding of what I want in life, what I believe in, and what is ultimately most important. All of these units have taught me something that I will take away from this class and shape me into the person I am now. This class not only taught me what “being human” means, but it taught me what being myself meant.