Maddie Powers- Final Exam Blog Post

Our first blog post was about what we thought it meant to be human. I find it only fitting that for our last blog post we get to write about being human throughout the different topics we have covered within class. Every aspect of life affects the human experience. If nothing changed the human experience we would never change, learn or grow. As we wrap up the semester, I realize that unit we covered was truly about the human experience. We started in the basics of the brain, language, and storytelling. Then we moved directly through humans and covered the nature of them along with their sacred space. We covered the love that humans experience, beauty within everything and art around the world. Wrapping up the semester, we covered human ethics, the law, the frailty of humans and humans inner journey. Overall these topics all come back to one thing, the human experience.

For as long as humans have been around, people have shared stories. The stories have been funny, sad and mysterious. People have written down their stories, told them orally, shared them through pictures and many more ways. Sometimes the stories are real and other lead your mind through a time of imagination. In Leonard Shlain’s reading The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, he discusses the right brain and left brain. The left brain is responsible for giving the facts of the story and deals with being orderly and planned. Typically the left brain prefers non fiction stories. The right brain houses the imagination and enjoys creative storytelling. Another piece of storytelling is symbol’s and signs. Stories can be told through pictures for instance you could tell a story in emojis. John Bowker in God:  A Brief History, talks about symbols that appear in religious stories. For instance a tree is often seen in religious stories all over the world. He says “a symbol is a conventional sign with an agreed meaning”. Another form of storytelling is through pictures. Some say a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture can stand as a symbol that people all over the world can understand. In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong discussed oral storytelling. Within the Paleolithic Period there was not a written record of their myths. Myths were proved to be crucial to the way that humans understood themselves and educated the people about their survival. The Paleolithic men and women told all their stories orally and the stories were passed along the same way.

Some say the humans were created by nature, and some might ask if that's where the term human nature comes from. I believe that it is human nature to have a sacred space. It could be a place where you feel safe or with someone/something where you feel as if when you are together you could conquer the fears of the world. Let’s start from the beginning with the creation of humans. In the story of Genesis God created man and women from nature. Nature was a big part of the creation of humans. Physical pieces of our world, it can be viewed as human nature. In the play “The Tempest”, it constantly explored the concept of human nature and what it meant to be human. Prospero and his daughter Miranda are stranded on an island with the beastly Caliban when a second shipwreck brings ashore the man of Miranda’s dreams. Shakespeare viewed nature through a more natural versus socially imposed lens to expose people's true human nature. Timothy Treadwell also dove into human nature, along with physical nature and touched upon sacred spaces. He spoke highly of the grizzly bears. His sacred space was with the grizzly bears. Treadwell felt that he belonged with the bears and that humans were destroying the precious bears. All three pieces of literature touched upon a piece and part of humans, nature and sacred space.

In the unit of love, beauty and art, I think that all three entwine into each other. I believe that you can’t have one without the others in this unit. In Nigel Spivey’s How Art Made the World, he described the term “picturesque” which literally means “like a picture”, or something seen as a painter would see it”. It was artwork that provoked satisfaction. Spivey described how amazing art can be and the feelings it can produce. In the next text art and beauty take on a different role. In The Picture of Dorian Gray , the portrait that was painted of Dorian showed his sin and corruption. He continued to have physical beauty, but the portrait was no longer beautiful. It was honest, but the beauty was taken and replaced with sin. In the film The Shape of Things, the art changed also. The canvas became a human and the artist changed the canvas into her version of an ideal form of art regardless of the feelings of the canvas. To her, he was a canvas and to him, she was his true love. He fell in love with someone who took advantage of him and used him. In all three pieces of literature art was a focus, but there was also the sense of beauty being embraced or taken away along with the truth or falsity of love.

Within life there is the law, ethics, and human frailty. In the bible, there is the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are not laws, but rules that you should live by. They guide you more on the ethical path of life. It also covers our human frailty by saying that “though shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet they neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbors”. Human frailty is all about resisting our temptations. In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught some of the most important lessons. He encouraged those around to live a morally sound life. Not all live a morally sound life though. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, Judah has an affair. It is not until two years into the affair that he realizes that he broke his own ethical code. Then he breaks the law, by having the women killed. Due to his own human frailty, he broke his own ethical code which then caused him to break the law to cover his mistake.

Throughout life we travel through an inner journey discovering things about ourselves that we never knew and searching for the true meaning of human reality. In the Basic Teaching of Buddhist Ethics, the main goal of buddhist practice is to reach freedom from suffering by coming to see the world as it actually is and abandoning the distorted projections that our thoughts and emotions create. The two most important systems of moral discipline are the Five precepts, which apply to lay people, and the Vows of Individual Liberation, which applies to monks and nuns. Following the system of moral discipline helps in achieving the main goal of buddhism. For some on their inner journey they are not discovering things about themselves, they are experiencing an array of emotions that controls their life. In Hamlet, death takes a toll on Hamlet. He is grieving the loss of his father, while dealing with his mother’s new marriage to his uncle. Hamlet starts off depressed and suicidal, then he becomes very angry about his mother’s new marriage. Throughout his splurge of anger he kills quite a few people. This part of his inner journey that is portrayed within the play as an emotional roller coaster for Hamlet. Siddhartha's inner journey was emotional, but it was more focused on the meaning of human reality. He left to study and learn with the ultimate goal of achieving nirvana. Siddhartha was never satisfied and walked away from some of the most respected teachers and unexpectedly found one that would teach him more than anyone else. He reached enlightenment and he found his own answer as to what the true meaning of human reality was. Sometimes the answer you're seeking takes you on journey that will change your whole life.

The human experience doesn’t come all at once. It is something you live everyday. Not every aspect of the human experience is sunshine and roses, but what is not so pretty makes us as humans stronger. It's the trials and tribulations that give us a chance to change our ways and come out bigger and better on the other sides. “Life’s a climb, but the views great”(Miley Cyrus).