What's really important, Rewards, Learning vs Education, and Struggles with teaching styles...

First off, Ts'ui Pên's Garden of Forking Paths reminds me of the movie The One with Jet Li.  Jet Li discovers that there are other 'hims' across the universe in similar worlds.  In each setting, though he is the same person, he is has chosen different paths and are therefore leading much different lives.  The main conflict is when his Criminal character illegally travels between worlds and kills off all but one version of his character.  Each elimination of a Jet Li makes the other Jet Li's more powerful.







What's really Important:
There have been a few really good class conversations that have made me think about things in a different light.  I've taken pages of notes and made several cross connections with how I generally view the world around me.  The pendulum theme of class swinging between meaning- and feeling-based cultures made a lot of sense and helped outline a basic historical pattern.  Lacon's totality theory on objectivizing those around us in order to cause them harm... Candide's unique and stirring view on optimism...

Struggles with Teaching Styles:
On the other hand, when we'd analyze paintings and other pieces of art, I felt like we would analyze the joy out them.  Occasionally I think that it's appropriate to hold a 2 hour discussion on how a few things make me feel - but maybe it's only a small part of what we could be studying.  Why don't we take a dive into technique...?  We could explore the materials available at different times, ingenuity in creating paint canvases, brushes and inks, making additional prints, the modern printing press, etc.  We could look at the evolution of musical instruments or the ever changing wardrobe fashions...  Each student could give a 5 minute oral presentation on an ancient author and present evidence on how their presence has influenced modern works.  Doc Mack could prepare a lecture on the different architecture found in LDS temples... the alternative possibilities are endless!

Rewards and Accountability, Learning vs Education:
I was really frustrated with the midterm test.  It was lengthy, had technical glitches, involved a great deal of memorization that I found irrelevant, and I wasn't nearly prepared enough for it.  To reign in my distaste, I had to take a few steps back and really analyze the situation.

1. I still had a chance to save my sinking grade with the remaining 800 points available.  Even if I fail the final in a similar fashion, the remaining 600 points will push me into a passing grade.  
2. I find it funny that the grade has been my first concern.  I think that a lot of us are here just for the green-light status on our MyMap academic plan.  With no offense intended for those that are, I'm not a humanities major.  I don't necessarily thrive on this kind of stuff - to me it's just one more GenEd course that I need to take in order to graduate.  I do realize, however, that there is importance in getting a well-rounded education that includes such things that are outside of my immediate interest.  
3. A letter grade is a result of the student satisfying the teacher's requirements.  Grades are objective and don't directly represent significant learning and positive change.  I want good academic marks because it's a reflection of my hard work and opens up doors of opportunity.  On the other hand, I want to remain a life-long learner and not just be satisfied with the a checkmark of completion.  
4. And finally, whatever happens in this class - can potentially be for my good. :) 

Propaganda at it's best

I had never really been exposed to Charly Chaplin before watching this film, and so when I first saw his character with a square mustache I instantly thought of Hitler.  Modern Times came out in 1936 - only a few years before the entire world is at war with the Axis powers, and so I made a connection (probably an incorrect connection after our discussion in class) that this video is a call to action, encouraging all of America to be more industrious and not be a fool like Hitler.  In fact, only Hitler is such a fool that he needs help feeding himself.  And then!  We'll have the machine malfunction so that we can humiliate him in the process.

It kind of reminds me of the educational philosophy from a few years prior, apparent in Bing Cosby's song, Swinging on a Star:

...Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar.  And be better off than you are, or would you rather be a mule!

...if you hate to go to school, you may grow up to be a mule...

...if you don't care a feather or a fig, you may grow up to be a pig...

...if then that sort of life is what you wish, you may grow up to be a fish...

...and all the monkeys aren't in the zoo, everyday you see quite a few.  So you see it's all up to you.  You could be better than you are, you could be swinging on a star.

The world is swinging back to a meaning based culture!  Where your own ingenuity is what brings you success.  The world can be a better place if you're smart enough and apply yourself!  You can be swinging on a star if you just go to school!  Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) took this pendulum swing down a slippery slope and wrote a future-based novel about how unrestrained technology would turn the world into feeling-less robots.  We'd have baby making factories that produced the exact number of children each state needed.  There was even a setting to adjust the cognitive firepower of the people it kicked out!  Huxley's warning is against completely scientifically constructed societies that targets humanistic achievements, such as literature, art, and religion.

Bloggers block...

Nothing in this chapter really spoke to me... The chapter was interesting enough - but I'm having troubles finding something that I really want to write about.

Here are a few interesting points:

(1) From the text, "New medical advances reduced the rate of infant mortality, cured hitherto fatal diseases, and prolonged life expectancy."  So far so good.  From that one piece, you'd think that the world is becoming a much better place.  However!  The following sentence tells us that these medical advances played a large part in starting a world war... "As a result, populations in most of Europe soared to record levels, creating food and housing shortages."  Along with these populations came a housing and transportation crisis that "uprooted the lives of many people" and as a result, "daily existence became anonymous and impersonal."

(2) New technological advances


Fun pieces from Stranger than Fiction:

"I don't need a nicotine pack, I smoke cigarettes."

"And then harold saw it, a damaged and terribly mistreated sea-foam green fender staring back at him.  Despite its obvious maladies, the guitar spoke with conviction and swagger.  In fact, it looked harold directly in the eye and very plainly stated, "I rock."

"It came to me... ...well, Penny, like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method."

Class Notes

Garden of the Forking Path

German spy, not because of his loyalty to Germany, but because he wants to prove that the Chinese are capable/smart.


Salvador Dali - The persistence of memory (1931
Dali's painting suggest that even time isn't a constant thing and is being uprooted. Einstein begins to question time...  Clocks suggest that the thing that has been so reliable actually isn't!  We can't be sure that the sun WILL come out tomorrow...  People are beginning to distrust the center and it reflects in their art.

A piece of art isn't complete until it's viewed... and each person responds differently because they come from different backgrounds and experiences...

Surrealism and the idea of time is central to modernism/post modernism.

Lyo Tard - there are grand narratives that explain everything.  Christian narrative - plan of salvation.  Communism, Science, etc.  Coming into the 20th century people lose faith in absolute truths... and create their own paradox that there are no grand narratives... and your world begins to break down.

Mircea Eliad - the sacred and the profane.  People find a center to their universe and build around that center.  Once a center breaks down we move on and find a new center.  20th century breaks away from centers that creates unorganized space.

Bringing it home...

The theme of the class is a swinging pendulum between Meaning to Presence.


Levinas - French jew who spent time in a concentration camp...

     When someone perceives that they know someone 100% they can reach a point where they summate everything about them into one label.  "You are a jew, say no more, I know..." And at that point of totality, humans are then able to harm other humans.  The tool of war is totality.  label them as something that stops the questions and allows you to destroy them: Enemy, Killer of Jews, Murderer, Terrorist, etc.
     Levinas encourages a different mind set where we realize that each person has an infinite amount of responses and can never be known 100%.  Above all is ethics, how we treat people.



Lacon - French philosopher...

     Lacon says that everyone is born without any language ability.  Everything about those early moments is emotion, drive, instinct--The Real.  But then at some point the infant finds a mirror and sees their reflection.  At that point they realize that they are, something...  Language allows us to name and categorize everything by assigning symbols to represent and communicate them--The Symbolic.

(1) You can't really go back to The Real--because once we catch a glimpse of it, we label it!  And then we're right back to The Symbolic!  (2) Take for instance, a father holding his new born baby with unspoken emotion.  As soon as he mutters, "I love you", that unspoken feeling is redefined because it is now filed away in the love category. (3) Every once in awhile our symbols are shattered for a brief moment.  Two planes slammed into the twin towers of NYC.  There was a moment of sheer emotion, without words... Then certain definitions were reevaluated, such as the word safe.  What does it mean to be safe anymore?  What--or who--is the United States of America anymore?

Further connections associate The Real with mother and water, and The Symbolic with father and language.

Lacon encourages us to suspend the symbolic, to feel the emotions.  Because once you label that emotion it is no longer as, 'words cannot describe."  Think of Christ after the death of Lazarus--with all power to raise his dear friend from the dead--taking the time to weep with his friends instead of commanding Lazarus to rise.  The Nephites weren't able to repeat the words uttered by Christ in the Americas.  I wonder if was because it was a pure communication of the spirit, which in our words, can't be described.


Romantasicm is all about presence - feelings, emotions.
Revolutionary art reduces complexity and pushes a strong message.

Class Notes

Life is Beautiful - Roberto Benigni (Comedy)

How can you create a comedy about something so serious?  Like the great depression... or the Nazi terror of World War II?!  Without minimizing the seriousness, we can find the humor/good here...

Reality - Am I dreaming right now?
Nephi says that he doesn't know all things... but that he knows a few fundamental things.

Opera

I fell asleep 5 minutes into La Traviata.  When I woke up 30 minutes later I realized what had happened and so I started the video over again.  Not 5 more minutes into La Traviata and I was out again.  I attempted a third time, but my wife interceded with complaints of a headache, and so I found a Synopsis to read instead. :)

My initial reaction to Opera is that of annoyance.  The women screech and I can't understand anything they're saying.  I'm the one skipping over the particularly unbearable sections of The Phantom of the Opera.  To counter this gag reflex, I compiled a list of sweet Opera experiences that I've had.

1. The Fifth Element

Diva, steward of the sacred element stones, is also an opera singer.  This song was really interesting to me because it brought a futuristic/techno spin to something I really didn't have any interest in...  Combine Opera with an electronic keyboard and you have something!

2. Andrea Bocelli

My older sister introduced me to Andrea Bocelli when I was in middle school and she was a PhD student.  I wanted to be smart like her so I went on a brief Opera kick.  

My favorite Bocelli moments are when he duets with Celine Dion, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the song he wrote after the passing of his Father, A Mio Padre.

3. Susan Boyle

This unattractive older lady in her grandmother's dress walks onto stage and shocks all of Britain, and the world!  Even judge Simon raised his eyebrows in surprise!  Today, her YouTube videos are receiving hundreds of millions of hits!

4. Josh Groban

For me, Josh Groban is the reinvention of Opera for the modern audience.  He takes traditional songs and introduces life back into them.   

Questions to address:

What is it about Opera that made it so popular?  How is it still alive today?

Class Notes

La Traviata

Escaping to the wilderness!  Industrial Revolution caused cities to pop up and there was a lot of suffering.  Paintings depict landscapes because it's an escape from reality.  It leaves the symbolic for a moment to explore the real.

Christ says before we makes sense of all this, let's just feel this.  --> Is that what the Nephites refer to when they aren't allowed to write what Christ says?  The spirit was communicating to them in such a perfect way, that if they try to put words to it that meaning will be lost?

Semantics - using correct words to describe meaning.  However, our imperfect language is limited and isn't the most effective form of communication. 

Finding Universality through individuality.  Address yourself instead of everyone, and you can connect with them on a universal level.  A light house is a specific point - but emulates light to the world.  

Lovis Corinth, Salome and the head of Saint John the Baptist, 1899.

This painting caught my attention for a number of reasons.  At first I was drawn to the center of the painting because the gaze of those within the picture created a sort of hierarchy of focal points and led me there.  It's a natural reaction to look where everyone else is looking...  I was beginning to realize that something was off, no pun intended, about the man presenting the platter to a woman of obvious importance.  Halfway through that thought I noticed that she wasn't fully clothed and wondered if she meant to parade herself around like that or simply couldn't decide on which shirt to wear that day...  Halfway through that thought came the natural reaction to divert my attention and instead look at the woman's face.  I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but there was something different about her face.  The author then pointed out that Lovis Corinth depicted Salome with heavy eye makeup and lipstick to "represent the degeneracy of the artist's own times."  At about that time I could look back at the platter and bloody sword and see that it was a head on a platter being presented to a queen, of sorts.

Thought #1:
     Corinth introduced elements from his own time into a time period where they possibly didn't belong to help communicate more effectively to his audience.  During his time, heavy eye makeup and lipstick apparently represented degeneracy.  Corinth presents Salome with those same features, in my opinion, to portray her as degenerate.
     This idea of including modern culture in artistic depictions of a past time happens all the time in movies!  And though I can't think of a single example right now, we use dialog in movies set in ancient times that only exists in modern times!  I'll add specific examples (and hopefully YouTube clips) as I think of them...

Thought #2:
     Nudity throughout the ages has apparently been widely accepted when in the form of art.  It makes me wonder if nudity was culturally acceptable, or if it was strictly accepted in the form of art...  Today, if you raised a billboard with a nude model, it would be considered pornographic - and walking around naked is against the law...  The one painting that helps communicate my thought is Edouard Manet's Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, 1863, where two fully dressed men carry on a casual conversation in the presence of a completely nude woman...  Do these types of paintings represent the cultural views of that time?  Or are they the exploration of an artist into forbidden areas...

Candide, Part 1

Before I get into any detail of Candide - I want to say that I really liked how the book gave a short summary explanation before each section.  It reminded me of the Standard works.


"...noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles. Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breeched, and so we have breeches..."


I really liked how Voltaire counters the errors of the enlightenment philosophy with wit and sarcasm.  The enlightenment philosophy would have you believe that god designed the nose to fit spectacles, thus, we have spectacles.  Legs were designed to be covered with pants, thus, we wear pants...  When in reality, it's the other way around!

Class Notes

Music Accessibility - how easy can it be played/sung?  Pop music is popular because it is easy to replicate, everyone can sing it.  Martin Luther wanted simple music to be sung in church so that it could be sung by everyone and easily understood - which was in controversy to the movement at the time to complicate things.

Baroque - new techniques - Opera.  Emotion, psychological exploration...
There's something about music that gets to us and expresses emotion that words sometimes can't.  Operas were written to people's taste.  It was new and received a good response.

Bach - Fugue in G Minor.  Repetitive, however, increases in complexity and difficulty each time around.

Pachelbel's Canon in D

Johann Pachelbel was this German Baroque composer who lived from 1653 to 1706 and wrote the world famous Canon in D in 1680.  Most renditions of this song are done by an orchestra and put to a slideshow of sunsets or wedding pictures like this one...

But YouTube does this awesome thing where it will recommend other videos that are related and I found a couple awesome renditions of Pachelbel's work.  This first one is a computer simulated keyboard that teaches you how to play the song on the piano!

And then there's the 'Blow your mind version' done by a couple of dudes in the living room of their apartment - and it does kind of blow your mind... that these two guys are actually fairly musically talented...  The song is by nature an awesome song - and lends itself to interesting renditions such as this one:

And this one! (skip over his introduction...)

Another fun video that caught my eye on YouTube was a Rock Version that was playing in a prison yard located in the Philippines.  The prison would organize flash mobs where the inmates would synchronize dance to popular songs.  The idea seems kind of out there but several videos claim that the inmates who dance together are more unified and have less prison violence.  The idea caught fire in the jails throughout China, India, and Thailand where they've imposed Yoga and created their own World Cup.  The 'Cebu Provincial Detention Center' in the Philippines has become world famous for their dancing inmates, insomuch that now they are apparently viewed more as dancers than inmates...

And here's another one for fun!

A 10 minute search on YouTube will show you that Pachelbel's musical creation connects with and inspires people of all ages throughout the world!