On Being Human

Throughout the course of Humanities we have been trying to answer one question: What it means to be human. Each of our units has aided in answering this question, from explaining how humans experience and perceive things, to showing how all humans suffer and have an unavoidable fate. Together, all of these units combine to give us a bit more of an insight to this complex question, with each one being a small piece to an even bigger puzzle. Every film we watch and book we read provides an in depth look into a different part of what it means to be human. By combining all of these tools, we have been able to for a general, basic understanding of what it means to be a human. 

Our introductory unit expresses the beginning of all human experience. We begin this unit by learning about the right and left brain experiences, and it transforms into a lesson on Aboriginal cultures and how their lives changed once they were introduced to the written word. In The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, Leonard Shlain discusses the differences between the right and left sides of the brain. Here we discovered that the left side of the brain is more analytical than the right side of the brain, which is more focused on creativity. The left side is also more able to think in a linear path than the right side, and the right side is more able to comprehend the spoken word than the left. The right/left brained system can easily explain the myths of Aboriginal cultures. In A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong we see how the two sides of the brain factor into the evolution of myths. The right and left side of the brain aid in the creation of the written and spoken word, and Armstrong discusses how the written word affects the telling of myths. Armstrong believes that the written word takes the "place" out of the myth, which actual storytelling provides. Myths have a place, and if a person is not in the place while experiencing the myth, it takes away the importance. The written word has made it possible to transport myths to other places, so an individual is not really experiencing the place of the myth when they are reading this. In a way, the evolution of myth is seen in "Toward Climax", by Gary Snyder. Snyder's poem depicts the evolution of human beings up until the urbanization of culture. He begins with evolution, and goes into detail when it comes to hunter and gatherer societies. He pays close attention to the beginning of the written language, which he sees a a turning point in cultural evolution. Together, these resources convey a message about culture and how it was changes when the written word was introduced to humans across the globe. 

In our unit "Humans, Nature, and Sacred Space" we saw how nature and reality is impossible to be physically captured. We studied people such a Timothy Treadwell and Werner Herzog, and wrote about our own sacred spaces to see how nature can never truly belong to anyone other than itself. Treadwell is a symbol for the love of nature, where Herzog can be symbolic for a fear or hatred of nature. The two communicate contrasting ideas which both show how nature is impossible to be captured by humans. Treadwell has a longing to spend time with the bears in Alaska, but his time is cut short by a bear attack. He loves the bears and believes they can do no wrong, so he tries to protect them. Unfortunately, trying to do so costs him his and his girlfriends life. Herzog, on the other hand, sees the bears as a harmful. Herzog believes that all of nature is a harmful force that should not be reckoned with. Treadwell tried his hardest to preserve and protect nature, where Herzog believes nature should be left alone. Treadwell proves unsuccessful and is defeated by nature, which shows it can never be captured by a human force. Herzog believes that nature will never be overtake by humans because it is a reckless, uncaptureable force. The class was also assigned a Sacred Space writing assignment that portrayed how we can capture a space mentally and communicate it through words, but we can't physically capture it. We had to portray a Sacred Space that belongs to other cultures or ourselves through a presentation, poetry, or an analytical essay. Each space could be written about or photographed, but there was no way to physically capture the space and bring it to the class. Each of these examples show how nature or a space in reality cannot be physically captured by humanity; they can only be experienced. 

"Love, Art, and Beauty" helped us see how humans change other people and ignore reality so they can experience the world. As a class, we studied aesthetic philosophers, read novels, and saw films that helped us come to this conclusion. As we worked our way through different aesthetic philosophers, we saw that they all had something to say about how humans experience art and beauty. We explored ideas from Plato's view of art as a copy of a copy, all the way to Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysian views on beauty. Each idea offered something new to the philosophical box of ideas we acquired as a class, but all of the views expressed how humans sometimes lacked a sense of reality in order to experience the world through art. Our novel and film, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Shape of Things, go hand in hand in this unit. They both depict a person changing another person even though the reasons may not be the same. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry shapes Dorian into a completely different human being with a new personality, just because he feels like it would be a fun experiment. The Shape of Things takes this concept to another level, where Evelyn shapes Adam into a different person for an art thesis project. Both Evelyn and Lord Henry manipulate their two subjects into become something they are not, but only Evelyn sees a benefit in this. She depicts Adam's transformation as art, and shows that the manipulation of another person can possibly, potentially be art. In the end, this unit was able to show that people can change others, and the change can be seen as something beautiful or artistic, and that humans will escape their reality in order to experience the world through art. 

Our Law and Ethics unit helped us answer the question: Are we isolated or are we a community? In this unit we studied different philosophers and compared and contrasted their sets of ethics to our own moral codes. Along with this, we also read The Stranger and discussed the philosophies brought forward by Albert Camus. Each philosopher we studied provided a different ethical code that our class had to discuss. We looked at philosophers such as Bentham, who created a pleasure and pain scale that was applied to the greater good of a community. Bentham saw happiness as the achievement of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and everyone had a moral obligation to make decisions that would increase happiness for the greatest number of people. This idea battled that of David Hume's, who believed feelings were responsible for human action, and that one should act as they should. He also stated "reason is, and ought to be, only the slave of passions". Even though we studied many philosophers in class, we also studied philosophers individually. I took it upon myself to study Nietzsche, seeing as I have the same beliefs as him. One of Nietzsche's most important philosophical views was the master/slave morality, which is where the people higher in power set the values of good and bad for the people in lower class. Nietzsche also believes that humans should focus on themselves and let their passions lead them to "self-mastery". We also studied Buddhist ethics which consist of the Five Precepts and the Ten Non-Virtues. Each of these lists consist of things people should or should not do in order to live a morally pure life. Some of these things include refraining from stealing, murdering, sexual misconduct, and lying. If a person successfully refrains from these things they will develop self-respect and live good, virtuous lives. Each philosophy we encountered had us question whether we were a community connected by morals, or weather we were individually responsible for our own ideas on morality. This question is still speculated, but its an important question that helps us answer what it means to human on a moral standpoint. 

Lastly, our unit on the Inner Journey and the Meaning of Human Reality helped us see that all humans suffer and have an unavoidable fate. Here we see three men, Job, Gilgamesh, and Oedipus face seemingly difficult challenges brought on by their fate that cause them pain and suffering. In The Story of Job we see a very religious and faithful man suffer in the face of God. God tested Jobs faith by killing his children and livestock, making him extremely ill, and sent Jobs neighbors to test his faith, but Job remained faithful to the Lord even though he caused him so much suffering. One could go as far to say that its in Job's fate that he is so faithful to the Lord. We also took at look at The Epic of Gilgamesh, where Gilgamesh, a strong, demigod King ruled over the city of Uruk. Gilgamesh lost his friend and he channeled the suffering caused by that event into a journey to find eternal life. Gilgamesh's suffering lead him to question his own mortality, so he decided to go on a quest to find a way to live forever. Unfortunately, Gilgamesh returned empty handed, with no possibility of becoming immortal, making it his fate to die just like everyone else. Lastly, we have Oedipus from Oedipus Rex who is another young king that tried to avoid his fate. Oedipus was told his fate, which was that he would kill his father and have incestuous relations with his mother, and he tried everything he could to avoid this. Oedipus' fate proved to be unavoidable, and because he had to do those awful things to his father and mother, he suffered. Together, all of these works show that all humans suffer, and that their suffering may be a product of their fate. These works also display how a humans fate is ultimately unavoidable, no mater how hard one may try to avoid it. 

Each one of our units contributes to the overall question of what it means to be human. Humanity will never have a definite answer to this question, but studying Humanities will give us a clearer insight as to how this question can be answered. Our class has own covered a few of the basic topics that Humanities covers, and what we have studied only skims the surface of the topics we have discussed. Over the course of Humanities, we have gained an overwhelming amount of knowledge about philosophers, painters, and characters that help convey what it means to be human, however, we still have a ways to go when it comes to having a complete answer to this question.