Final Exam: A Synthesis of Texts to Define Humanity

The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Stranger, Gilgamesh, Siddhartha, “Hamlet”. What could ever bring so many landmark works of literature together in one place? Only Levin’s Humanities Honors, of course. Throughout this class, we have covered many topics - some of strong interest to me, some not. The Humanities course has taught me many things over the last four plus months, but the same question has been at the root of everything we have done, and that question is what is it to be a human being? Now that the class is about to be over, the end goal may seem quite obvious; but early on, the aforementioned question was hardly in any of our minds. That being said, it is important to look back and review our journey to where we are now, and to finally discover the purpose behind some of the more important material we covered.

The first unit in Humanities, the Introductory Unit, was designed to focus on left and right brain skills and ideas, metaphors, cognitive affective ways of knowing, symbolism, written and oral language, storytelling, and time, and it was highlighted by texts from authors such as Shlain, Armstrong, and Bowker. One of the first things we focused on in this class was the idea that there are two separate sides of the brain, and that each side specializes more in certain areas than the other. Although we did several activities to go along with this subject, the most iconic one was the Shlain reading. Shlain highlighted the idea that people who are more right brained tend to be more creative and emotion driven, while those who are considered more left brained tend to attack problems in a more logic based manner; left brains tend to excel in math and science as opposed to art. Shlain also mentioned that gender can play a role in which side of our brains we rely on more heavily, with women tending to focus more on the right, while men are most commonly left brainers. The packet written by Karen Armstrong took a step away from our brains, focusing primarily on the interpretation of myths throughout the ages. While myths have for years been essential to different human belief systems, Armstrong showed how they have evolved - both from a content perspective as well as an interpretive one. Bowker also referenced myths in his works, but was much less focused on them, covering a far broader spectrum than Armstrong, from symbolism to ritual. Bowker described the evolution of various traditions throughout human history, and even provided a brief background for the transformation of music from its roots in ritual to where it is today. The introductory unit showed the tradition-based side of being a human, highlighting how our early fight for survival lead to our social nature and need for community today.

The first full unit we tackled in Humanities was focused on Humans, Nature, and Sacred Space, and was highlighted by texts from authors such as Werner Herzog, Gary Snyder, Montaigne, and William Shakespeare. One of the best things we did this whole semester was without a doubt the viewing of Werner Herzog’s (rather opinionated) documentary about the life of wildman Timothy Treadwell, titled Grizzly Man. Since Herzog and Treadwell have such contrasting opinions on people's’ involvement in nature, this film was perfect for showing the general human attitude when it comes to the world around us. Gary Snyder’s poem “Toward Climax” showed a very different perspective on human involvement in nature, chronicling people’s increasing defilement of the natural world over time. By writing it the way he did, Snyder left a lot open to interpretation, but the general message was clear: The climactic point in mankind’s relationship with nature has come and gone. We also read Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” during this unit, although it was quite strongly connected with Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” which we looked into just prior to reading the play. Both texts focused on the differences in opinion between various groups of people in regards to being human, the variance coming in that Shakespeare’s work was much more fictitious, as the plot was driven by magic. This unit was probably my favorite, as I found much of the material quite interesting - and at worst relaxing, as I wrote poetry for the unit project. The content of “Unit One” showed us what it means to be human in regards to interacting with both ourselves, one another, and our surroundings.

The next unit in the Humanities saga focused on Love, Beauty, and Art, and was highlighted by texts from authors such as Oscar Wilde and Nigel Spivey.  One of the focal points of this unit was the idea that different people can have varying definitions of what is and is not art, and also what that art might be made to represent. In the film The Shape of Things, we further investigated this theory, as we witnessed a unique form of art that to its creator was a thing of beauty, but to nearly everyone else was nothing more than a cruel experiment. The aforementioned theory was also looked at in depth through Oscar Wilde’s book, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wilde’s work, we saw just how manipulative humans can be, and also how important it is to be aware of one’s opinions as an individual and to hold true to them. All three aspects of this unit were actually visible in Dorian Gray; the portrait providing art and beauty, the relationships among the characters demonstrating love (or lack there of). Art was again brought to the forefront in Nigel Spivey’s How Art Made the World. Spivey discussed the evolution of art through human history, from its roots to where it is today. He also touched upon the influence of art on the beauty standard, and how that has evolved along with the rest of the art spectrum. As a whole, this unit showed the ways in which humans experience art, beauty, and love, both emotionally and physically, and also drew connections among the three. We learned through this that to be human is a different experience than any other creature could ever imagine, and that ability to experience and appreciate these aspects of life is what makes us unique as a species.

The next unit was focused on Law and Ethics, and was highlighted by text from Camus, as well as several sets of holy guidelines. Camus’ The Stranger was a rather odd story, one where the protagonist went through life with no apparent emotion, at least not the proper one at the proper time. The book related to law and ethics in that the main character had no well defined set of ethics (or so it seemed), and also had a rather confusing experience during his trial for murder, a case which wound up hinges largely on the court’s evaluation of his character as a human being. We also watched the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, a story which follows several individuals’ lives as they experience important moral (ethical) and legal decisions. This film emphasized the effects that a potentially harmful decision can have on one’s conscious, as several of the characters seemed to nearly drive themselves mad over opportunities they either took (or did not take) and wished they had (or had not). Finally, we took a look as a class at the 10 Commandments and the Buddhist precepts. After comparing and contrasting them, we found that many holy codes are really quite similar when put into the context of their respective belief systems. We also investigated the potential of the divine or the afterlife as potential threats to keep societal structure in order. This unit taught us that to be human is to not only understand and appreciate the ethical codes laid down by those around us, but to also create our own based on our personal life experiences. We also must contribute fairly to society and help to maintain law and order.

The final and most recent Humanities unit wrapped up the saga with a focus on the Inner Journey and the Meaning of Human Reality. This last unit was highlighted by texts from Hesse and (who else) Shakespeare. In Shakespeare’s Danish play Hamlet, the idea of human reality was a focal point, as the conflicted protagonist searched for both meaning and understanding in an atmosphere where he seemed to hardly belong. These same key elements were visible in The Epic of Gilgamesh, a story about a man who seems to vanquish every challenge thrown his way (even by the gods), but feels empty as to what his purpose may be in life. Gilgamesh also struggles through the inner journey, eventually maturing himself enough to accept his own mortality. Hesse’s Siddhartha chronicles the inner journey of one individual as he searches for a path to enlightenment, and in doing so, learns things about himself he never expected to discover. This unit showed us that to be human, one must experience an inner journey and in doing so discover himself in new ways. One must also find a definite reality to live in, and must not allow it to become confused with imaginative realms, or else risk losing one’s mind.  

While we have covered a vast amount of material throughout the humanities curriculum, it can all be combined to answer the same critical question: What is it to be human? We have seen that while being an individual is extremely important to defining oneself, we also must rely on others as humans are meant to work together and be social. We discovered that humans are unique in our ability to experience things both emotionally and physically (and to synthesize these reactions), and that only people can then put these experiences into a system of beliefs as to what is good and bad, right and wrong. Finally, we found that only humans have a system of laws to sort the actions of our species, and that we are the only creatures who can truly define our realities and go on an inner journey to better understand our places in these surroundings. To be human is to be unique, and Humanities has taught me that, if nothing else.  

The Last Post

Humanity is a melting pot of so many ideals, opinions, actions, creations. We as humans have created many things on this earth, literature, art, music, architecture. We have created and destroyed, we are both good people and bad. But there has always been one question that we have never been able to truly and fully answer; what does it mean to be human? Through this class, we have been studying humans, their behaviours, how we think and we act, what we feel, what we like and dislike, and even how our brains work. Now as the year comes to a close, we have to look back at all we have learned and analyze and answer the question of what we are as humans, why we act the way we do and why we are the way we are. We have read many books and plays, watched many films that explore the infinite possibilities of humans.

 

While the introductory unit was short, and there was really no end as it meshed with the Humans Nature and Sacred Space Unit, we touched upon some things that bring about the question of humanity. Our powerful minds have brought amazing and unbelievable things into this world, some new, some old, something creative, or something of literature. Our minds have infinite possibilities (or so we believe), because our mind is split into two hemispheres, right and left. As described by Leonard Shlain in his writings on Right Brain/Left Brain, the right side of the brain is concerned with being, and the left side, doing. The left and right sides of the brain are polar opposites, like many things in the world. The left side of the brain is much more literal and concerned with linguistics and speech while the right side of the brain is the more creative and artistic side that concerns itself with emotion, intuition, and the appreciation of music. But, the two sides of the brain have to work together to make a functional brain and create great works of literary masterpieces such as Genesis, which can be considered one of the greatest and most well known texts in the world. Without our complex brains, we would not be able to accomplish anything that we ever had. Myths would be nonexistent, along with symbols, metaphors, art, music or even a written language. These are all important and essential creations of the human mind. Karen Armstrong wrote in her A Short History of Myth that humans have been and always will be mythmakers. It combines the abilities of the left and right sides of our brains. The creation of myths have allowed us to connect ourselves to religion and to rituals within that religion. Religion is intertwined with humans and their history  and many great religious works have been published, that use both the left and the right sides of the brain. Our brains are unique, there is no other animal on the planet that has a brain as superior as ours, and that is a part of what makes us special.

 

As humans, we have a lot of appreciation for the things around us, and even ourselves. We have a deep appreciation for nature, and we have a desire to protect it, especially with pollution and deforestation in today’s world. We spent a lot of time in class discussing the importance of nature, and watched a documentary, Australia’s Aborigines which exemplified that importance though the rituals of a dying race of Australian Aborigines. Nature can be what connects us to the higher power, or in the Australian’s minds, to the Dreamtime. Nature can be our sacred space, the place we feel most comfortable and connected to ourselves and the world around us. Nature is sacred and very interwoven into the history of humankind. We read a rather long packet How Art Made the World: Second Nature by Nigel Spivey which described how nature is important to different people, and how we view nature in our art. Which, even in our art, nature is seen as sacred, as a place we can escape to, to bring peace to our minds.  Constable’s Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree is the perfect example of this desire, because he so perfectly depicts the elm tree that it almost looks like a photograph. Constable must have spent more than a few hours studying that same trunk, but it brought him much delight to do so. We study and depict nature in art because it something that we are connected to on a deeper level than, sometimes, we are connected to each other. From the early days, we have been dependent on nature to bring us nourishment and keep us alive. And while we are not so dependent on nature in today’s world, that deep bond still exists.

 

We as humans have always been concerned with our outward appearance, to make sure we are aesthetically pleasing to the world. It is still a large issue that is covered in the media today, but it is also a topic that was explored by Oscar Wilde in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray is a beautiful young man who is willing to sell his soul to attain everlasting youth and beauty. This speaks loudly to the idea that we as humans are very concerned with our looks, that we are willing to give up anything, even our souls, to be eternally young and beautiful. Humans will always look for something that brings us pleasure or happiness. Love is something that, along with attaining beauty, humans constantly seek out. The movie The Shape of Things actually combines these two concepts quite nicely. The film follows Adam as he falls in loves with an art graduate student, Evelyn, who is working on her art thesis during their relationship. Adam seeks her love and attention, as all humans do, and falls in love with her, only to be heartbroken and deeply betrayed by Evelyn when she finally presents Adam as her human sculpture for her thesis. Throughout their entire relationship, Evelyn only sought to change Adam’s appearance, to make him more aesthetically pleasing to the world, through only the power of suggestion. But Adam is completely oblivious to this because his only concern is his love for Evelyn; he is even willing to put her above his friends. Love makes us do crazy things, but Evelyn put her art above love. There have been some interesting philosophies on art, and how it affects us as humans. Friedrich Nietzche, a German philosopher, had, at least in my opinion, the most interesting view of art and humans. He viewed art in two ways: rigid and structured Apollonian and creative Dionysian; two opposites that balance the world. Good art is a perfect balance of these two, just as is the world, and are humans; just as we are not just left or right brained, but a balance of the two.

 

Laws and regulations are something that have been created by humans to help keep humans in line and to create a surface in which society can grow and develop from. We have created laws to prevent other humans from doing something that we deem unacceptable. One of the most well known set of laws in the world is the 10 commandments. In the 10 commandments, it outlines what we as humans should or should not do to live a good life free of sin. However, humans are not made to be bound by rules, and that is evident in the novel, The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Mersault murdered a man in cold blood, even though that is clearly illegal. It may be argued that he was not in his right mind when he pulled the trigger, nevertheless, he broke a rule that was placed in order to prevent humans ending another human’s life. This can also be a question of ethics, and what Mersault’s ethical values compared to ours. The idea of our ethical values are then put to test while watching Crimes and Misdemeanors. Men cheat on their wives, and there’s a murder. These are all issues that bring on awareness of our ethical values, what we believe is right and wrong. This is apart of what makes us human and what separates us from any other living being on the planet. We are unique in that we have the ability to reason with ourselves, our minds, our conscience. Even when that ability is taken away, due to mental illness or injury, we might consider that person to be lesser than the rest of us, less than human. Ethical values are huge factor to through into the pot of what makes us human. Without them, what would we possibly be, how could we have ever risen to be the dominant species? Ethics help to bring law, and help to distinguish us from the world.

 

The idea of an inner journey is something that is an uniquely human experience. The inner journey, as we have discussed in class, is something that completely individual. The search for our inner self is explored through Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, where the main character, Siddhartha, searches for enlightenment through the teachings of many teachers. Siddhartha’s inner journey is to discover himself and make peace in the world. And while Govinda was searching for the same thing, they reached that personal enlightenment in very different ways. But the inner journey can take many different shapes and forms and different paths can be followed. In the except of The Book of Job, Job’s journey is to live a blameless life, free of sin. He reaches his enlightenment, if that it is, through staying faithful to God. He is rewarded for not going against God with unimaginable riches and a family. The movie we watched for this unit, explores two very different philosophies of human reality, existentialism and nihilism. The existential detectives believe that the world is connected; everything is connected, and that humans are able to act on free will. On the opposite end, nihilism believes that there is no true meaning to life and are skeptical about most everything. Both sides battle for Albert’s attention, but in the end he learns that both are essential to reality, we cannot have one without the other. There is a perfect balance between existentialism and nihilism; there cannot be good without bad, optimism without pessimism; there are both ups and downs in life.

 

Looking back, we have made great discoveries about humanity in our class, we discussed this question many times and in many different shapes in forms. But, as we come to the end, I think we have not only learned a lot about what it means to be human, but we also learned about how we, ourselves, are human. How each of us are unique, and have our own ideas about humanity. And now, to answer the question, I don’t think there is one real, true definition of what it means to be human. I think each of us, as individuals have our own ideas about what makes us human. So, there could be 7 billion answers to the question of what make us human. But, we can also learn from those who have contemplated the same ideas, learn their philosophies, but we also have the make our own judgments on the idea. A part of being human is the ability to decide for ourselves who we are and who we want to be.

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. 

The Final Blog Post

Humanities Final Exam Spring 2015

In our Humanities class, we read many different readings, looked at many forms of art, and watched a lot of films.  These different sources contributed to our understanding of being human. As we went through the semester, our learning was divided into five different sections, the cognitive and affective ways of knowing using the right and left brain unit, the humans, nature, and sacred space unit, the love, beauty, and art unit, the law and ethics unit, and the inner journey and meaning of human reality unit. These units further expanded our knowledge on the human experience.  All of these topics incorporate the ideas of human reality. Within these subjects, we found what makes up our personal human realities.  

The introductory unit that was covered in class was mostly based on the right and left brain and how each side of the brain connects to metaphors, symbolism, writing and oral language, forms of storytelling, and experiences of time. The main purpose for this topic was to better understand the connections that humans have when they interact with each other. In Leonard Shlain’s article about the right and left brain functions, he explained the influence that each hemisphere had about interpreting different information.  In the film about the living style of Australia’s Aborigines, the idea of human experience would differ greatly from our current one because of the changing interpretation of the world. The Australian Aborigines used the right and left brain communication skills when telling stories which were usually verbal. When Karen Armstrong explained the mythology of the Paleolithic period, she emphasized the idea of the "Dreamtime."  In the year of 20000 to 80000 BCE, the concept of Dreamtime was very important to everyday survival because it taught humans the skills like hunting and gathering that were essential to their lives. Each skill connected to a right and/or left brain function.  This introductory unit later connected with some of the future topics that were explained in class.

The second main unit that we covered in class was about humans, nature, and sacred space. This topic explains the different ideas that people have formed depending on their different cultures and backgrounds. In Werner Herzog's documentary about Timothy Treadwell living with vicious wild animals, Herzog explained that his view was contradicting to Treadwell's opinion about saving wildlife. Treadwell believed that sacred space could be shared among different species and different cultures and wanted a better understanding with his friends, the grizzly bears. When we moved forward in the unit, we found that the poem, "Toward Climax" also represents sacred space ideas and the illusion that due to human nature, our world has surpassed its prime. In the first book of the Bible, human nature is explained by the impulsive decisions made by both Adam and Eve and how an outside influence can greatly change someone's perception of the world.  This topic soon lead into the next idea in our English class.

As the year progressed, we learned about love, beauty, and art, and the way humans display their subjective opinions about each word. Many would agree that each topic is very hard to explain specifically and humans can not come to a universal opinion. In the book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, an artist named Basil Hallward is infatuated by the beauty of the main character, Dorian Gray.  The thought of love and temporary outer beauty, consumed Gray’s mind leading him to act on foolish decisions throughout the book.  In “The Shape of Things,” the fake relationship between Evelyn and Adam, portrayed that art, beauty, and love can deceive another person. Emotions and connections are deeply rooted to these concepts because they involve personal experiences and interactions.  The concept of beauty is unique depending on the culture and the time of existence.  In class, we learned that the prehistoric human appeal was much different from the Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Egyptians. Each culture had its own unique style of art and view on how humans were seen as beautiful.  This topic was also blended in with the concept of truth which was able to be connected with some later topics in the year.

When we started to expand our knowledge on the topic of law and ethics, it was apparent that morality played a big role in the experience of being human. In the book, The Stranger by Albert Camus, the notion of law and ethics was largely present when the main character, Meursault was confronted with many difficult decisions about his own morals.  Many times throughout the book, Meursault showed signs of having no empathy or remorse for his own actions which are key factors in the role of being human.  In certain religions, people have to abide by specific rules like the 10 Commandments or the Holiness Code in Judaism and Christianity.  These two lists of “rules” are very similar to the Buddhist ethics that we read in class involving the moral conduct and the five precepts which will result in major consequences if not followed.  These ethics can be apparent in certain philosophers that we discussed in great depth during class. When we learned about Bentham, we learned that he had a utilitarian approach to his ideas which meant that he wanted to maximize the amount of pleasure presented in the world.  Nel Noddings, an American feminist mainly focused on the importance of care and moral education in the world.  Friedrich Nietzsche often disagreed with the Christian religion and thought that the world was one connected unit. He made up the concept of “will to power” and liked the Apollonian and Dionysian ideas which integrated well with the introductory unit about the right and left brain.  

The final unit in our curriculum was inner journey and the meaning of human reality. This topic explained the importance of finding self enlightenment and understanding the inner meaning of life. Every person experiences a different inner journey and has his/her own unique opinion about human reality.  When we learned about Job in class, we learned that he went through a lot of pain and suffering and began to lose his faith in God. Through many melancholy and joyless events, Job continued to remain loyal to God and in the end was rewarded. The inner journey that Job experienced was a lesson learned to always keep his faith to God, even though he didn’t deserve the negativity that he received. In the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” Gilgamesh experiences the painful encounter with death when his best friend, Enkidu dies and seeks out where he can find eternal life, but learns that death is inevitable.  Death is one of the four sights that Siddhartha encounters on his quest to find enlightenment.  Siddhartha also experienced many times of suffering, but believed that every action and event gave him experience which lead to needed understanding which is important for the human experience.

As our year comes to an end, one could conclude that the roles of each topic are confusing and complex. The human brain is capable of thinking beyond what the senses are experiencing. We can make deep visionary illusions in our minds that help contribute to the human connections we make throughout the day. Our ability to rationalize, express deep emotion, and inspire creation is what makes human existence so incredible. While we leave school thinking, our emotions and connections are going to form our own personal opinions about human experience.

Final

Zoe Proulx

Humanities Honors

June 6, 2015

The Entirety of the Human Experience

Humans have been analyzing life since the very beginning- through written stories, spoken word, paintings, sculptures, music and much more. In our humanities honors class, we took a look at many examples of the human experience, and viewed different cultures that strongly represented the human experience. We were able to analyze and discuss many paintings, books, articles, movies and cultures. These discussions allowed us to see things from many different perspectives and learn more about what it means to be human. In this class we focused on five main units: the Introductory Unit, Humans, Nature, and Sacred Space, Love, Beauty, and Art, Law and Ethics, and The Inner Journey and the Meaning of Human Reality. Each of these units we studied in depth, and were given many things to analyze that would help us to further understand the meaning of the unit. All of these units together make up the entirety of the human experience.

The class began with the Introductory Unit, which involved learning about the right and left brain functions, written and oral language, metaphors, and symbolism. This beginning unit was crucial to understanding how and why humans communicate the meaning of life and the human experience. We studied the culture and art of the Australian Aborigines, which helped to understand how they communicated and interpreted the world. The Australian Aborigines used oral language to pass on their creationary stories and myths. In the film Australian Aborigines, a mother was shown telling a story to her children using a piece of string to allow the children to interact and further understand the story. By watching and listening to their mother, the children were using their creative mind as well as their logical mind to understand and comprehend the tale. This tied directly into our studies of the right and left brain functions. In The Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain, it explains how the right side of the brain is nonverbal, and uses gestures, facial expressions, body stance, and aesthetics to understand and comprehend an oral story (Shlain, 18). By verbally communicating a story to her children, the mother is able to express the emotion and intensity of the story and how it affected people. Shlain also discusses metaphors and explains how they are the right brain’s unique contribution to the left brain’s language capability. This relationship between the right brain and its comprehension of metaphors and emotion connects directly to an article written by John Bowker called God: A Brief History. This article discusses symbols and signs and how they contribute to the process of communication. Metaphors, much like verbal symbols, have multiple levels of meaning that are perceived simultaneously (Shlain, 20). Metaphors express emotion, dreams, and complex feeling-states. They are much like symbols, which, rather than verbal, are visible expressions of the feelings and thoughts that humans have about their world (Bowker, 39). Symbols can also represent something holy or divine, such as the Jewish star of david or the cross. All of these things- right brain, left brain, symbols, storytelling- represent how we communicate within our cultures. These factors influence the human experience drastically. Without communication, our world would not advance or have interconnections. Communication allows people to explore the inner and outer mind, and question the real as well as abstract parts of our experience.

The next unit we reviewed was Humans, Nature, and Sacred Space. This unit was perfect to place after the Introductory unit. Reviewing how humans interact within nature allows us to take our new comprehension skills and put them into action. We looked at different forms of art as well as past examples of human interaction with nature. During this unit we watched a film on a very interesting person, Timothy Treadwell aka Grizzly Man. The particular film we watched was by Werner Herzog, who viewed Timothy’s relationship with nature as careless and naive. This film demonstrates a great contrast in views, where Timothy sees an extreme emotional connection towards nature, Herzog sees violence and separation, saying that nature is not only politically corrupt, but corrupt within itself (Noys, 38). This film represented a very modern spectrum of views on humans and nature. Studying ancient art allowed us to get a better view on how the relationship between humans and nature changed. In particular, the sacral-idyllic chinese landscape paintings. Many of these paintings displayed the intense beauty of nature, showing large mountainsides and wide, tangling rivers. The people, if any, are displayed as small and insignificant compared to the land around them. This shows how important nature was in the late 17th century, and how humans were viewed with unmistakably less significance than nature. Studying this relationship with nature led into the next part of the unit, Sacred Space. This section was mainly focused on the sacred spaces within our world, such as churches, synagogues, burial places, and places with extreme religious significance. We continued to watch films on indigenous cultures, learning more about the sacred spaces within their culture. A few examples are the caves in which the Australian Aborigines buried their dead, and the physical locations that were directly related to their gods, such as rocks and mountains. These things are large scaled sacred spaces, but there are also smaller sacred spaces such as bedrooms, prayer spots, and meeting sites. Humans, nature, and sacred spaces are part of the human experience because they demonstrate how we interact with the world around us. Humans live everyday within nature, and are continuously interacting with those around them as well as the gods they believe in. Nature is embedded in the human experience, it is the physical space in which humans experience every event of their lives, in and around others.

Studying further into the human experience, we began to look at the basic values of our society. Love, beauty and art are at the core of these values. Within our society, everything we see around us is built to represent these three values. To start off this unit, we reviewed the art of multiple different cultures such as prehistoric, Egyptian, and greek. The different pieces we studied portrayed how that culture viewed and experienced beauty, because the art represented the things that culture wanted to create and look at. Prehistoric art showed large hips, breasts, and butts, as well as prominent genitalia. For the people of this generation, the sexual organs were the main focus of their attraction, stemming from the instinctual desire to reproduce. Egyptian art showed proportioned bodies and realistic proportions. This shows how Egyptian cultures viewed the realistic bodies of people as beauty. Greek art showed fitness and physical perfection, incredible beauty, and realistic, lifelike proportions. These arts represented how humans experienced beauty and determined what was beautiful to them and society. Next in this unit, we read the book A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. This book represents the role of love and beauty within our society. In the book, the main character is utterly obsessed with his youth and beauty, and all those around him are equally mesmerized by his looks. The character is not particularly smart, but he is adored and liked by those around him. The entire book displays the importance of beauty to those around us, and how it affects our everyday lives. The lengths this character goes to preserve his beauty - selling his soul, committing murder, ruining his relationship with those around him - shows how much emphasis is put on beauty within our society. After reading this book, we viewed a film called The Shape of Things. We were given questions that provoked us to think about the relationship between the characters in the movie to the characters from PDG. Many of the characters were alike, some being so wrapped up in the idea of being beautiful that they go to great lengths in order to obtain and keep that beauty. In this film, the character Adam changes nearly everything about his appearance and personalty (to the point where he gets plastic surgery) in order to be appealing to others. Beauty, art and love are large parts of the human experience. Everyday as we travel and look around us, we see ads, magazines, people, shops, and tv shows that display immense beauty. The art in our society represents what we view as aesthetically appealing, and humans are constantly experiencing this throughout their lives.

The next unit, Law and Ethics, represents the moral dilemmas humans experience every day. Ethics and law play a very large role in the human experience, determining how we judge our actions and how we judge those around us. We reviewed many different philosophers within this unit, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Ficino, Kant, and Nietzsche. They all had many different views on ethics, particularly Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that one should not think of others while making ethical and moral decisions, but do what is best for yourself. We also recently reviewed Buddhist ethics, in which the purpose is to end suffering, and in order to do this one must refrain from destructive ethical actions. In the Buddhist ethics, there are five precepts- refrain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and drunkenness. These five precepts are included in many other religious moral codes, such as the 10 commandments. These basic rules were the foundation of the human experience, and are meant to guide people through life. We also read a book in this unit called The Stranger, written by Albert Camus. This book was focused on morals and ethics, and forced the reader to ask themselves controversial questions while reading. The main character in the book has many interactions in which he is required to decide where he stands morally, and make decisions based upon what he feels. The main character, Meursault, must decide whether he cares enough about those around him to make decisions that will help or hinder them. These kinds of decisions have always been a part of the human experience. Ethics have built our law system since day one, and have been slowly evolving throughout the years.

The last unit we discussed was the Inner Journey and the Meaning of Human Reality. This unit was filled with the abstract questions that humans have been asking themselves for decades. The Inner Journey is part of every human experience, basically it is the "meaning of life". Every human does through their own personal journey of discovering who they are. In Gilgamesh, his journey is that he must find a way to live life fully and find a way to overcome his fear of death. Gilgamesh is told to dance, eat, and enjoy all of what life has to give him. Siddhartha also goes through an inner journey after he discovers the reality of life. When Siddhartha sees the four sights - age, death, illness, and hope - he decides that his journey must be to end all human suffering. Siddhartha struggles within himself to overcome his old ways of living and avoid the worldly pleasures that cause suffering. This is his inner journey, and he encourages others to find their own. Another example of an inner journey and meaning of human reality is the Allegory of the Cave. In this story, a man discovers the reality of life after leaving the cave and discovering what is behind the curtain that has been misleading all of his people. After adjusting to the harsh sun, he realizes the truth of reality and fights to understand and believe it. This story is explaining that one must face reality, even if it is difficult and disappointing. Understanding reality is important for everyone, and everyone must go through their own inner journey in order to come to terms with their true reality.

All of these units tied together to explain the human experience. Communicating and interacting with nature and those around us make up the human experience. Within our own minds we contemplate things such as morals, ethics, art, beauty, truth, and love. These things we contemplate our entire lives. The human experience is not something that can be summed up, but it is certainly something that can be studied. The human experience is also different for everyone, because not everyone has the same perception of reality. Siddhartha's inner journey is quite different from Hamlet's or Jobs, or mine. The entirety of our class was to study the human experience and attempt to understand our own perceptions of reality and begin our inner journey.

Oh the Humanity.....

Unlike English 11, this class was more than just another literature analysis class, it was a being analysis class. We all learned a little bit more about who we are, as humans. But, what does that really mean? To some, it simply implies that we are of homo sapien descent. That we, as humans, walk upright and have a high brain mass to body mass ratio. Can that be all that separates us from the remainder of nature? Andrea Levin along with many other experts in the field of Humanities would say no. Humans have more to offer the world.

The global ecosystem that is earth primarily involves two parties: humans and nonhumans. The way in which these two interact determines the outcome of our fates. Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man makes the case that humans should live everyday conscious of the existence of animals and nature, but should not interfere with its natural rhythm. In the movie, a man named Timothy Treadwell tries to help the bears in Alaska by living with them and filming them for documentaries. Herzog uses his death by bear to conclude his point that humans should not interfere with nature’s ebb and flow. Another way that humans interact with the nature which surrounds us is through the art which we create. Many landscape artists try to capture the beauty of an impossibly beautiful location. That presents one problem: nature isn’t stagnant. It is always changing and undulating from moment to moment. As soon as you perceive the powerful beauty of a scene, it is immediately different and potentially less beautiful. Our persistent pursuit to capture and create beauty is unique to a very small quantity of species. However, our desire for this kind of endeavor had to begin somewhere. There are many theories about when and where this may have begun, but the theory which we discussed in class was in the BBC’s show, How Art Made the World. The host Nigel Spivey suggests that our art today can trace its links back to the cave paintings of our distant ancestors. Their sensory deprivation within the caves gave way to the reproduction of hallucinated images on the walls. Art exploded after these early events until today when art is heralded for its beauty and skillful techniques.

Humans have a unique perspective of art. We do more than just look and analyze, we also are capable of experiencing the art. There is an entire field of philosophy which is dedicated to how art and beauty are related and to the way which those two traits affect us. The many philosophers throughout the ages have had drastically varying views on how the arts change us. From the Platonic view that art is evil and used as a tool to tempt fools, to the Hume ideas that art is experienced differently within each of us according to our tastes. Oscar Wilde had a philosophy which we performed much studying on through his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In this novel we discuss the role of the artist in the process of creating art and how that leads to a particular experience. Basil creates the portrait which is art in its own right, but Lord Henry also feels that his manipulation of Dorian is an artistic endeavor. This book inspired a movie which explores similar concepts: The Shape of Things. This movie shows an artist, Evelyn, use Adam, a Dorian figure, to change him into an artistic display through artificial love and seduction. Humans can not only experience the emotions which art gives upon viewing, but also the emotions of contemplating the artist and their delicate process.

The artistic process pursued by Evelyn and Lord Henry starts to beg the question of what should be the code of ethics to live life by. We studied a wide variety of ethical philosophers in class. Among them were Plato, Nietzsche, Hume, and Bentham. Bentham’s philosophy differed from that of his peers through his radically rational approach to ethics. He devised a system of mathematics to calculate which action should be taken in any situation. Within his system, often called Utilitarianism, the results will always yield the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This contrasts with Hume’s belief that situations are not as black and white as that. Each scenario will be evaluated separately and our decisions will be guided by our personal passions and desires rather than for the greater good. Buddhism, and the ethical code which governs it, can be considered a combination of the two. Each choice should be evaluated to determine whether it will harm others or yourself. Minimizing the damage to the world and to the human community is the ultimate goal of every Buddhist.

One of the most famous Buddhist figures in history is Siddhartha Gautama. His journey to enlightenment, as documented by Herman Hesse, chronicles an extensive transformation from wealthy child to enlightened elder. When the story begins he is a young boy under the protection of his father, the King. He is dissatisfied with his and his father’s existence and seeks to find a deeper meaning. One day while on a trek out of the safety of his father’s eyes Siddhartha stumbles across the Four Sights. It is then that he comes to the sudden and dramatic realization that the world is actually an evil place filled with suffering, sickness, and death. He leaves his father to seek a life which is free from suffering. Gilgamesh is another character who dramatically becomes aware of the suffering of this world through the death of his once foe, turned brother, and eventually, his failure to reach immortality. The world, then, seems to be a cruel place for us humans. The final character who knows suffering as an intimate portion of his life is Hamlet, the tragically depressed character in one of Shakespeare’s finest works. He, along with the others mentioned above, comes to the sad realization that our world is a dark, depressive place filled with sadness and suffering. Hamlet’s father is killed by his uncle who then swiftly courts Hamlet’s mother all prior to the beginning of the story. We are able to catch a glimpse into the mind of someone who has latched onto the darkness of the world and refuses to let go until his death during the final scene of the play. It seems that humans are fated to suffer in this hellish world from birth to death. But would life be worth living if it were not filled with at least brief moments of intense happiness? Many humans live every day while ignoring these ideas, while others accept a cruel destiny by their own hands in order to stop the inevitable suffering.

So does being human simply mean that we walk upright and have a big brain? No. Our tenacity to ask and answer this plethora of questions sets us apart from other animals for a start. But also, we are highly intelligent creatures who are capable of creating art, creating suffering, and creating happiness. We are special. You are special. Keep thinking, keep asking, and never give up searching for the answer.