One Last Blog

I wanted to end my blog with just some thoughts, summaries and growth that I have experienced over the course of this semester. Why you may ask?...because I can and so I will.

Over the course of my four years in college (and especially the last two) I have been pushed to think and to decide; to observe my life and truly look inwardly to discover the woman that I am becoming. I have had mentors along the way who refused to let me settle with just ok. What I have discovered in this time frame is that I am a creative, sexuate, feminine being who is discovering old flaws and new beauties in this world.

The philosophers I have studied for this class, Gilkey, Berry, Rand and Irigaray have all poignantly shown what they see as the flaws in the world. Though they can speak without thinking about what they see as the major issues in the world, they all still hold a common thread…hope.

Each of these philosophers holds different truths to be true to them, however none of them have all the answers. Just as I have struggled with the instability created in my life from truly questioning my core values and what I grew up believing was the iron-clad truth. Though at times the change was painful and I would even shed tears for the new thoughts that came and meant I was leaving behind the old. Change never is easy. Just as each philosopher I read has discovered at some point, whether it’s they’re radical idea that leaves them jobless or being forced into living in community.

When I came to college I was a young pond, one that had yet to grow stagnant, but was in danger of doing so if I had not been challenged to move, to think, to create ripples. Now as I prepare to graduate, I no longer see that pond, but rather a river that I have flown into one that interacts, moves, thinks, changes and has relations with others that are a part of this river.

Life is ever changing. I don’t have all the answers, I can’t even say that I know the truth of the world, but what I can say is that I’m  on a path in which I look and observe and breathe and take-in this world as I search for the truth with those around me whom with open eyes, look and breathe and move with me as we continue forward in this journey we call life.

Concrete vs. Idealism

Anyone who has studied philosophy is aware that it is very easy for a philosopher to wander off so far into the depths of their own mind that the concrete, physical world and what is capable of being real is lost to the ideal. I'm not bashing idealism, for without it why would we strive for anything better? At one point in history a world free of slavery was an ideal and look how far we've come to accomplishing that. Granted the concrete, what is possible must also hold weight. The concrete is what is capable of happening now, or at least beginning.

What I'm getting at is that both are proper and necessary. Each holds their own place and individual importance. The philosophers I have surveyed this semester have thus far pretty much belonged to one world or the other. Take Ayn Rand who's "free man" is pure idealism and where most of her philosophies fall. On the opposite of the spectrum is Wendall Berry who lives out his life philosophy on his farm with his wife.

It was not until reading Irigaray have I found a philospher that seems to balance living deep off in her own idealism, but yet manages to find ways to bring those philosophies into concrete living. Take her writing, sometimes it comes off as nothing but rude. However upon a closer examination and a realization of her philosophy on linguistics, she is not trying to be rude, she is simply trying to be clear and use a neuter linguistic to the best of her ability. Another example is found in her dialogue with Wheeler where they discuss how living dualisticlly is possible under the right architectural design or Stone and the practice of Yoga in daily life expanding ones breath and thinking space.

Irigaray's thoughts are often thought to be radical, but for such a radical idealism one cannot deny that her idealism is matched by her concrete ideas for how people can live out that radical idealism.

The Problem of Complacency and Conventional Thinking

Have you ever looked at a stagnant body of water? Motionless. It typically is crawling with mosquitoes and other unpleasant living things, there’s scum floating on the top, probably a piece of trash or two as well, and it smells. If you close your eyes can you see it? It’s an unpleasant and almost eerie scene no matter if it’s a small puddle of left over rain water or a pond that no longer has any form of circulation.

Now imagine if that’s your life. I’m speaking metaphorically and I’m referring to an inner mental capacity that each person carries. When conventional thinking is accepted or even when complacency on any thoughts occurs that is the start of stagnation. We close ourselves off from others, become “stuck-in-our-ways” and that is when division and sexism and racism occurs. We must keep our minds and relationships fluid.

To do this we must not be like stagnant water, but moving water, much like that of a river. We must push ourselves mentally. I don’t mean that brain teasers are a daily exercise that everyone should do, but rather we must always be willing to challenge and be open to those ideas that are different from our own. By being willing to think about something that is different, whether it is an opinion, a perspective, even a religion is key to keeping ourselves fluid.

The only things that are stagnant in life are those things that are dead or dying a slow death. As we close ourselves off from the world it is a slow process in which we harden our hearts and thoughts against all things contrary to our own. Education is the greatest way to keep oneself fluid and education doesn’t have to happen in a classroom or textbook (though it can), it can also happen by meditating, prayer, or open dialogue.

To be complacent is to wish for death-not physical death, but the death of the soul and mind. That is the danger of complacency and when conventional thinking becomes accepted as fact.

Celebrating Differences

Have you ever looked around yourself and noticed something...that you are different from him, from her, from the bird in the air to the squirrel on the ground. No human whether African, American, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Female, Male, we're all different. Even identical twins have differences, no one is the same. Though I may be a mix of Scotch-Irish decent you can put me beside another of the same and we will look nothing alike.

My point is that we are all others. History has shown how our otherness has divided humanity into cultures or societies and governments. It has been the line drawn in the sand, but what we don't recognize is that even within our own culture down to our own family units we are still other to anyone is not yourself. I don't see it just along the division of Male/Female that Irigaray discusses, but I see it permeating into all of humanity. But I must say that I agree with Irigaray in that it is time to stop thinking of "other" as a crude, dirty, obscene word and as fact. And it’s a fact that can be celebrated.

Now to be able to celebrate this otherness I agree that a universal neuter language is necessary in order to see these others as a good thing. By having a truly neuter universal language (which as Irigaray would say does not exist-and I agree) then a perspective can be understood, even if we are not of the same truth. I guess my concept would take Irigaray’s idea of living dualistically to a whole new level. I think that the major divide between Male and Female is important to consider, and maybe we each do have our own truths that are separate, but I think this concept must be taken further. For are we not all vastly shaped by our family, community and culture? And within in those circles of life in which we operate are we not influenced to perceive things in a specific way? And wouldn’t that then make my truth that I seek different from that of a truth sought by a girl living in India who is my same age? I agree with Irigaray that the masculine overtones in our language greatly colors many of our patriarchal societies and needs desperately to find a new neuter voice; a voice in which the male and female voice and breath can be understood;  a voice that is about understanding and not about one over the other.

And maybe to realize that voice we need to understand that we are all other. The concept of perception and dividing lines goes past gender, past ethnicity, past family ties and all the way down until we are one and therefore other to all that we term other. Though it’s easy to end there, I don’t wish to end on a thought where one could feel isolated and alone. Rather by recognizing that we are all other and that we all still have ties to others brings back a since of community and livelihood, but think past your normal boundaries of community. For if we are all other are we not then in some way all connected to each other? It’s a beautiful and connecting thing if you think about it, even though it may seem backwards.

It's something to be celebrated.

Breathing

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.

What is the first thing a child must do to survive?

-Breathe in.

What is the very last thing someone does before dying?

-Take their last breath.

Breath.

It's a theme that has been repeating itself for me with every philosopher I have encountered this semester and Irigaray makes no exception to this. Breath is what connects us to life on this earth. The air we breathe is vital to our well being. That's why we talk about pollutants in the air or the alarming levels of ozone and carbon dioxide in the air, because it's vital to our survival. But breathing and the air we breathe has come to be almost a philosophy of my own.

The air that surrounds us has more meaning than just merely giving us life-it connects us. It connects you to me, Buddha to the flower he leans over and inhales the scent of, priests to incense burning, lovers lying next to each other in a bed, enemies in the heat of battle, you to a past love one who's perfume still hangs in the air of her bedroom. Air is a part of the relationships we build, form and connect with, whether they be good, bad or indifferent. Air is a life giving quality and a connector. Rob Bell in a Nooma video even explains how air connects us to the Divine. Irigaray also writes on this connection of air to the divine or even other dimensions. In her conversation with Michael Stone on "'Oneness' and 'Being-Two' in the Practice and Culture of Yoga" they discuss the importance of breathing in yoga. They take it past just the health benefits and the individual level of the literal air that is focused on being brought into the body and pushed out of the body. Irigaray and Stone talk about the air and breathing as expanding one's space in which to think and to meditate. Think about it. If one concentrates on air and air within this bubble we call the atmosphere fills every crack it can and touches/surrounds everything within this bubble is that not a lot of space one can think in? It also brings back the thoughts on connection. If air touches everything and it is vital to us all, does that not in some way connect my oneness to another oneness sitting half-way across the world, someone I've never met and probably never will within the over six billion people that fill this earth? In that matter does it not connect me, at least indirectly to each of those six billion people and let's not forget the other living things on this planet, animals, insects, plants, all breathing the same air that I do? And if it's all connected at least in a small way, then how should I think of that which is other than me? Should I not care for it? Now I'm not saying everyone should be vegan because vegetables and animals are living, but shouldn't I at least have some level of care and even respect for it all? I think Wendall Berry would agree, let's support the small farmers. All this said, the answer I would say to all the questions I just asked is yes. It's something to think about, ponder for a bit.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.

Dialogue

I recently had the honor to sit down with Mr. Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson for lunch. He was a man of few words, but his eyes seemed to hold the wisdom of the ages between the wrinkles and the smile that seemed to say that he was enthralled in his own private joke. Whether that is true, or just what I think when I look at any person who has weathered the storms of life, woman or man, I can't say. However when he did speak he spoke with kindness. At the luncheon I attended he was asked to say a few words (and few they were, I don't think the speech lasted even five minutes) and though short I find myself still pondering over some of the things he said.

"Learning not only happens in the textbooks, but in life experience." -Arun Gandhi
Isn't this true, isn't this a value that I hold dear to myself, yet one that I manage not to be able to put into words, yet Gandhi managed to?

Universities are a place of learning, a place where one comes to broaden their mind. Yet sometimes universities are the most divided. Let's leave the differences off the campus and build a community of sharing of knowledge. (Paraphrased from Gandhi's speech)
Isn't it true that when we come to college we are shaped and molded and pushed to think and experience new things in our classes (or at least I hope so). Yet when I look at the organizations on campus so many are divided not by interests, but rather by race or gender or both. Even when they claim not to be, it's sad to say they are, even ones that don't explicitly state they are. I was once encouraged by a speaker to go to a meeting where I would be the minority, and that I would be embraced with open arms--sadly the speaker was very wrong.

How can we take the simple truths that Arun Gandhi laid out in just a few brief moments and put them in to action on a university campus?

Dialogue.

In Irigaray's work Conversations her chapters are various conversations that she has had with individuals and or groups. The subject matter varies from chapter from chapter, but what I have gathered thus far in the book (and think I will continue to discover) is the importance of not only the language that we use, but the way that we use it in speaking to others. Dialogue is key to opening the pathways that will end, set aside the differences that divide us, on campus and in the world. As Irigaray also discusses (and I will only briefly mention it here, for I intend to write entire blogs on this subject) the language that we use is vital in those dialogues or conversations. Until we can use a language that will put everyone on equal ground the dialogues/conversations won't be successful. However obtaining that perfect dialogue will take some time...years to say the least, but until then we can at least start the dialogue as we work towards hopefully that language that Irigaray idolizes.

All it takes is a simple "hello" to begin.

Luce Irigaray

Luce Irigaray was born in the 1930s in Belgium. In 1955 she received a Master’s Degree from the University of Louvain. She taught high school in Brussells from 1956-1959. She went back to school to get a Master’s Degree from the University of Paris in psychology. She then worked for the Fondation Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in Belgium; where she began as a research assistant at the Centre in Paris.

In the 1960s Irigaray participated in Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic seminars. In 1968 she received a Doctorate in Linguistics and then taught for a while at the Univeristy of Vincennes. It was in 1969 she analyzed Antionette Fouque, a feminist leader and she was intrigued. Her second Doctorate thesis, “Speculum of the Other Woman,” was shortly followed by the ending of her employment at the University of Vincennes. The phallocentric economy she condemned in her thesis would be the very one that would try to silence her.

Irigaray then moved to the feminist circles where she found an audience, though she refused to be apart of any one group. She soon became active though, participating in demonstrations and was even invited to speak at seminars and conference throughout Europe. The continuation of this led to the publishing of An Ethics of Sexual Difference, which established Irigaray as a major Continental philosopher.

Since then her works have continued to influence the feminist movement in France and Italy. She has continued to conduct research on the difference between the language of women and the language of men; that involves men and women who speak various languages.

Irigaray continues to philosophize and research and publish her thoughts. She has written 19 books in three different languages and has published numerous articles. She also continues to be heard, speaking, for as a linguist Irigaray sees the value in the spoken word, in dialogue or better put Conversations.

A Dialogue between Rand and Berry

Perfection and Perception

On the short trip across that little pond called the Atlantic Ocean a friend of mine and I got into a philosophical discussion on We The Living. We talked about how the Story of the Viking and the philosophy behind it is that the internal infinite possibilities held within a single individual versus the ideals of the community and the infinite possibility of the whole. That led us to the conversation held between Kira and Andrei about God. The discussion is on how if one believes in God then one doesn't believe in life-because "whatever anyone chooses to call God -- is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above hiss own possibility thinks very litle of himself and his own life." This goes back to the Viking and the infinite possibilities within the individual. Kira goes onto say, "It's a rare gift, you know, to fell reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it." This made us think of perfection and how Kira then according to this passage perceives perfection--in the here and now.

As we continued to talk about Kira's perfection and how it is different from our own views of perfection, we came to realize that even our ideas on perfection were different and how if we were to gather defitions of perfection from everyone on the plane, each one would have a different idea of perfection (if only slightly). We then turned to how Kira perceived perfection through striving for the undefeated life and how that her definition is very dependent on situation in life. Rand describes this book as the closest thing to an autobiography that she would ever write-that the story is fiction, the setting is real and the ideals and philoshophy of Kira's are her own. With that thought we began to think of this ideal of Rand's placed in the real world. It started to become very clear how our perceptions of perfection could create internal struggles and detremental problems within individuals and how it could begin to divide groups of people.

For the individual, my best description of the internal struggle was this years suprise hit and Academy Nominee for Best Picture-Black Swan. The main character, Nina, is a prima ballerina who's dream is of playing the lead role in the classic ballet Swan Lake. Throughout the film Nina pushes herself to achieve this goal, to dance the perfect dance.

As the trailer portrays Nina's striving for perfection leds to her loss with realitity and ultiminately (SPOILER ALERT) her death. Nina's struggles are much like Kira's who stays with an abusive lover just for the sake of the potential that his life holds and the promise of making it abroad. This goal in Kira's life, to make it to the undefeated life abroad is her idea of perfection and leads to her the same fate as Nina in Black Swan.

Will this always be the price to pay to reach perfection, or is that why we mere mortals should leave perfection to the gods and just dream of the day we might see heaven?

Kira the Viking

At the beginning of the novel we find our heroine telling of the only hero that she knows of, the Viking:

"The only hero [Kira] had known was a Viking whose story she had read as a child; a Viking whose eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword, but there was no boundary for the point of his sword; a Viking who walked through life, breaking barriers and reaping victories, who walked through ruins while the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing its weight; a Viking who laughed at kings, who laughed at priests, who looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook and there, over-shadowing the sky, he saw his own picture; a Viking who lived but for the joy and the wonder and the glory of the god that was himself."
-We The Living p. 49
We find this story reborn in Kira's life. She never saw beyond her sword-her goal of making it abroad. The sword had no boundary-she stopped at nothing to attain what she wanted whether it was saving Leo's life (her first hope at going abroad) or going it alone. She broke through barriers and reaped victories-the government who tried to make her part of the being that was made of human flesh, arms, and hot heavy breath from toiling never could and she would work her way past their lines of red tape to prove it. She laughed at kings at priests or better disguised as Commrades with party cards. She saw herself and saw the life, if even for only a brief moment, that could existed undefeated and that was her God-the life that held possibility.

The Song of Broken Glass

In We the Living Kira finds an anthem that is at the heart beat of her life. Even before times got hard for Kira she knew that this song embodied all that she wished for and it became her “last battle-march.” The music was her promise, “a promise at the dawn of her life. That which had been promised then, could not be denied to her now.” Even though Rand and Kira would probably deny it, I would argue that this song was her life’s hymn that accompanied the, “fragile girl in the flowing, medieval gown of a priestess.”

The song was The Song of Broken Glass.

It comes from a real operetta that is still preformed in Russia to this day. It is from Emmerich Kalman’s Die Bajadere.  "It was the most wanton operetta from over there, from abroad. It was like a glance straight through the snow and the flags, through the border, into the heart of the other world.”  "There were women in shimmering satin from a place where fashions existed, and people dancing a funny foreign dance called 'Shimmy,' and a woman who did not sing but barked words out, spitting them contemptuously at the audience, in a flat, hoarse voice that trailed suddenly into a husky moan--and a music that laughed defiantly, panting, gasping, hitting one's throat and breath, an impudent drunken music, like the 'Song of Broken Glass,' a promise that existed somewhere, that was, that could be."

Kira searches throughout the story, unknowingly to find this song, the answer to her unspoken prayer of what life could be. At the end of the story she hears the song at first the song trembles even hesitates but then it burst forth in “fine waves, like the thin, clear ringing of glass.” The song was of consummate human joy. The song and the end of her life showed how much had been possible and that “Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.”

Kira Argounova and Jo March

The year doesn't matter, but what does is that times were hard and not only the small comforts of life were gone. Pure survival became the driving force of everyday life. Women weren't property, but they weren't on equal footing with men as tradition dictated; however with times as such a closing of the gap was found with unease. In these very real times two fictional characters stand out to me. Even though the year was 1860, New England, America in the midst of the Civil War and 1924 Petrograd, Soviet Russia in the middle of the rising red tide of communism, the two women characters in the two very different novels share many of the same qualities.

Meet Citizen Kira Argounova, daughter of the bourigouesis and Jo March, daughter of a union officer. Both of these women were not the average woman of their days. Kira and Jo had their own way of viewing life and driving passions that allowed them to accomplish whatever they put their minds' to. For Jo it was her writing and taking care of Beth, for Kira becoming an architect and taking care of Leo and her family. Both had individualistic tendencies, but showed caring hearts under their rough exteriors.

My point is that we can find common threads in the most unlikely of places and the old cliche of "you can't judge a book by its cover" is still very true to this day.

A Short History of the color RED

Ancient Folklore says that the first color perceived by man was RED; maybe that’s why it has remained through history as one of the most powerful colors, with the most stories, meanings and symbolism behind it. Even in modern times a person suffering from a brain injury that becomes temporarily color-blinded states that the first color they begin to discern is red. Also studies done in present times have been conducted in regards to color association. On average the color red is associated with two words – power and hunger.

Neolithic hunters, Anglo-Saxons, Norse all of these people believed that the color red held magic powers and often times would bury their dead with red ochre. Red was said to protect from evil spirits in these cultures. The warriors and hunters would paint their weapons red which they believed endowed magic. In Australia the aborigines still hold this belief even in modern times. Roman gladiators drank the blood of their enemies so that they could absorb their strength. In the Middle Ages red sheets were used as protection against “red illnesses” like fever, rashes and miscarriages. Ruby gems, red garlands and red scarfs were signs of protection as well and often worn in weddings during the 18^th century in some cultures.

A red rose became the symbol of love and fidelity in many cultures. In Greek and Roman mythology the red rose sprang alive from the blood of Adonis who was killed by a wild boar on a hunting excursion. The red rose thus became the symbol also for the cycle of growth and decay. In Christian beliefs it is associated with the Cross and the bloodshed of Jesus of Nazareth.

Red also held more negative meanings as well. Israelites would paint red animal blood over their doorframes to ward off vindictive spirits. In Egypt the red sands of the desert represent the destructive god Seth. Egyptian writers used red ink to dictate nasty words; contrast that with Christianity in which many Bibles use the color red to indicate God/Jesus speaking.

In regards to We the Living, the book tells the very real story of the rising red tide of communism in Soviet Russia, even though the novel is fiction. The cover of the book only depicts one image – a red piece of barbed wire. The color red, appropriately then, is state time and time again in its pages. It is interesting and understandable that with all the varying symbolisms behind red that it became the rallying red flag in which the communists assembled behind. 

The Girl Who Took Short Showers

American blonde, who never longed,

Life was kind, but she was blind,

Always hygienic,

For grace she was told, was in it,

She smelled of sweet lilac her priest would tithe to that,

She never stopped to hear the cries,

Of those who suffered greater than thy,

Rail thin arms and bloated stomachs from days sitting by the road side,

Or mutilated bodies from days of genocide,

Were images never found in her head,

But in her heart she held a secret,

For in her soul she saw their eyes that cried no tears,

She took short showers.

-Melissa McDuffee

The Lesson of the Viking

"The only hero [Kira] had known was a Viking whose story she had read as a child; a Viking whose eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword, but there was no boundary for the point of his sword; a Viking who walked through life, breaking barriers and reaping victories, who walked through ruins while the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing its weight; a Viking who laughed at kings, who laughed at priests, who looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook and there, over-shadowing the sky, he saw his own picture; a Viking who lived but for the joy and the wonder and the glory of the god that was himself."
-We The Living p. 49

One can see the ideals of Ayn Rand embodied in this story. It's about living, about being and not getting caught up in the details and drudgery of life. It's easy to see the destruction that the Viking normally is thought of as bringing, but Rand finds away of finding the beauty in it as well. It's the beauty yet rugged nature of the Viking. The Viking is only concerned with himself--which is the individual value that Rand is known for. In a simplistic form the Viking embodies the hero that she came to fully write about in works such as Atlas Shrugged.


So what is the lesson that the Viking brings?

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand is an author who has personally fascinated me since high school. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision which sustained her throughout her life. At nine years old she started her writing career. She admired Victor Hugo and saw herself, like him, a European writer, not a collectivist Russian writer. In high school she witnessed the Kerensky Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. She escaped the fighting by moving with her family to Crimea. With the victory of the Communist brought hard times around for her family. In her last year of high school she studied American history which became her model of what free men could be. 

She attended the University of Petrograd where she studied philosophy and history. She graduated in 1924 and found that the communists had infiltrated life once again. She found comfort in Viennese operettas and Western films. In 1925 she was granted permission to travel to America which was suppose to be short, though she was determined never to return to Soviet Russia. 

While in America she moved to Hollywood to try her hand at screenwriting. After working various jobs in Hollywood on sets. Her first book We The Living was completed in 1934 but was rejected by several publishers, but eventually was published in 1936. This was the most autobiographical of all her novels, being based on her years under Soviet tyranny.  

She published many other famous work such as the Fountainhead, Anthem and Atlas Shrugged. She often depicted a hero as being the "ideal man" or how a man "could be and ought to be." Her philosophy developed and came into full bloom in Atlas Shrugged which integrated: ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. Her philosophy became known as Objectivism a "philosophy for living on earth." 

Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982. Her books are still widely known and thousands of copies are sold a year. Her vision of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of thousands of readers and launched a philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture.

Life and Death

"Don't be afraid of death Winnie, be afraid of the unlived life."

What's ideal: quantity or qualitity? Obviously one wishes to have both-but which would you choose, if you had to. Berry wrestles with this very question and the story of Lily in his essay Quanity vs. Form.

Is death something that should be avoided and be put off at all costs or is it the completion of a life?

Where do we meet in the middle? It is one thing to bring death upon oneself, and another entirely to not wish to allow science to extend one's life until it's nothing more than machinery moving one's breath in and out. This is a very touchy subject that has intrigued me personally for some time; yet it's still all very new territory. Ethics has long been forgotten in this pursuit of immortality, but it's time for a change. It is time to understand balance. To allow for autonomy to decide where the balance between quanity and quality lies.

Stories

What ever happened to the days when life was slower, simpler, and maybe even sweeter? You know the days that Hollywood has often romantacized, when most people lived off the land. The days of "family, forestry and pulling horses."

But is what I just described really the truth?
Is the reality that is often times romantacized truly a result of reality or is it "reality drawn from fiction?" As Berry was once told, "there's no use in telling a pretty good story when you can tell a really good story?" Some may gasp at reading this statement, but is it not the truth? Think of the fish tales in one's own life-how many times has our fish grown, maybe by just a couple of inches, or by several feet? One might yell "Lies! All lies!" but by telling the really good story, doesn't one still learn something? The storyteller aknowledges human limits and a human power and the listerner(s) hear a more telling/moving/inspiring [insert other appropriate synonym here].

Berry admits that many of his own stories start from a real event, but then evolve into a great story that in the end can only be labeled as fiction. If we get so tied down in the facts and researching what really happened don't we miss the point of it all. It's like looking at a painting and only focusing on how this line could be clearer, that smudge should really be a shade darker and missing the beauty of the painting that is staring you in the face-the wonder of it all.

I'm not saying ignore the truth, but allow yourself to listen to the story.

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry, born August 5, 1934 in Henry Couty, Kentucky. This man is an American "man of letters, acadmenic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is the author of novels, short stories, poems and essays.

Berry earned his bachelor's degree from the Univeristy of Kentucky in 1956 and finished his master's in 1957. He has taught at many prestigious univeristies such as, Stanford, Georgetown, New York University and Bucknell.

He has published over forty works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. These publications have earned him several awards and honors from the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to the T.S. Eliot Award and many, many more.

He currently lives and works with his wife, Tanya Berry, on their farm in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Another Blog-"In Search of Sunlight"

While reading the Shantung Compound and searching for articles that I felt tied into the book, I stumbled upon this little gem:
http://kindlingforhim.blogspot.com/2008/11/shantung-compound-summaries.html

If you haven't read this book, this blogger gives a great summary of the main points discussed in Shantung Compound. Also I would highly suggest this book to anyone, no matter where you are in life, there is something you can take from the simple, yet complex truths that Gilkey writes about.

Rolling Blackouts and Pressure

Fort Worth Rolling Blackouts

Thanks to all the snow, or to be more accurate—the ice, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) mandated “rolling power outages.” This was a last resort and ERCOT claims that controlled outages are good and should last no longer than thirty minutes.

Well that’s all pretty boring information, and the article attached is as well. So why did I post this article? I posted it in response to all the facebook statuses I read in relation to the blackouts.

In the age of information we are all pumped full of more information than we know what to do with (just look at how beautifully the Bing commercials have captured this concept).

For the amount of information readily available at the click of a button I was appaled by the ignorance of many of the posts that I read.

This got me thinking about the Shantung Compound and how my generation would act if put “under pressure.” Sure one could argue that in this day and age that we do live under all sorts of stress or pressure. Our generation lives under the pressure of a failing economy, unstable weather, a lack of jobs, the list goes on and on for each individual.

The question still remains of how does the pressure we in the modern world face stack up against that of those in the Shantung Compound Internment Camp?

I feel that we act quite the same as those in the book—we go about our daily lives, and occasionally we recognize the situation we are dealing with, but just as quickly we turn and go back to our normal conversations and daily activities. That is unless there is a spectacle to be made, much like the trial depicted in the Shantung Compound. It captures our full attention--Michael Vick is torturing animals, Genocide is happening in Darfur--*gasp* but these things only hold our attention for a brief moment. The cruelty and injustice in the world soon goes back under the radar and continues on.

So shouldn’t our generation be different?

We have the ability to obtain information, to google the rolling blackouts and understand their necessity. We do live in the “Age of Information.” So why do we choose to be ignorant, as facebook so often points out through our friends and maybe sometimes even our own statuses? The people in Shantung Compound didn’t have google, or plasma screen 48’ T.V.s or let alone a newspaper to gain information from—ignorance was their only option. It’s not our only option. So I leave with one last question:

Will ignorance always be bliss?

Discussion Question-Week 1

1) "For even saintly folk will act like sinners
      Unless they have their customary dinners."
                                            -Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera
From the first of the book I was almost plagued by this statement. Will people act out if thrown into something new/different?

2) When do social ideals and patriotic ties become unimportant, lost or muddled together?

3) Can concrete answers and philosophical theories meet in the middle? Or can realistic theology and ethical idealism meet in the middle?

4) Can we as humans function without some form of politics invading the society we live in?

Free Will or Genetics?

First off, thank you Michael Smith for guiding me to this article.

In this article the author discusses the what we think of as being free will and is it really free will or a product of our genetics and previous experiences.

Do we have free will or are we “condemned to freedom,” in Jean-Paul Sartre’s words?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/your-move-the-maze-of-free-will/

Langdon Gilkey

Langdon Gilkey: 1919-2004

The author of Shantung Compound and the first book I am tackling in my portfolio. Gilkey was a theologian at the University of Chicago and is considered to be one of the most influential American Christian theologians of the 20th century. A colleague, students of his and readers referred to him as, "the surest theological guide for the joys and terrors of living as a modern Christian in this 'time of troubles.'"

Gilkey had a way of bringing together theological theories and putting them into the immediate lived experience and he did it in an, "imaginative yet concrete way." In Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, he narrates his own experience while living in a Japanese Internment Camp for two and a half years. During this time he departs for the liberal Protestant belief system that he once held. It was his time in the interment camp that led him to rethink Christianity in the modern "time of trouble." No longer were the traditional symbols of sin and grace for Gilkey, rather with a renewed look at the classical Reformation he dived into the individual, societal and historical estrangement, self-delusion and sin.

His early books document his time, and existential power of his experiences, that started from his early pacifist years to his teachings in China and his time in the Internment camp. His teachers--Niebuhr and Tillich--then molded him upon his return from China and helped him develop his own methods and categories which became a well formulated, powerful and creative theologically vision of his own.

His new take on the theology of history, which was based on a rethinking of the questions of "free will and grace, providence and fate, and eschatology and secular history," grew to become his most important, strictly theological work. Towards the end of his life he became one of the leading figures in the inter-religious and pluralist dialogue for Christian theology.


Source:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/041121.gilkey.shtml
http://www2.stetson.edu/~ljguenth/group/rel_cul.htm

What is this?

This is my (as I have aptly named) Senior Portfolio. So why am I doing this? Simple, it's for my independent study. Dr. Iron's and I decided that the best way to share and display all the pieces of my portfolio that I will be building over the course of the semester would be to create a blog. In this study I will be diving into modern philosophy and its effects on the world that I live in, my generation, culture and life experiences. In this blog you will find several varying posts, which include:

• My journals-these will mainly be my thoughts on the four books I am reading for the semester (Shantung Compound by Langdon Gilkey, We The Living by Ayn Rand, The Way of Ignorance by Wendell Berry, and Conversations by Luce Irigaray)
• Author Information-Each book I will also post a general overview of information on each of the authors and what her or his take on philosophy is.
• Discussion Questions-these will be the 
• Other: this broad category will include articles, art work, music, poetry, pop culture references, current events or any other thing that I feel can tie into this overall work.

I hope you enjoy and PLEASE leave your "two-cents" whether you whole-heartedly agree or disagree with me!