Even More Coincidences

I'm not entirely sure if anybody even reads these anymore but I needed to share this. Like Karen I had a small coincidence when I got home too. So I got home and I have some reading that I plan on doing as I assume every English major does during break, but once I got to my room I decided to go through my bookshelf just to see what was on there. When my family moved into this house we moved a lot of old books onto the bookshelves in my room, and I never really bothered with very many of them. As I'm going through those books a name caught my eye, it was Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but the book was The Idiot. So I continued to look through my bookshelf and I see another Dostoyevsky book, and this one is The Brothers Karamazov. I'm sure you all remember listening to Dr. Sexson talking about the three greatest stories of human suffering: The Book of Job, King Lear, and The Brothers Karamazov.

I found this book and was absolutely shocked. I lived in this room for 6 years of my life, and never really knew that I had anything of worth on there. So i'm reading the book to see if Dr. Sexson was right. So far so good. I guess I would suggest that everybody go through your book shelves to see if you find anything worthwhile.

Merry Christmas and toodle loo.

Dr. Sexson's Cool New Look

So I was just wondering if anybody else noticed that half of Dr. Sexson's collar was flipped up today? Personally i'm jealous because I know that I can't pull it off. I mean come on we've all seen that one guy who walks into a party and has his collar popped. Usually we immediately make a judgement to not interact with that person, because they're likely to be one of the dumbest people you've ever met. I would like to point out that not only did Dr. Sexson pull this look off, but he was able to pull it off with just one side flipped, an ability that I would have thought next to impossible. Anyways, I would just like to congratulate and thank Dr. Sexson on making what we all thought uncool cool.

A flurry of blogs

Now that I'm finally fully participating in the blogs, and especially since the end of semester is coming, I'm seeing a flurry of blogs from almost everyone, and enjoying all of it. I only wish that I had not been so unsure of blogging and the affect it would have on my class experience. At the beginning of this class I felt that I would only be summarizing what I've read in the Bible. While I didn't read much of the Bible, I now realize that it could have been more, and that I wish I had participated more within my blog. I regret to say that I never feel like I can truly put my thoughts into words the way I want it to be, and this scared me a little away from participating (it still scares some). That's still no excuse, and I would like to apologize to and to thank everybody in the class. Most importantly to Dr. Sexson. I truly wish that this were a two semester class or something that we could continue with past this semester. Oh well, what I do plan on doing over the Christmas break is to read a little bit of everyone's blogs. I hope to see many of you in future English classes.
Good Luck and God Bless.

On the Concept of Belief

One thing I've noticed is that within the Bible there doesn't seem to be much questioning of the existence of God. I don't believe though, that the point of these books is to prove God's existence, but this question is probably one of the most prevalent questions of our time.

Does God exist? my answer- I don't know.

I consider myself an agnostic, I don't believe there is sufficient proof for the existence of some being higher than us, and I just can't bring myself to have faith in something I cannot see or even ever know. For me this means that I'm open to the possibility of God, that my scientific and truth seeking mind cannot allow me to believe that a God can exist. As Robert Langdon says in the famous book and movie Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, "God did not bless me with the gift of faith." I like to use this statement for myself because from time to time I have people ask me if I believe in God, because this statement puts a very good light on not believing. I just couldn't keep saying that I believed when in reality I wasn't entirely sure that I did, and I'm still not sure, but at least I'm not claiming something that isn't true anymore, at least I'm not lying to myself.

Personally though I believe the issue is much bigger than straight up belief. I think we have to question why the concept of God was created in the first place. And that of course was to explain the origins of our surroundings. In order to explain the how and why of existence. But now we have scientific evidence that refutes the stories used to explain these things, and even more we have received more answers on the how of existence in the last 300 years than ever before, and we are continuing to gain answers about the human anatomy, the brain, the universe, and about physics as time progresses. But these studies don't give an answer to the why of existence.

What is the why of existence? Is it just something that randomly happened in the universe as scientist's might claim? Is it because we are supposed to experience all the quirks of life as a precursor to something bigger? Is it for our experiences alone? Is it so that we might find definition for ourselves individually or as a group? Why? Why? Why? Why? I honestly don't know, and I don't think I want to know. But maybe that's where God exists, is in our inability to know this ultimate question. For me, I can't bring myself to believe for no other reason than that I have no answers. I'm not strong enough to convince myself.

Many people would then question what is the point of life, and I would tell them to experience the ups, downs, and in betweens. To observe and to create. To strive and to relax. To wish for everything and to receive nothing. To see pain in another person's eyes and to try to comprehend that pain by relating it to those times when you yourself have experienced pain. To try to define yourself in the best way possible. And finally to ask the questions pertinent to life so far as they have an answer, because the questions that don't have answers will only give you a headache, much like what I have now.

Oops

So I thought for one more good blog post I would attend Catholic Mass and see if I could get something good from it. I had heard that every Wednesday in the SUB that they have service at 5:30, and I hadn't been to a service since the weekend before I came back to Bozeman. As I'm getting to the room I notice there's a little sign on the front of the door that says "There will be no service tonight. See you next semester." My plan has been foiled. And for what reason? Dead Week. I honestly don't see what's so dead about it, I mean I see more people in the library this week than any other week in the semester. Oh well, kudos for trying right?

The Priestly Benediction

So I was looking up fun little things online about certain popular prayers within the bible and I was looking specifically at The Priestly Benediction which goes:

May the Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace
Numbers 6:24-26

So I looked up this prayer on wikipedia and found out that the actor Leonard Nimoy who originally played Spoc in the popular tv series Star Trek had grown up in the Jewish tradition, and he remembered when he was a boy his father making the hand signals for the Priestly Benediction, which he decided a single handed version would be perfect for the hand signal he would use when giving his Vulcan Hand Salute, which included the famous line from Star Trek "Live long and prosper." So for all you Star Trek fans, just remember that "Live long and prosper" and especially the hand signal that goes with comes from a verse in the Bible. Just makes you wonder how many other little things like that have been influenced by the Bible.
Food for thought.

Song of Solomon

So here's a link to a video of a choir singing one of the many versions of the song Set Me as a Seal Upon Your Heart. I couldn't get the link to attach for some reason so if you want to hear this song you'll have to copy and paste it. I remember performing this song in my high school chorus and thought I could share this with everybody. Don't worry though I went to the trouble of finding the best version on youtube. What I didn't realize until this class was that the lyrics for this song came straight from the Song of Solomon, this gives the song a little more significance to me now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb6uY-y9HRI&feature=related

My Commentary on My Paper (I Know This Title is Just a Little Self Pretentious)

So anyways I had a wonderful time writing this paper and it has been a journey of ups and downs of discovery. The thing of it is is that this semester, while being extremely enjoyable has been one of the most thought provocative and difficult times of my life. With a total of 18 credits and between the advanced concepts covered in 3 of these classes(Biblical Foundations in Literature, Literary Criticism and Theory, and Peer Leadership), I have come across ideas that before my college career I had never even dreamed of. And learning some of the things that I have learned has been hard to grasp and I must now learn how to make a proper application of this thought. Because of this paper I have begun to do this, for this was still one of the most unresolved questions in my life was how to apply this knowledge of skeptical wisdom without totally debunking it for extremely low reasons that would only add to the multitude of misunderstandings. And I know now that with this start I can continue my application of these thoughts I have come across. Finally I feel I must point out that for this paper my ideas on the concept of wisdom and applying it appropriately were out to here (imagine my arms spreading as if I were holding something large and round, such as a barrel), but that my ability for relating them to you the rest of the class, whether through my paper or my presentation, were somewhere in here (now imagine my hands as if they were holding something smaller, maybe a basketball or soccer ball). And with that I leave the interpretation up to you.

My Paper - Applying Wisdom

Applying Wisdom
Throughout this semester in Biblical Foundations of Literature we have explored many intriguing and thought provoking subjects of what is found in the Bible and how people interpret it in the literary world. When I came into this class I had no idea the influence it might have on me as I progress through my college career. The topic that struck me the most though was the one on wisdom. I liked this topic best because it was one that throughout this semester I have encountered numerous times. The time that it became a prevalent and continuous thought in my mind though was when we covered it in this class. I remember the day when Dr. Sexson read the line from Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, all is vanity.” This line according to him was the perfect representation of skeptical wisdom. He proceeded to tell us that that line means that everything is pointless or a simple breath of air or fog, as derived from the Hebrew word hebel. At first I had a hard time accepting this concept, I remember walking away from class that day running over and over again the topics we covered and trying to make sense of it. This topic has sent me on an inward, thoughtful search to learn how to define wisdom in my own life, and once discovered to learn how to use wisdom in order to lead my life in the best way possible. If this is possible at all, I still don’t know, but as many people do, I have found a way to accept the answers I have discovered and plan to attempt the type of happiness that has culminated in my head from various readings and realizations.
To begin the explanation of my discoveries and my own personal thoughts on how to live a wise life I feel I must first define wisdom. The dictionary.com definition is, “The ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight.” The word insight in this definition gives a feel of stepping away from a situation and evaluating it for what and how it is. This is a thought that I will come back to, but first I feel I must continue to clear up some misgivings that many people apply to the word wisdom. The first and foremost misunderstanding of the word is in the separation of wisdom from knowledge. Each time this argument has come up it seems to me that the same conclusion is reached, and that is that wisdom is what comes from experience, and knowledge is what comes from the study of a subject or skill. This is a very basic review of an argument that I have experienced twice in this semester, both coming from being a peer leader for the US 101 Freshman Seminar class. The argument came from a discussion of the Apology section of Plato’s Euthyphro, in which Socrates claims that he is wise because he is aware that he knows nothing. The easy thing to latch on to is that Socrates knows nothing, but in reality the most important part of his statement is that of his awareness. He is aware that he does not know the specificities of certain practices, and that is where he is wise.
I came across this argument around the same time that we covered wisdom in our class. While I have had Socrates’ Apology before this semester, it had never occurred to me to continue to question the process of awareness and the play it has in wisdom. Again I think my investigation was prompted by our discussions on this subject. At this point though, the sense of wisdom as knowing that there is nothing to look forward to as covered in Ecclesiastes still did not make sense to me. I continued to question though and I started to think about that topic of insight. I feel that insight is directly caused by being aware of situations. Not aware as in the sense that a person is conscious in that situation, but aware in the sense that they know why it is happening and how that came to be. This type of awareness allows a person to be insightful.
Around the time that I was beginning to think about the relationship between awareness and insight, for my US 460 Peer Leader class (which goes along with being a peer leader for US101) I had to give a presentation on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The American Scholar. In this speech he gave in 1837 he challenges how American culture (workers, scholars, and everyday people) at that time would become what they do, because they didn’t understand or weren’t aware of other proceedings within the country as a whole. A famous quote from this speech is, “The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship.” What Emerson suggests that people begin doing is easily broken down into three steps; to investigate, to study, and to take action. He called for an awareness of other types of work, while still knowing one’s own field. This three step plan lends itself beautifully to being aware of situations and being able to use that insight gained from awareness. Investigate the situation, study why it is that it happens, and then take an appropriate action to what one finds.
Where this left me though, was with how to take action on the wisdom that I have begun investigating, and have studied in this short period of time. I still did not know what I should do, because that type of wisdom still did not quite make sense. It was about here that I discovered a book in the library called Me by Mel Thompson. This book is a part of The Art of Living series, and I randomly found it on the display shelf. What caught my eye about this book was that it claimed to be an exploration on the idea of the self. In this, Thompson claims that we are more than a materialistic set of neurons as many recent philosophers have argued, and also more than just a soul occupying a physical body. He sees that it is a mixture of both of these claims for in our awareness of ourselves the materialistic view becomes obsolete, and in the fact that Alzheimer’s disease can take away our memories and change who we are, the dualistic view becomes a poorly thought out claim as well. What hit me the most about his argument was not this part, but rather that life is a set of random happenings that will constantly shape each of us. People strive to become one thing and they often times find once they get there that they are dissatisfied. Thompson claims that we must accept this constant and unavoidable set of chances and changes within ourselves, because a stagnant existence is not something that we can experience. Whether or not we find that we have reached our desired station in life, we will experience something new that will change us, for better or worse.
Here was where I started to really latch on to and understand what to do with Ecclesiastes’ message. I finally understood why everything is but a breath, for if we are just experiencing random chances, we cannot truly know everything that there is to know, we will just find over and over again that there really is nothing to look forward to. To use a cliché, it seems the message is one that tells us to live in the moment. To really live in the moment, for we can’t know what will happen to us no matter how hard we try to shape our lives so that things will happen in a predictable way. With our insight and awareness, we can take what we know and what we have experienced to live situations anew, whether good or bad.
I finally came to a conclusion to lead a life of continuous and constant change and to be aware of why it is that I must live this way. Once I discovered this I began to look back on what I have been learning throughout this semester and one topic came to mind. In my Literary Criticism class, we have studied many critics and their different approaches to literature. When I began looking back I remembered a conversation about T.S. Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. In this Eliot claims that all of art is one great big entity, and that each artist cannot escape from the traditions set forth before their existence. Also that nothing truly new can be created, for in all likelihood somebody has probably done the same thing before that artist even existed. He claims that we cannot escape this, but each and every time somebody creates something new, while it may not be entirely new, they are adding to the tradition and causing the entire entity of art to change. In a sense all of art would ripple with the effects of this new work.
When I thought back on this it began to make sense with what I had discovered, while nothing I experience is new, it is in actuality constantly changing the entire experiences of all others. For what I experience may have been slightly different from what somebody else experiences, much the same way that art may have the same conclusions but is reached in a different way.
To continue with Eliot, I feel I must include his insistence in interpreting literature on leaving the author out of this process. He claims that in order to make something worthwhile the artist must surrender themselves to emotions and whatever creative work they are making. In a way to leave their thoughts out and to let the feel of the moment create what it is that an artist is making. He calls this his Impersonal Theory, and because of an author’s surrender, we as critics have to leave him out of the interpretation.
The question now becomes how do I apply this to my study of wisdom, and how does this affect how I must lead my life with a sense of constant change. I believe the argument now becomes leading life with thought verses leading life with emotion. These are very basic terms on what it is that I am trying to portray, but are the only words in which I know how to explain it. The struggle leads into trying to live by emotions, for situations experienced with emotions, whether good or bad, are the ones that people remember the most, and the ones that will ultimately continue to change a person. Thought on the other hand just gets in the way of experiencing something. This is not to say that thought is bad, because without it humans would not be self aware, and I would not be able to come to the conclusion of leading life with a sense of constant continuous change. Northrop Frye touches on this subject in his book The Great Code, especially in the section on wisdom that we specifically talked about in class. He says that, “Here we finally see the real form of wisdom in human life as the philosophia or love of wisdom that is creative and not simply erudite.” How this applies to my argument is that a creative and emotion filled existence is one that will be more meaningful to a person than one lead by knowledge and erudite pure thought. Again I do not think that we can totally escape thought, but rather that we must balance our thought with our emotions, in order to experience situations in the right way.
Now I know that in this paper I have kind of gone away from the influence that the Bible has had on my investigation and the interpretation of wisdom that is found there, but I would like to point out that it was this first discussion of wisdom in the Bible that started me out on this type of search to not only define wisdom but learn ways of applying it to my everyday life. I believe that my discoveries are valid and can be used in a proper way, but whether or not I am right is arguable, and I will not after this experience be closed to any new ideas on the matter. That would only contradict what it is that I have claimed. That is that after a complete and total understanding of what wisdom is a person can then use the knowledge that everything is but a breath, to lead a life of constant, continuous change with a well balanced mixture of emotion and thought.

Paper Topic

I have chosen the first option of what I know now that I didn't know before and the difference it makes, and with this option I am going to explore the concept of wisdom. Throughout this semester I have had the extreme luck of nearly all of my classes overlapping and covering subjects and topics that are very similar but put to use in many different genres and aspects of life. One of the most reoccurring is that of wisdom. What I am working on is exploring the different kinds of wisdom, the definition, and most importantly how we as humans and how I myself put this wisdom to use in everyday life.
This will all be ready by tomorrow the 3rd of December, because I present tomorrow being that my last name is West and we are going in backward alphabetical order. So much for getting things done ahead of time.
PROCRASTINATION STATION