How we Experience the World: Final Exam

The human experience is a jumble of experiences, influences, and our own biological makeup that make each individual special and unique. Evolution has even played a dramatic role in how we now experience the world. First each person has a right and left side of their brain.  Our left side is cognitive and rational, while our right side is creative and artistic. Having both rational and creative functions in our brains allows us to live a more balanced and functioning life. The left side is the analytical side that we use for math equations, interpreting, and solving everyday problems. The right side is the portion of the brain that allows us to be imaginative and create beautiful pieces of art. It is the emotional half of our mind. Now when writing was introduced into our culture, it changed the way we act, think, and experience the world. We transformed from drawing pictures on cave walls to tell a story to using letters with no image attachment to do the same thing. So our brains went from emotionally interpreting images (right side) to reading phonetics. This in turn made us a lot more left sided, meaning we became much more analytical because we didn’t have the images constantly in our every day life.

Now besides our biological and evolutionary influences, sacred space and nature play a tremendous role in how we experience life. One’s sacred space is what is natural to them. It could be a religious sanctuary of theirs, a special open field that they know of, or simply their bed in their room. It is different for every individual and is where he/she goes to find peace and escape reality. The world is a complex and confusing place and without one’s sacred place, we would become overwhelmed and lost. The most common generalized sacred place is nature. People view nature as pure and innocent, therefore the perfect place to escape from the traffic of our daily lives. When something is as pure and untouched as nature, individuals strive to become as close to that thing as possible. That is done in a multitude of ways. Some become natural themselves, eliminating any artificial or superficial quality that they may possess. Others just go to nature to bring themselves back to a place internally that they want to be at. All are marvelous ways that we as humans keep ourselves in check and able ourselves to keep on living and experiencing fully.

When we are out in the real world we experience love and beauty everyday, and each human being has their own interpretation of what that is. This makes every person experience those qualities of life diversely. Beauty can be inside (personality) and/or outside (appearance). Beauty can also be what is pure and innocent or what is natural. It all depends on the individual and what their interpretations are. For me I experience beauty as a combination of all of those things. I think that beauty is what is natural, but it is also appearances and how a person acts. Beauty is superficial and deep to me. But if one is overriding the other, then something may become ugly even though one aspect of themselves is beautiful. For example if a girl is immensely gorgeous and pleasing to the eye on the outside, but they a cruel and ruthless person on the inside, then they become ugly because their inner self is taking over. Beauty has a huge role with love and can affect one falling in or out of love. When something is beautiful we want to possess it and have it for ourselves, thus gravitating to approach that special thing. Once we acquire it, a lot of us think that we are in love, which we may be truly feeling that, but what that really is your body acknowledging that you have accomplished what you set out to do. We tend to fall out love because that person we have such strong feelings for has given up on trying and are not the same diamond that you may have once found. Love is, I think, the topic and experience in a person’s journey that causes the most ups and downs and effects in one’s life.

Law and ethics play a huge role in the human experience because they dictate what we can and cannot allow ourselves to do and everyone has their own opinion on what they should be. The most influential concept in regards to law and ethics is religion. America says that we are not suppose to mix religion and government, but religion is what convinces us of what is right and wrong, so it is predominately influencing our decisions when it comes to our laws. The bible goes through a list of things that is right or wrong and also has consequences for sinning, the holiness code. This forces us to create our own set of ethics and boundaries that we must follow in order to achieve entrance into heaven. Even though there is a set moral code, every one has a different interpretation of that code, creating a diversified community, all thinking that they are doing right. Who really knows if there is a god or heaven, but everyone in one way or another strives to get there by being a ‘good’ person. Who wants to go to Hell right?

To bring this all to an end, everything that we experience in society, love, beauty, nature, sacred space, evolution, law, and ethics create our own personal inner journey that make our worldly experience unique to ourselves. While the craziness of society is happening around us, we are having our own inner experience that no one else can feel but you. One can try to explain it, but not a single person, no matter how much of an understanding they may have, can truly know and feel what you are describing. This is because we all have different minds and therefore interpret things differently. For example in Hamlet, Hamlet’s feelings for Oephelia are more out of lust than love, while she is madly in love with him and naively falls for his trickery. This just goes to show that everyone is experiencing the same exact situation differently, creating a wonderful place where there is a unique situation everywhere you turn.

Story of Life

What would life be without its story. Many strive to leave there own legacy behind so that they will leave a tremendous mark on time. No one ever wants to be forgotten. So the way people are remembered is through others sharing that person's life in a story. We use them to guide us, teach us, and amuse us. They always serve as entertainment, but in the background they are always having an impact on how we choose to live our life. A person never wants to be a stray wolf from the pact learning on its own, so we as humans all come together to help each other out. Every human being serves as in influence in their present life and their past. What they have journeyed through in their life will serve as a guide as to what to do and not to do when it comes to certain experiences they've had. Everyone has a different journey and therefore can teach something different than anyone else.

In an individual's life there are countless journeys that they go through. Each turning point is the start of a brand new journey. For example becoming a parent or starting your very first job are both examples of new journeys being created. Our personal journey's serve as our stepping stones to growing as a human being and as to finding more and more about ourselves and who we are becoming. If we all didn't have those experiences and stories then we all would be robots wandering around purely functioning. Life would be uninteresting and not a single person would be 'living.'

Humanities Final

Being human is a great mystery that every person on this world has in common, yet not everybody has searched the world around them and their minds to try to figure it out.  For those who have not, Humanities is the origin where these answers can be found.  Yet no one can know for sure what his existence means, Humanities can put him in the right direction to further understanding the meaning of his life.  At the Keene High School, the Humanities class is the best at digging deep inside one’s mind to find opinions and possible explanations to our existence.  At the beginning of the class we learned about Humnaities’ introductory unit, consisting of right and left brains, metaphors, symbolism, forms of storytelling and more.  I learned that I am a strong right brainer through our varius right brain and left brain readings.  This made much sense to me when I found out because I love to act, sing, perform, and be on stage in front of hundreds of people.  Our readings on the experiences of time and info on native American tradition helped me understand as a human that there is a spiritual world I believe in that is something greater than what humans can wrap our heads around.

    The second unit our class covered consisted of humans, nature, and sacred space.  We learned much about this unit when we read the short poems on Mother Nature.  We learned that nature was the thing that allows us to survive, providing us with never-ending (theoretically) food, air, and water.  Along with that, it is the thing that gives us shelter and the wonderful environment that people love to be in.  Inside these wonders of nature, sacred spaces can be found, and I remember talking about a sacred space of mine known as turtle rock.  The readings on sacred space were important to me, because they reminded me of turtle rock, a place I visited many times as a young boy.  I could go into my backyard, walk up the long forest, and find this sacred rock where nothing else, rather than the leaves and peace, could find me.  This helped me through my journey of life because I understood at an early age I had an affinity for the rural wonders of forests and outside living.  Nature and my sacred spaces shaped who I am to this day, and who I will be in a few years.

   Next we covered the unit of love and beauty.  This was my favorite unit in the class, and it probably was most others, as the concepts of love and beauty are prevalent and present in all of our lives.  We watched a movie, The Shape Of Things, which was mainly themed on love.  Evelyn uses love to persuade and pursue the character Adam, and she uses his love and emotions as the centerpiece for a big art project.  This hits close to home base because people often feel used or are hurt from love, but it is a part of being human to overcome the sadness and find other love.  In life, not everyone will be able to love whatever he wants, but the back and forth pursuit of love and personal relation is something that can not be too easy, or humans would not find it as magical.  We also read the book Dorian Gray in this unit, and beauty was quite prevalent.  We learned about the beauty of being youthful and young, and that we should embrace the time we have to be young and have fun, but a big part of being human is growing up and that we can not be children for the rest of our lives.  There is a part of life where we become adults and have to settle more, or else being youthful and young would turn against us and become a bad thing.  If everybody in the world goofed off and did whatever pleased them, the world would be much less successful and organized, and the time to do goofy things is as a youth.  This does not mean older people can not have fun however!  We also learned about love when we read on Philosophers such as Plato, who believes people strive for the concept of beauty when they love someone, rather than the person him/herself.  This is important in understanding what it is to be human because everyone in the world loves something, whether it is another person, a pet, or item, but we love the concept of beauty whether it is just the concept or the thing itself.

  On our fourth unit we learned about Law and Ethics.  We watched the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, which played an important source to understanding the unit.  The movie consisted of killing, lying to survive, relationships that should not have happened, and actions that leave consequence because they are ethically wrong.  The movie helped determine that choices in our futures can lead to consequence or regret if we do not play it wise.  We also read a lot about great philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill, where he had pages and pages of ethic beliefs.  Being human is all about the choices you make, and we learned from his point of view that actions could have good consequences but still not be permissible, and that we avoid bad decisions because we know they have terrible results.  Not everyone has to follow how Mill feels, but the class learned the goods and bads that could pop up in the future.  We learned more about good and bad decisions when we read The Sermon on the Mount as well, and received a better understanding of general commandments and rules that applied hundreds of years ago and still have prevalence in today’s society.  As an example, it listed the importance of mourning over the dead, being merciful, and being pure at heart, which many of us are today.  These good or bad choices and consequences helped the class realize that the decisions in our lives will shape who we are, and that we should make good choices if we want to live consequence-free lives and become overall better humans.

The last unit we tackled consisted of the meaning of existence and the hero’s journey.  In this unit we watched and read Hamlet, and this helped the class understand our existence because we learned about an inner journey.  The main character in Hamlet (Hamlet) must go through a hero’s journey alone to free Denmark of a foul king, and this relates to everyone reading because we all have journeys ourselves.  Even at the start of our birth, we are heros because we have survived the dark, life-changing experience of being born and taken out of our mothers.  Little do we know at that point, we have a long journey ahead of us, where we will need to survive the world and gather the skills and friends to make our lives as enjoyable and successful as we can.  Although everyone’s journey in life will be different, every human shares the fact that we are surviving and living life, which Hamlet and any person we know about is also doing.  Hamlet ends up dying after he kills King Claudius, which is a pivotal event in his life.  Pivotal events will spring up and happen a lot in our lives, and we need to make the best of our journey to become the human we want to become.

final

To truly be human, one must be able to analyze, interpret, and communicate. In Shlain's Alphabet Versus Goddess, he discusses the major differences between the right and left brain, and how this affects the way humans process information. The right brain expresses a state of feeling and being while the left brain is concerned with doing and the willingness to do. The right brain interprets information in the form of emotion, without any effort to translate into words. An example Shlain uses is that of human facial expression; the brain reads the expression and understands it on a deep, emotional level, but it does not translate the feelings into words like "happy" or "sad" without the help of the left brain. This way of thinking and interpreting is uniquely human. David Abram also discusses the brains way of processing information in The Spell of the Sensuous, but with more of an emphasis on the evolution of language. When humans started communicating through pictures (the first step on the way to a fully developed written language), the began the shift away from human gestures and voices and started focusing on these man made images. When the rebus came along, however, the drawn picture or character was no longer meant to simply represent a material thing, it was meant to invoke a specific sound of the human voice. This communication process is uniquely human. Native American oral tradition is an example of the importance of spoken language and its power though history. It has lasted hundreds of years, and some of the stories still exist.

In the Tempest, the relationship humans have with nature plays a major role. Right from the start of the play, a powerful storm leaves a ship and its crew at the mercy of nature. Prospero is a God like figure throughout the show, and he uses the power of nature to control people. In another instance, Prospero is the reason a group of people get lost on the woods of the island. He uses the power of nature to create a confusing maze of trees. According to this show, being human means being at the mercy of nature. Much like the storm in in the Tempest, the flood in Genesis shows how powerless humans are against nature. God uses the power of nature to control the evil that is spreading among humans. Another example of how the God from the Bible uses the power of nature is the 10 plagues. God uses disease, light depravation, and hail storms to punish the people of Egypt. This shows that humans are at the mercy of nature. In Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, he uses nature imagery to pain a vivid picture. He depicts the contrast between a maiden he loves and beautiful aspect of nature (the sun, flowers, and snow). He does this to show that even though his maiden isn't perfect, he loves her all the same. This shows natures powerful influence on humans. Shakespeare uses this power in his poems to make them more effective.

In Dorian Gray, Dorian is a model of youth and beauty. He make people around him envious of his outward appearance. He eventually becomes corrupt by Lord Henry, but it seems to have no affect on his beauty. It does however, have an effect on his inward beauty (as shown by his decaying portrait). This goes to show that being a beautiful human means being beautiful on the inside. In the movie the Shape of Things, Evelyn makes Adam her project much like Henry makes Dorian. Evelyn turns Adam into what society views as beautiful in order to make an artistic statement about beauty and society. This shows that society's view of beauty is skewed, and to be truly beautiful, on must find beauty within ones self. In Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, he treats love as an eternal force that is the reality of everyones life. Even if people are lost in life, the can still be saves by the power of love. This shows that to be human means to find love.

In the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors the protagonist is in a difficult moral situation. He has trouble with the thought of ethics and God. After he has an old girlfriend killed to make his life easier, he feels as though he will be punished by a higher power because there is a moral structure to the universe. This movie shows that there is a moral and ethical structure to the universe.  The Bible dictates many moral standards, specifically in the 10 commandments. According to this, there is a very strict and moral code to the universe: abide by these rules and you will be rewarded, if you do not, you will be punished. In the Stranger, Meursault kills a man. This is against the moral standards of the universe and he is therefore punished. The punishment isn't standard punishment, but he is punished with the hard life he is given and the consequences of the murder.

Hamlet is a prime example of the inner journey. Unlike many standard "heroic" journeys, Hamlet's is in his mind. He must get revenge and discover if there is as true meaning to life in order to feel at peace. Moyre's description of the inner journey is through story; he says everyone finds truth through storytelling.

Final

Our introductory unit encompassed much of the human capacity for experiencing the world. We dicussed cyclical time, linear time, the roles of the creative right and logical left hemispheres, how we process and relate our knowledge, and the symbolism that we are able to see in our own world. This was a unit that touched on exactly how the human experience is possible within us. One of the main points was focused on the way we relate stories, specifically our written languages. In David Abrams' "Spell of the Sensuous", he describes how written language has defined how we process our stories in terms of time and space. He believed that once a story passed from oral to written form it lost part of its circumstantial power, as the writing allowed the story to be uprooted from its origin and carried elsewhere to be shared in an identical way. Abrams also implies that these formal writing systems served as part of an end to what we could refer to as "cyclical time", in that once stories were written down, they were anchored in the past, thus providing the vantage point of a past, present and future, rather than a story that time and time again comes around. In John Bowker's "God- A Brief History" he goes into detail on how humans began to incorporate symbols and such into our culture. In his writing, he details the differences in the types of sign that first emerged. An icon is a sign containing qualities of that which is being signified, an index has a dynamic relationship with that thing being signified, and a symbol is a sign with a meaning agreed on by all who use it. However, the most basic form of relating the human experience was with our words through memory. In the film Australia's Aborigine's, the people of the outback have to this day relayed all of their knowledge by mouth, passed down through generations, in an attempt to keep the stories connected to their surroundings and the dreamtime.

As humans we have always held a need to keep some places sacred, whether these places be churches, our own rooms, or in the case of some native cultures, the natural world in its entirety. The Choctaw Indians, as referenced in the text "North America's Mother Earth, Father Sky" held burial grounds as highly sacred: "'And where,' they wondered, 'shall we leave the remains of our loved ones?' 'Let us place them in this sacred mound of earth,' the twins said. 'The place of the Fruitful mound is our home forever.' As in this example, people often need a connection to nature, though this need has strongly diminished over time. Despite this diminished nature, we can see a clear connection in landscape art, as pointed out in our packet on How Art Made the World. Landscape painting, and the need to portray our natural surroundings is evidenced in virtually all cultures, from 17th century Chinese art to Mosaics from 120 BC, all the way to Tischbein's "Goethe by the Campagna" circa 1787. What changes is the human perspective by culture. The latter painting, European in nature, puts the human subject front and center with nature as a background, while the earlier paintings, such as those of the Chinese culture mentioned put human kind as an afterthought, a part of nature and the landscape. In Nigel Spivey's work on the caves in Lascaux in the documentary How Art Made the World he sees a whole other dynamic, which is nature, specifically wild animals, depicted as the quintessential part of the culture, sacred in their location (the cave galleries) and ritualistic reproductions.

Love and beauty are two of the driving concepts behind humanity. Without them, we lose a very large piece of what makes us human. That is, the capacity to discern the beautiful from the unattractive or displeasing, and the ability to feel, develop, and display true love. Aesthetics is a concept that has been highly talked about over the years. Many philosophers had an aesthetic philosophy on what they regarded as beautiful that was entirely unique. Plato, as evidenced in his "Symposium", specifically "The Love of Beauty", states that he believes beauty is existent in a realm of ideals beyond our own, and that all things are mere recreations of this ideal. Aristotle took a similar view that was explained well in the packet titled "Truth Resides in The World Around Us". In his mind, ideals were formed when we viewed many forms of something and derived from these viewings the appropriate common characteristics that make up the ideal form of whatever it is we are considering. When we see a person whom we believe is ideal, we fall in love, which is an experience that is uniquely human. In our packet on Egyptian Love Poetry, we see many of the common themes of human loves, and the qualities that make it unique. These authors, clearly veterans of love, make allusions to the power of love, describing physical illness, or making comparisons to powerful or beautiful forces of nature, such as flowers, rivers, or the oceans. One such example would be when an author proclaims
"Not even old crocodile
There on the Sandbank between us
Can keep us Apart."

Ethics is what defines our moral and civilized society. Without ethics and rules, human culture is nothing. We have been assigning ourselves these codes since the beginning of human interaction, attempts to keep order and make life safer for all involved. These codes are often presented in the form of religion. Christianity is an easy example because of its prominence and influence within our own culture. In "The Sermon on the Mount", rule after rule is proclaimed by Jesus, the laws of human kind pouring forth like a river: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy," "Love your enemies and pray for those who prosecute you" and many more. These are condensed and specified in the "The Holiness Code": "Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie to one another." "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind." These and the other multitude of codes to be found in this text are often perpetuated in religious text. Some people don’t possess an internal moral or ethical code. For example, someone like Merseault of Camus’ “The Stranger” may understand morality and ethics, but take a stance of indifference. Merseault fails to grieve for his mother’s death, lacks the feeling of true love, and kills a man with excessive violence, all without any sort of strong reaction.

My Final Humanities Blog Post

        The evolution of the left brain was a revolutionary change that changed the human experience more than any other event in  human history. As we read in Shlain, the left brain allows us to use logic and rational thought. The left brain makes rational logical thought a reality. It is the source of our ability to suspend emotion in favor of logic, a trait unique to humans, as well as the organ that allows us to communicate effectively in complex forms of language. Spoken language requires the cooperation of both sides of the brain in order to function to its fullest capacity, as we learned in Abrahms’ The Spell of the Sensuous. The left brain interprets the mouth movements in conjunction with the sounds which reach the ear, while the right brain simultaneously translates much more subtle signals that are revealed in the other person’(s) tone, expression, and body language. With the valuable information supplied by the right brain, we can more accurately gauge the reaction to our words and adjust accordingly. This is an intrinsic part of entertaining storytelling. As such, stories lose much of their meaning when they are read or heard without being seen. When stories are read, only the left brain is engaged. There are no non-verbal signals to interpret, only the mechanical nature of written language, depriving us of  more immersive experience. If we are able to hear the story read aloud, as we did with the excerpt from David Sedaris’ work, we may understand the meaning better through the reader’s tone and inflection. However, neither of these can match the immersive, engaging experience of observing an animated storyteller while he or she relates some tale.

        Whether we admit it or not, all humans are intrinsically linked to nature. At some point in every culture’s history, its people express a deep connection to the natural world.  In more “primitive” cultures, such as that of Native Americans, individuals are encouraged to respect nature from birth through their creation myth. In most Native American tribes, the creation myth very often features animals that wield god-like powers, and these animals are often portrayed as the creators of human life. In other stories, the animals enable the humans to survive, such as the story of the heavenly women who fell to Earth. One of the birds brought sediment from the ocean bottom to form land on the back of a giant turtle’s shell to save the women from drowning. However, in many of the “more civilized” cultures of the world, the creation myth suggests, whether explicitly or through implication, that humans are superior to animals. A good example of this is found in some interpretations of Genesis. In this creation story, it states that God created man before all the animals, and gave him dominion over all of nature.

        As a result of these opposing viewpoints, significant differences between the behavior of the cultures are evident. Native Americans show great reverence and respect for every part of the natural world, from the smallest organism to the largest. They base their entire lives around living in harmony with nature. In contrast, many western civilizations show little to no regard for Mother Nature. Environments are destroyed with impunity, and animals are hunted to extinction without a hint of scruple. 

        A culture’s creation beliefs also affect the definition of a sacred space. For example, the Australian Aborigines believe that all land untainted by industry is sacred because during the Dreamtime, their gods walked throughout the land, forming the topography and seeding life. Every topographical feature is the direct result of manipulation by gods, which makes all the earth sacred. In western culture, sacred spaces are most often artificial structures, constructed by mortal hands and often completely unrelated to any direct act by their deity. Practitioners must travel to that one arbitrary location in order to worship fully, which limits the appeal of that sacred space.

    Sacred spaces do not necessarily have to have any religious significance.  In Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell flees the civilized world in search of serenity and solitude. He discovers “his” island, as well as the bears that inhabit it. He instantly recognizes this sanctuary to be a sacred  place, free from the harmful influences of man and his machines. His time with the bears gives Timothy a level of clarity that allows him to think about his existence. He realizes that he must protect this sacred space from any who would seek to defile it, and dedicates the remainder of his life to this goal.

    The ability to understand the abstract idea of beauty is another trait found in no other species other than humans. No two individuals or cultures share the exact same definition of beauty. In older cultures, beauty often meant simply whatever features were most useful. For example, Nigel Speevey explains that while the Woman of Willendorf appears to be an incredibly crude interpretation of a woman, each feature was designed for a specific purpose. Desirable traits, such as large hips and large breasts, were emphasized due to the great importance of child-bearing in that era and culture. Her genitalia was also exaggerated to suggest fertility. However, other features, such as arms, lower legs, and facial features were minimized because they had no bearing on a woman’s primary use: reproduction.

    Throughout history, philosophers have expressed a plethora of opinions on beauty itself, as well as its relationship to love. Plato believed that love was nothing more than the desire to possess something beautiful.  Even the love a parent has for his or her child is the desire to possess something beautiful: a kind of immortality through the continuation of one’s bloodline. In the every love poem that we read, such as Song of Songs, there are no more than a few lines without mention of beauty. It is the catalyst for all real love, and holds a great fascination and preoccupation for humans.

    Unfortunately, many individuals use their beauty for darker purposes, as seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde. Dorian uses his surpassing to beauty and charm to live a life inundated with  carnal pleasure. Whenever a problem arose, others would forgive him for no other reason other than his unchanging beauty. Dorian even managed to talk his way out of murder, using his looks to his advantage and overwhelming lesser persons. However, despite the ease in which he could bed anyone he chose, Dorian never truly found love, and was driven mad by guilt over his crimes. He does not have the courage to confess his crimes, and when he stabs his portrait in a fit of rage, he inadvertently kills himself. 

    In contrast to Dorian, Meursault, the protagonist of Albert Camus’ L’étranger, makes no attempt to weasel his way  out of iron grip of the law. He does not deny his crimes, and instead of struggling fruitlessly, he uses the many days of his incarceration to reflect on his past, as well as life in general. When his time comes, he is far better prepared to die than Dorian. Meursault accepts his sentence with composure and resigns himself to fate, knowing that the laws which had convicted him were just and fair.

    Although he would have denied this vehemently, his convictions about murder were in agreement with the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were given to Moses to give the Israelites a foundation upon which to base their legal and ethical codes. These values were continued by Christians, and by extension, the laws of our great nation. The commandments are clear, concise, and apply to just about every situation and time period, a fact which led to their adoption into our laws. Even though some commandments were not signed into law, they did become the basis of the ethical code that most people follow currently. Interestingly, there are a great many similarities between the eight-fold path of Buddhism and the commandments. For example, both forbid murder, adultery, and greed. These points are simply written in a different manner in the eight-fold path.

    Humans have and always will struggle to  understand why certain things happen to them. Every culture created its own stories to help explain these phenomena. These stories  often feature unwilling heroes reluctantly  embark upon an adventure that changes them into a completely different person. Interestingly, Joseph Campbell discovered that these stories are ubiquitous across nearly every culture. In addition, each of those myriad stories follows the same general path, which he dubbed “The Hero’s Journey,” or monomyth.  The hero starts in the real world, but is called or sent to somewhere unfamiliar to them. They face challenges, and eventually fall to the lowest level (the Abyss), which may be a mental or physical condition. There they experience a sort of death and rebirth. Eventually, they emerge and are transformed into a different being and return home.

    Every human being undergoes this journey, although they are rarely so  exciting. Instead, they happen subtly, making small changes within our psyches that eventually manifest themselves and cause visible change in behavior and outlook. Without this journey, we would be doomed to make mistakes without the hope of learning a lesson from them.

The Human Existence

An essential part of the human experience is the biological differences between cultures. Everyone has their own, unique genetic make-up, but similar evolutionary traits are often exhibited in separate civilizations. In Leonard Shlain's "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess," he describes the different hemispheres of the brain and their separate functions. He goes on, however, to write that these functions have evolved due to the culture in which they are present. Even though all individuals in a culture have right and left sides of the brain, their brains could have a stronger senses of smell, or a heightened feelings of love. I have heard of a group in Africa that is immune to AIDS. Another cultural phenomenon is the advancement of the written language. As David Abram indicates, groups can develop a written language unique to their own living situation. Glyphs were originally created to copy the images we see in life, and then be copied down for future stories. Stories incorporated written language later in human history, but primarily started as an oral tradition. Cultures from around the world have been known to tell stories, often about the same subjects, but the way in which they tell them are always different. Europeans often told stories that related to Jesus and his ideas with Christian morals. These stories always follow a linear, chronological pattern. The Native Americans, however, told stories that approached the same topics as the Europeans (death, life, ethics, etc.), but used a more cyclical pattern and involved the natural world around them more. The way humans change due to their surroundings is a common theme of humanity.

Our next unit was about Nature and Sacred Spaces. These deal with the human experience because it approaches a very common theme among all people. We assign different amounts of value to places according to our individual beliefs and the values of our culture combined. Our internal beliefs guide us to hold certain places holy, like religious locations, such as the Kaaba and the Chartres Cathedral. These two locations hold great merit for people who believe in those two religions, but would not have as profound an effect on people outside the faith. These need not be solely religious, too. Many sacred spaces are simply places that we, personally, find to be important, even if they aren’t important to others. Timothy Treadwell decided to live in the Alaskan Tundra with grizzly bears because he thought they were the most special creatures on the planet. He considered that his Sacred Space although it did not have the same impact on him as it did others. Nature is a place that can produce profound, Sacred Space-like, emotions, but also can be considered something to be dominated. In The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, Nature is a sacred space to characters like Caliban, but is equally unimportant to people like Sebastian. Nature is simply another Sacred Space that could have an effect on the individual or not.

Love and Beauty are the most common themes. They are ideas that are exhibited cross-culturally. They are humungous parts of literature, stories, and evolution. They are probably the most common theme in all of history. The Venus of Willendorf is a figure that exhibited a focus on beauty in the probable years of 22,000-24,000 B.C.E. Whatever culture she came from thought that a figure like this was beautiful. She has enormous breasts and hips and no head and no arms. She is an example of what that culture found beautiful. About 25,900 years later, Oscar Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray. Beauty is described in this book as much less practical as the Venus of Willendorf. It is now thought of in tandem with the possession of money. If a person has money and exhibits in their clothing and appearance, they are considered beautiful. We studied many Philosophers who tried to tackle this monumental figure that is love. Nietzsche believed that you reflect yourself in who you love, while Kant believed in the power of universal beauty. Love and beauty is a prevalent topic in all cultures and thus is a massive part of the human experience.]

Ethics are representative of the human experience because they are most influenced by others. Ethics is an idea that would not exist without social constructs. Many of our ethics, here in the United States, are based off of European values. These values are mainly Judeo-Christian ideas that have been imposed on our culture. We covered such topics as the 10 commandments, the Holiness Code, the Buddhist precepts, and the Sermon on the Mount. These all have similar values but with distinct differences that alter cultures. The Buddhist precepts focus more on the rightousness of the mind, and not the righteousness of the actions. These leas a culture to be more intuitive, irrational, and probably right-brained dominant as many Eastern Civilizations are. The Judeo-Christian values are more action based, and less idea based. That will lead to a civilization filled with logic and actions, probably a more left-brained dominant culture. We read the Stranger by Kamus. His ideas of ethics were a little more vague, as he is an absurdist. He believed in the randomness of the universe and that there was no order to life. His ethics, however, were still indicative of being affected by outside sources. He alludes in his writing that murder and coldness is wrong, and compassion and Judeo-Christian values are right. The piece of art that directly faced many ethical dilemmas was Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. In the film, he approaches ideas of solidarity vs. submission into a system. He essentially proves that those who follow a system are the successful ones and those who try to verge are usually unsuccessful. This take on ethics heavily influenced by others thoughts and feelings. The unit delves deeply into the topic of human existence.

Finally, we covered the Hero’s Journey. This is the most external idea that will challenge our inner souls. The Hero’s Journey is not an inborn idea. It is something that is imposed on us by figures like Hamlet, from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Moses, and pop icons like Simba. These characters have to go into an abyss, discover something about themselves and return to the world outside them. This idea is most described the most by philosopher Joseph Campbell. He describes the hero’s journey as an idea that is a valuable part of human existence. He shows it as a part of life that is heavily influenced by others, as we use these people as our personal models. The Hero’s Journey is an idea that influences the situations around us and is a valuable part of human existence.