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.