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.