| Some pretty crazy, stressful, problematic things are happening around Animal Planet and it's inhabitants here lately. I'm performing some self-therapy by not writing about it. Fear not, if you're dying of curiosity, I'll 'splain later. Or if you just can't wait, shoot me a message and I'll hook ya up. I completed my Humanities class last night. We've had some amazing discussions during the course of the last nine weeks, and left the class inspired by our teacher to singlehandedly redirect civilization's motivations and thoughts toward the spiritual aspects of life. I don't mean "spiritual" in the Bible-thumping, hymn-belting way, but in the creation of art, and the observation of life, and the understanding of cultures, and the exploration of the wonders that surround us. That may sound trite, but it's not meant to be so. There is beauty in everything, if we'd only see the truth in that statement. Sure, anyone can point out the Great Pyramids of Giza, or the Hagia Sofia, or the Mona Lisa, or Michaelangelo's David and call them "great". But do they really understand what makes them so? Or do they just parrot the opinion because everyone else thinks so? One of Aristotle's Requirements of Great Art is that a piece has to maintain it's popularity over generations, and its recognition that it is a "great" piece of art. That can be a self-defeating thing, though, if each generation doesn't take the time to rediscover what made the piece so great in the first place. I thank my professor profusely for awakening this new appreciation in me. The problem is, now I want to visit the Louvre, and Egypt, and Athens. I want to see the things we've been talking about for myself. I want to touch the cold marble tombs in Westminster Abby. I want to walk along the main street in the ruins of Pompeii and imagine what its final hours must have been like. I want to see the Heads of Easter Island. I want to fly over the Nazca Plains (were we seeded here by aliens?). I want to lie down in the middle of Stonehenge, shut my eyes, and try to intuit my way to what they were trying to accomplish. I want to stand next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dare it to fall over ("Where were you when the tower fell?" "Getting out of the way."). I want to read the story of Budda as inscribed in pictures along the walls of Borubudur. I want to see the Nike of Samothrace and envision her positioned on the prow of an ancient ship. I want to visit the cathedral of Notre Dame (flying buttresses rule). I don't want much, do I? There is no right way or wrong way in anything. Not in religion or culture or art. As different as *they* are from *us*, there are integral connections that make us the same. Did you know that every civilization has a creation theory, and they're all very similar? That almost every civilization has a legend about a great flood, many of which occur thousands of years before Noah was to have lived? That the Greeks had a god for everything, which is startlingly similar to the Catholic church who has a Saint for everything? Real events and real deeds of real people get passed down to generations and become legends, then myths. Who knows the absolute truth in anything? Who knows the origin of anything? When civilizations began to trade with each other and exchange ideas and communicate further outside of their own locales, an intermingling of culture, beliefs, and morals was inevitable. Sometimes despite people's best efforts to prevent it. No aspect of culture is purely traceable to one civilization marching down through the ages. They're all influenced by one another. They are contrived of people comparing two beliefs, techniques, or ways of life, casting out the bad in both, intermingling what's left, and improving upon it. Sometimes the changes are abrupt. Sometimes it takes thousands of years. And somewhere down the line the origins get blurred, until even when civilizations can *agree* on their similarities, they fight over who came up with it first. One of the best things this class has taught me, is to look closely at the things that surround me. Pay attention to details. Listen closely to what others have to say. Take the time to learn about our differences. Be still and observe the world. Go slowly. Look up, look down, look around. Never stop learning, because there's so much out there. Life is so much bigger than the sum of our parts. Our world is so much broader than the narrow band we observe from day to day. So much has been created, destroyed, preserved, recreated, discovered, lost, rediscovered. As fast as we find something new, something else is lost forever. We don't know what we've lost, we don't know what we have right now. We can't wrap our arms (or our minds) around the vastness of time, the richness of culture, the diversity of thought, and the talent of the civilizations that have occurred before us. We don't know what great things are ahead, what is buried just underneath the surface or right around the next bend or over the next mountain ridge, waiting to be discovered. But I want to be there. Elbow-and-knee deep in it. Right on the forefront. Want to come along? |