woohoo! who's up for some intellectual stimulation!?

ngugi? big fan.

2008-04-06T23:10:00.000-07:00

just kinda wanted to rant about the book a little bit. when i was reading it i ended up liking it way more than i thought i would. even though some parts are really dry and political and "humanity is fickle" and blah blah blah, i really was surprised, in a good way, at how poetic the language is and (maybe its because i'm a girl, haha) i really liked the love story. the book reminded me a lot of a cross between a shakespearian tragedy and lord of the flies. actually a LOT like lord of the flies. the question for the next paper i actually kind of like too, by the way, because the whole time i was reading it i kept on wondering why the heck he's pushing for so much education and at the same time wondering what the "white man"'s education really is. obviously it's partial religious teachings because of a few side-references, like Waiyaki knowing about Noah's flood, and i think a part about Peter. it kind of started bugging me a little bit, actually. especially in the middle when he's going nutso over building new schools and such and not really mentioning to anyone why education is so important, except for in one of the last sentences in the book where he kind of feebly says that the whole education ordeal is so that they can better defend themselves against the white man. but this being said, what exactly is it that is so different about the two sides anyway. especially after the tribes are educated. and they even make it a point to say that the tribal parents are proud of their kids for learning from these new schools. doesn't that make it a contradiction? all these people are so staunchly against something that they almost essentially have in common. the only thing they seem to differ on (the two groups, that is) is their religion. but even that being said, the book doesn't really offer much insight to what either group truly believes anyway. well...maybe more so the tribes than the Christians, because Ngugi goes into a little bit of background in the beginning with the whole african religion thing.

the symbolism in it is really stirring too. there seem to be a lot of parallels between the tribal life and the bible. waiyaki is almost sort of a Christ-like figure, while kithumia (sp?) is his personified disciples, kathau is like judas, and (this may be stretching it a little bit, unless you're a big fan of the davinci code...) nyumbara like mary magdelene. alright...nix on that last one, that's going a bit far. at the same time there's also a bunch of other parallels to other things. probably just the whol human nature thing. i mean, i guess, in essence, that's really what the book is about: how the world can never be as it should be because human nature always gets in the way. which is why nothing can or ever has been be peacefully united, much like the two villages.

wow, that was long. go me.

locke's religion and all that fun stuff

2008-02-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

I'm really skeptical of Locke's added "religious" ideas. From what I know of writing arguments, or papers trying to prove a point in general, it helps if you add something relate-able to your audience and strong evidence which can make your argument stronger. Since Locke's argument is hinged more on his little made up definition of what Nature is than any solid definition of God (even though it's probably safe to assume that he's talking about the Christian God), I think he uses God as a relate-able after-thought to get people to warm up to his ideas better and to trust his word more readily. I know a lot of fervent Christians that tend to think more highly of complete strangers when told that they are also Christian, not necessarily because of an extreme piety but also because it's a common ground that they share. Adding in the odd God phrase now and then also makes it harder to contest his argument since no one was too willing to defy something that their God deems is true.
On a semi-different note, I also find it interesting that most of his phrases where God's principles and such are brought up are really vague. His only actual citing of the Bible and the direct ideas of God is when he mentions Cain.

of the cards...

2007-11-29T22:20:00.000-08:00

descartes...hmmm...i think his theories are really interesting but i'm having trouble organizing his theories and opinions into something kind of logical.

I want to know what people think of his theory that everyone has good sense but just needs to employ it.

I also want to know if people think its necessarily a bad thing when things are taught to one by a group of people as opposed to just one singular person.

anti-semitism...right?

2007-11-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

so, i kind of have to say that i'm getting a lot of ambiguity out of shakespeare in the good ole Merchant of Venice. at some points he seems to just look at anti-semitism as something regular in society; completely normal, acceptable, whatever. but in some spots it seems like he's making a case for people to stop discriminating against different religions. like in the speech portion that we covered today, the whole "do we not bleed" thing: it sounds to me like shakespeare is trying to prompt some empathy or sympathy from the reader by reminding them all that Jews are still people too, just like Christians and that religions don't change any of that. in fact, i feel like he puts that there specifically for that purpose. after you hear shylock's side of the story you feel more compelled to hate antonio along with shylock than to spurn shylock for hating him in the first place. i also wanted to point out at some point in class today (but probly forgot...) that they show a nice side to him before his daughter leaves home. his servant boy (forget his name...) doesn't really seem to have a legitimate reason for hating him besides the fact that he's Jewish, and Shylock isn't even particularly mean to him or anything; all he really seems to do is chide him for being a late-sleeper and doesn't really even give him any crap when he says he wants to leave. shylock only really seems to snap after he finds out about his daughter, taking the whole pound-of-flesh thing more seriously than before and maybe just going nuts at the thought of his daughter converting and marrying one of the pigs that kept them so low for so long.

whats the diff?

2007-11-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

so, referring back to the question from wednesday: what is the difference between science and religion? i still kind of hold with what i said in class: that science demands fact and that religion demands some sort of faith. this is probably the closest to a concrete answer that you can get. some science, after all, can't be proven exept in theory, which i guess could be defined as faith. however, religion kinda holds absolute for the whole proving thing. you can't really prove that there is a God, or miracles, or angels, or heaven or hell. that kind of makes you wonder why people to have such a stronghold in religion. it's probably just held up from history, that there wasn't a lot of scientific fact to back up how life works so they just relied on their faith to explain things. thats probably why there were so many witch hunts and hangings and why the reformation was so bloody: because people didn't like to challenge what they couldn't explain so they tried to destroy it instead. today, though, since science is such a large part of everyone's life and how everything is explained people don't really find such a big need for religion and have a tendency to disregard it or just make it an afterthought.

not blog-worthy

2007-10-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

this is probably irrelevent and totally not blog-worthy, but i just wanted to put out there that i understand Galileo a LOT better when i read it out loud; even though i sound like a creeper who talks to herself. i'm actually taking all the material in though, as opposed to it going in one ear and out the other when i just read to myself. yeah thats all, just puttin that out there!

redo!

2007-10-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

so as a redo on that last blog post (like anyone cares...) i re-read Of Cannibals and noticed that he does mention religion but that their religion only really "worships" honor and respect for other humans and the necessity of loyalty to their wives. i think one of the most obvious themes in this work is the attention paid to respecting fellow human beings. like when one's at war and wants to seriously shame their enemy, they taken them prisoner, treat them nice for a little bit, then roast them on a spit and eat them. but other than that (and their punishments for false prophets...) they weren't really a harmful culture. montaigne describes european ways of torture as much more terrifying and surely much more barbaric, like dragging someone across town strapped to a cart which is then set on fire and you are eaten alive by dogs and pigs. even though everyone is definitely revulsed by what he describes in the brazilian culture, the european one is clearly more terrifying, and makes the reader (or perhaps just the readers of the times) feel awful for recognizing the latter first.

as for barbarism...

2007-10-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

i agree with montaigne's getting at here (or what i think he's getting at here...) looking back at european society, how bizarre were their customs? the whole royal blood thing, the thing with the poor people, and so many other things, like the religious wars and such. actually, to go off on a tangent here, and i was thinking about this in class too, in montaigne's whole essay he doesn't mention the religion of the brazilians. this could lead us to believe that either it isn't important or...something else, haha. maybe their religion is just to "worship" fellow human beings through respecting them, which is something that he's trying to teach the europeans?

2007-10-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

that video game idea really intigued me and kind of brought me back to something we discussed in my photography class. our professor asked us to define art and everyone came up with a different answer. i think that from that discussion i've decided that art is any form of expression or that causes emotion. mostly we associate it with the visual idea, but it can be anything. thats why some people think that graffiti is art or that even doodles on paper are art; it doesn't necessarily have to have a particular meaning to anyone but the person that made it, but it still holds a meaning. i think that video games can already be considered art (well...some of them) because they create emotion and they are, well, created BY someone. if you're playing, say, guitar hero, you might feel good about yourself because you're doing really good on some song, but you might also feel bad because you might just suck at guitar hero. doesn't that kind of make it art? i dunno, maybe i'm just rambling, haha.

pictures vs. texts

2007-10-17T22:51:00.001-07:00

just to kind of touch on the whole "what makes images different from texts" thing, i just wanted to say that images are like vehicles for understanding certain things more in-depth. for example, when one reads the story of Noah and his shame and his sons and that whole thing, you just kind of picture it (or at least i do) as in the middle of no-where, probably in some house made out of mud, very dreary and dusty and dry (o-ho, alliteration), just not really a very pretty scene. but then after seeing michaelangelo's take on it, which is a little more romanticized and perhaps more human than what we might picture upon reading the text straight out of the bible, you get a little more out of it. the picture helps to convey the emotion of the scene through the expressions on their faces and the gestures that they make, which is something sorta left out of the biblical text. having a picture gives you someone else's visualization of what they've read, which i think is interesting to note because odds are it won't be what you've been imagining. i like the whole images thing, it makes you think more.

"sin"?

2007-10-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Just something that i noticed in the Gita: they use the word "sin" a lot, but does it mean the same thing that it does in the Christian context? like..to be a little euthyphro-y on ya...what does "sin" mean? something (an action) that doesn't please God/gods? so...when they say seers can destroy their sins (the 5th teaching, stanza 25), what exactly are they really trying to say? that their actions can be maneuvered and adjusted so that they aren't unpleasing anymore? that they can eliminate sin by controlling themselves and having the discipline to not "sin"? and do they ever really clarify what their "sin"s are? i'm kinda confused.

2007-10-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

i can't really think of anything to blog about. can that count as a blog?

conclusions and stuff

2007-10-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

just reflecting on the whole "without a conclusion" discussion that we had at the end of class yesterday. i think that by leaving the end of the discussion without a conclusion it opens up more for the reader to decide for themselves. to leave a conclusion, even though it would give the reader an answer, the person would still either agree with it or disagree with it, not necessarily making their own deductions but maybe just parrotting whatever plato had told them the answer was. i dunno, thats all.

2007-09-30T20:59:00.001-07:00

i just tried to read the bhagavad-gita and i honestly just want to say that i don't think i've ever had worse ADD. maybe its just the beginning of it?

abraham meets socrates

2007-09-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

what would happen if abraham met socrates...hmmm...

i think it's kind of hard to say. Abraham is definitely a loyal guy and all, but one kind of has to wonder how smart he was. if he were a smart guy, or at least a guy open to thinking, he might think about what socrates was asking him and maybe think twice about taking his son up to some mountain to sacrifice him to God. however, if abraham was just some man who maybe wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, he'd probably just shut out whatever socrates was trying to tell him and push on up the mountian wielding his pointy knife in one hand and his son in the other.

then again, taking intelligence out of the equation and just assuming that abraham was pretty normally smart, what would happen? i bet he would get angry. i bet abraham would get angry at socrates for asking him about his faith. i think back then if God asked you to do something, you just did it and called it holy because it was kind of like pleasing God, as opposed to doing something bad, which would not be pleasing God and, thus, unholy. so socrates even asking that question might be thought of as "unholy" just because it was such a big taboo to question God (something i don't think he liked).

2007-09-20T19:10:00.001-07:00

i just kind of wanted to rant a little bit about our discussion on moday just cuz i just read jenna's blog post from tuesday and i thought it was interesting.

going into the discussion on monday i kind of thought that intentions are more powerful than actions. now i'm not really so sure. see, i always kind of figured that someone meaning to do something and not doing it was kind of more toward the point than someone doing something by accident. i mean, that's kind of how our legal system is supposed to work, right? if you kill someone by accident it's manslaughter, but if you kill on purpose its murder. we even have to different words that depend on intent over action. i just think it's kind of confusing because even though actions do speak louder than words, intentions do have some say in there too. i dunno this entry was kind of pointless but i just kind of wanted to organize my thoughts.

thoughts on the bible and all that

2007-09-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

well, i guess i'm just another brick in the wall, but i too had a Christian upbringing. however, it's not really getting in my way from seeing genesis and exodus and matthew in new ways. well...maybe not so much exodus and matthew as genesis. quite honestly i think i just tried to read the bible too many times at the wrong moment without ever really taking it in. after having read it now with a critical eye and a head for criticism, its much more interesting. i've never really READ genesis, but now that i have i can form my own opinions about God; not necessarily having radical change in my religion (i kind of think that in Christianity, the new testament really matters more than the old testament; sort of like history gives us insight into current events, the old testament gives us insight into christianity) but definitely taking more into consideration. it's also extremely refreshing to get a non-religious stand-point on a lot of this stuff. quite honestly i never really thought about the feelings that some of the people might have in the bible, or about taking time out of context (for example maybe applying modern morality to the times in genesis as opposed to ignoring all the weird stuff just because it didn't happen now-ish), but people speaking up and actually disagreeing is making me think about it more, and not necessarily in a reverant way. its refreshing and its good to know that we can make our own minds up about this stuff.

penny theory

2007-09-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

so i just kind of was thinking about the penny theory thing and just kind of applied it a little bit to things that we barely even notice. like pop-up ads or shampoo commercials or DVD covers. it's just kind of weird. what's even weirder is that they don't just throw something together to make it attractive to the eye, they add subliminal messages like how certain colors make you feel, what's noticeable and what just pounds something into your head so many times that you think about it without even referring to the commercial.

getting back on topic, though, i was just kind of thinking what we were all talking about in terms of the bible and in terms of gilgamesh. just like how much you have to deduce from your own logic and how much you need to take into account from your readings. makes you kind of just want to stare at stupid things for a extensive amount of time.

aaaand moving straight into Genesis

2007-09-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

so as a raised Christian, i've read over Genesis quite a few times. however, there is a lot of information that i either just skipped over or never really thought about. there were a million notes that i took about this section. why did God let men live for such a long time so long? maybe because he was still pissed at adam for eating off his tree and wanted recompence for those actions; maybe hoping that he'd doubt what Eden was really like, or else have to live on earth for that much longer knowing what a no-no he made, that he can't go back to eden, that he screwed over humankind and that he has to wait for a really long time before he can re-join God again. enoch seems to be a favorite of God and thus lives for a shorter time, which sort of hints that God's favorites got less "punishment time" on earth, and more time to re-join their creator.

another question: where did cain's wife come from? was incest ok back then and they just didn't mention her cuz she was just a girl?

another other question...or just thought: did anybody just stop and think about noah's ark for a second? i mean, yeah, we're all used to the little pop-up story books and all the parodies with donald duck and "evan almighty", but did you ever really stop and think about this? this is like a flash flood times a billion. this is beyond nuclear war and things like even katrina (not that i'm belittling them, i'm just putting them in perspective). this was a flood that covered the entire earth and wiped out everyone. there weren't any food drives or wandering nomads or refugees or anything. everybody died. ..well except noah and his family. that just really blew my mind. and not to mention that but the facct that noah and his family just had to watch everyone die. did you guys think about that? imagine the world's biggest disaster about to happen, knowing about it, and having to NOT tell anyone. that's a lot of pressure for one guy. i mean, the way genesis is written is probably more straightforward than, say, psalms, and they don't really mess around with details like feelings, but i just kind of got stuck on that. imagine knowing about the inevitable and rapid distinction of everyone you've ever known...and then doing nothing about it.

homosexuality in gilgamesh

2007-08-30T10:50:00.000-07:00

basically one of the things that i've been wondering about Gilgamesh and Enkidu lately has been to try and interpret their relationship to one another. obviously they both like women because gilgamesh sleeps with virginal brides before their husbands and enkidu sleeps with that harlot for about a week. however, after reading up on the city of Uruk and the goddess of that city (and also love and war): Ishtar, on learns that ritual sex was taken as an offering to Ishtar (sometimes), so that's also kind of up in the air. to contribute to both of these things the book keeps on using phrases like "loved him like a woman" which one, i guess, can either interpret to mean that they have an incredible friendship comparable to maybe a married couple, or else maybe that they are almost quite literally like a married couple in every sense of the word, including an attraction to each other and even a possible sexual relationship. like when they have to huddle against each other for warmth on the way to defeat Humbaba, and also when they touch each other's hearts. in any case, i hate to be so modern-minded about a possible just-friendship, but you do kind of wonder, right?

2007-08-29T08:24:00.001-07:00

oh yeah. part of the "blogosphere".