Gone But Not Forgotten

It's been a year, to the day. I lost a friend of mine I went to high school with to a driver who wasn't paying attention. Throughout high school, we had the majority of classes together. All of our AP classes like Calculus and English and even Orchestra. And we clashed. If I said Shakespeare was English, he would argue he was Italian. And if he said that we only used 25% of our brains, I had to counter with my own claim. We especially disagreed about religion which led to arguments that I'm not proud of. And now he's gone. But is he really? His Facebook page is incredibly active with all of his friends and classmates continually leaving him messages.

It's been two and a half years since I lost my uncle, my hero. But he will never be truly gone for me. He's in everything I do, in every Marine I see, in my grandparents farm, in my career decision, and he is one of the men I compare dates to. 

I share this because of some thoughts prompted by Kurt Witt's "Silly delete key" post on Sept 7th. When we delete something, is it really gone? Just because a word never appears on the screen or in our essay,  it doesn't mean we didn't consider it, that we didn't type it then erase it. Ideas and theories come and go; we constantly create new technologies and then replace them with newer things only weeks or months later. But the old ideas and inventions still exist, even if only in theory. There is no delete key in life, no "take back's", or redo's. Thoughts, once shared, are forever out in the pool of collective thought.

On Saturday, we will mark the 9th anniversary of 9/11. The Twin Towers no longer stand in the heart of New York City, but they did once. The hundreds of people that lost their lives that day may no longer take the subway to work every morning, but they are still influencing us today. These losses, these "old" ideas--they don't just fade away. They become part of us, making us better, reminding us to take them with us into the future. 

More Power of Words

Just as the Gutenberg Bible gave power to the early readers of it's smudged pages, today technology is allowing other people to share powerful words. People who aren't just political figures, religious authorities, celebrities, and educated white men or land owners, are being heard today. This Verizon commercial caught my attention not just because I'm a woman, but because I want to be heard whether I'm married or single, 19 or 43, white, asian, latino, or black. Not only do I want to have my voice be heard--I want it to matter.

Power of Words

We read and discuss and write literature, but why?

Because we believe that words have power; sometimes they have a power in and of themselves, and other times the only power words have is what we give them. At times, who speaks certain words is crucial to their meaning and to how they are understood, such as prophets and apostles. Other times, it is the words alone that prompt us into action. For example: "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." Who wrote those words? Thomas Paine. Even if you didn't know that, you recognized those words because they catapulted the colonies to revolutionary action.

Words can touch people. Words can change people. What words have changed you?

Humanism: Pride is the Root of All Evil

Petrarch, considered the original Humanist, believed that language and philosophy could be analyzed by a single individual who could divine the meaning of it. Not only did he believe in the study of the classic philosophers and theory, but he held that humans were capable of directing their own learning. (Does that sound like any of our classes? Hmmm) Petrarch thought that none of his peers were equal to him in reading and writing, so he wrote letters to Cicero, Homer, and St. Augustine discussing his thoughts on their writings and theories. In my earlier post, Who Am I To Judge?, I wrestled with the idea that I can't criticize other authors and philosophers. Petrarch disagrees-in fact he believed that we have a duty to analyze and dissect previous literature. For it is only from that exercise will we prove old ideas in error and discover our own theories. Thank you Petrarch- you would've made a great motivational speaker.

Mirandola, further explains that man is indeed a supreme creation because of our agency; we can choose to learn and grow or regress since it isn't mandated for us. Now before you let all this go to your head, do you really think that everything you have is due to your own labors? Do you really believe you are completely independent? Hardly my friends. Part of being human involves relationships and how they add meaning to our actions. Petrarch himself wrote many books and essays, but he also wrote 366 poems for the woman he fell in love with. We do crazy things for people we love because we recognize that love makes us something more than we can be alone.

Forgive me for bringing Harry Potter into this, but J.K. Rowling, though atheist, suggests in the series that love is actually the supreme force at work. It is love that saves Harry as an infant and it is love that ultimately allows Harry to defeat Voldemort because Voldemort cannot see the value of it. Voldemort is the quintessential example of pride- trying one thing after another to further the interests of himself in an effort to gain immortality. Had he gained it, I believe he would've found it very lonely after awhile. In fact, most people we would label "powerful" are only powerful through the support of their followers. Yet, there is another kind of power found in those who understand truth. There is power in knowing who you are and what that means. There is a power is service just as there is in education that all the armies of the world could not lay at our feet.

We live in a world of YOUtube and online search engines that let us celebrate our individual abilities, and honestly I am grateful for what they add to our culture and learning. But looking back at the humanist movement, I feel like I can claim they errored in their rationale. Man in himself is not the measure of all things. Man (and woman) in the way he (she) loves is the measure of all things.

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A quote from my manuscript: "Nicolas Sparks wrote, "The first time you fall in love, it changes your life forever, and no matter how hard you try, the feelin' never goes away."Because that first love is when you really let someone else into your heart and soul and realize that the meaning of life is wrapped up in a feeling so great it defies accurate description. It's ...the first time you give a part of yourself away, and you can never be the same again."

Utopia...?

The word utopia comes from the Greek work eutopia, literally meaning: the good place that is no place. Why does the human race seem obsessed with creating alternate realities? Is it because the world we live in is so terrible that we crave a more beautiful peaceful world? Or are we just trying desperately to control something, anything at all?

The recent movie, Avatar, shows humans taking over the planet in search of "unobtainium", the very name of which suggests that it cannot be obtained. That actual term is used in science to denote a material that is extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible to make. Yet, in the movie the military is willing to wipe out an entire native civilization for it.

Today we have hundreds of virtual worlds: Sims, World of Warcraft, Toontown, Second Life, Active Worlds, TowerChat, Dreamyville, Whyville, Traveler, The Palace, and many many more. In some of them you go on an amazing adventure in an exotic land, while in others you create a family and go to work and buy a dog; in short, you can become whoever you want to be. Excuse me? Come back to the real world. Sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end, lost in a fictional world made up by a computer program will not solve your problems. Or the world's problems.

Harriet Beecher Stowe did not just imagine a life without slavery; she wrote a book on the reality in an effort to make changes. Instead of drowning our issues in video games and virtual reality simulations, don't you think we would reach a better world through service and awareness and by facing reality head on?

Becoming a Renaissance Woman (or Man)

Renaissance woman (or man): one who has broad intellectual interests in various fields including art and science; one who strives to learn on more than a superficial level; one invested in personal discovery and creativity; one who controls their own learning and exploration.

As we begin to discuss the Renaissance and New Worldviews, I see an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and true understanding at the root of each new thought, theory, scientist, artist, or even the seemingly average man. What made Copernicus want to study the cosmos? What drove da Vinci to invent and paint? Why did Tyndale take the risks to translate the Bible into English? Or Von Hohenheim to reform chemistry and medicine? How did Palissy come to the conclusion that  fossils were the remains of plants and animals? What made Joseph Smith kneel down to pray in a grove of trees? Why did Gilbert think of the Earth in regard to magnets? And the answer, I believe, comes down to searching for truth.

Being LDS, I believe that there are different levels of truth. Neal A. Maxwell in a talk entitled "Disciple Scholar" states that " there is no democracy among truths, they are not of equal significance." He presents the idea that there are three levels of truth: Descriptions of reality (i.e. airline schedules, exchange rates), proximate or lesser truths consisting of verifiable scientific information (the what and how of the universe), and finally, the ultimate and eternal truths. The second level is always growing and expanding with our study and research, yet it still remains separate from the ultimate truths because of the limitations of humans. Aristotle and Ptolemy believed in the model that stated that the Earth was a place of change and corruption, decay and death, while heaven (they were referring to space as well as the kingdom of gods) is a place of perfection. Since then, the idea of a distinct separation from divinity has perpetuated in science. Now as we are disciple scholars and participants in the new Renaissance of our age, we have the opportunity to change this separation. For everything points to God, from the Milky Way to homologous pairs of chromosomes, from the Mona Lisa and Sistine Chapel style of art to Picasso and cubism. 

The Renaissance men and women were searching for truth and meaning in their world, for explanations to phenomenons and problems. Today many are still searching for those things, but we have the ability to see the divinity within ourselves and connect the proximate truths to the eternal ones in order to bridge that age old separation.

Who Am I To Judge?

So I can already tell that this could get addicting. It reminds me of Jenna from Waitress when she says, " I was addicted to saying things and having them matter to someone."

Ok, I'm sitting in my Shakespeare class yesterday (which I'm way excited about!!!) and we are discussing why in the world people should study Shakespeare in the first place. The discussion covered his amazing use of language, the universal nature of his characters and their relationships, and many other good reasons why the study of Shakespeare is valid. Yet, the question that came to mind during this discussion was : who am I to criticize literature?

In high school, I remember getting lists of required reading and wondering who decided that those books were "classics" and what gave them the right to make that distinction. For instance, I strongly dislike Hemingway, but no matter what I say he will be studied for years to come. On the other hand, I absolutely love L.M. Montgomery but I have yet to find her in a classroom despite her beautiful literature. When I left high school it was a tradition to "sign a block" on the walls of your past teachers. So in my junior English class I wrote on the wall:

What makes a classic a classic? You Do!

Furthermore, as I was sitting in Shakespeare and later in my other Lit class, I decided something. I am not yet experienced enough in anything to play the role of critic, I mean 'he who is without sin can cast the first stone' and I am certainly not in a place to throw even pebbles. Side note- it reminds me of commentators at professional athletic events; I just want to hit the commentators sometimes-if you could do better then get off the sidelines and go play instead of throwing out nasty critique!! So I've come to the conclusion instead that I'm going to interact with the literature, have a conversation with Will Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and all their characters. Maybe one day, when I have poems and stories published across the world I can look back and critique, but for now I'm just going to fall in love with all these authors I read and think about the consequences of falling in love later.