Six seemingly simple characteristics that represent the complexity of both the mind and the body define the human condition: birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, conflict, and mortality. These traits work individually as well as collectively to showcase how people live in their everyday lives and how those lives interconnect. This abstract concept of the human condition requires personal exploration as well as personal accountability to self and others in the past and in the present, while simultaneously considering the future and honoring the past. Why do academicians look to literature if not to grow and to connect? The works of Emily Dickinson, Cornel West, and Friedrich Nietzsche beautifully illustrate this conclusion, yes, but what
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According to “The Examined Life” by Cornel West, one does not need to have special schooling in order to philosophize, or just think. “God, no!” West says in response to whether or not it takes a learned set of skills to think(0:34). Unquestionably, humans lie to themselves by saying esoteric thinking requires an intense, formal education. In reality, only willpower and the willingness to desire, to think, and to learn fuel philosophy. In “The Examined Life”, West references genetics to describe truth: “Human beings are unable to ever gain any monopoly of Truth Capital T. We might have access to small truth t, but they’re infallible claims about truth”(West 14). In genetics, capital letters represent big, dominant alleles, and lower case letters represent recessive traits, the ones that give in to dominant alleles. In his monologue, West says that the truth capital T proves difficult to accept. Humans cannot comprehend or handle the truth, so they settle for complacency, or little t, doing so makes life easier. As a rule, it takes Discipline and Courage, Capital D and Capital C, to think and to examine. It absolutely requires …show more content…
Growth from making mistakes, growth from learning, and physical, biological, aging birth. The slow progression of literal to imaginative and metaphorical becomes prevalent in Emily Dickinson’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”. In even just the title, Dickinson already makes the biggest statement of all: Humanity grows accustomed to the bad, the darkness in life, precipitating society to become complacent and take no action against it. But Emily Dickinson has something else to say about that. In her iconic poem, Dickinson makes a change in her wording, she at first sheds negative light on the darkness, but then later on, she tells of how light equals hope and how hope will generate growth. “And so of larger Darkness, these evenings of the Brain, When not a Moon (humans) discloses a sign, or star, come out -- within (star meaning hope and light)”(Dickinson 12). The reclusive author metaphorically postulates that the Darkness (capitalized to give more meaning to personify the darkness) takes over the brain, the “evenings”, and then the strongest of men will become hopeful, and grow out of the Darkness that has consumed him. Yes, society grows accustomed to the dark, but in this world, numerous incredibly brave individuals who single-handedly take on the darkest parts of their brain exist, and they experience growth from
According to “The Examined Life” by Cornel West, one does not need to have special schooling in order to philosophize, or just think. “God, no!” West says in response to whether or not it takes a learned set of skills to think(0:34). Unquestionably, humans lie to themselves by saying esoteric thinking requires an intense, formal education. In reality, only willpower and the willingness to desire, to think, and to learn fuel philosophy. In “The Examined Life”, West references genetics to describe truth: “Human beings are unable to ever gain any monopoly of Truth Capital T. We might have access to small truth t, but they’re infallible claims about truth”(West 14). In genetics, capital letters represent big, dominant alleles, and lower case letters represent recessive traits, the ones that give in to dominant alleles. In his monologue, West says that the truth capital T proves difficult to accept. Humans cannot comprehend or handle the truth, so they settle for complacency, or little t, doing so makes life easier. As a rule, it takes Discipline and Courage, Capital D and Capital C, to think and to examine. It absolutely requires …show more content…
Growth from making mistakes, growth from learning, and physical, biological, aging birth. The slow progression of literal to imaginative and metaphorical becomes prevalent in Emily Dickinson’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”. In even just the title, Dickinson already makes the biggest statement of all: Humanity grows accustomed to the bad, the darkness in life, precipitating society to become complacent and take no action against it. But Emily Dickinson has something else to say about that. In her iconic poem, Dickinson makes a change in her wording, she at first sheds negative light on the darkness, but then later on, she tells of how light equals hope and how hope will generate growth. “And so of larger Darkness, these evenings of the Brain, When not a Moon (humans) discloses a sign, or star, come out -- within (star meaning hope and light)”(Dickinson 12). The reclusive author metaphorically postulates that the Darkness (capitalized to give more meaning to personify the darkness) takes over the brain, the “evenings”, and then the strongest of men will become hopeful, and grow out of the Darkness that has consumed him. Yes, society grows accustomed to the dark, but in this world, numerous incredibly brave individuals who single-handedly take on the darkest parts of their brain exist, and they experience growth from