...Emily Sun Mr. Bursiek IB LA 11 22 October 2012 Limited Transcendence in the Human Condition An analysis of contradicting elements in selected personal essays of Virginia Woolf An author fascinated with boundaries, Virginia Woolf blurs the line between black and white in her essays The Death of the Moth and Street Haunting. In both essays she highlights opposing extremes: Street Haunting articulates the innate conflict of impulse and restraint, and The Death of the Moth articulates the enduring struggle between life and death, from which death always rises as the victor. The juxtaposition of these conflicting extremes as contradictory ultimately results in a dialectical synthesis of the two, proving that one is synergetic with the other. Through this synergy Woolf emphasizes the strength of the human condition to transcend the boundaries of its ambiguities, but clearly defines its inability to fully surpass the boundaries of the physical world. The Death of the Moth makes a piercingly clear point that life is futile in the face of its unfailing conqueror: death. Yet embedded at the heart of Woolf’s essay and thesis lies an inherent contradiction. Woolf constructs her essay to revolve around death’s victorious potency. Yet that is not enough. For, to glorify the power of death, she must also paint life as a substantial opponent to overcome. She does accomplish this purpose, describing the moth’s “gigantic effort…against a power of such magnitude” (Moth 2), a surprisingly...
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...approachability: the alarming ‘yells of the savages’2 are contrasted with a realisation that ‘the brutes of these vast wilds were possessed of an instinct nearly commensurate with [Heyward's] own reason’.3 The character of the Native is depicted as inextricably linked to war and masculinity, their whole culture seeming to be defined by hunting and conflict, and tribes who fail to adhere to these attributes are disrespectfully and negatively labeled as ‘women’. Female Natives appear to exist merely in slave-like deference to the warrior males. However, this image is simply not an accurate account of Native American gender roles at the time. The Iroquois Confederacy of tribes, whom Hawk-eye derogatorily refers to as ‘Mingo’ or ‘Maqua’, were in fact matrilineal: [...] ALTHOUGH THE LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS HAD THE APPEARANCE OF A GOVERNMENT CONSISTING EXCLUSIVELY OF MALES, EACH MEMBER OF THAT GOVERNING BODY WAS IN REALITY ANSWERABLE TO THE WOMEN OF HIS MATERNAL FAMILY, WHICH IN FACT CONSISTED ONLY OF ONE FEMALE, THE ‘AGED SENSIBLE’ WOMAN.4 This exaggerated masculinity of the Natives, incorporating themes of authority, security and aggression, can in fact be seen in direct opposition to the feminised, white characters associated with the British army, chiefly Alice, Heyward and Gamut, who reveal a civilised sentimentality, yet also a complete inability to survive on their own in the wild New World. The Natives such as Uncas and Chingachgook remain readily attentive and anticipating of the forest...
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...This performance included a gigantic boat built of wood. That sways from side to side based on the dancer’s movement. The music was strong and had a heavy drum beat. There was one light on the stage which was showcased on the boat, and all the dancers wore white. Trajectoire is meant to represent the physical and emotional journey through the ebb and flow of human experience. The performers struggle to find their balance on a voyage of destiny and destination. As Heim stated prior to the performance “Trajectorie shows the transcendence of the human soul against all odds”. This performance is what initially drew me into their performance when I first heard about them. My favorite part of the dancer was there were four female dancers, and they all stood with their weight on a side and as the boat swung to the other side, the dancers just dropped to the floor. At first, I was so scared, but it took incredibly physicality, and balance. Another impressive part was when the dancers ran towards the swaying boat and then ran back when it swayed in the opposite direction. It felt like the dancers were the water commanding the boat. The jumps and flips done off the boat showed the risks that we take in life. The boat showed the balance that we need to acquire in life. While this...
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...the grand-scale sanctuary where imagination, myth and spirits come to life. Pien’s ethereal paper cut-outs begin as a photograph, images of trees and human figures. He combines the two digital photographs and manipulates it until the visual aligns with his mind’s eye. “I am interested in exploring realms where language is inadequate to explain away mysteries and wonders,” he says. On the night of Haven of Delight‘s opening Pien wandered around with a small keychain flashlight, asking patrons to hold it up at eyelevel. The small light showcased an entirely different interpretation, Haven of Delight became lucid, a dream within a dream. Pien is fascinated with the unconscious, a realm when reality gives way and our minds are free to roam wild and our hearts purest. “My attempt is to create tensions within the work while removing binaries,” says Pien. “It is my hope that as a result, the work would succeeded in allowing multiple interpretations to take place.” The Toronto-based contemporary visual artist is a mythmaker. For over 25 years Pien has toyed with...
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...INTRODUCTION THE OLDEST STORY IN THE WORLD In Iraq, when the dust blows, stopping men and tanks, it brings with it memories of an ancient world, much older than Islam or Christianity. Western civilization originated from that place between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where Hammurabi created his legal code and where Gilgamesh was written -- the oldest story in the world, a thousand years older than the Iliad or the Bible. Its hero was a historical king who reigned in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk in about 2750 BCE. In the epic, he has an intimate friend, Enkidu, a naked wild man who has been civilized through the erotic arts of a temple priestess. With him Gilgamesh battles monsters, and when Enkidu dies, he is inconsolable. He sets out on a desperate journey to find the one man who can tell him how to escape death. Part of the fascination of Gilgamesh is that, like any great work of literature, it has much to tell us about ourselves. In giving voice to grief and the fear of death, perhaps more powerfully than any book written after it, in portraying love and vulnerability and the quest for wisdom, it has become a personal testimony for millions of readers in dozens of languages. But it also has a particular relevance in today's world, with its polarized fundamentalisms, each side fervently believing in its own righteousness, each on a crusade, or jihad, against what it perceives as an evil enemy. The hero of this epic is an antihero, a superman (a superpower, one...
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...MICHEL FOUCAULT & THE SHIP OF FOOLS TERM PAPER - WESTERN PHILOSOPHY Submitted by, Meera M Panicker 1st yr Integrated MA Introduction When I started reading Foucault’s madness and Civilization, i had no idea about what i was going to do for the term paper. I was just fascinated by how his ideas on all of it, madness and normality sounded. When i started reading, it was at first not easy to understand, but slowly i started understanding little by little. Foucaults works have little reiews from the west and more reviews from the French. The French had cut and dissected the book in no way the western world has, and this actually made reading harder because there were very little available on the subject. So, i have relied on more of a personal understanding of what i have read. The narrenschiff or the ship of fools, like it had fascinated Foucault also fascinated me. I was fascinated by how renaissance exalted madness and gloricised it in its artworks, but how event then it was excluded at the same time....
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...Sustainability Review Test 1 1) Kenneth E. Boulding—“Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” * English (1910-1993), Professor at U. of Michigan, U of Colorado * Economist, educator, peace advocate, Quaker, systems scientists, interdisciplinary philosopher * We are approaching a closed system and how it is going to be tough for us * Neither receivers inputs nor outputs * i.e. self-contained * Today we are in an open mind approaching a closed one * Morals are keeping us in the open for now * Econospherethe total worth of everything we have * Fossil fuel is buried sunshine * Shift from Cowboy Economy—people believe that there are unlimited shits, i.e. like the wild west to Spaceship Economy * Spaceship Economywe have only brought enough food/resources for the people we are carrying and must make it last for as long as we can * Stresses resource management * Doesn’t really consider environmental impact as much as more about conservation * Focuses more on population vs. environmental impact * Entropy (?) * Spaceman Economy living within our means, don’t worship production vs. costs… more conservation concerned * Fracking is a good example of us still in a cowboy mode although we are shifting toward Spaceman * Reference to Ethics—ethics, it is us, it is a plural term… we have an ethical obligation to think of future generations * Solutions at the end...
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...the provenance of women, the quest for a rational, scientific method for understanding and conquering Nature was the objective of men. This objective circumscribed women’s ability to fully interact and engage with nature. In Shelley’s novel, it is what the women do not do, that bears consideration. Women do not go out into the wild mountain passes nor do they breathe the deep mysterious experience of the sublime. These are male endeavors. For women, nature is gently entered and never fully experienced, a confined vista seen through a window from the shelter of civilization. Two oil paintings composed by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich in the early part of the nineteenth century dynamically illustrates the divide between men and women’s experience of nature as portrayed in Frankenstein. Wanderer above a Sea of Mist (1818, Hamburg, Hamburg Kunsthalle) and Woman at the Window (1822, Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie) are visual dynamics that invite a deeper exploration of how men and women engage with the natural world. Both works strikingly capture Shelley’s own experience as a woman left behind by men who sought the transcendence of nature and informed her women characters in the novel. In Wanderer above a Sea of Mist, a lone man, a wanderer, gazes out from a precipice at an expansive landscape of mountain peaks and ridges. His back is facing his observer. His stance is one of heroic contemplation of the view before him and that view is awesome. Not unlike...
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...Sustainability Review Test 1 1) Kenneth E. Boulding—“Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” * English (1910-1993), Professor at U. of Michigan, U of Colorado * Economist, educator, peace advocate, Quaker, systems scientists, interdisciplinary philosopher * We are approaching a closed system and how it is going to be tough for us * Neither receivers inputs nor outputs * i.e. self-contained * Today we are in an open mind approaching a closed one * Morals are keeping us in the open for now * Econospherethe total worth of everything we have * Fossil fuel is buried sunshine * Shift from Cowboy Economy—people believe that there are unlimited shits, i.e. like the wild west to Spaceship Economy * Spaceship Economywe have only brought enough food/resources for the people we are carrying and must make it last for as long as we can * Stresses resource management * Doesn’t really consider environmental impact as much as more about conservation * Focuses more on population vs. environmental impact * Entropy (?) * Spaceman Economy living within our means, don’t worship production vs. costs… more conservation concerned * Fracking is a good example of us still in a cowboy mode although we are shifting toward Spaceman * Reference to Ethics—ethics, it is us, it is a plural term… we have an ethical obligation to think of future generations * Solutions at the end...
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...truly see a tree, hear a bird sing, or come to fathom, in any meaningful way, the existence of another human being until we really try. Mija, the film’s protagonist, is a 66-year old raising her teenage grandson, Wook, in a tiny, cluttered apartment in an unnamed South Korean city. The film begins with her being diagnosed as an Alzheimer’s patient. With the onset of this disease, her life begins to lose meaning: words fade from her vocabulary, connections with the material word diminish, and people don’t seem to make much sense to her. Considering this, her pursuit to study poetry is a way to imbue her life with new meaning. And while this pursuit begins as a pastime, it soon transforms into a passion and, finally, becomes a means of transcendence; a means of seeing the world and the people close to her in a way that could only be described as beautiful, genuine and poetic. For while Mija does not initially understand the death of the young girl, Agnes, through poetry, she is able to see it clearly. Lee begins the film with a mesmerizing image of rushing water in a river stream. What...
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...Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre . . . the name is one of the most popular in modern philosophy. But who was he? What did he write and what were his works about? What was his role with regard to Existentialism? What is Existentialism, really? What life influences affected the person as whom he became famous? How would Sartre assess various social topics that we face today? What are the problems with Sartre's view of Existentialism and existence in general? These are the questions addressed in the following pages of this brief dissertation.His life Upon reviewing several sources, it is apparent that Sartre was a very disorganized and inconsistent individual. Sartre was obsessed with his intellect to the point of abandon of all else in his life - personal hygiene, honesty, organization, thoroughness, and more. It seems that he felt he was of superior intelligence in comparison to all others who surrounded him. He was not necessarily a great and original thinker, but rather a superb media sensation of sorts. Rather than developing Existentialist thought, he merely promoted it to amazing popularity through his eccentric lifestyle. Although he is best known for his association with Existentialism, it is interesting to note that he denounced its principles later in life and adopted Marxism, which he also later denounced. Jean-Paul-Charles-Aymard Sartre was born in Paris on June 21, 1905, the only child of Anne-Marie Schweitzer Sartre and Jean-Baptiste Sartre. Anne-Marie...
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...Bhagavad Gita : A Motivational Management Book by M.P. Bhattathiri, Retired Chief Technical Examiner, to The Govt. of Kerala. Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Management guidelines from the Bhagavad Gita Old truths in a new context The source of the problem Utilisation of available resources Work commitment Motivation – self and self-transcendence Work culture Work results Manager's mental health Management needs those who practice what they preach In conclusion A note on the word "yoga". Abstract One of the greatest contributions of India to the world is Holy Gita which is considered to be one of the first revelations from God. The spiritual philosophy and management lessons in this holy book were brought in to light of the world by many great Indian saint's effort and they call the Bhagavad-Gita the essence of Vedic Literature and a complete guide to practical life. It provides "all that is needed to raise the consciousness of man to the highest possible level." Maharishi reveals the deep, universal truths of life that speak to the needs and aspirations of everyone. Your followers in your establishment are continuing the mission by keeping this lantern burning always knowing the wishes of the modern generations. Arjuna got mentally depressed when he saw his relatives with whom he has to fight.( Mental health has become a major international public health concern now). To motivate him the Bhagavad-Gita is preached in the battle...
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...------------------------------------------------- Ishmael Question 1 In the novel, Ishmael, the phrase that the gorilla uses to represent society’s creation of a reality for an individual and a group is Mother Culture Question 2 at the end of the novel, the narrator expresses the idea that what he wants from Ishmael is a program Question 3 Daniel Quinn wrote the novel “Ishmael” in the twentieth century Question 4 According to Ishmael, if the takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things, the leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people Question 5 The premise being acted out by Leaver cultures, according to the novel, Ishmael, is humanity belongs to the world Question 6 In the novel, Ishmael, the gorilla says there are two stories being enacted by humans at the present time: the takers and the leavers Question 7 Based on the text of the novel Ishmael, complete the following analogy. The Takers are to the Leavers as Cain is to Abel Question 9 In the novel, Ishmael, the dialogue eventually deals with a biblical story. Which biblical story is a key part of the novel? Garden of Eden Question 10 There are two trees in the biblical story of the garden of Eden, as recounted by Ishmael. One tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The other tree is the tree of Life Question 11 According to the novel, Ishmael, if the Takers know the one right way to live, Leavers know the way that they prefer to live Question 12 ...
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...[pic] CARL JUNG 1875 - 1961 Dr. C. George Boeree [pic] Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throught the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul. -- Carl Jung Freud said that the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious conscious. He certainly made that the goal of his work as a theorist. And yet he makes the unconscious sound very unpleasant, to say the least: It is a cauldron of seething desires, a bottomless pit of perverse and incestuous cravings, a burial ground for frightening experiences which nevertheless come back to haunt us. Frankly, it doesn't sound like anything I'd like to make conscious! A younger colleague of his, Carl Jung, was to make the exploration of this "inner space" his life's work. He went equipped with a background in Freudian theory, of course, and with an apparently inexhaustible...
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...THE POLITICS OF TRAVEL IS TOURISM JUST COLONIALISM IN ANOTHER GUISE? by DAVID NICHOLSON-LORD [pic] "Of all noxious animals too the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist." Thus the Rev. Francis Kilvert, clergyman, diarist and snob, writing in his journal a few days before Easter 1870, after an encounter in the lonely ruins of Llanthony Abbey in Wales. Update the language, change a few of the local details--for "British," for instance, read Japanese or American or German--and you have a comment that is as relevant, and as redolent, now as it was nearly 130 years ago in a remote valley among the Welsh hills. A tourist, usually, is somebody else. Kilvert, whose diary as a country curate is now regarded as a small classic of English literature, was visiting the abbey himself, on a twenty-five-mile walk with a friend, but failed to see that this might qualify him for the detested designation. As for the behavior that occasioned his horror, it seems pretty mild by today's standards--the people he later execrated were "postured among the ruins in an attitude of admiration, one of them of course discoursing learnedly to his gaping companion and pointing out objects of interest with his stick." It was the stick, apparently, that did it. "If there is one thing more hateful than another," the curate fulminated into his journal that night, "it is being told what to admire and having objects...
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