(Edit: This is my 6th attempt to post this entry since 8 am. hopefully this one stays up. I am furious with blogger.com as I've written this response out about 3 times now.
Dr. Craig's blog made me think a lot about how the "ruling class" tries to "brainwash" the middle and lower classes into thinking certain things and behaving in certain ways. Sure, it's easy to assume that upper classes have power because that's just the way things are or "it is what it is" but is the lower class' response to such autonomy their own fault?
There are people in the world with so much money they don't know what to do with it. So they store it in banks, and live off the interest for the rest of their lives and never do anything positive for the world with their profits. Then again, there are some (Bill Gates) who spend their money on useful causes and charities that are slowly helping to change the world around us. But what can the lower class do about such people as mentioned before? I have no idea. I don't know how to change the way things are, because even something such as buying a film or a CD that is anti-establishment or anti-war or anti-anything is still giving money to celebrities or musicians who will make capital off of it at the end of the day. They will still become far richer than me, and I am contributing to their wealth and for what? It is sad that the world is the way it is now, and that few hold so much power over many due to financial or economic reasons. That's the thing that I thought about the most while reading the response. I just got somewhat upset.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Marxism v. Liberal Humanism
I'm horrible at blogging.
Especially about things I know little to nothing about.
So this might just be me regurgitating facts from a textbook until I get comfortable with this class.
So bear with me.
Compared to liberal humanism, Marxism is probably the more realistic way to review and critique texts. Liberal humanism is a nice idea for assessing literary works.
According to Barry's 10 tenents of human liberalism, a text has many different meanings in itself. Which is weird to me because I base a lot of what I read from a text off of the prior knowledge I posess about it, such as the time it was written during or a bit about the author and what the author tries to portray according to him/her. It seems absurd to me that the author can't give a text a meaning and that the text itself holds the only true meaning.
According to a tenent of liberal humanism's, human nature is unchanging and the way humans are now is the way they have always been. I find this to be absolutely ridiculous, and no way to look at a text when critiquing it. Human nature changes with the centuries and also along with the economic changes that occur. Marxism points out the importance of evaluating economics in terms of evaluation of a literary work because people value posessions and material items in our capitalistic society. People are structured by their economic stance as well as their upbringings due to certain econoic advantages or disadvantages. Marxism contradicts liberal humanism in a sense that it is centered around class and economic structure, mainly being capitalism. This being said, it is easy to see such a big difference in opinion when it comes to the "right way" of interpreting a text because of how different the points are that you are viewing them from.
That was the main point that stood out to me, and hopefully I didn't confuse anybody too much. Or if I did, just kick me in the shin next time you see me for putting you through that torture.
Until my next set of incoherent literary ramblings...
Especially about things I know little to nothing about.
So this might just be me regurgitating facts from a textbook until I get comfortable with this class.
So bear with me.
Compared to liberal humanism, Marxism is probably the more realistic way to review and critique texts. Liberal humanism is a nice idea for assessing literary works.
According to Barry's 10 tenents of human liberalism, a text has many different meanings in itself. Which is weird to me because I base a lot of what I read from a text off of the prior knowledge I posess about it, such as the time it was written during or a bit about the author and what the author tries to portray according to him/her. It seems absurd to me that the author can't give a text a meaning and that the text itself holds the only true meaning.
According to a tenent of liberal humanism's, human nature is unchanging and the way humans are now is the way they have always been. I find this to be absolutely ridiculous, and no way to look at a text when critiquing it. Human nature changes with the centuries and also along with the economic changes that occur. Marxism points out the importance of evaluating economics in terms of evaluation of a literary work because people value posessions and material items in our capitalistic society. People are structured by their economic stance as well as their upbringings due to certain econoic advantages or disadvantages. Marxism contradicts liberal humanism in a sense that it is centered around class and economic structure, mainly being capitalism. This being said, it is easy to see such a big difference in opinion when it comes to the "right way" of interpreting a text because of how different the points are that you are viewing them from.
That was the main point that stood out to me, and hopefully I didn't confuse anybody too much. Or if I did, just kick me in the shin next time you see me for putting you through that torture.
Until my next set of incoherent literary ramblings...
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
First Legit Entry
Hello potential avid readers,
Regina is my pen name for this site, but guaranteed if you read this blog and know me personally, it won't be hard to figure out who this blog belongs to.
My goal is not to belittle anyone or critique anyone's interpretations. Just to express my ideas and thoughts and critical inquiries about works that we read in class. Though I can be argumentative, I choose not exercise it over things such as interpretation, so sometimes I can be passive when it comes to debate. Not saying critical inquiry is a trivial thing, but to me, it is certainly not something I am passionate about or knowledgeable about enough to push my views onto somebody else. I'm just here to learn and hopefully get a good grade by keeping up with blog entries. I've never had a blog before so this should be interesting.
RG
Regina is my pen name for this site, but guaranteed if you read this blog and know me personally, it won't be hard to figure out who this blog belongs to.
My goal is not to belittle anyone or critique anyone's interpretations. Just to express my ideas and thoughts and critical inquiries about works that we read in class. Though I can be argumentative, I choose not exercise it over things such as interpretation, so sometimes I can be passive when it comes to debate. Not saying critical inquiry is a trivial thing, but to me, it is certainly not something I am passionate about or knowledgeable about enough to push my views onto somebody else. I'm just here to learn and hopefully get a good grade by keeping up with blog entries. I've never had a blog before so this should be interesting.
RG
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)