Fluent Essays

Module AssignmentsStudy the assigned curriculum — both Parts 1 and 2.Submit your essay (or your contracted alternative), which must include thoughts on both parts of each module.Your peer exchanges are due two days after your essay is due.The essays are designed to be meaningful exercises of self-exploration (reflections) rather than busy work (summaries).The practice of philosophy is a major goal of your essays and exchanges. This practice promotes and supports independent, creative and original thinking. Essays Due by 11:00 PM on Mondays and Thursdays.Your essays need to be a thoughtful “journal-like” reflections.Essays must address both part 1 and part 2 of each module’s curriculum.A good reflection is one that I could not have read before. This is because it is the essay that only you could have written — due to your unique set of life experiencesMinimum RequirementsEssays are not summaries. That is busy work.Summaries do not receive credit because they do not require serious thought — simply the ability to record information.Your essays must be more than 700 words to receive credit and be eligible for a C, more than 800 words to be eligible for a B, and more than 900 words to be eligible for an A.Your assignments are not eligible for A’s if they require proofreading.Assignments that are partial (not meeting minimum requirements) do not receive partial credit.Late assignments are not eligible for credit.Essay PromptsYou are not required to use the following prompts, but they may help you think about what you are studying: What did you learn? What surprised you and/or caused enough doubt that you were inspired to do a little research and fact checking?Did you find any specific ideas confusing or difficult? Did you have an emotional response, negative or positive? Do you know why?Have you had any experiences you are willing to share with our class that help you relate to and understand any of the material in this module?Did this assignment contain any “awakening” ideas, those that inspire you rather than depress you?Did you find any of the ideas surprising? Why? PART ONE IS ATTACHED IN box below, and part 2 are the links part_1_.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview Study Part 1: Introduction to the Humanities Introduction to the Humanities Welcome to Humanities 30, The Beginnings of Civilization! This class is a survey course on the cultures that have given rise to Western Civilization. Most Humanities texts start out by reminding us that we study the Humanities in order to become more human. Those of us who love pets know that they are full of feeling and personality. Humans don’t have a monopoly on such qualities. So, what is it exactly that makes us human? This is one of the important questions you will be exploring as you study the Humanities. The Humanities reveal the amazing creativity of humans. At the same time, they also record how humans have struggled to understand the great questions. The Humanities thrive on the search for what the ancient Greeks called “the True, the Good and the Beautiful.” This class focuses on this long journey of seeking to embrace and embody these three wonderful qualities. Module Objectives: ● Discuss the important role the Humanities have played in shaping the human understanding of the great questions. ● Understand how to study serious, academic subjects ● Recognize how the Humanities can help people discover their full humanity. ● Discuss why questions, rather than answers, help humans open up to and experience “the True, the Good and the Beautiful.” ● Expand your understanding of the human journey. ● Explore what potential creativity you might give birth to if your life was dedicated to beauty and wisdom. Guide to Academic Studies Studying college level academic subject matter is not “easy.” It is not supposed to be. Rather, it is supposed to help you think. Such material is challenging for most people new to this kind of serious studying. This depends on such things as a student’s reading level, vocabulary, and if he or she has had any previous experience studying for a college degree. Rushing or expecting to understand right away does not promote deep thought. It is like exercising. Most people without physical challenges can walk around easily enough. This does not mean they can run a marathon. In the same way, most people can “think” in terms of deciding where to go for lunch or what to wear. At the same time, this does not mean they can think deeply or critically. Thinking seriously is like running a marathon. You must practice. Having to reread assignments and watch documentaries does not mean you are stupid. It means you are studying. Just as exercising is good for your body, so studying is good for your mind. Some students can fall into the habit of judging a subjects worth by whether they “like” it or not. It helps to remember that you are not studying for entertainment. It is not about liking it or disliking it. Instead, your focus needs to be on learning and developing your mind. If you rush through your assignments, you will miss the opportunity offered: seeking wisdom as well as knowledge. A Helpful Approach It is very helpful to have the right approach and attitude. A negative academic experience in college has much more to do with your attitude rather than your intelligence. An attitude of appreciation for the opportunity to explore your world view helps a great deal. One way to check your attitude is to reflect on how you speak to yourself. It reveals your thinking. Does your thinking help you or hurt you? Is it positive? Is it negative? For example, some students speak and think negatively about the need for studying: “I have to go and study. I hate writing. I don’t want to read this book.” It is bound to be more difficult this way. Another way of phrasing the same task: “I want to read serious material because it is going to help me: increase my vocabulary, think critically for myself, earn a college degree, converse with other educated people, etc.” If you remember your aim, then you take responsibility for choosing to attend college. The vast majority of college students are over 18 and out of high school. This means no one can force you to take this class. It is your choice. To complain about your own choice only makes learning more difficult. Studying the Humanities An approach where you give yourself enough time and quiet space to think is critical. All too often, trouble understanding is due to a lack of focus, rather than the difficulty of the material. For example, in this age of multiple screens, many students study with their phone right next to them. They are quick to check and answer text messages every couple of minutes, have the TV on, or try to study with other people around. This, obviously, is not conducive to understanding anything deep and profound. It helps a lot to underline passages that seem significant (and it will help you write your essay). It is important to take the time to look up words that you don’t understand. Nevertheless, I don’t want you getting too frustrated and simply give up. That would be undermining your own education, which is a poor use of your time, energy and money. Instead, give me a call. It is good to remember that this is not a literature class. You should not focus on an author’s style and other such literary issues. That is too easy. Such an approach allows you to avoid discussing the more serious content, which takes more effort. A common complaint students make about earning their degree and needing to study is an impatience about not knowing some of the vocabulary an author uses. They write that they have to go slowly because they have to look up words. Complaining about this is not appropriate for students interested in earning a college degree and being recognized as educated people. Lower scores are assigned when students use their essays to complain — rather than thinking and exploring and learning. There are no “right” answers that you need to know to earn an A in this class. Your score is based on engaging with the ideas presented. You should not “believe” anything. The Humanities are not about believing, but about exploring the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. This is why you need to be cautious about agreeing or disagreeing too quickly when material is new to you. It is best to simply use this exploration of human civilization as an opportunity to think, consider, and ponder. Humanities and the Search for Meaning Great creativity is supported by an open and inquiring mind. One way to facilitate an open mind is to look at your studies this semester as a chance to dive into the great questions. The questions of meaning, such as why am I here? Who am I? How should I live? Does my life have a purpose? Is there a God? What happens when we die? are the ones that cannot really be understood. This is not say people dont think there are answers. Many people believe they know the answers. For example, the religions will teach that there is a God and that we will meet God after we die. It is important to note however, that you will never really know what happens after you die until you actually die. That is why so much of religion is based on faith rather than knowledge. The challenge is to allow the unknowing to exist without filling in the gap with answers. Answers tend to close the mind rather than open it. To be in question is just about the most human thing we can do. Just think about children and all of their questions. Somewhere along the line we usually move in one of two directions. We either accept the fact that there are no answers to the great questions of meaning, or we accept that there are answers, usually settling for the answers from a tradition that appeals to us or makes sense to us. Either way, we tend to lose touch with the questions that make us ache, or what the philosopher Jacob Needleman refers to as the Indestructible Question. When you think about the Humanities as a record of the search for the True, the Good and the Beautiful, it can lead you to your own search. Then you will not simply learn about past cultural achievements, but you realize why the Humanities have been seen as helping us become more human. Great art, music, literature ennoble us. The great ideas recorded in philosophy can bring us the wisdom of Socrates. He was considered wise because he recognized he did not know. We are brought up in a culture that worships answers. People ask us our opinions and — surprise — we usually have one on almost everything. We forget that we have not studied most of these things and probably only know a lot about the few things we have time to specialize in. What can be especially alarming is to notice that people tend to have the strongest opinions about the very things they dont understand or can support with evidence. Just think about all of the wars fought in the name of faith. Openness: Staying In-Between The great Greek philosopher Socrates, who we will study, got into all sorts of trouble because he asked questions that exposed human ignorance. However, he was also called a midwife, a person who helps another give birth. We need this help because not knowing makes most of us very uncomfortable. Approached in this Socratic manner, the study of what is best about humanity, combined with the daily news, which reminds us how terrible humans can be, facilitates staying in-between. As you read the lectures and watch the videos, you will find yourself wanting to agree or disagree, like or dislike what you discover. These quick judgments are another way of avoiding recognizing how little we know. In that sense, our quick opinions serve as answers. Answers, no matter how profound, will close you down. See if you can discover this and verify it or not for yourself. When you are in a state of questioning, you are open. However, as soon as you choose an answer, it doesn’t matter which answer, you fall out of that in-between space that is the opening. This opening, according to Socrates, serves as an invitation to allow more of the True, the Good and the Beautiful to enter our lives. Society teaches us many toxic ideas. These ideas are recognized as toxic when we discover they do not lead to the promised happiness. One quick example, most of us grow up thinking that our happiness is based on what other people do and what other people think of us. This means we will always be victims, never in control of our own experience of life. An awakening idea confronts a toxic idea. When we see them together, it becomes a possibility to trade the toxic idea for the awakening one. In this example, an awakening idea would be one that empowers us. We are in charge of whether we are happy or not. We can stop blaming others for what we feel. To do this, however, requires a degree of maturity that many people do not seem to reach. Becoming Human One way of thinking about maturity is to see it as the process of becoming more human. How could we be more human than we already are? By being able to think our own thoughts and take responsibility for our choices. Then we can avoid being pushed around by the crowd and giving into the herd mentality. Many humans live their life on autopilot. Their thoughts and emotions, which they take as their own, are actually just the result of all of the programming they received as children. To become less like a robot and more like a human, we need to grow into our humanity. The Humanities can help us do that. For one thing, this whole class studies people who were not part of the mass herd. They are people who could think outside of the box and make up their own minds to create what they wanted, rather than what others demanded. One implication of the Humanities could be that our humanness might not be so much what we are, but a seed we are born with. To let that seed develop and reach its potential, we must find ways of giving it a chance to grow. Studying the people who managed to do this is one of the great gifts of studying the Humanities. The Humanities and Self-Knowledge The Humanities can foster an interest in self-knowledge. The Greek temple at Delphi had over its doorway the words “Know Thyself.” This is not ordinary knowledge about ourselves, such as what our favorite pizza is and what we like for music. This is about the surface self, the ego and its programming. Deep self-knowledge is about exploring what it means to be conscious beings. It is about trying to nurture this seed of our true humanity buried beneath the surface of the personality or social self that we show the world. This surface self can be recognized as the part of us which is always judging and commenting on everything around us. The deeper self is recognized by its calmness and how it simply observes without all of the judging. You can try this. It is very difficult to just watch things without having an opinion about them. Those experienced in meditation teach us to notice how the mind is almost constantly talking, comparing, judging, etc. You don’t need to meditate to see this, but this commentary becomes more apparent whenever you try to be silent. This ongoing commentary and the part of us that can see and listen to this commentary presents us with an interesting dilemma. There is a twoness within most of us that is rarely recognized if it is not brought to our attention. This division can be experienced as an inner duality. This is one of the possible reasons we have so many contradictions. A simple example is how one part of us decides it wants to lose weight and then another part takes over that wants the ice cream. It is easy to see this as a bad thing. However, it is also possible to see it as a very good thing if we could understand the importance of these contradictions in helping us nurture the seed of humanity within each person. Without our contradictions, we do not have much of a struggle. Without a struggle, there is no growth. Ancient people discovered that they could make fire. They could rub two sticks together, which would create a friction. This friction creates the sparks that start a fire. A similar process might be what we need to feed and water the seed of our humanity. The Humanities reveal our potential for creativity and passion. Our daily lives, the grind, is what we see all around us. These are the two sticks, if we stay with this metaphor. We need to rub these two sticks, — our potential and our current condition — together in order to develop an inner flame. The Humanities give us the opportunity by helping us remain in the questions rather than in the answers. Perhaps this flame, when the time is ripe, welds our contradictions together into a unity that mistakenly believe we already have. Perhaps this more unified human being is the potential we are born with, but is all too often never realized. The Inner Flame The point of living the questions is not remain forever in doubt. It is to allow something new to come forth. Think of something as simple as bread. Bread is made of two basic things, water and flour. As water and flour, it is uneatable. However, bring that third force — fire — into the picture and you get something very different. The two, when heated, bring about another thing that is greater than its parts — bread. This inner flame could be seen as a fragile awareness, an awareness that needs to be continually rediscovered. You cannot rest on your laurels and conclude that you are done. Each moment becomes an opportunity to return to being in-between. This facilitates the possibility of opening to this moment and the next and the next. Because what we find is not an answer, but an experience. The experience of being human, a conscious being in the immensity of space and time. These are often our peak moments. Great beauty can bring us to these moments. For some people, it might be a snowcovered mountain or a sunset at the beach. You cant define this, answer it, you can only be present to it. Nature can be very powerful in this way. The Humanities can also be powerful. Both allow us to experience awe. Awe is an opening experience just as questions are. It is great to be stirred by nature. It is also great to be stirred by reading a great book or seeing a beautiful painting or watching a wonderful film. What we come to is not a place of answers and certainties, but a space of openness. It is then that we become interested not in simply in new experiences, but in that part of ourselves which is aware of experience. The Humanities can be a support for this constant rediscovery of the basic questions of meaning that come to us when we are confronted by the tragedies and comedies life serves up to each person. It is for reasons like this that the Humanities help us become more human. The Infinite and the Finite Immanuel Kant opened his most famous book, The Critique of Pure Reason, with an astonishing insight. Humans have minds that can ask the great questions, but not minds that can understand the answers. In other words, how can a limited, finite human being, with limited time, experience and knowledge, possibly understand the cosmos, which for all intents and purposes, appears to be infinite? A simple answer would be, it cant. Nevertheless, people try and the Humanities reveal this attempt to understand. The nature of being human is to be radically curious. It is this curiosity that leads people to ask one of the first great questions — how is it that I am here? The philosopher Ken Wilber writes: “It is flat-out strange that something — that anything — is happening at all. There was nothing, then a Big Bang, and then here we all are. This is extremely weird. To Schelling’s burning question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ There have been two general answers. The first might be called the philosophy of “oops.” The universe just occurs, there is nothing behind it, it’s all ultimately accidental or random, it just is, it just happens — oops! The other broad answer that has been tendered is that something else is going on: behind the happenstance drama is a deeper or higher or wider pattern, or order, or intelligence (Wilber 2000, p. 3). The Humanities, as understood today, began with the first civilizations that sprouted from what had been long ages of hunters and gatherers. We dont even know for sure how long humanity lived on this planet in this way. We do know, however, that these years lasted far longer than the few thousand years covered by a study of the Humanities. Two Approaches to Questions of Meaning By the time we do get to the period where records are kept, we learn that there have been two basic ways of answering the great question of why there is something rather than nothing. Ancient people answered this question in two ways: mythology and philosophy. Before humans came to speculate in the abstract and logical manner that we recognize today as philosophical thought, people looked for answers in their stories, especially in their creation stories. Mythological thinking is magical thinking. Nature is personalized the way animals are humanized in cartoons today. Storms are not only caused by the gods, but they are a direct result of my decisions and my behaviors. If a person is killed by lightening, this is not a freak accident. Instead it strikes because of a decision made by the storm gods. You can see a funny example of this in little children today. Little kids will hide behind their parents’ legs, where we can clearly see them. However, they think that they are hidden because they are hiding. They are not yet able to see that their intention to hide is not enough to actually hide them. The tragic side of this is that when they think or say something mean to someone, and then that person gets hurt, they think that they caused this to happen. Their thoughts control reality. This way of thinking is magical rather than reasonable. Many of our superstitions still come from this place of magical and mythological thinking. Ancient peopl ... Purchase answer to see full attachment