The Ted Talk led by Dennis Dutton encompassed only a fraction of the reasons behind the existence of art and, furthermore, the survival of art. Dennis starts out by addressing the Darwinian principle and the different types of ways we interpret the idea of beauty. At the end of his excerpt he made a statement regarding that what we perceive as beauty relies heavily on that of our ancestors, which I do not agree with. Yes I do see the connection between the early homosapiens first generating the feeling and emotions towards seeing something they felt had a gravitational pull on their soul. However, I do not agree with the idea of myself looking at an object that I perceive as beautiful stemming from my early ancestors. Understanding the brief overview of neurophysiology, it is essentially the firing of neurons when activating visual stimulus by looking at an object, or in this case an art piece, which then relays electrical activity onto the emotional areas of your brain causing you to feel happy, sad, or unfavorable to the work. Yes I do see the argument where there could potentially be the case of evolution that our minds are wired in a fashion where we have learned to feel a speck of emotion when visualizing a piece of art from either an innate feature or from societal influences.
In the piece by Ellen Dissanayake, she makes it a point to address the idea that our early ancestors viewed art was an early outlet for survival (p.16). As mentioned before, I can see and understand the correlation of interpreting and formulating emotions when seeing art from our ancestors. Ellen also makes a point in which I semi-agree with on page 19 of her excerpt that “there is no appreciation of art without interpretation.” I disagree with this as feel as though people may be inclined to appreciate the idea of art on the surface. If they posses the ability to be thoughtful and realize the amount of work and effort the artist put in to express their ideology and emotions through a medium. On the other hand, I agree with this statement because I do feel that in order to really appreciate someone’s masterpiece you should take the time to fully engage yourself in their work and formulate your own opinions and ideas or guess what the artist was trying to portray. There really is no real concrete definition for art, and through evolution of ideology, there are infinite forms of art that seem to be continuously evolving and altering our thoughts in the process.
Health
Security
Family
Loyalty
Wisdom
Friendship
Personal Accomplishment
Personal Development
Power
Wealth
Independence
Leadership
Expertness
Prestige
Location
Enjoyment
Community
Service
Integrity
Creativity
This afternoon, I stayed in my apartment and did homework. I guess that would support mainly security and wisdom. I ensured my safety of remaining in doors and gaining knowledge by completing homework assignments and studying for my midterms. The number one important aspect that I value is health, which I was taught from a young age. My family instilled the importance of maintaining good health over anything. Without good health, you would be limited to your daily activities and enjoying life to it’s fullest. I am actually unsure if any of my values that held an authoritative position in me has proven to be invalid. I still take all my values into account as they allow me to govern the choices I make.
The main goal I have for myself at the moment would be to own my own physical therapy business. Other goals would be to graduate, get accepted to grad school, and hopefully attain a steady job in the direction of my goal. One of the main obstacles to achieve my goal would be the fact that I am still in undergraduate studies. Once I am finished, the next obstacle would be finishing graduate school and passing the physical therapy exam in order to receive my physical therapy license.
In the latter part of the reading, the passage discussing the idea of ranking our values based on our personal experiences drew my attention. I think it is safe to assume that most people tend to believe in certain morals and intrinsic values based on their personal experiences and feelings about the source of their beliefs. For instance, I take to heart and follow the beliefs and values of my parents, as they are the number one figures in my life that taught me the first lessons in life. As mentioned in the reading, we are also “drawing upon [our] own accumulated sense experience” (16). Although our parents were probably one of the first elderly figures to show us what their beliefs are, we are also influenced by outside sources daily. Our teachers, friends, and colleagues are few of the most influential people in our lives who constantly have us wondering about our initial beliefs and values either through justification of their own experiences and beliefs. When we grow up and become our own individuals, is it possible that we have completely different views on the world around us or do we innately act in some ways more than others based on our upbringing? This also surprised me while reading that our outside influences may also have an affect on our beliefs and values by simply ” ‘selling’ a particular approach to personal values” (16). Some individuals seek out spiritual meaning and support to better certain views on their beliefs. I feel in this sense we are losing a part of our true selfs based on the experiences of others. What if what they were telling us was completely made up to twist our views on our old beliefs when in fact what we had first believed in were to be true?
I also agreed with the analogy of individuals taking a poll about people’s ideas and beliefs on their personal values. It is unfortunate that nowadays and perhaps even back then people would not tell the truth in its entirety. People never really tell the whole truth, which brings me to question why an individual holds this kind of moral? Perhaps due to an old personal experience where they deemed appropriate that less the people know the better? Although through personal experience the whole truth always comes out regardless how much you attempt to cover it up. From that I have created a new personal value of my own to always completely 100% tell the truth even though it may be rude or inappropriate.
References: Lewis, H. (1990). A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives. Axios Press.Pg. 6-16.
Searching for an interesting blog for this first assignment, I stumbled across this intriguing yet eye catching article. This post was about a new founded system that turns sewage waste into purified drinking water, electricity, and clean ash. Bill Gates was the one of the first people to try the engineered drinking water. After you get past the idea that he has just drank water derived from sewage waste, it doesn’t seem so bad after all. This machine is self sustaining as it runs on steam creating electricity that is derived from the dried sewage “sludge.” The prototype for this machine is located a little north of Seattle. This project is still well under construction as they aim to almost completely reinvent the toilet. Although this seems like a great idea to input into developing countries, I feel the cost to create and upkeep the machine may be probable issues. On the up side, we would be saving energy and our environment by recycling human waste.
I chose this blog post because it immediately caught my eye with the title and it’s uniqueness. At first I could not believe that there was an actual machine that could do the impossible. Knowing that there are endless possibilities to reuse natural materials to create sustainable energy is quite mind blowing. Those who are unable to have easy access to clean and safe water are at risk of many health diseases and illnesses. We take advantage of having purified drinking water at the tips of our fingers. I think this is the beginning of a bright future for our environment but for those countries who are limited to resources. I hope that one day the world will be able to run on less expensive and environmentally friendly resources to save our earth from depletion of natural resources. We are already on our way of saving the earth with the electric cars, increasing the awareness of recycling, and now using poo to create drinking water.