Reflect and Connect: Week 9

Connect:

Reflect:
This week we still have been talking a lot about nature issues and nature in general. The nature issue I am focusing on is nuclear waste dumping in the deserts of Utah. They are burying the waste there because no one lives there so they assume it won't affect us but it can and it probably will.  If we leave the waste underground, it could leak into our water source and give us cancer, ultimately leading to death. Other people are focusing on deforestation and the polar bears and gobal warming and whaling. All of these issues are interesting to learn about but when you see them all together like this it is kind of overwhelming because then you realize that there are a lot of problems in our world and it almost makes you afraid for the future. If everybody tried to make a difference, we could change things, but the sad thing is, no one wants to help. That is what the world has come to.

Myths

Hebrew Bible, Genesis

Bereishith, from the Tanakh (c. 6^th-3^rd Centuries B.C.E.) pg. 98-111

1.      What differences do you notice about the roles of female figures? What’s the name of Noah’s wife?

In these myths, I notice that the roles of women are insignificant. The man is made out to be the main “ruler” of a couple, with the wife obeying and succumbing to his rule. An example of how women were insignificant is when Adam and Eve eat the apple and God says that he will increase the pain that Eve will suffer during labor. Also, in this passage, “Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife…” (pg. 101) God is giving Adam his punishment and he pretty much says because you listened to your wife, you did something wrong, making it sound like a man should never take the word of the woman. As for Noah’s wife’s name, I don’t think it is mentioned once in the myth. A perfect example of the unimportance women play in this myth.

2.      What is the nature of Adam’s relationship to God? Of Adam’s relationship to Eve? How do these conflict?

Adam sees God as his leader, his creator, because that’s what God is to him. Adam expresses the love and devotion of a child who thinks their “parent” is the whole world. That is, until God makes an appropriate companion for him, Eve. I think that the parent analogy is still applicable here because as the child ages, they still love the parent, but they know how to live independently of them now and when they find a mate, they live more for the mate. He still loves God, but he has an even more special place in his heart for Eve, making him listen more to her and agree with her.  These conflict because of course, God says “Don’t eat the fruit.” But Eve says that it’s ok to eat the fruit. Adam is going to side with Eve, which he did, and ate the fruit. This made him defy god and bring the downfall of humankind. 

3.      What is the place of human beings in these stories?

 Even though the gods are creating these humans, they are still supposed to be a lesser form of a god. They are made to have the outward appearance of a god, but not the inner powers. The gods still know that they are the superior ones and they point out, and are even a little degrading, about the imperfections of man. For example, in this myth when god decides that all things with life in them are bad, he wipes them out with a flood, leaving only Noah and his family with the animal pairs. They look down on man because man sometimes makes decisions that are frowned upon by the gods.

Epic of Gilgamesh

(c. 2500 B.C.E.) pg. 91-93

1. How might the movement from an oral version of the story to a written version of the         story affect what we take from it?

I am going to connect this to Shakespeare in the Bush with the tribe and Hamlet and how the story completely changed for the author of the article because the tribe members had a different way of interpreting what happened in the story based on their beliefs and values. With that said, an oral version of a story or myth has room to grow and change and mold with the story teller and the people the story is being told to. But when a story is written down, that is how it is and that is how it is going to stay forever. The only room for change is if it is translated in another language, losing some of its meaning and value in the last language.

2. In all these stories, how do the gods behave?

In these myths, I feel that the gods have at least two main characteristics: they always bicker and they are arrogant. When they argue, there is always one bad apple of the group who wants to start some kind of war so the gods face off against each other and fight, with the good always prevailing. For example, in this myth, the gods are unpleased with the humans so they want to create a flood and kill them all, like in the bible with Noah. The gods are arrogant because they always think that their creations are amazing until they get to humans, then they look down on humankind’s flaws. If they don’t approve of the human race, why did they make us in the first place?

3.      What differences exist between the human and divine worlds?

One difference between the human and divine worlds is that there are only a small number of divine members and there are a huge number of humans. Another difference is that the gods are normally based on elements of the earth or things dealing with nature. For example, there’s a god who raises the sun every day and there is a god who controls the sea. The biggest difference is that obviously the members of the divine world have powers and humans don’t. The divine can make anything happen while humans have to work for things.

Bering Strait Eskimo Creation Myth

The Time When There Were No People on the Earth Plain pg. 118-119

1.      Would you agree that creation myths represent one of the most stunning feats of the human imagination? Why?

I agree that myths are really a great display of the creativity within the human mind. I agree with this because the world and people are “made” out of the weirdest things and it’s never the same in different myths. For example, in this myth, the figure that is supposed to represent god is a man that has a magical raven mask that can either make him human or bird. And the first man is born from a pea-pod. Then the raven uses the dirt to make new things. I know that dirt is a common theme but the raven-man? Where did that come from? It’s a great display of imagination and creativity in humans.

2.      What might account for the differences between the original materials used to create human beings in all these stories?

I think the main difference in the perception of what everything was originally made of depends on what geographical region the myth came from. For example, if the myth were to come from an island writer, I think a lot of things would revolve around the water and waves. Where this myth talks about Eskimos, I associate them with fishing and I notice that in this myth the raven-man makes a lot of fish. The only connection I can’t make is the dirt but they are outdoorsy people so it can connect in a small way.

3.      What differences exist between the human and divine worlds?

In this myth I really like how there isn’t a difference between the divine and human world. I feel like this because when the guy is “born”, I get the impression that the god made him for some company. I feel like the god is actually a sweet tempered guy and is trying to make things that please the human. He finds joy knowing that a creation has awed the human. He also tries to help the human out, like in this passage, “Then Raven asked man if he had eaten anything. The latter answered that he had taken some soft stuff into him at one of the pools. ‘Ah!’ said Raven, ‘you drank some water. Now wait for me here.’… when Raven returned, bringing four berries in his claws.” (pg. 118-119) It seems like a peaceful union of divine world and human world in this myth.

Reflect and Connect: Week 8

Connect:

Reflect:
This week in class we talked a lot about nature some more. A theme that kept coming up was areas of natural land that looks completely different than we remember it. Like the Jordan River Parkway and how the birds and greenery are disappearing along the sides of it. I have a personal connection with this because when I drive around with my mom she is always saying how an area that is full of buildings has "changed so much from when I was a kid." She tells me how the new office complex used to be a big open field that they would dirt bike in. I also connect this to my neighborhood when I first moved in because our house was one of the first built in the neighborhood so me and my brother would play in the dirt all day long and now there are houses all around us. All of my connections are examples of how there is less and less natural space left on earth.

Easter's End

Jared Diamond is a professor at UCLA of geography. He was a professor of physiology at UCLA school of medicine. He started his studies in physiology and then ventured to biology and biogeography. He has written eight books.  He also goes to New Guinea to study the bird population and has written a book about his findings.

The general point made by Jared Diamond in his work Easter’s End is that our society is like the society on Easter Island. More specifically, Diamond suggests that we are using up all of the worlds resources until one day they will all be gone and our society will no longer exist. He writes, “Easter Island is earth writ small. Today, again, a rising population confronts shrinking resources.” (pg. 431) In this passage, Diamond is suggesting exactly what I said; we are a growing population with limited resources. In conclusion, it is Diamond’s belief that we are very similar to the population of Easter Island that over exhausted the resources of their island.

In my view, Diamond is right because it has always been my personal belief that one day, the human population will become extinct due to our overuse of the resources that the earth provides for us. For example, I know that I Am Legend is just a movie but I can see how one day the world will become quiet and uninhabited except maybe by a select few. Of course we won’t all get a weird disease that turns us into zombies, we will just die. Although Diamond might object that we have the history and knowledge to hopefully prevent another society crash, I maintain that it is only a matter of time before the earth retaliates against us. Therefore, I conclude that Diamond is totally right in comparing us to the civilization of Easter Island and I think something like that could happen in the future.

Art Critique

1.      Which museum did you visit?

 I visited the University Of Utah Museum Of Fine Arts.

2.      In 150 words, describe at least one of the broad collections on a theme, period, geographic region, or topic within the museum.

A broad collection that I want to talk about is an exhibit that UMFA has year round and it is the collection of Asian art. It is a combination of sculptures and knick knacks of Asian origin. I really liked this collection because I thought that the things they had on display were really interesting.  For example, they had a banner type thing that was made of wood and had elaborate carvings in it of important figures in the Asian culture and I thought that the detail was amazing and I loved how much they fit onto it so that you noticed something different every time you looked at it. They also had stone sculptures on display that I thought were really interesting because they were gods and goddesses, if I can say that, of an eastern religion. For example, there was a sculpture of an elephant with no arms standing on its hind legs wearing elaborate jewelry and it was called Ganesha, a god of some sort.

3.      Give a brief, one paragraph (100 words) description of a special exhibit.

One of the special exhibits on display at UMFA was a collection of art work on the Great Depression. Every piece in the collection was a picture of some sort and they were all done in black and white with the exception of maybe three. A lot of the works were pictures of men working in fields, with tractors, with machinery, and performing heavy labor. There were also pictures of desolate landscapes and of course the infamous dust storms that plagued the people of the Great Depression. By looking at a drawing in the collection, I learned that people would hire farmers to live with them and harvest the crops and these people were called tenant farmers because they were tenants of the home owners.

4.      What kind of information is provided about the works? Tell me three places you might find more detailed information that doesn’t include the web.

Next to a piece of art is a plaque with information on it. The kind of information available to you on the plaque are things like the artists name, the nationality of the artist, the year it was painted, the name of the work, the years of the artists life, the type of art work (sculpture, painting, etc.), and sometimes they provide a short paragraph about the work. If you were looking to find more information about a piece, you could go to another museum with the same artists work, you could look at books pertaining to the specific artist, or you could ask someone who is knowledgeable in the artist/painting that you are interested in. 

5.      Choose several works that particularly appealed to you. Explain why you were drawn to these works. Comment on the subject, style, medium, time period, etc.  Who were the artists? This question must be answered in its entirety. (At least 500 words)

 The first piece of work that I was drawn to was a picture in the Great Depression collection called Tenant Farmers. I was drawn to this picture because it was a touch of green highlight in a sea of black and white. Two faces with age lines and frowns were looking at me, reminding me of the classic farm couple with frowns and a pitchfork. It was composed of lines making the faces appear to have a grotesque look about them. The green color and the harsh black lines made the couple appear as if they were zombies. I thought this was absurd since the drawing came from the Great Depression but I also thought it was very cool, it is the main reason why I liked the picture. I just thought it was really funny.

The second piece of art work that I was drawn to was called Mushroom and Trees I. As soon as I walked in the room, my eye was drawn to this picture. I liked it so much because it looked like ink spills in water.  The ink was flowing around lazily like it had nowhere to go anytime soon but the scene was frozen in time.  From a distance, the picture looked like a landscape with a solitary tree in the center of the picture. I thought it was really cool and I wondered how the artist accomplished the look.

I saw the most influential piece of work next. It was called On Balmy Terrain and it was an entire wall covered with written on pieces of wood that were collected from right here in Utah. There was nothing extremely special about the piece but the first board I read said, “Down a dirt road” and all I could think of was an important person in my life who taught me to take the dirt road sometimes instead of the paved road to go a little slower in life and relax. I was hooked after that.  I stood, rooted the spot, for a good five minutes reading each piece of wood. The thing I liked most was that even if I looked at the same area more than once, I always saw something I hadn’t noticed the first time. Some of the boards I remember said, “His mouth”, “Our primal kisses”, “Chunky blue midnight beads”, “Mexico”, and other random things all thrown together to make something whole. As I read, I kept going back to the same person and even though it made me a little sad, I was transfixed. I didn’t read all of the pieces of wood, I had to walk away but I would go back to sit and stare at it for hours if I have the time and money.

The last piece of work that really stood out to me was a marble statue of a naked lady being caressed by the wing of a swan. It was called Leda and the Swan. Legend has it that Zeus wanted Leda, the wife of the Spartan king, so he turned himself into a swan to seduce her. She then produced Helen and Polydeuces. I liked it so much because I thought the pure white of it was beautiful and I can’t help but appreciate the human figure. I also liked it because the plaque provided background information and it no longer was a naked lady with a swan, it had meaning to it and became much more beautiful to me, even if the story is a little weird. 

6.      How did the artworks you looked at relate to material we have discussed in class? Mushrooms and Trees I and other pictures I noticed really tied into the environment and how we’ve been talking about it in class. For example, in the same gallery as Mushrooms there were pictures that depicted oil fires and ship wrecks in the oceans and dark, inky blackness of pollution on the world. It made me think of American cars and how they are getting bigger and are using more gas and oil therefore polluting the world more. Then using those cars to hit the environment directly in national parks like stated in Polemic. The pictures were the result of humans using up the world’s resources and leaving the negative marks everywhere. I thought it was interesting that these pictures were in one of the special exhibits that aren’t at UMFA all of the time and how perfectly they tied into our class discussions and readings at the moment.

7.      What was your personal reaction to this experience? Would you enjoy attending this type of event again? Why or why not? (Minimum of 100 words)

I really liked going to UMFA. I like experiencing art that I haven’t seen before because I think it is always so cool. Even if I don’t like something, I am a person who learns to appreciate it. I like looking at art so much because I like that everything made is inspired by something, there is always a story behind it and even if there isn’t, I like that you can look at a piece of art and make your own story to it. It speaks to you and only you in a specific way like how On Balmy Terrain spoke to me with such importance. It all depends on the connections that you can make to a certain piece of art and whether or not that connection is positive or negative. I also like appreciating the skill of others and noting how skillful they truly are, it amazes me that some people are born with such great artistic abilities. I would definitely love to do something like this again and see all of the things that have been made out there in the world.