Dialectics: Foolishness and Bravery

In order to be brave, one must take a certain amount of unnecessary risk. If you don't take risk, then what is there to be brave and courageous about. When you don't take risk, then you live life without excitement because we all get excited and enjoy and remember the times when we took risks, not the times when we lived safely. But then what is foolishness? Isn't foolishness when you do or act in a stupid way? So foolishness would be excess risk or even attempted bravery that failed. Or you could define bravery as foolishness that is acknowledged and accepted by society and those around us.

But not everyone is brave. So there is something that is preventing many from becoming brave, and that is fear. If you fear the risk or see the risk as too great, then you won't take it. This is reason overcoming foolishness. Then do you have to lack reason to be brave? Because with reason, there comes fear of the consequences.

But bravery and courage may not be terms that even apply to modern life. Many times I associate bravery and courage with times in the past. I don't feel that those definitions apply anymore. There is a slightly different association to these words now. They are used more in the sense of overcoming challenges. Foolishness seems to have been taken out of the equation, but it has retained the same definition and associations. What seems to have taken the place of foolishness is fear. You fear failing at overcoming the challenge, so you must have to the courage and bravery to overcome your fear. When you overcome challenges, you create opportunity. I am sure that we have all seen what happens to people who are too foolish to face their fear and overcome challenges and have limited opportunities before them.

Blogging Around

Roman's Best of the Week blog entry about the idea of epiphany in Cathedral.

Roman, I really like how your described the experience of an epiphany, how language actually limits the description of an epiphany and takes away from the experience. It reminded be of the idea that in order to completely understand something you have to experience it. Even when I write about experiences that I have and try to convey them to other people through words, I find that they never sound quite right. I feel that I am doing a disservice to the moment. The only way that anyone could know what I was talking about would be being with me for the brief moment on a peak, or finding the flower that you've been searching for for years (for me it was the calypso lady slipper). That is why we have other modes of expression like music or art. Like you said, some things just can't be explained with words.

Merrick's Best of the Week blog entry about assisted suicide.

Merrick, I, like Taylor, do honor your opinion, but I have to disagree.

Say that your grandma had Alzheimer's. Would you rather slowly and painfully watch her deteriorate mentally or would you rather let her make the choice while she was still your grandma to end her life? I don't understand how this could be a selfish decision. She would be trying to save you and your family from the pain that they would experience seeing her slowly become someone else, someone who forgets who you are. This could go on for who knows how long. I really liked how Taylor put that they are only existing and not really living.

I do feel that their should be a thorough process that each individual must go through in order to end their life. Their must be a certain amount of counseling as well as doctors, both medical and psychological agreeing that the patient can pursue this option, and they should be able to do this without the fear of putting their career on the line. Their should also be family consent and they should be involved in the entire counseling process because like you said, this decision affects friends and family as well. All in all, suicide should be an option available, but not for the victim of a recent break up.

Best of the Week: The View of the Black Slave in Heart of Darkness

I believe that the best idea stated in class was whether or not the view of the black slave could be worked into Heart of Darkness. The most interesting idea that I though was offered was making the narrator black and have him expressing his views based upon the actions of Marlow and those around him. But this would not have worked because it takes away from the integrity of the novel and alters Marlow's true experience because Marlow is using this story to reflect and find inner meaning. With all of the other examples that were offered, there was some reason that it couldn't be worked in without changing the story in a profound way. This then made me realize the importance of the history of the author and time period of publication. In Conrad's time, racism was still an integral part of all societies. Even a person like Conrad who was writing this story and being abnormal for his time would have found a book with the view of a black man to be too revolutionary. To further demonstrate Conrad's racism, I would like to point out that there is not a single point in the novel when a black man is not portrayed as being inferior or savage. It has rarely occurred to me that these two aspects were that important, but this book has really shown how changing when the book was written would affect the overall product. Even if the book isn't historical fiction, you still need to do your research to fully understand and comprehend the deliberate decisions that the author made.