Blogging Around: Taso and Melanie

Taso K.
Taso wrote a blog post about aesthetics and beauty, and it made me realize that I also have the same opinion as him on the subject.  This is my reponse:

"Taso, I love this post a lot.  I can agree completely with your opinion that, why does beauty or aesthetics have to have rules.  I also agree that everyone has varying opinions on what is beautiful and what isn't.  That is why people like different things.  Thanks for writing about this, because I didn't realize until right now that beauty shouldn't have rules.  You really opened my eyes."

Melanie M.
In Melanie's post, she wrote about how humanities is influencing the way she sees art.  The post made me realize that I also have been viewing other things differently due to humanities.  This is how I responded to her post:

"Melanie, I can totally relate to where you're coming from.  My experiences in not just other classes, but in my life experiences have shaped the way that I see artwork now.  I've noticed that this is what humanities has done to me throughout the year as well.  I've noticed that the way I experience not just art has changed, but the way I view other things in my life has changed due to humanities as well."

What if: Life of memory is the only chance of meaning?

In class this week we started learning about the principles and ideas of modernism and postmodernism.  Since we are currently living in postmodern times, I find it very interesting to see how differently the two ideas contrast.  I was especially intrigues by the differences of the views about memory.  The current, or postmodern idea of memory is that we are withing memory; memory is not within us.  The modern view is that life of memory is the only chance of meaning.  I didn't really understand what that meant at first, so I looked into it further.

I realized that the meaning of the modern philosophy for memory is that in order to have a meaning to our lives, we must remember all of our life.  I found this very interesting.  So, what if life of memory is the only chance of meaning?

Well if that is true, then does that mean since I cannot remember the first years of my life, then those years had no significance at all?  How could that be?  Those are the years when I first planted my feet on the ground and walked forward.  I surely find that to have some sort of meaning.  Those first years, I made great friends, some of whom I cannot remember their names for the life of me.  I find myself struggling to remember times in elementary school, and middle school.  I learned plenty of valuable information, and made many friends and decisions, all of them shaping who I am today.  So I guess I don't understand why it is that if i don't remember something, it would have no meaning or significance at all.

If this were truly the case, that a life of memory is the only chance of meaning, then I'm positive that plenty of my life would be wasted, simply because I don't have the ability to remember it all.