Reflection 6: Hug your inner Spender.

With the snowapocalypse, I lost track of what I posted and what I didn't- but I think it will all become clearer this week. Do bear with me as I post my reflection and substantive posts in wrong order for this week. On another note, I am 21 now. You remember those college essay prompts we had to write about "having dinner with 3 important figures in history?" Having access to all DC Bars now, I think Bradburry and I could be good drinking buddies.

I already shared in class what I took out of Martian Chronicles and the Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. However, I think it is a good time to fill in those who were absent in class on Thursday. To me Martian Chronicles represented a process of self-alienation, self realization and how we cope with "loss of familiar cues." This process is one I'm familiar with by virtue of living in the US for 3 years now...but it probably happened to those of you who are not even aware of it. By leaving our homes, and coming to AU we, in one way or the other, had to readjust our lifestyles. Some probably had to modify their lives more than others for their own reasons. One of my favorite philosophers of all time Aristotle emphasizes the self-actualization to maximize one's potential...and I cannot think of a better way ofmaximizing our potential by leaving our comfort zones. I left home, only to understand "home" being merely a state of mind. A theme that was implied in some of the short stories found in Bradburry's book.

As Michael and I were creating the Wiki page for this week, we could not get a hold of the book. We thought about summarizing stories, but it was very difficult. As a short book, Chronicles was packed with themes throughout the book, so we decided to wrestle with some of the themes we found interesting.  I was particularly interested in the role of culture in interactions, as I mentioned earlier. However, I found 2 more important themes in the book. Namely:

1. Proofs for God's Existence
Throughout the voyages, humans are seeing all these signs and interpreting them in the scales of their values and beliefs. One of their core beliefs is the assumption on the existence of a higher moral authority called God. In their eyes, life on Mars is part of God's grand plan. However, humans in these stories neglect the fact that life on Earth could have been God's master plan. I have ideas scattered all over the place, so let me move on to my second point before I forget what to say...

2. Art vs. Art-ificial & Communication
On page 66 Spender rants about the role of art in life. Spender compliments the Martians for including art as part of their life. He compares Martians to people in Earth to point out how materialistic they have become. When we look back in history, art has always been part of human life-- it was the ultimate human experience. Specially when we look at the drawings that have been foun din the caves, we understand that humans felt the need of passing/reflecting their inner experiences, emotions, feelings to the outside world. Thank lord we now have many means of sharing our feelings/ thoughts with others. Since we are incapable of telephaty there is no perfect information among ourselves but we created tools to communicate our minds to one another: we not only draw, we compose music, we write poetry and stories. It could be true that we have access to many tools to say what we would like to say. Yet, we are reluctant. We oppress our feelings. We see human expression of emotions a sign of weakness. We shut a side of ourselves somewhere we have no access to and we do not talk about it. In fact, when someone is brave enough to talk about it we pay him/her. Think about it: We pay people to make art for us.

On that note, I embrace my inner Spender and peace out. I think you should give your inner Spender a hug too; if he leaves, you may never find him again.