Heroes and Mystics 2022

 I decided to make this weeks blog post an analysis of the Joe Pug song discussed in class because my interpretation seemed very different from other peoples. I have found with folk music like this, it is rare to have very cerebral and convoluted lyrics covered in difficult metaphors. Most folk music I have heard use metaphors in a more simple way, simply allowing them to speak from the heart without making the song 10 hours long. Therefor, I analyzed it with the understanding that the writer is not likely to me an English major in college and know all the fancy way to write something. for the same of simplicity i sectioned things out by stanza. I will not be doing the entire song as it is far too long for a blog entry, but perhaps there will be a second blog post on it if I continue to think about it. I personally do not see any allegory in this therefore it will not be mentioned And I’ve come to know the wishlist of my father I’ve come to know the shipwrecks where he wished I’ve ...

We were prompted with the question in class today about music's connection to our emotions and our identity. For example, I play James Taylor when im anxious and when I feel homesick I play House At Pooh Corner because my dad used to play it for me when I was a kid to get me to fall asleep. TAPS always makes me cry and Frank Sinatra reminds me of my mom and I dancing in the kitchen. There is no question that music has a connection to our souls (if you believe in a soul) and who we are/ how we relate to the world. Another student spoke about how the music played today made him feel and I think the word he was looking for is contentment. live music seems to do that to most people, hence why they have live music playing in some Irish pubs and restaurants. While American culture lacks the well-spread traditional music we were shown today, we have plenty of traditions surrounding music and plenty of traditions that involve music. it just seems our culture isn't very picky about what...

  I really enjoyed this poem because it rang very true for me. Sometimes what we are looking for is right in front of us but we do not realize this until we go down a different path to find it. This is what the main character of Rumi’s poem encountered. He was unsatisfied with his life so he sets off to find it in Cairo. However, at the end of the poem he realizes that “what I’m longing for lived in my house in Baghdad!...But I had to come this long way to know it!” (Rumi). This is a common pattern within human lives. People often go off searching for themselves or their future only to realize that where they were rooted is where they are meant to be. Yet they could have never come to this conclusion if they had not left their roots to look for a new home. This is of course representative of the hero’s journey—leaving home to follow a call for something more, encountering trials and tribulations along the way, only to return back home with the knowledge that the place they belong i...

 one of the most interesting debates occurred recently and I wanted to research the topic of the historical beginnings of love, sex, and intimacy. ive included a small extract from my source in the hopes it will clear things up. "Love, sex, and marriage in ancient  Greece  are portrayed in  Greek literature  as distinct, yet closely intertwined, elements of life. For many upper-class men, marriages did not take place for love, and other relationships, be it with men or other  women , took on this role. Due to this, a lot of the  literature  discussing love is about the relationships men had outside marriage, often pederastic relationships. For women, marriage was a social and financial decision made by their father and, particularly in classical  Athens , women were expected to stay indoors so as to avoid any accusations of infidelity."- https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1713/love-sex--marriage-in-ancient-greece/  the idea that sex an...

As we are talking about the text narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse, I am going to consider this to be a good chance to discuss his writing. I was asked to read Siddhartha in the beginning of high school, I then learned about how Pietism works and his exploration into psychoanalysis. many int he psychological field no longer consider Freud's work to be viable as his data is based off case studies, were unethically collected, and therefore cannot be generalized to the population. his writing did win him a Nobel Prize, but I have never been able to enjoy his writing. I find his phrasing and sentence structure to be confusing and too overly complicated. while I love poetry writing styles and find some of his ideas wonderful, some of his religious beliefs in Siddhartha went beyond what I thought was necessary to discuss.  We also recently watched the film Cold Fever which was fascinating, and as I have spare space in this entry there are a few things I still do not understand from ...

I have been reading  Lewis, C.S. "Myth Became Fact."   God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics  in  pieces to make it more palatable. I find reading philsophy all in one go becomes overwhelming and leaves my brain spinning with more questions that I started with. The section I read today stuck out to me from a psychologist and sociologist point of view.  "Why, on his view, do all these educated and enlightened pseudo-Christians insist on expressing their deepest thoughts in terms of an archaic mythology which must hamper and embarrass them at every turn? Why do they refuse to cut the umbilical cord which binds the living and nourishing child to its moribund mother? For, if Corineus is right, it should be a great relief to them to do so. Yet the odd thing is that even those who seem most embarrassed by the sediment of 'barbaric' Christianity in their thought become suddenly obstinate when you ask them to get rid of i...

 In a recent blog post by Jacob Ham on the discussion of logos and mythos he stated  " knowledge about the natural world is only ever true or false, rather than existing on a scale of truthiness different to each individual. In order for logos knowledge to be true knowledge, one must accept narratives about the scientific method, the ability for logic to arrive at "truth", and others regarding a person's ability to have knowledge"  the argument that true knowledge is inherently flawed as truth is subjective. the "truth" as it is colloquially used is not grounded in much and therefore can be described with the perspective of the person saying that something is "true". a good example is the image of 2 people looking at a number on the floor. the people are standing opposite each other and one says 9 and thee other says 6. Neither are wrong because from their perspective the statement is true. the same idea can be used in religion, as all believ...

 I recently delved back into the world of The Inheritance Cycle series and as that is the only thing in my head it will now become the main focus of the blog post. Thankfully the story of Eragon lends itself to the topic very well. I have stolen extracts from a paper I wrote on the subject earlier in the year, but I will expand upon them. If you are interested in reading The Inheritance Cycle, spoilers are present.  Before going any further, it is important to note that Eragon and Saphira are considered a singular hero, not separate entities. There are linked mentally to form one conscious link shared between the two. If a rider dies, their dragon dies too, if a dragon dies, its rider loses their immortality and will eventually die. Without Eragon, Saphira would never have hatched and would have remained an egg. Without Saphira, Eragon would have become a simple farm boy in his home village. The duo is considered one hero as their shared mental link is what makes them special....

  According to Alan Noble, author of “You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World” the modern hero’s journey emphasizes leaving home but not returning to it. In the first chapter Noble writes that “In a traditional hero’s journey, the hero returns home after a period of testing and growth so that he can liberate or cure his home” (pg. 34). This is consistent with Campbell’s discussion of the hero’s journey and with what we have discussed in class so far. Noble explains that leaving home to follow a vision of a “good” life is something we value in modern society and support individuals in; however, we do not place an importance on returning home and sharing that life with those we left behind. This is due to individualism and the idea that we belong to ourselves and our lives are solely our own, and therefore we have a responsibility to create meaning and choose the right path. Noble also states that “self-discovery is our contemporary hero’s journey” to show that we ...

 I’ve noticed something amongst many modern hero stories. A lot of them ignore the refusal of the call stage or make a meta joke about it. I haven’t seen any main character in a hero story outright refuse the call for any good reason in years. Most characters either accept the call while heartedly, or they will make a joke about how all heroes have to go through such perilous journeys and they don’t want that. I feel that when Campbell wrote about his stages of the hero’s journey, it was based on all of the ancient hero myths. In these myths, many heroes initially refused the call because ancient humans were afraid of the unknown. To them, the unknown showing  up and outright calling out to them was insane.

# "On Fairy-Stories" - J. R. R. Tolkien  ## Part 1 of 5 (pages 1 - 10) ## Written by Konner Johnson      Tolkien seeks to understand and define what fairy-stories are, and consist of. Tolkien first starts by giving the definition of Fairy-tale that shows up in the dictionary. There are 3 parts of the definition. The first is that a fairy tale is a tale about fairy, or generally a fair legend with developed senses. The second is that it is an unreal or incredible story and the third is that it is a falsehood. Tolkien then makes the difference between men and fairies. Men are more supernatural and fairies are more natural. I find this particularly interesting. I feel as though this would be flipped. Shouldn't the fairies be the supernatural ones. But I do understand where Tolkien is coming from. The fairies are from nature and therefore they are more natural than those who are humans.      Tolkien then continues to break down the terms fairy stories. He ...