Blog Post
Objectives: none
During today's class we learned about transcendentalism and two of the five major tents of it. Transcendentalism began in 1836, lasting until 1860, and was a literary movement that believed truth existed beyond reason and experience. After romanticism was recently introduced, there were some that embraced the idea completely, putting faith in living a meaningful life. We focused on these exclusive collection of writers who completely rejected rationalist morals and thoughts, but still required physical evidence to justify truth. Transcendentalists were determined to sculpt a legacy of literary independence from European countries, through writings such as essays, philosophy, novels, and multiple other forms. The belief of transcendentalism includes five major tents (rules to live by), the first two being: nonconformity and self-reliance. Nonconformity is to value individualism and create original ideas and embrace the unconventional, which usually goes against the social norm.
Example: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
-Henry David Thoreau
Meaning: encourages people to "march to the beat of their own drum" and just be themselves, even if everyone else around them is doing something else.
Example: "Imitation is suicide"
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Meaning: uses a metaphor, choosing suicide as symbolism for the death of one's self because they are lying to themselves and trying to be something you are not.
Self-reliance was the second rule that was discussed in class, and was defined as being independent (only relying on yourself) and having the expectation that if you want to achieve something, YOU have to strive for that dream on your own. The last few minutes of class, we were asked to find the differences between solitude and loneliness and write them down independently, then share with our classmates in our group. Solitude is the choice of being isolated, the want to disconnect, which is usually associated with a positive emotion (reflection or rest without distraction). Loneliness is the opposite because it strongly compared to a feeling (of sadness) because the person normally has no choice in the matter.
I felt that today's lesson got the class to participate and be more involved a bit more than normal because of the change in presentation and going from using a PowerPoint for the past few days, transitioning to a Prezi, which shows the flow of information in a more visual and active way. Since we weren't expecting to see a Prezi and hadn't seen one in quite some time, it not only was refreshing, but brought a sense of nostalgia with it and connected with students appearing better than a slideshow might. I found today's lesson interesting and educational, but not stale and think other students mostly felt at least a little bit similar because the lesson was about a romantic idea, which sounds more like a fairy-tale than realistic view, but transcendentalism pushes the idea further and makes it more entertaining.
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