The Age of Reason

            Upon first delving into Thomas Paine’s classic text, The Age of Reason, I had a few biases towards the book that had stemmed from my prior education of it and the radical thoughts of its creator.  I learned in numerous classes throughout high school that Thomas Paine was in fact a revolutionary thinker unlike any other of his time and that this should be appreciated, but I have always found myself thinking of this man as a staunch atheist that in fact lived in opposition to all of the ideas surrounding religion that I believe in wholeheartedly.  I suppose it is because of my strong Christian background that I always become frustrated when reading excerpts by Thomas Paine, let alone entire works, and this is precisely why this text was difficult for me to get through because of its ferocious opposition of organized religion and his established mission to debunk the claims of Christian doctrine.  It was only through this book, however, that I was able to see that Paine was not in fact an atheist, but an individual who stood firmly by his convictions just as I do by the beliefs I hold in my own religion.  I was able to appreciate this fact and acknowledge how he conveyed his points through careful word usage and complex philosophical thought.  It was interesting to see how Paine spends most of the text making very strong points using the simplest of words that are often only one or two syllables in length.  This doesn’t seem all that impressive, but to me it is remarkable how he was able to convey his ideas about such revolutionary thoughts and phenomena through a basic rhetoric.  Even though his ideas challenged my mind to think critically and to doubt what I had been previously taught, the text itself was fairly basic on a sentence-by-sentence basis, and this kept me interested throughout the readings.   Paine goes on to detail the overlying point of the entire book that the only proof that a particular scripture of any religious sect is a divine revelation is the assertion by those believers in it that it is.  This was a mind blowing statement to me even though I could not immediately contrive a plausible response and I truly believe this point will have me thinking for a long time after I finish reading Thomas Paine’s words.  I do believe in my heart and through my faith that the Bible is a much more sacred piece of text than “any other piece of reportage” like Paine attempts to assert, but I can entirely acknowledge the fact that believers in any religion will argue the very same point about their scripture.  Ultimately, I think Paine wrote with the intention of leaving the interpretation of his texts up to the minds of his readers and that is what he is remembered most vividly for today.  He truly did believe all that he wrote and this is what makes his works among some of the most read and analyzed in the world today.  While he wrote with extreme force and forwardness, I think that Thomas Paine felt that whatever he wrote about government or religion would one day be viewed as the powerful truth that he always intended it to be.  While that hope may never come to fruition, I believe that his work will continue to be studied as an important alternative viewpoint to traditional religious confines for many years to come.    

The Daodejing of Laozi and Genesis

As a devout Christian, I obviously had many interesting thoughts and opinions regarding both The Daodejing of Laozi, which I had never studied before, and the book of Genesis, which I have read and studied for many years.  Ivanhoe’s translation and compilation of this classic literature exposed me to the world of Chinese thought and philosophy for the very first time, and each of the chapters opened my eyes to concepts of religious understanding that had never crossed my mind before.  I was immediately drawn to the resonant style in which each chapter was written, and this fact shocked as a result of it being an English translation.  Usually, when texts are translated they lose the integrity and emotion of the message that is being conveyed, but in this case I felt as if Ivanhoe was able to retain a good deal of this resonance even in his translation.  The mystery that accompanied the ideas of the Daodejing was something that initially took me off guard when I first started analyzing the text, but as I continued to read I soon realized that this is the very principal that the text is aiming to speak to.  There is a type of wisdom that is so subtle and unclear that it is difficult for ordinary minds to grasp.  The true meaning of the Dao is beyond the limits that words can convey, so the text calls upon the reader to understand the concepts and break the mystery in his own terms in order to grasp the underlying themes and messages that run throughout each chapter.  This was hard and sometimes even frustrating for me to do, but it most definitely challenged my mind to think outside the typical confines of literary analysis by striving to find the true identity and purpose of the Dao.  It was only when my reading concluded that I was able to accept the fact that the Dao holds different meanings to every person who lives by its teachings, and this form of religion does not have the same concrete basis and set of governing principles as the religion of Christianity that I believe in.  While reading Genesis again, I found myself attempting to read the text with the unbiased mindset of a scholar or someone who had never read the Bible before, rather than as a follower of the doctrine that this book speaks of.  As hard as that was to do, it did help me to evaluate some of the basic aspects of Genesis in a different light such as the stories relating to the creation of the world and the accounts of Abraham.  First, I really took the time to pay close attention to the vast amount of binary opposites that present themselves in the early chapters of Genesis such as light and darkness, man contrasting woman, and positive and negative that work to demonstrate how the most unfavorable elements of human life came into being.  In the ensuing chapters, I was humbled to revisit the stories of Abraham and his children and how the Lord gives dramatic rewards for absolute faith and obedience.  God lives through various objects, people, and other beings, and that is why some of the stories are not explained in full detail as He alternates through periods of being seen and unseen.  It is truly this absence that helps to assert his power and supremacy in Christianity, and it also builds upon the entire story that is presented in the book of Genesis.     

The Souls of Black Folk

The idea of double consciousness that W.E.B. Du Bois talks about in The Souls of Black Folk captured my attention from the beginning of the text, and the concept forced me to look at how I view people who may be different than me in a different light.  I find it very true that often humans judge their own personal value and identity through the eyes of others, and it was shocking to me to finally realize how troubled this approach is.  Not only can looking at one’s self in this light give someone a false sense of worthlessness, but it can also cause entire races and groups of people, such as African Americans, to question their identity.  This idea caused me to take a more in depth look at what it meant to be an African American.  The questions surrounding the identity of these people as either American AND black or American BUT black forced me to go back and look at my knowledge of racial segregation and tension during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Society as a whole obviously restricted black opportunities and labeled these people as Negroes.  This automatically took away any claim they had of being true Americans in title and truly demonstrated that being black had much more weight than being American in this society of Du Bois’ time.  Although as I continued to read I also recognized the more internal debate within blacks that Du Bois spoke to where blacks feel as though they are Americans because they believe in American ideals and values.  Some African Americans during this time chose t feel this way and by doing so refused to conform to how whites in society perceived them.  This discourse among the African American community itself is ultimately what brought a voice to these people in speaking out against oppression and injustice in all facets of life.  Du Bois’ thoughts fell within the latter spectrum and caused him to refute the identity that his people were given in society in favor of equal rights for all.  This battle between external and internal influences within the black community is what caused the uprising of civil rights activism and these early incidents helped to pave the road for later activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, just to name a few.  I was pleased with Du Bois’ candidness in his writing and his willingness to openly criticize other influential blacks, such as Booker T. Washington, for their inabilities or unwillingness to fight for the suffrage and education of African Americans.  As he detailed these desires for universal education, I was impressed by his poignant writing style in discussing how keeping blacks in poverty hurts not just the individual but the country at large and has the potential to lead to rebellion.  This unbeknownst foreshadowing demonstrated to me that it is not education that gives people dangerous ideas, but rather the lack thereof that can cause individuals left in ignorance to act out against society.  These points helped me to understand American society from a different society during this pivotal time in our nation’s history, but it also helped to show me that many issues involving education, universal suffrage, and political activism still exist in a large capacity today.    

The Trials of Socrates

            Throughout my reading of The Trials of Socrates I have scaled the spectrum of emotions all the way from a state of irritation, to sympathetic, to understanding and appreciative.  This text, although a smooth and easy read, has challenged my mind to pay close attention to the smallest of details in making sense of the philosophes messages while still trying to uncover its relevance to our current unit of community.  The most striking portion of the text to me was certainly Plato’s descriptions of Socrates’ apology to the jury and assembled Athenians.  At first glance of the title of the story I was surprised to see that Socrates, who in our prior readings had so staunchly denied any accountability and showed no guilt for any of the crimes he had been accused of, would be making a public apology for such things.  It soon became clear that the word apology did not have the same meaning during these times in ancient Greece, and that Socrates in fact would be presenting a personal defense of himself to the people assembled in the court.  Much as I did when I read the discourse between Socrates and Euthyphro at the beginning of the book, I started out with an intense sense of annoyance with Socrates’ words and his inability to take any responsibility for even the slightest of charges that were brought against him.  There is no doubt that he is in fact very wise, but the reality that he attempts to use his cunning and often condescending words in his own defense against that very thing was bothersome to read and left me initially frustrated at Socrates.  Quite frankly, at the beginning of this reading his word games and puzzles made me wish for the maximum punishment for him.  I was especially taken aback by his ideas that the youth of Athens were attempting to embody him by trying to question the wisdom of other individuals as Socrates had once done.  I viewed this as an extremely self centered and ridiculous concept for him to say because I thought this only spoke to the accusers’ convictions that Socrates viewed his own wisdom as much greater than that of any other and that he was trying to dominate society with his blasphemous views.  As I fought to get through this portion of the reading, my opinions finally began to change when Socrates began to attack the integrity of Meletus and the rest of the accusers.  I was so focused on the extremely self-righteous manner in which Socrates presented his defense that I never took the time to truly evaluate the case that the Athenians had brought against him.  I think this speaks to a general bias of character that is present in any individual when reading a text, and in hindsight I am glad that I fought through my distaste of the text log enough to get to this point of Socrates actually speaking ideas that appealed and made sense to me.  Ultimately, I believe that although the thoughts and ideas presented in this text were sometimes frustrating to me, they do represent a very eloquent and important philosophical account of human ethics and the pursuit of them that is used even in modern times.  These thoughts and accounts have helped to shape the structure of many important practices and institutions in the educational, social, and even governmental spheres, and they have contributed immensely to the vast intellectual community that shapes our world today.    

Borderlands

      In Borderlands-La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa describes the trials and tribulations that plague her life as she investigates her self, her land, and her language.  From the onset I was very intrigued by what I thought would be the natural plot flow of this text where Anzaldúa would describe her personal struggles as well as those of her people in attempting to come to a new land of opportunity, albeit one that did not openly accept them.  As a mestiza, or woman of mixed parentage, as well as a lesbian, her path to acceptance came at a much more burdensome price of conflict and denial.  For some, the use of the Spanish language to complement the major ideas of the text may have come as a burden, but even though I only know the basic elements of the language I could tell even before consulting a dictionary the emotion and power that accompanied the various language forms of the mestizo that Anzaldúa describes.  It was hard for me to understand at first why the entirety of the text was not translated to modern English, but I soon came to appreciate the beauty of the Spanish language more than I ever have previously in my studies of it.  Modern English does not translate in the same fashion as Spanish so hence by translating it the reader would be losing the true point that the author is trying to convey about her emotions and actions in these pivotal times of cultural conflict.  My necessity for the Spanish to English dictionary, therefore, became far less bothersome as I became to understand Anzaldús’s point, along with Temple University’s point, in making us read this text.  I really think that by detailing life from the border she is presenting to the reader an entirely different and new culture in and of itself.  While much attention is paid to the conflict that exists between the United States and Mexico, the author is showing us the world of the oppressed mestizo in the borderlands through thoughts, words, and values.  It is rare that an account in literature is based entirely upon the voice of the oppressed, and her words have helped me to appreciate that fact that culture can in fact be identified and wrapped up in language.  These individuals on the border seemed to live by creating their own voices amongst themselves that embodied their values of hard work and a desire to understand everything that they encountered in life.  I was also able to appreciate Anzaldúa’s references to art and imagery because these are things that I can personally identify with, and I feel that art of any variety is crucial to building and appreciating the beauties and ultimately the truths that lie within any culture.  Also, I was surprisingly able to draw some parallels between Anzaldúa’s writing and the lectures of Freud.  She frequently discusses the presence of the unconscious imagery that drives what she does in real life and the emotions and thoughts that accompany these actions.  For example, she discusses the serpent in the unconscious of her slumber as the symbol of “the dark sexual drive, the feminine, the serpentine movement of sexual creativity, and the basis of all energy and life.”  These words immediately brought my mind to Freud’s discussions on dreams and helped me to understand the sequence in which we are studying these texts in class.  Anzaldúa’s work examines perspectives on the mestizo in not only a cultural light, but she also acknowledges and details the psychological attributes that contribute to her writing and the identity of her people as a whole.