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.