I love dropping Aristotle into institute lessons. I love that I get to read Confessions for school next year. I wandered through the library today picking up books to start putting together my year (and to just read) and it was delicious. Some titles: Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling, Leisure: the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper, some P.D. Wodehouse who I've never read, One Whole and Perfect Day, a YA novel that won a bunch of awards this year. Most of the titles were recommended through an essay on liberal education from my stepfather...the essay definitely has an agenda, so I'm trying to sift carefully, but how could I resist really?
What I love, though, about libraries, is that what you come out with is hardly ever what you went in looking for. Sure, about half these titles were on my list, but the other half were next in line in the library catalog, or next to the book I was looking for on the shelf, or on the sorting shelves (where Teaching Adolescents to Write should have been but definitely wasn't). So I wandered and searched and scavenged and it was lovely.
On heroes: Homer and Plutarch told stories about people so that they could stand as examples for how we should be. Yeah, Achilles and Agamemnon were great negative examples, but even their positive virtues were touted, right? The hero traditionally stands in for us and stories are a way to pass down social mores and expectations.
I've been thinking a lot about Michael Scott, though (from The Office) and about the anti-hero. For those of you who don't know, the schtick is that he is socially oblivious and abrasive and watching him is like getting a really deep-tissue massage--painful, but ultimately rewarding. And by rewarding I mean hilarious. What I think though, is that our society doesn't trust positive assertions: postmodernism has thrown everything into a state of relativity where there is no clear cut right. What Steve Carrell is doing is showing us how not to be--the only advice we're willing to take on heroism. Maybe?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Aristotelian please
Posted by Kjerstin Evans Ballard at 11:35 PM
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3 comments:
Hm. How would you feel about passing along that essay your stepfather sent you?
It's interesting to think of Michael in The Office that way. It makes a lot of sense. I wonder if it's true that society doesn't trust positive assertions, as you say, when it comes to heroes. I think a lot of society craves them. I think that the trick is that often times when we create heroes, they're too simple. It's hard to make a complex hero, and so the anti-hero gets played up more often. I dunno, though. Just a thought, and one that remains unsupported by specific examples for the moment.
I don't know if postmodernism did that on purpose, or if it just turned out that way. I think though, that postmodernism sort of refrains from commenting on right or wrong at all, and just "looks." This can be problematic if you look so much that you make no choices about morality or ethics, of course. When I think of the word "postmodernism" I imagine a giant question mark - because that's what I think it does. It questions and questions and questions until you're truly frustrated and either retreat into something comfortable, or decide to choose some answers. Hm. Actually, maybe that's just me.
And I now wish that I watch The Office, so I could sort of get a better idea of what you're talking about.
Another thing, I think Amanda is right about the lack of complex heroes thing. That's why real-life heroes are so much better than created ones.
Hey there! Congrats on your graduation! I made my blog private, so if you'd like to continue reading, I will need your e-mail! Curtandkell@yahoo.com
Would you also pass it on to your siblings?! Thanks!
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