I'm not really sure about this class. I feel like so far it is more of a class of self-discovery and discussion than about studying English literature. It's not a bad thing, but it is certainly not what I expected, seeing opening thoughts on Doctor Faustus lead into students' lengthy monologues on what their religious and secular beliefs have changed into within the past few months, or the past few minutes.
It is, however, terribly interesting to listen to all of it, soak in my peers' opinions, look at the clock and see that an hour of class is already over, have my brain wrapped in so many different directions and thought patterns, and feel as though there's a whole world out there that no one truly knows anything about.
It makes one feel so small and so hopeless knowing that this path can lead nowhere but insanity if you were to just go lay out in a field and try to figure it all out based on logic. Logic, in definition, explains things and shows what "makes sense," but how can anything make sense if there are alternate explanations for everything? How do you show the logic behind the clouds moving in the sky? It's a vast combination of water, gases, atmospheric pressures, and wind patterns. But how do you show why those are there? How do you show why those are the factors that control it, why "logic" doesn't determine that birds are responsible for the clouds moving, and the invention of the airplane just sped up the whole mess?
Logical answer: science can show it. But when it comes to things beyond what scientists can prove on a physical level, when it comes from the physical to the "metaphysical," from the earthly to the "unearthly," the natural to the "supernatural," all bets are off. How do you prove that God exists? This proof has likely been attempted since man's first ability to think abstractly, by church officials like Saint Anselm, philosophers like Rene Descartes, and even fact-worshipping mathematicians like Kurt Godel. Every one of their "proofs" has flaws, has people criticizing, providing alternative "logic," that discredits each proof.
People have individual minds, which allow for individual thoughts, which necessitate a human race full of conflicting belief systems, as each idea presented can be shown with ideal logic, which until disproved seems to make perfect sense. While logic presents itself as a ideal character to prove an idea to be a belief, it is really the antagonist, the bad guy, for it can turn us all away and counter each idea, confusing us and turning us every which way, placing us in a momentary sense of relief as we think that we have it all figured out, only to have our whole worlds turned upside down as the next idea places us in mental anguish as it makes us question the last.
Without a God, there is no end. A belief can only be determined through placing trust and faith in God. Knowing in your heart that something is true, is good, is right -- that is believing. Knowing that something, someone, created this Earth and all that is in it, is beyond the power of logic. Believing is laying in that field somewhere, on a patch of grass that was created outside the realm of your understanding; it is looking up into those heavens not knowing what the hell could be up there; and it is feeling at peace because you understand that to this world, you may be small, to your life you are the world, and to whoever created it all, you are life.
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This blog is so true. I've noticed that literary classes - the good ones, anyway - have a tendency towards digression. And don't get me wrong: I know I am a culprit.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, it is difficult to discuss the works of Milton and Marlowe without getting into personal beliefs, because they were /trying/ to get at our personal beliefs. And they were good at it.
I find it easier to focus on literary elements now that we are studying a work whose supernatural figures are fae rather than demonic, but that in itself is worthy of consideration. How different is the belief in fairies from the belief in God, from a rational perspective? And why does one still bring so many of us to arms in this supposedly reasonable age?
Maybe it's because we're just as ridiculous as we've ever been. Or maybe "supernatural" is not synonymous with "irrational," and maybe we're missing something.
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