Blog #5: Humanities

The humanities have been and continue to be a functional tool in shaping our reality. Art has been a quarreled subject as to what purpose it serves to the human eye and mind. Does it serve as just a feel good activity or does it have a deeper emotional connection to its audience? Art is a human activity that one person, as the author explains, "unconsciously hands on to others feelings they have lived through, and others are infected by these feelings and also experience them." Art, to people who not look beyond face value, do not see the meaning by this explanation. Art is not just a canvas and a paintbrush, art is everywhere. Our everyday actions is art, each persons personality is an art, the way the waves crash onto the shore is art. One just has to have the correct mindset to actually appreciate it. As the author continues "art is not an outlet to escape life but to make it larger." Art in a nutshell, is an appeal to the emotion. The humanities have lasted because there are no rules or restrictions to hold it back. The arts have no limits, and people can explore it to any extent which gives the artist a world of options in portraying their thoughts or emotions through action, speech or paper.

Blog #4: Issue from Simone de Beauvoir perspective

Men and women over history have been portrayed as unequal sexes. Men have been known as the "subject" and women the "other." In our present day nation, we are still facing this problem even with accusations that we reached a level of equality between sexes. Economically, women today make 72 cents to the dollar that men make. This right here raises an immediate red flag that we have not yet reached our goal. In the government presently, Hillary Clinton, who is running for president, has doubt immediately raised because of her gender. Women are still seen as the weaker sex, which is why our past presidents and government as a whole have been dominantly male. In society it seems that men still "bring home the bacon" more then women are. It is less of an expectation for women to contribute financially compared to men, though this level of expectancy has decreased over time. It seems that history of inequality will never be shaken off from our minds. No matter how much equality among sexes is preached to our society, we will never reach this ideal state because history clings to the decisions we make in the future. Gender equality has made great leaps and bounds over the past 60 years but we still have not reached our goal. Will we ever reach a state of equilibrium? Only time will tell.