The Changes of Person and Music

First off

The name of the song I have picked is "Our Own Pretty Ways" by First Aid Kit.

I picked this song because of a meaning I believe it shares with life, order, and chaos. The key word this all focuses on is 'change'. The changes in one's life and one's own person over time. No one person ever stays the same forever. Similar perhaps, but not the same. The changes of a person are guaranteed as they grow older and experience life, which this known fact gives a sense of order. The way someone changes though can be different depending on the person and how they react to the experience they had. Change always has a sense of chaos. People have changed from better to worse to better to better.
"For we all change in our own ways, in our own pretty ways" is the chorus to the song above and I feel it is in tune with how change in one's life really is. Just since the beginning of college I know I and many others I knew from high school have changed. Some for the better, others not.
Either way, this is my piece picked to show life, order, and chaos.

Prof. Lovett's lecture

Prof. Lovett's lecture on the brain expressed the amazing amounts of a person as we know it stored in the relatively small form of the brain. The brain and the way it works has always been a bit of a weird space in my thoughts since I was very young, for it is odd to believe that all anyone really is is a gross gray thing lumped up inside one's head. The 10% myth that Prof. Lovett discussed I must admit was not a shock to be because of my own understanding (however limited) of the brain. What was a shocking topic that Prof. Lovett discussed was the young man that had a very bad case of obsessive compulsive. It was so over whelming that the man dropped out of college and tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the head with a .22. His suicide failed but the bullet placed itself in the lower center part of his brain and thus stopped the brain's over compulsive nature. The man even went back to college later on and gained a job after.
It is mind boggling thing, the brain. No matter how many times I learn and relearn facts about it, I always come back to the question of whether a brain is really what I am. In terms of the class I think the order is the brain itself, and the chaos is me thinking about the brain. It is like trying to look at one's own nose without a mirror.

(image to come)

Reflection of Franklin and Juhan

Although Franklin and Juhan had different ways of expressing themselves, their views were basically the same. Franklin believed that one should work to drive negative elements of the character out of one's self in order to become a more perfect version of the self. Juhan believed that as we grow, we learn to avoid past ignorance and personal failures and become a more well rounded version of the self. Doing this allows for the growth of one's 'self' whether it be simply by growing or by working to rid one's self of their faults. I feel, however, that by doing such to order the mind and body, one is in fact (like Juhan believed) destroying a part of itself. The self of chaos. The self of chaos may sound like something to get rid of as both Franklin and Juhan worked to do, but the self of chaos is the basic natural form of the human mind. Can a person break away from their natural roots completely and convert to the self of order? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Here are some of my own records of changing the self by ending habits found negative.

(sheets to be viewed at a later date)

Q: Wiesel states that he sympathized with Job. After reading The Book of Job, how would you describe the similarities/differences between Wiesel and Job and their relationship to God? Compare the reactions of Job and Wiesel to their suffering and to the way their suffering affected their fate.

R: Both Wiesel and Job seemed to be without crime but were punished any way. Both suffered greatly with their punishments and losses, and both came to questioning God as to why all of this had happened to them. Wiesel however was being wronged purely by man, unlike Job who had both nature and man against him. Where Job had to live on as the only one around feeling such misery, Wiesel lived with hundreds of others that felt the crushing blow of being wronged. Job's reaction to these events in his life was similar to Wiesel, but where as he was not watching himself and those around him change into something less than. Both Wiesel and Job questioned God and why he allowed for such things to happen to humans on earth.

(picture from avanimation. avsupport. com)

Prof. Denis' Lecture

Prof. Denis gave a lecture on the horrors of the holocaust and those that fought off the seemingly never ending tide of inhuman actions through the rebellion of art. Prof. Denis teaches a course on the topic, but even though he has covered the topic more than once in classes his emotional struggle over the holocaust and the acts committed there could easily be seen. The art shown in the slide show was mainly rough and on simple supplies such as cardboard and work slips. Although there were hundreds of pictures that survived the different death camps unlike some of their artists, it is unknown how many drawings and paintings did not. While some artists were employed in the camps while they were impressed there, not all made pictures for visiting Nazi officers or drawings of victims for Nazi experiments. The more powerful art from these centers of humanity's crime were those that were made in secret, documenting the disturbing acts of the Nazis and even those of other prisoners. The over all affect of the lecture was that of awe no matter how many times a person read about life during the holocaust.

(picture from Windows Vista)

The Art of Job

Professor Kather's lecture was based mainly on the artist William Blake's view of The Book of Job. I had known of William Blake from his poetry but sadly not for his art work which I found full of different meanings and ideas. If I could sum up what feeling I got from Prof. Kather's lecture it would be a feeling of humbling. If I had been given the chance to look over Blake's drawings I would have studied them, noticed a few differences and ideals, and then moved on without giving it much more thought. Prof. Kather however gave me an insight to the meaning behind a lot of his work such as his dislike for the old testament. This gives me the idea of perhaps going back and rereading a lot of William Blake's work that I had most likely moved through without grasping the full meaning.

The Book of Job

Q: How do you react to God's show of strength and power-his boasting, his intimidation, his aggressive behavior-at the end of the story? Is it an appropriate response to Job? What does this show say about God and his relationship to man?

R: Keeping the courses name in mind I find the ending between God and Job to be somewhat of order and chaos. God is meant to be the all powerful order and Job has been forced into a more chaotic world because of the sudden shifts in his life. God's over powering demeanor is basically his way of placing down the order of his world. In the world that God created, God is the God. A one. A whole. Not to be questioned or reasoned with, just to be thanked and obeyed. Job thus is in action a force of chaos born from the chaos his life became for he did nothing wrong but was wronged himself. The lack of order, for he prayed and feared God doing all that was in his power to do right by God, allowed Job to question and to ask why. This difference between the two seem to show a never ending paradox. The relationship between God and Job is that of a master and he whom must obey. Job is rewarded in the end.