Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Communist Manifesto

This was not my first time reading the Communist Manifesto. However, after reading it for CIE rather then a history class I was able to take a much different perspective of the text. It is amazing to see how revolutionary this piece of text really is. Not only does Marx claim the needs to be a proletariat revolution to save society, he says a violent revolution is the only way. Reading this from a modern perspective and with all of the previous conceived notions we have developed about communism, it is almost difficult to take this text seriously. Communism has such a horrible connotation since its institution in Russia. Everyone knows that ideologically Communism may seem to work, but as a society it is not only impractical, but impossible as well. We do not have the capacity to treat everyone as equals and not embrace advantages or improvements as they present themselves. Marx had good intentions with his creation of the Communist Manifesto but his goals were too lofty and his perception of humans was too positive.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Reflections on Today's Class

After our class today I really began to think about the purpose of poetry and the way authors intended their writing to be read.

After reading the poem 4 times, I have come to the conclusion that many of the statements made in class today were products of superficial interpretations of the text. Wordsworth wanted his audience to read the text literally, but this does not detract from the necessity to read into the deeper meanings embedding within the text. I believe Wordsworth was discussing physical nature throughout his entire poem, I don't see any text that points to nature being a metaphor for a larger idea.

It also seems to me that we tended to jump to the conclusion that Wordsworth was angry at his corruption through his loss of his childhood outlook on nature. Again, I don't really see any evidence in the text to support this claim. Rather it seems that he is content with his new perspective on nature. He is now able to see the deeper purpose and benefits of nature. Instead of losing a connection with nature, Wordsworth has actually just developed a different, more mature relationship.

It's important that we remember not in interject our own assumptions into the text. We can only base our conclusions on the evidence we have in front of us. It is true that there are historical clues that can help us speculate some of the author's motives, but it can never be more than speculation. Conclusion need to have textual support to hold any validity.

I didn't mean to rant but I'm worried we may lose some of the integrity of our discussion if we continue to fail to properly support our assumptions and conclusions.

Monday, February 4, 2008

First Blog Post of the Second Semester

So this is our first blog of the second semester. Nathan is currently teaching the rest of the class how to make the blogs, but since we already have our blogs established our assignment is to write our first blog post.