When I think about this class I realize that I never had a class quite like it before. I have never had a class or a professor that told me to just sit down, shut up, and observe the world. Then I was told to observe to world with a different lens. I was told to look with an aesthetic lens, a spiritual lens, a scientific lens, and an intellectual lens. This was a challenge for me. I can try to look at the world differently but that's all I can do. Try.
The aesthetic lens came more naturally to me due to the fact that I go to art school and I have been honing this lens for a decent amount of time now. What I realized through the conscious viewing with the aesthetic wok is that it often leads to obsession. I will stay up for days getting that look I want. The aesthetic of what this school does can be done in normal hours and it is possible to not stay up for days working on art. We just do. I don't really know why.
The spiritual lens is a strange grey area for me. I am not religious but I am a Jew. I believe that the world is interconnected with everything else because of scientific evidence. But my spiritual way of knowing has been changing rapidly since I started paying attention. I firmly believe that we are missing something but I couldn't tell you what. And I can't tell you how regain that missing piece. When looking at the world in a spiritual fashion at the world everything seems much simpler.
The intellectual WoK is the the art of asking the right questions. Although I associate it with academia at it's core it is philosophy. My attempt to wander this world with more intellectual insight was a strange challenge. I find that more often than not I how instead of why. Intellectuals discuss and obsess over the why. For example if I need to program a lighting console for a show I don't first ask why I am making those looks I make sure they look how they are supposed to.
The scientific Wok is what I spend a fair amount of my life in. I look around the world on ask how. Straying from that was a difficult task but in doing so I learned that may not always be the best thing to ask. I always wondered about how things work and rarely did I ever think of the consequences of my tinkering. Moving beyond the scientific WoK made me aware of that flaw.
This class, for me was about the exploration of different personalities and myself. I never gave any of this stuff much thought until this class. This thought exposed some flaws in the way conduct myself and my affairs. The spiritual, scientific, aesthetic, and intellectual WoKs all have a part to play in who you are. This class was the first to tell me to explore that.
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