Blog 4 – As Shelley’s poem predicted?

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         To be honest, the research process had been encumbered before Tuesday’s class ended. No new and strong evidences were found. That was really terrible. My precedent drafts behaved so weak that it cannot persuade even me. What I have written is just some thoughtful stuff in my mind. I don’t even make quite clear on what to argue and the draft was only stated something ambiguous. Since I began to search the etymology of melancholy, I found it, really found it. It is explained that melancholy means not only sadness, gloominess, mournfulness, but also introspection, pensiveness, meditativeness, sentimentality. The deeper or unknown properties of melancholy are the important points as I thought before. I felt more confident. Those properties make melancholy different from sadness and can be argued against.

         I can see there is something interesting on my survey. 100% of the surveyed selected that “Happiness” was the best way to understand Shelley’s poem, which is completely opposite with my opinion and anticipation. Why is that? If Shelly wanted to express one kind of expectation or hope, what was “Winter” used for? Is it necessary to think out more profound meaning? Maybe we feel difficult in modem times, we need to think about more happiness.

         Because I changed the direction of my topic, only one of my original annotated bibliographies can be used for my essay. One point that “Depression is melancholy, minus its charms” claimed by Susan Sontag from the annotated bibliography is most shinning source I found by now. It is inspiring and has a power to overturn our clichés. Melancholy is aesthetic due to its meditativeness and sentimentality in some sense, I think. If happiness is the only emotion to pursue, the world could be so dull. I would feel ashamed and sorry that Adam and Eve ate the wisdom apple.

         Though I have been trying to search more resources that would help on my essay, only a few found were really valuable that can help me in the exact position. While among those valuable claims, not every single sentence will be cited. Then a question or a selection comes out that how I combine them with my own words suitably into strong and persuasive paragraphs.

Blog 3 - A Bunch of Grapes

         I'm sure whether it is a bias, but I do always deem that the only one at the bottom of a bunch of grapes is the sweetest. Each time with a kind of esteem and expectation eating beads of grapes down from the top, there is infinite experience and the last one is finished without taste and commemoration.

         (Having been working painfully on subject 2 for dozens of hours, I really need to pause temporally and write this blog first while sentimental music is still cheering me up.)

         “Q-H-Q” looks like a bunch of grapes.

         What makes a good question?

         Free-write is a good way to note ideas in a short time. But sometimes the writing is disordered and easy to wander. Q-H-Q is a way to pop up questions continuously against a specific topic. It is pretty purposive. But sometimes it is really difficult to propose more valuable questions on the topic because the realm is already narrowed down small enough in the end. My topic is talking that melancholy is positive. The key terms are melancholy, sensitivity, reflection and creation. How did “sensitivity” come to my mind? When I was discussing the characteristics of melancholy with others, it just appeared. How did “reflection” come to my mind? When I searched out an essay talking about the relations between melancholy and philosophy, it occurred to me a scene that philosopher looks so painful when thinking about the philosophy. What about “creation”? Because poet is sensitive, a lot of wonderful poems are created. Philosopher always reflects on something and then writes down (“temporary”) truth. All of these are creations. Hence, the word popped up in my mind. When I was listening to some sentimental or sorrowful music, I felt the melancholy and it occurred to me a poetic sentence by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”. Such beautiful poem full of melancholy has been enchanting thousands of people, young and old, women and men.

         I’m not going to say if those key terms are good or not. I cannot. But I gained them due to discussion, research, sensing, interest, experiences and persistence.

         As the world has been developed and materialized, there are less chances and less time for people in cities to think deeply. Move fast, eat fast, walk fast. They are easy to get melancholy but feel blank at well. Some even have melancholia, or do something much more horrific. Because glitz and simpleness? There is some misunderstanding. Actually, melancholy is an emotion and not a sickness. Melancholia is a disease. Over melancholy can lead to melancholia. I just realized that when working on the topic. My ideology was destroyed and re-built. Some professors link the melancholy to aesthetic. Then the topic could be huge. Though I cannot interpret their theories well, I’m trying. Know melancholy and don’t go to the extreme of it. Move it brightly by a certain way, writing, telling, reading or appreciating. OK?

         “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Blog 2 - Hate & Argument

More often, people want to act with a positive emotion. We can find well-being when we are happy. But negative feelings appear on our face from time to time. We don’t know exactly where they come from and how they disappear like a spirit. One thing ensured is that they exist in the world all the time. Andrew Sullivan had a quite deep discussion about one of the negative emotion, hate, in his What’s So Bad About Hate (1999).

         One opinion in this article appeals to me very much, talking that sexism is a narcissistic hate and why. Let’s consider sexism is a narcissistic hate from the time being. But Sullivan deemed that men’s narcissism behaves as ignorance, condescending and unawareness. Don’t you think the statement a little ambivalent? What is narcissism? Like a girl standing in front of her mirror, checking herself carefully and finally saying “I’m beautiful.”? Or like a top student thinking he/she is the most intelligent student in his/her class and no other classmate can exceed him/her? What is men’s narcissism supposed to be? “We men are the most powerful being on the earth. We have pure and excellent bloodlines with unique genes. Woman can only be servants, cleaning and cooking.” This is supposed to be a classic claim for men. While we can see men sometimes is fear of building such imaginary before women in Sullivan’s analysis. They choose to ignore women because they think it is shaming if they cannot implement a specific “mission”. It could be very depressing and burdensome. Some men can’t bear such suffering and therefore is unaware of women. Then such concern is just concern and looking for a way out, condescending for example. In this respect, I would like to consider sexism as a hysterical hate. As Sullivan stated, the generation of hate is caused by something and most of the time a hate cannot be simply ranged in a specific kind.

         Hate has been talked about a lot from the very beginning of human history. It’s really bad sometimes and can cause critical results. But I think another emotion should also be highly paid attention to in the modern world. It is melancholy. Why? As various technologies and industries have highly developed from last century, the world has been fulfilled with a lot of material products and our minds have also been materialized more or less. One hand, it become easier for us to acquire stuff what we want, the other hand, we are driven by our endless physical and metal desire. People are easy to get down for failing to gain something. Though predecessors’ lives may not be as splendid as ours, we are envious of their pure happiness at times. Sometimes there is not a clear cause or reason, people just get dejected. It seems that the kind of emotion is becoming one of our habits. How could a life last long without vitality? What it can involve may astound us much more, depression, suicide, cancer and so on. Each of them hurt us deeper than a physical wound does.

         If human can overcome cancers soon, then what’s next human “cancer”? Will the new cancer still exist simply in the human beings’ cells? Will it still be visible? Could it arise from our brain, our mind? Could it be easily healed by pills or operations? Metal diseases are much more complicated than we thought. But human want to multiply. Human beings are social. It can be very important for us to learn about our feelings, affections, moods, emotions and group characteristics. It could be very interesting and magical to do research on ourselves.