world without words

So what have we learned folks? Liberal Humanism in itself is a pretty faulty concept, because it not only rejects context as indicative of good literature, but also perpetuates this idea of a 'fixed human nature'. Human nature is essentially unchanging, the liberal humanist argues, but I'm not so sure I agree. Isn't the natural course of everything living to mutate and evolve? The book even goes as far as to say that a major point of liberal humanism is that "..continuity in literature is more important and significant than innovation." This clearly isn't very forward thinking. Innovation is what keeps any artistic medium alive and kicking.

In our class discussion we talked about language and its correspondence to reality - does it construct it or represent it? We talked about our experiences and how we express them later through our language, and how it is (in some cases) not until you put an experience into words that the experience really clicks. Language is a method of making sense of the world. I think we're to a point where our dependence on words is so great that without them we lose the ability to make sense of anything. Without consciously finding a way to express something real, you find yourself on autopilot, missing all those details that make everything that happens so meaningful. Reality doesn't feel REALLY real until we put it in words. But I think its also true that words are meaningless without experience. Example: every so often there will be a song that maybe I grew up listening to, which i'd always been attracted to for its tune or the singer. The event that is portrayed in the lyrics is completely lost on me. But one day I go back having experienced something like the story the song is telling, or the emotion its portraying, and its meaning is elevated and I find myself really within the words. So this idea of life imitating art and vice versa, I think it can go both ways. Its like two sides of the same coin or something cheesy like that.