Scribe: 4.20.2009
Period 4
Halfway through the period, the wonderful Tricia told me that I was scribe, and I was shocked. Tricia says hi as well.
Today we focused on AP Test preparation, reading and answering the questions to the last selection in the packet we received. Authored by Alan Bloom, the selection was about sex. The most important wisdom you can get from Bloom’s ideas is that we, as young people, are exploring with sex way too early. Therefore we have defective eros (defined as love and sexual desire, and explored by Plato in Phaedrus). What this means is that the parts that make us up and develop as we grow older are misshapen (education, morality, eros). If you give into erotic desires when young, the mystery of such acts becomes non-mystery, and your knowledge in this area is about the same as an adult. I doubt the author would be likely to say, though, that you have developed as a normal adult, for having a defective eros gives you a flat-soul. The flat-souled person finds no joy or beauty in the playing of a guitar under a girl’s bedroom window. The flat-souled person says, “The hell with footsie, take off your clothes!” Bloom offers this advice: “Imagination is required to restore their youth, beauty and vitality, and then experience their inspiration.”
Mr. Eldridge concluded the period by touching his students. …Morally, touching. He touched us, morally. With morality he touched our hearts. Well, maybe.
Here was his touch: are we be challenged with morality? Mr. Eldridge knows we are intelluctually challenged; Mr. Eldridge assumes we are taking care of sexual desires; Mr. Eldridge wonders when the last time somebody challenged us morally. Teachers talk about cheating, yes, but not what’s really going on. Cheating is nothing; but a deeper disease infects the cheater, the disease that says, “This test determines my future” or “I don’t care about my integrity” or “That girl looks pretty.” We do not often explore morality, though I would have to offer myself that many people branch eros under morality.
Mr. Eldridge threw a honey mustard & onion pretzel at me. It hit a chair and exploded. Last time he ate it! They’re so good. Thanks Colleen.
Sientanlos,
Jordan
Period 5
Hey Period Five,
Today was a scorching hot day. In class today we took another 15 question practice A.P. test. This time the passage was written by Alan Bloom. After we took the quiz we went over it as a class and this is what we learned. Alan Bloom asserted that when animals reach puberty they have reached all that they will ever be. However for humans this is just the beginning. An animal’s activity is merely reproduction and for the human this is not the case. Also the passage consisted of two humans which were Romantic sensibility and flat soul. We then were informed that in the passage the character Emma was the searcher and she was searching for something more.
Some Facts that we learned while going over the quiz were:
- The word erotic comes from the Greek God Eros. Eros is the God of love and sexual desire.
- Ancien régime: Political and social system of France prior to the French Revolution. Under the regime, everyone was a subject of the king of France as well as a member of an estate and province. All rights and status flowed from the social institutions, divided into three orders: clergy, nobility, and others (the Third Estate). There was no national citizenship.
- Dogma: is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from.
Some random facts that were said during the day by Mr. E included.
- People from an aristocracy do not have to prove that they are better. They are born into their position which means that God chose them for the job.
- Legend has it that Charles II had 100 children.
Do not forget to pick a research question tonight and bring it to class tomorrow.
-Keren Mahgerefteh
Filed under: Daily Scribe and
@Jordan, I’d like to make a case for eros being separate from morality. Morality comes down to choices, but attraction is so very much not a choice. We can exercise conscious control over our actions, but that is just adding reins and a bit to unbridled emotion.
I’d like to add two sonnets that speak of this division between what we desire and what we should. They are from Sir Philip Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella” cycle:
“My mouth doth water, and my breast doth swell”
My mouth doth water, and my breast doth swell,
My tongue doth itch, my thoughts in labor be;
Listen then, lordings, with good ear to me,
For of my life I must a riddle tell.
Toward Aurora’s court a nymph doth dwell,
Rich in all beauties which man’s eye can see;
Beauties so far from reach of words that we
Abase her praise saying she doth excel
Rich in the treasure of deserved renown,
Rich in the riches of a royal heart,
Rich in those gifts which give th’ eternal crown;
Who, though most rich in these and every part
Which make the patents of true worldly bliss,
Hath no misfortune but that Rich she is.
&
“Who will in fairest book of Nature know”
Who will in fairest book of Nature know
How virtue may best lodg’d in beauty be,
Let him but learn of Love to read in thee,
Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.
There shall he find all vices’ overthrow,
Not by rude force, but sweetest sovranty
Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly,
That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.
And, not content to be Perfection’s heir
Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move
Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair.
So while thy beauty draws the heart to love,
As fast that virtue bends that love to good.
But ah, Desire still cries: “Give me some food!”
[Reply to comment]
Jordan Roberson Reply:
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
@Mr. Eldridge,
Wouldn’t the best morality not be a decision, but rather a lifestyle and mindset? Eros unleashed too young can misshape us, and loose eros can lead to overall dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Shouldn’t discretion extend even into the realm of eros? Lest our desire consume us. Can you explain the emptiness that many women feel (used up, dirty)? This feeling, to me, implies there must be a connection between what is right and wrong, morality, and the feelings of desire.
[Reply to comment]
Mr. Eldridge Reply:
April 24th, 2009 at 9:09 am
@Jordan Roberson, Your idea of living a certain lifestyle that shields one is effective, but only for a limited time. Living a sheltered life as such, one is never challenged to make moral decisions. But when life throws temptation at your feet, what to do?!?
Often those with lifestyles and mindsets that restrict them to a narrow mode of experience (rather than through conscious choice) throw the baby out with the bath water when they dabble or experiment or indulge. They have no practice with moral decision-making, therefore they make no decisions; they cannot find a happy medium–and so they flip-flop from one extreme to the next.
I have seen this so many times that it’s hard for me to keep count. Without the ability to decide and know that the decision can be changed in the next instant, then we sacrifice our free will and find ourselves mired in despair at our own lack of moral strength.
The poet John Milton understood this. For him faith untested is no faith at all. And I believe the same for morality. Untested it is not morality, it is being an automaton. Otherwise why would we have the capability in the first place? As Hamlet says, “He that made us… gave us not that capability and Godlike reason to fust in us unused.”
Desire can only be wrong if we define desire as wrong. Desire is desire. Nothing in this world would happen if it weren’t for desire. It is our actions that make us right and wrong, not our spontaneous emotions.
[Reply to comment]
Jordan Roberson Reply:
April 24th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
@Mr. Eldridge,
Can you expand on:
“Often those with lifestyles and mindsets that restrict them to a narrow mode of experience (rather than through conscious choice)….They have no practice with moral decision-making, therefore they make no decisions; they cannot find a happy medium–and so they flip-flop from one extreme to the next.”
Is not a lifestyle a daily task of decision-making? What makes a lifestyle NOT a conscious choice? I agree with what you say about faith untested. If faith is a lifestyle, and a lifestyle involves wrestling, doesn’t the wrestling indicate a healthy individual who is making moral decisions? (I guess the second condition is the controversy. It could also be said: If a lifestyle is faith, and faith involves testing/wrestling, then the individual is (consistently and continually) healthily making moral decisions.)
[Reply to comment]
I was most impressed with 5th period. I don’t think we made a single 420 joke all day. I don’t know any good ones, but I thouhgt Dessouky might.
Anyway, this is kinda off-topic, but…what are we doing in this class after the AP Test? Please say it involves something fun.
[Reply to comment]
Stejones Reply:
April 30th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
@Dr. Ryan Cady, Esquire.,
My hope is that we analyze Monty Python and act out scenes of it in class, much like what some other classes may do with Shakespeare.
But since we are AP, I think we deserve some British humor.
[Reply to comment]
Ethan Singer Reply:
April 30th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
@Dr. Ryan Cady, Esquire.,
Personally, I do not really mind what we do in class after the APs as I like class already. Its the homework that might need to be adjusted a smidgen. Anywayz…as a part-Hawaiian, anything’ll do…it will just need to be incorporated with large amounts of good food, good music, and relaxation, all key ingredients in the recipe for success…or at least happiness.
Shootz
[Reply to comment]