I found Tuesday’s class quite refreshing. So often, in the humanities we focus on how things make us feel based on our own paradigm and with a closed mindset. As a result, we sometimes go as far as ignoring facts. Sometimes I do find myself aggravated when reading a political piece I do not agree with; however, I realize I must assess the facts sans bias. Before class I was approaching the pieces in a bit of a biased off put nature and was happy to be reminded that the factual evidence cannot be refuted.

The lesson learned is that one thing does not necessarily mean causality of another. Two things can run in parallel. Before this class I never would be saying these kinds of things.

For whatever reason, I particularly enjoy symbolism. In The Intuitionist I am overly interested in the elevator and asking myself if any other object could carry the same symbolic elements only to come up with nothing. Would any of you happen to know of any?

Not only do we have an elevator but deeper, we have a machine that can go up and down mechanically. Another element of the elevator I wanted to focus on is that in the event of a failure, the only direction the elevator can go is down (with the help of gravity). For me this shows the struggles of racial progress. As things get better and people get happier, something will happen and the elevator comes crashing down. The progress is no more.

Think of The Civil Rights movement and the progress that was made (or seemed to have been made) and look at the racial tensions in our country today. Though the elevator has been innovated over time, the same issues may arise and history will undoubtedly repeat itself.

A great piece about the symbolism and themes can be found here: http://www.avclub.com/article/emthe-intuitionistem-introduction-and-the-force-of-46296

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I wanted to use the image to clarify that I am not saying you should not “feel” in the humanities but rather also be able to look beyond disagreements and learn from factual evidence.