The thing about Art is that for it to reveal its secret you have to do more than just glance at it.
You have to engage, participate – let IT worm its way into YOU.
But how do you do that with stone and glass, walls and a roof?
Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame du Haut(“Our Lady of the Heights”) is a good architectural example, and in this video I suggest a way to stir up the fireflies.
“When Cold Stone Warmly Beckons” is the second installment of LIT BY FIREFLIES: Art That Sparkles. Dive in if you are curious as to how a building can talk.
The thing about Art is that it’s a baptismal experience that will only nourish those who immerse themselves.
But how to enter into an I-THOU relationship with a work of art is not always obvious. This new series – Lit By Fireflies: Art That Sparkles – is designed to address that concern.
“When Gibberish Is Eloquent” is the first installment. Dive in if you are curious about “Lucky’s Speech” in Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting For Godot.
I was recently declared persona non grata by my alumni chat group. Because – so proclaimed the Site Admin, herself not even a graduate of our alma mater – I dared post comments with “more than one thot.”
Okay. As a slight concession, then, I have broken this longish (20 min) “thot-laden” video into five easy subsections. I don’t normally encourage or cater to viewers on YouTube or my blog sites but for those who like to be forewarned, here is a succinct topical overview.
1. MID-LIFE CAREER CHANGE (& Nightly Obsessions) 0:00-3:32
Switching to a new career in my 40s was a colossal mistake. The Humanities are dead, my 34 years of teaching all for naught.
2. CRITICAL THINKING (& The Post-Truth Era) 3:32-6:35
We live in an era when facts don’t matter. Critical thinking skills are taught in the humanities but in a post-truth world they have become irrelevant. Not only do humans tend to make emotional decisions not based on reason and evidence, but why bother to try and reason someone out of an opinion they didn’t reason themselves into?
3. WORKFORCE EDUCATION (& The Irrelevance of the Humanities) 6:35-12:28
Humanities are perceived as not being job-related. They do in fact teach marketable skills but educators have been remiss in stressing vocational benefits.
4. CULTURAL CHANGE (& The Crisis of Humanity) 12:28-16:07
The decline of the humanities is symptomatic of a larger cultural paradigm change that is redefining what it means to be human: (a) materialistic culture elevates economic consideration to the supreme good, (b) contemporary society promotes the individual over the collective, and (c) both religious anti-rationalism and populist anti-elitism foster resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind, and a tendency to denigrate those (intellectuals) who engage in it.
5. MAGA’s BETRAYAL (& A Life Wasted) 16:07-19:59
Over & beyond teaching useful skills that transcend the classroom, a study of the humanities leads to an awakened understanding of oneself as a member of the human species, including the capacity to empathize and inhabit the experience of others. Nowhere are these concerns to be found in Project 2025, MAGA’s blueprint for the future of America, except lumped derogatorily under the pejorative, “woke.”
NOTE: this is not your typical dry lecture but contains a constant stream of supplemental video clips to match and enhance each “thot.”Even my one-year-old puppy has his moments.
giblets & flapdoodle 