That We May All Be A Part Of THE CENTAUR

“He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere” So said Charles J. He said this in response to my point that sprezzatura is in and through all things in the renaissance. It made me ponder as to the home for each concept, as well as which one is chiefest among them.

I now want to compare the renaissance to a centaur. 

Essaying the Essay: Wrapping up the Renaissance & Reformation

As we conclude this unit on the Renaissance and Reformation within this Rhetoric & Civilization course, I'd like my students to return to the essay form -- not the college essay form with its overt structure of argument and support, but the essay form as first practiced by Michel de Montaigne: exploratory, informed, and conveyed with a sense of personal reflection and style.

We just had a classroom activity, a "salon" where, in small groups, the students practiced sprezzatura -- spirited and witty conversation informed by the historical figures, texts, and concepts we've studied in this period. I want their written essay to be something of an extension of this lively dialogue. In short, I'm hoping that in about 500 words each student can demonstrate 1) knowledge of specific concepts, people, events, and texts of the Renaissance and reformation; and 2) ability to meaningfully explore such ideas within the genre of the Renaissance "essay." In that spirit, they are to essayer ("try" or "prove") their ideas as those ideas bump into one another, and as they play off of people and ideas.

A simple formula:

Of Men and Rivers

"But Rivers alter their course, sometimes beating against the one side, and sometimes the other, and some times quietly keeping the channel." 

I love this. It reflects the spectrum of the human experience. It reflects an aspect of the Renaissance themes from class, this idea of a river being capable of altering its own course. The interesting thing to me is how accustomed we are to this idea. We are so oversaturated with experiences from our culture that affirm our human potential. Everyone loves hearing a good miracle story – the boy or girl who pushes past respective circumstances to reach out to something greater.

I wonder then, if we have found ourselves in the category of ‘quietly keeping the channel’. I also am curious at the implication, as well as the connotation, of this phrase. First, I’d like to treat the connotation of this idea. It is difficult, even within the context of the text, to find Montaigne’s true intent; I’d like to believe that it is not a negative connotation. It seems quite ambivalent: a statement of perceived truth.

That being said, how do we connote it ourselves? I think it’s a somewhat negative thing in our culture today. ‘Quietly keeping the channel’ can easily be interpreted as a sort of crowd-following blindness. There doesn’t appear to be anything exciting about it, and if everyone always kept that channel, we wouldn’t have any sort of progression as a race. So, it becomes an interesting implication: Is humanity defined by the potential to truly alter a respective course, beating against the sides of our channel?

In the face of this question, I’d like to assert that there is a purpose for Montaigne’s ambivalence. I think there is a true sense of nobility in ‘quietly keeping the channel’. I think of the honor code. We live a set of rules that govern our lives, and it is this channel that directs us. So where does this leave us, in regards to the previous question. Is humanity defined by the potential to alter a respective course, or by the principles of quietly keeping the channel? I think Montaigne’s ambivalence points us to the answer. It is defined by the balance of both.

Whether Facebook Creates Friends or Fools

"As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that presses it down, so the mind yields to demonstration." (Cicero)

Can Facebook communication really demonstrate friendship to others? 

            I stared at the keys of my laptop. What should I say? This was it, the most harrowing experience for a Latter Day Saint, that moment when a Facebook “friend”—who is also “Latter Day Saint”—posts an attack against our faith on their Facebook feed. A member of my congregation was basically saying, “I quit; religion is stupid.” There I sat, slouched over my laptop awaiting inspiration.

           

            Obviously, the most important thing was that he knew I cared about him. I also knew that, in general, he wasn’t very fond of church leadership. So, I typed my comment carefully and awaited his response. I waited for days, but I didn’t see a thing. Had he not logged into Facebook? Why wouldn’t he check this post daily (if not hourly) on such a heated topic? After all, there were dozens of comments beside the one I made. Still, there was nothing.

           

            I decided to talk to this “friend,” and I made sure to do it in person. I reached out with a simple act of service—taking him some doughnuts that were leftover from an office party—which he happily received. Doughnuts in hand, he let me into his apartment and we were able to have a caring conversation about his concerns. I left that night as his friend, not just his “friend.”  

           

            Lesson learned: nothing replaces a genuine, personal demonstration of friendship (aka: an act of service).

     

Of Complainers

It’s said that you are who you surround yourself with. This means that if you are around good, kind people you are more likely to be a good, kind person, and vice versa. If that train of thought is believed, than by associating with complainers you are likely also a downer. Is that always such a bad thing though?

Montaigne, in his essay Of the Resemblance of Children to their Father’s, asserts “if [the body] seems to find the disease evaporate… in making loud outcries… let it roar as it will.”

Of Appearances

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know." - Michel de Montaigne 

We live in a world in which we as human beings gravitate towards social media. We love being in the know - knowing what's going on in others' lives as well as sharing what is happening in ours. What we love so much about social media, is that we have the ability and the power to present our ideal selves. Our profile says and shows whatever we want it to about who we are. Our profile is our "picture-perfect" persona. By having the Internet and a computer screen as a filter, we are able to communicate to others only what we want them to see. We can leave out all the baggage that we are carrying in our lives and only show the good parts. Someone posts a picture of them on a hiking trail in the mountains to express, "Look how athletic and outdoorsy I am!" What they left out from their convenient Instagram post is that their tent collapsed in the middle of the night, the thunderstorm doused their campfire, and they got a massive outbreak of poison ivy. Another Facebooker posts a picture of their egg-white omelet they made for themselves for breakfast, attempting to send a message of, "I'm so healthy, and also, I cook!" They left out that they had to throw away three burned omelets before finally making one that was posting-worthy. We take millions of selfies before finally posting the one that is most slimming. Pictures and posts on our personal online profiles communicate to our society and the world around us who we are. But it isn't the truest version. 

Even I am guilty of this. This summer I went on a dance study abroad to Italy. It was an all girl program. Over the course of the 6-weeks that the same 25 girls were together, new friendships were created, but as you can imagine, a lot of drama was created as well. When I got home from my trip, I posted a video on my Facebook that my friend had made of our summer. It showed all of us girls dancing around the streets, laughing, eating gelato, etc. It gave off the appearance that I had the most wonderful, perfect, romantic summer in Europe with my 25 best friends. And I'm sure everyone who watched that video believed that. And in many ways, it was an amazing summer. But what the video didn't show, nor would I have wanted the entire Facebook world to know, was the drama that occurred and the cliques that formed among the girls that absolutely drove me crazy and hurt many feelings. 

This idea of social media and photography has influenced who we are as a people today. It has influenced how we communicate ourselves to each other. We communicate only half-truths. We want to only show our best selves. While this can be a confidence booster as we focus on the best and most exciting parts of our lives, it puts a lens over who we are as a person, and we are never seen truly in focus. 

Of Technology and Professionalism

We shall find few persons in those republics who have pushed their fortunes to any great degree of eminence without the assistance of eloquence. – Montaigne, “Of the Vanity of Words”

Montaigne’s quote is as true now as it was then: we seldom find people of fortune who aren’t good communicators. Communicating is necessary to get ideas across, but the modes of communication and the accepted forms of communication are changing. There was a time in elementary school, for example, where my teacher told me to get used to writing in cursive because that’s how I’d be required to write the rest of my life. Well, that didn’t happen.

Of Marraige

          "Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out."- Michel de Montaigne

Doesn't this picture sum up well what Montaigne said?

                Marriage is a topic that the current world is not only having trouble defining, but also struggling to determine its value. There are so many unique opinions and views on marriage in the current world that sometimes it is hard to not only keep track of them all, but also decipher who is right and who is wrong. Can anyone be right or wrong when it come to the topic of marriage?

            At Brigham Young University in a heavy LDS environment marriage is seen as key to happiness in life and eternal salvation. Marriages occur at a much younger age than the average U.S. marriage and also tend to see couples have children sooner and in greater abundance. In contrast the average American view of marriage is referred to as “settling down”. Marriage is done later in life, after college life and freedom have been experienced. Marriage is seen as something someone does when in love, and not as a necessary part of having a happy life. These are only two brief descriptions of some of the views of marriage that exist in our current time.

So.. does it really even matter how people view and define marriage?

How the world chooses to define and treat marriage will dramatically affect people’s lives, because it has traditionally been the structure in which new generations have learned and grown up in. As this structure of marriage changes and fluctuates so will the cultures and civilizations of the world. Consider a friend of mine whose mother taught her about the purpose of marriage. My friend was informed that each marriage has a purpose, that first you should marry someone to gain a little bit of money, then a second marriage for love and physical attraction, and a final marriage to settle down with someone you can stand for the rest of your mortal existence. This concept was so foreign to me personally that it now made sense why so many of my friend’s choices were so different than mine. The way people choose to define topics that involve any type of moral decisions, such as marriage, will affect the way that cultures grows and develops in a community. 

Of Social Media

When wondering whether or not clothing has benefitted mankind, Montaigne theorizes, “Now, all other creatures [are] sufficiently furnished with all things necessary for [their] support,…it is not to be imagined that we…are brought…defective…and in such a state as cannot subsist without external aid.”

Essaying, Montaigne-style

The essay form is very familiar to college students; less so, the original genre of the essay as this was used in the Renaissance by writers like Montaigne. My students read from Montaigne recently, and I lectured to them (starting about 47:50 in the class recording) about the essay as an exploratory genre, rather than as (with contemporary college writing) a tightly organized and argued piece of writing.

I'd like my students to try out the original, Renaissance-style essay form in their next blog post, using Montaigne's approach (if not his length) as he models this in such pieces as "Of Cannibals." What is that approach?

• A personal essay (drawing upon personal experience and reflecting a personal viewpoint)
• An informed essay (bringing in quotations, history, well-known texts)
• An essay that brings out clear issues but explores multiple sides of issues rather than merely arguing one.

I mentioned in class that there are parallels to Montaigne's Renaissance essay form in today's blogging. This is true with respect to the personal and exploratory nature of many a blog post. However, I would like my students to imitate less the wandering style of Montaigne and to look more at how his writings are informed (in part by using quotations and historical allusions) and how they are clear and balanced on difficult issues. (We don't need a reason to be disorganized and wandering. Montaigne models that a productive kind of exploration is one that is grounded in the history of thought, and one that clearly posits ideas in contrast to each other).

The Assignment