tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post3755175750801596670..comments2023-11-05T07:27:43.837-05:00Comments on Narrative and Technology: Blog #2, Prompt #3Adamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post-20909792254411817592012-01-21T19:39:12.962-05:002012-01-21T19:39:12.962-05:00I've read any number of essays which try to de...I've read any number of essays which try to define humanity in terms of emotion, but collapse because they don't begin with the obvious fact that other animals feel emotion (Darwin wrote a book about it!). So one thing I like here is that you are more careful and specific about what kinds of emotions are characteristic of human beings.<br /><br />I also appreciated your grounding - imperfectly explained, but still clearly present - in a subset of psychology.<br /><br />The weakness here is that you never *directly* define human nature - what you call a definition defines the school of psychology, not humanity itself, and the dictionary definition is cheap.<br /><br />But you do *show* approximately what emotions you're interested in - ambition, beauty, and fear. The last obviously characterizes any animal with any emotional life at all; the appreciation of beauty, though, sure *seems* to be a human thing, and ambition might be as well, depending on how you define it (I'd actually argue that other great apes, and probably all high social mammals, are capable of ambition for higher status, but at the very least you're on an interesting track).<br /><br />So your understanding of humanity and your focus on the monster through that understanding is reasonably focused and clear, once the reader has thought it through carefully. I'd be much happier if your definition was clearer, and if you gave more thought to whether all three emotions are really distinctive to humanity - in many ways this might have been more convincing and more distinctive if you'd started with the well-argued premise that only human beings have a deep emotional attachment to beauty, and that *this* is what makes the monster human, although incorporating ambition (or how about linking the two?) is fine too.<br /><br />So this could be streamlined, and the actual moment of the definition is poorly handled, but you execute the rest *as if* you had a coherent definition and agenda, which is good.Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post-35911022936625780812012-01-21T16:40:12.395-05:002012-01-21T16:40:12.395-05:00Hey Pat,
First off, I really like how you define...Hey Pat, <br /><br />First off, I really like how you defined which emotions are key to the human personality. I agree that although happiness and sadness are more simple emotions that one could argue many animals feel, emotions like empathy, stress, and wonder are very human. <br /><br />You reference several sections in the book to support your claims of his feeling emotions, but I think you could potentially support them more with a quote here or there. <br /><br />I agree with you that the monster's observation of the family is very important in both defining and molding his emotions, further proving that he is human. Because this is such an important section, I think you could strengthen it even more with more emotions on top of the fear and ambition that you mentioned. <br /><br />Sorry about the late post,<br />BenBen Fellowshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05890078361181898871noreply@blogger.com