As I look back at the very first blog post I wrote for Humanities Core—on the about me page, where I stated what I want to learn from the course—I can see that my view of war has vastly changed in a number of months. While I was put in the mindset to think about war from the point of a single human being, rather than simply wars are bad for society, I had no idea that I would dig this deep in my investigation of war.
It seems that I was originally curious with the role of an individual in war as either a fighter or a peasant. Considering that we were studying texts like Homer’s The Iliad and Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius Simplicissimus, I guess that makes sense. Yet, it’s astounding to look back and consider that I only thought that there were two perspectives in war: the above versus the below, or the hero versus the peasant. Now, it seems that only looking at war from the victor or the fallen’s perspective is absurd.
Now, I can think of the individual in war as a refugee, a victim, a soldier, a leader, even as an adult or a child. To think that all of these accounts are so very different, yet so very human—it conveys to me that war is truly a human experience because of how it impacts the individual and evokes so many different emotion—fear, anger, remorse, and joy. Sure, war has great impact on society—but the stories that come out of war are all so very unique and personal and human.
It’s also very interesting to me that I wasn’t very far off the mark in saying that the study of the humanities is all about interpretation—yet I was so oblivious to what that really meant. I thought that in investigating humans, it was all about how I interpreted experiences in war. I thought that in studying the humanities, it was about how I choose to interpret the material. Yet, now I see that in studying the humanities, we can learn the most from studying the individual’s account and interpretation of war. By looking at other’s different perspectives, from different people and different societies, it is fascinating to see how so many cultural and individual ideas can come out of war.
It seems that I was originally curious with the role of an individual in war as either a fighter or a peasant. Considering that we were studying texts like Homer’s The Iliad and Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius Simplicissimus, I guess that makes sense. Yet, it’s astounding to look back and consider that I only thought that there were two perspectives in war: the above versus the below, or the hero versus the peasant. Now, it seems that only looking at war from the victor or the fallen’s perspective is absurd.
Now, I can think of the individual in war as a refugee, a victim, a soldier, a leader, even as an adult or a child. To think that all of these accounts are so very different, yet so very human—it conveys to me that war is truly a human experience because of how it impacts the individual and evokes so many different emotion—fear, anger, remorse, and joy. Sure, war has great impact on society—but the stories that come out of war are all so very unique and personal and human.
It’s also very interesting to me that I wasn’t very far off the mark in saying that the study of the humanities is all about interpretation—yet I was so oblivious to what that really meant. I thought that in investigating humans, it was all about how I interpreted experiences in war. I thought that in studying the humanities, it was about how I choose to interpret the material. Yet, now I see that in studying the humanities, we can learn the most from studying the individual’s account and interpretation of war. By looking at other’s different perspectives, from different people and different societies, it is fascinating to see how so many cultural and individual ideas can come out of war.