Reflections from Last Thursday

In class we talked about the philosopher Richard Rorty, who was an American philosopher who had a childhood fascination with orchids and was also passionate about social justice. His goals for college were to find a framework for how these two could be related, but he couldn’t find one. Paul discussed how Richard spent the rest of his life focusing on the fact that there is no fixed truth or reality, which is why he could not find a fixed framework for these two subjects. Some passions just may not mix perfectly together or there may not be a reason for liking two very different things. What I find interesting is that rather than pursuing either of these passions, Richard focused his life on trying to figure out the meaning behind it. In this case, the pursuit of meaning was more important than the actual interests. I feel like this example is very important in our discussion of “truth”. I think “truth” isn’t really what is important to society, but rather the story behind “truth”. The explanation is always more interesting than the fact because we search for understanding rather than knowing.

            On another note, I found an interesting video on a comedy website called Britanick. It’s called “Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer”, in which all of the elements of movies are put together in a particular way that exposes the “formula” for a movie trailer. I thought it pertains to our conversations about what is “new” and whether there is an algorithm for successful literature (or in this case movie trailer). Here’s the link: http://www.britanick.com/videos/?id=WAG9Xn5bJwQ.