Hello all, welcome back to the third edition of my weekly reflections. We’ve had a mildly exciting week with our PLP humanities class this week, I’ve particularly enjoyed all of the discussions we’ve been having, I haven’t really enjoyed being labeled a contrarian, though, I see why most people think that. Our daily discussions as a class have been focused on determining whether or not songs in culture are sexist, if you’ve read my blog from last week you may know that I don’t think there’s a right answer to that but usually most of the class comes to similar consensus, I think that’s because the majority of us tend to be pretty progressive with our thoughts on society and culture. 

Last week I highlighted the essay “The Death of Author” which argues that all text (including music) should be interpreted by the individual, this week I decided I wanted to dig a little deeper into that concept and relate it to our discussions in class, this lead me down an all familiar rabbit hole of thought that ended with me going through a tiny existential crisis. I think that almost all aspects of life can be interpreted subjectively, I guess this is a pretty nihilistic take because it infers that nothing has any real meaning, but I think that fact gives the individual the power to choose their own meaning, thus my conclusion (this video by “Kurzgesagt” is great on explaining this better than me) if anyone is interested by this video I recommend checking out Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, or Plato. I don’t know if that’s the conclusion Ms Willemse wants us to come to, I think most of the PLP students would agree that right and wrong aren’t objective. Perhaps the discussions allow us to think more critically about what we think is right and wrong and realize that our perception of it can change very easily. I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve taken away from the discussions, I used to think that music was just music and people really shouldn’t let themselves get offended by it, and even though I still kind of think that, I now really understand why people can get offended by certain songs or texts. These discussions have definitely helped me understand why things do or don’t matter to other individuals. I just think that being able to hear about other people’s thought processes on these things is really cool, and honestly the discussions are my favorite part of the school day. 

Moving forward I’m quite excited for the rest of this project actually, because we’ve been exploring a lot of topics I really enjoy thinking about. I’m also no longer finding the essay readings as redundant anymore because I’ve kind of realized the point in reading them. Also excited to watch Kramer vs. Kramer tomorrow!

So as always, thanks for reading and have a great rest of your day/evening!