SKOOL RANT (and also ranting about other things that make my life miserable because I can't stop thinking about them)

So school! It's been 3 weeks since Year 2 and it hasn't been fun haha it's been a lot more work than the laze-about-year-one-me has been used to. But I am intensely grateful to be able to start my level 3000 mods because they're wildly interesting in that we are introduced to the context in which the books we read were written in.

So 13/14th Century Medieval English culture is one, and the backdrop to the lives of the Victorians and the Romantics. And it just seems to me that every period of literature is a reaction to the period beforehand. So we have the Romantics reacting to the 18th Century and its emphasis on rationalism over emotionalism. Where the 18th century writers went by the motto, "I think therefore I am", Dr. A. mentioned that the Romantics went in the opposite direction, choosing instead, "I feel, therefore I am."

And then the Victorians reacted to the Romantics, where instead of emotionalism, 19th Century literature brought forth the idea of the realist novel where things were written as realistically (see Dicken's Hard Times) as possible; that is, ordinary, even mundane everyday things were written about in detail, instead of coloured by the idealistic imagination of the Romantics. But the Romantic movement had a large impact on the writing scene, contributing the Gothic novel, such that even into the late 19th Century, we see writers like the Bronte sisters (but mostly Charlotte and Emily) and Oscar Wilde being heavily influenced by the Gothic.

And then the Modernists (1920s thereabouts) were also a reaction to the realism of the 19th Century. There was a turn back to the idealism of the past while also breaking away from the strictures of poetry. The Modernist poets were the ones who came up with free verse poetry. That is, poetry that can be unrhymed, unhindered by strictures to forms like the sonnet form (14 lines, either an octave and a sestet or 2 quatrains and a couplet). Most modern poetry is in fact, in free verse.

So:

Romantics: Classical/ Reason/ Strict form  = Bad, Gothic/ Irrational/ Less structured forms= Good
Victorians: Classical= meh, Gothic= meh, Realist= Life is not bad or good but Imma just write everything down anyway
Modernists: Classical/ clean aesthetic lines= Good, Gothic/ heavy, over-sombre= Bad
Post-modernists: EVERYTHING SUX.

Classicism and the Gothic have changed over the centuries in terms of symbolic meaning.

But what gets my goat is how literary movements all seem to be a reaction to something; it's endlessly cyclical (like fashion). It feels like nothing can be new anymore. Science Fiction seems to have turned into broody dissertations on dystopian societies rather than thinking about new technologies. So it's lost it's trashy schtick (which was what made it fun) and become more intellectually concerned with the state of society.

And also, I feel really stupid in class because I'm reacting to the reactions of the movements we're studying. I identify in a scary lost, confused teenager way to the Romantics who were all for Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and who were totally into fantasizing the medieval and the Far East (China was the Middle East was Greece to them, because #Orientalism, everyone probably looks the same in the lands I imagine but have never been to. And whoo harems are a big thing in the Oriental right. And of course the Medieval people never had plague or a hard life. They were so close to nature and fresh air and pretty flowers.)

And sometimes all I want to do is read Lit without thinking or vocalising my thoughts. But then that wouldn't be the study of literature would it. Great books need to be read and thought about in great detail, what is the writer trying to say, how do I know this, what evidence do I have from the text? Am I over analysing things? How does what this writer have to say add to my life or what I think about the general populace in the first place. Ugh.

I used to like it a lot, but I've gotten so lazy, my brain hurts from constantly trying to guess at what I think the writer's point is, and all I wanna do is react to words from a purely emotional level. Like, what a splendid turn of phrase this is, man this combination of words is beautiful, I need to share this with the world. So is literature something intellectual or can I react emotionally? And if it requires both then I'm screwed cause it's draining to run through books and attempt to form coherent thoughts about them. Like this paraphrased question from 19th cen.: "if the social affects the personal, is the converse also true? Or must the private sphere be kept separate and 'unsullied' from the public sphere. How does Margaret navigate the contending forces of the social and the private?" Like omg, just decoding the question alone is awful because it makes so many implicit assumptions. Like private sphere= personal, and public sphere= social, and that there are necessarily clear distinctions between the two, and then having to run through 'North and South' which is a bloody long book and finding quotes to support your stand etc etc. Like I don't think I was made for this.

Maybe I'm what they call a dilettante (i.e. a person with a passing casual interest in the arts but without real commitment) haha. Also, I have a cold now, and my nose sucks and my throat is sore, and the weather is cold and miserable but not too cold. Whine. Whine. Whine.

Also social work is bleargh. If from the readings they assigned us, one of the fundamental values of the profession is that "The profession of social work is based upon a belief in the value and dignity of all human beings, and a concern for their social well being." (from the SASW code of ethics), how is it that any of them (read, social workers) can even support abortion or ask their clients to consider it no matter their situation? I mean if all social workers believe that there is "value and dignity in all human beings," then shouldn't this value and dignity be recognised all the way, from the first moment of inception and until death? When do you begin considering someone a human being and when do you stop?

When is a baby a baby instead of a parasitic inconvenience/ sum representation of all your fears and emotions about the future, the past, your parents', friends and society's reaction to you, or even your inability/ ability to provide for a child? And when do you recognise that the baby is neither the mother nor the father any more than you yourself are your father or your mother? If we were babies once, and if we have distinct personalities, feelings and thoughts from our parents, is it not true to say that neither will our children have our exact personalities, feelings and thoughts? If this is true, then who are we to say that thus far our lives are shitty and therefore our children will never be able to transcend this environment of shittiness that they are born into?

And if we choose to be utilitarian about it, or to put it simplistically, base someone's life or death on the final outcome or consequences/ how useful they will be, eg. kill 2 men to save a trainload of people, how are we to decide that this child will be useless if he gets to live if s/he hasn't even been tested out?

Which is why I cannot be a feminist because then I would be wrongly aligning myself with a cause I do not believe in (find me a feminist against abortion). I believe that people should be respected regardless of race, gender, language or religion, and I abhor those who mistreat others even as I have great pity for them because it seems to me that mistreatment of others is spiracle (you mistreat me, I am weaker than you, I mistreat others weaker than me to vent my anger, others mistreat others weaker than them to vent their anger and so on in a crazy spiral descent of madness). I still think that people, especially women are discriminated against because of stupid stereotypes that people cannot get out of their thick heads (and both men and women are guilty of this), but I think the solution for this is plain ol' respect for the individual's value because s/he is a person: starting from the embryo to the elderly person in pain. It's not much use campaigning for equal rights if people can't even recognise that a person is a who and not a what.