Words don't lose their meaning if you use them often. Words lose their meaning if your actions vary from your words.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Medium
People gossip and chit-chat about useless things and it is considered normal. People do the same thing on Facebook and my intellectual friends find this appalling. Does the medium (Internet, phone, face to face, etc.) decide what is appropriate? The intellectuals also take pride in their non-activity on Facebook. However, they do have Facebook accounts. At cafes, people read newspapers and magazines when they are with their friends/spouses and nobody notices. If people read/interact on their iPads or iPhones when they are with other people at cafes, the intellectuals see this as the society going downhill. Does the medium (paper, touch screen) decide what is appropriate? People do make-up. It is second nature to most people, they don't think about it. However, some intellectuals don't like when other people get plastic surgery done. So, application of a substance is fine if it is on the skin and insertion of a substance/chemical inside the body to look better is frowned upon. Does the medium (inside the body or on the skin) decide what is appropriate?
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Who am I?
Who I am is not written in stone. Who I am today is different from who I was yesterday and who I will be tomorrow.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Origins of Courtly Love
Increasing literacy did not only mean the production of
philosophical works. In 1130-36 Geoffrey of Monmouth assembled his History of the Kings of Britain, containing stories of King Arthur based on Celtic legend.
A few decades later Chretien de Troyes used the same material to tell the story
of Perceval, which linked the Arthurian romances to the search of Holy Grail.
These stories captured and helped to create the culture of chivalry, of courtly
love and Christian romance that became the ideal self-image of European
nobility and gentry for centuries to come. The key elements of this literature
were bravery as an ideal end in itself (the knights were not fighting to defend
heir homeland but were going out to seek adventure), and the idealization of
love between a man and a woman. In a clear urban alternative to boorishness of
rural warrior barons, the restrictions of church literature, love became
exquisitely refined, and was often adulterous- Lancelot, the principal hero of
the Round Table, was created in order to give the Queen an illicit object of
idealized love. Although this code of love was a highly artificial creation, largely
inspired by Iberian Arabic tradition, it was taken to be a natural phenomenon
in the west for the next 800 or so years. - Roger Osborne (from the book- Civilization)
Happy Valentine's day! :-)
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