Humanities

Description

Answer only 1 question in each category. That’s 3 essays in total. each about 750 words.

The due date is Sunday, December 6, at 11:59 pm.

Category 1 – Compassion

A. For Buddhists like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, acting compassionately comes from thinking compassionately, and thinking compassionately comes from changing our usual thinking patterns. In the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, the God Krishna also tells Arjuna to change his thinking patterns. Explain these similarities and/or differences in more specific detail, showing why the gods are so concerned with the ways we think.

OR

B. For Buddhists like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, acting compassionately comes from thinking compassionately, and thinking compassionately comes from changing our usual thinking patterns. In his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. argues that the Christian God wants us to change our thinking patterns. Explain these similarities and/or differences in more specific detail, showing why the gods are so concerned with the ways we think.

Category 2 – Suffering

A. In the Book of Job, Job takes issue with the way other people have traditionally understood the One God (of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Today, many feminist theologians have also questioned the ways people have traditionally understood the One God. Explain these similarities and/or differences in more specific detail, showing why their understanding of the One God is so important to the ways they see themselves.

OR

B. In the Book of Job, Job takes issue with the way other people have traditionally understood the One God (of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Today, contemporary theologians (Rabbi Kushner, Rev. Gomes, and some of our Black Lives Matter writers, for example) have also questioned the ways people have traditionally understood the One God. Explain these similarities and/or differences in more specific detail, showing why their understanding of the One God is so important to the ways they see themselves.

Category 3 – Art

A. Van Gogh believed that art could transform ordinary people, places and things, helping us to access new worlds, or at least new ways of seeing our own world. Greek artists sculpted art that transformed ordinary athletes into something more, thereby giving us new ways of seeing ourselves. Explain these similarities and/or differences in more specific detail, showing what role the gods played in these transformations.

OR

B. Van Gogh believed that art could transform ordinary people, places and things, helping us to access new worlds, or at least new ways of seeing our own world. H.P. Lovecraft wrote fictional stories that also explored new worlds questioning the limits of what we see and what we know for certain. Explain in more specific detail, showing what role the gods played in these transformations.