Feb 17 2008
Regarding
To start off, two definitions for your consideration:
CREATION: the act of creating; esp: the act of bringing the world into ordered existence.
HUMANITY, plural HUMANITIES: 1:the quality or state of being humane, 2: the quality or state of being human, 3: the branches of learning (philosophy, arts, or languages) that investigate human constructs and concerns, 4: the human race: the totality of human beings.
In each of us is the desire to create, something. Maybe it’s a piece of art. Maybe it’s a cake. Maybe it’s a clean living room. In many ways, the state of being human is a state of creation. In fact, one way the “totality of human beings” is measured is by and through our own creations, starting on the most basic levels—food and shelter. Once those needs have been met in some way or another, what the desire-to-create leaves in its wake is a myriad of things not simply for the sustenance of the human body, but for the human soul as well. And so including the study of philosophy, arts and languages amidst the other definitions of humanity is not simply appropriate, but necessary.
If creation is the act of bringing the world into an ordered existence, then the Humanities are the means by which we express and communicate our understanding of that world and it’s order, and how we participate in the creation of new worlds.
This is a place to explore many things: books and words, art, music, film, ideas, things that are beautiful and lovely, and last but not least, the creation that is simply the ordinary but extraordinary individual.
And that leads to the title.
In a poem by Christina Rosetti she asks, “What is orange?” I imagine color theorists as well as fruit farmers each would have a specific answer to that question. Christina answers it simply, “Why an orange. Just an orange.” This in no way lessens the value of an orange, be it a color or fruit. In fact she calls our attention to the beauty of what is there. Just an orange. Maybe it’s not something that seems spectacular on the grand scale, simple thing that it is.
But then again, look at it. Maybe it is spectacular, by it’s own simple merits.