Would dogs write better love songs than humans, if so WHY? ho, ho. -S. Sharrett
I myself have always been an individual who sought out the why, and always knew that the question why has always been at the heart of any endeavor, whether it be artistic or scientific, worth pursuing. This not only because why challenges any comstruct, personal or institutional, set before it, but because inquiry is the life blood that feeds the expansion of our own minds. And for that, amongst many other reasons, I really enjoyed some of the thoughts and whys explored in the reading this week.
Something, in particular, that struck me in Hickey's pages, aside from his thoughts on love songs, was his affinity with and insights into Las Vegas. When I first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by the late, great Dr. Hunter S Thompson, I never truly understood why Vegas was the heart, the vortex, nay the disturbingly calm eye of the American dream that rips through dreams and lives like a hurricane, but Hickey illuminated this logic to me, just as the authentic lights of the Sunset Strip, a shimmering rhinestone oasis, do that small (relatively speaking) hunk of Neveda desert in the dead of night; Las Vegas is what American Dreams are made of. Las Vegas is the only place where in the course of a few hours, with a bit of hubris and lots of luck, you too can taste a nice meaty hunk of "Fat America;" it is the only place where social stratification isn't so conveniently ordered that the classes are stacked "like liquers in a dessert drink" (Boy howdy, I love that one); only on Vegas stages could you put your closet center stage, pretend you locked yourself inside, and stand on the out flaming brighter than the sun itself (maybe cause your covered in rhinestones), and it is the only place that is more democratic then American government claims itself to be. For this, I am in many ways endebted to Hickey, for providing an insight I was lost upon before, and for getting me very interested in living in Vegas at one time or an other. (Seriously, if I can't land a teaching job (one of the few places I might enjoy being a professor, it is so pretentious everywhere else, as he has stated) there is always "three shifts a day, around the clock, seven days a week" and I'm sure I could fit one of those shifts into my busy sheduel. Ho ho.)
A demand declared by Hickey, and a thought that seems to arise frequently (or did) in lecture or seminar is DEFINE CULTURE. I am just curious to know how ya'll would define culture, or if you'd even make that attempt at all?
My first and most adamant thought is LEARNED BEHAVIOR, but I'm sure some may disagree.
-Stephen
oh, p.s. who else thinks dogs or other animals would write better love songs than humans? i mean it seems like they've got life figured out better than we do (especially pets), so Im sure they could.
