Thursday, October 2, 2014

The AHA! Moment; Hume is the Root Origin of Humor

This morning I had a tiny AHA! moment—not quite a religious experience, but at least a lower case aha.
Yesterday I spoke with our wily instructor about how overwhelmed I felt at not really "getting the point" and how I was feeling a little fractured and disjointed about the religious studies structure.

She told me more about Hume as a person after I queried about his actual convictions, which I could not glean from his writings. He seemed to negate every religion and ism equally without ever telling us what he thought was a good thing.

Well, after understanding that Hume was quite the "character" on the Broadway of Religious Studies, I had a domino-effect realization (You know, where one thought topples another until you have a patterned row).

I will not speak of all the individual thoughts but the final row of dominoes looks something like this;


  • I now associate the name, Hume with Hume-or and Hume-anity.
  • Studying religion is a lot like abstract painting
  • There is no structure, we bring structure to it—Joseph Campbell said "There is no meaning, we bring meaning to it" 
  • Authors like Hume, Gill, Smith, and even Rodriguez get paid per word so that is probably why they use so many
  • I will probably never be an academic writer (but we'll see after I take English 1A)
  • I want to research a religion that is funny and does not take itself so seriously
  • I am a bit intimidated by scholars
  • Philosophers and Scholars also must appease their own Medici patrons
  • Some of my dominoes are buried under other dominoes

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