When most people hear the word "transcendentalism," they think "ew, that's a long word. It sounds boring." But when I hear "transcendentalism" I think of trees, flowers and forests and how transcendentalists believed nature was true beauty. They were also strong supporters of the whole "carpe diem" theme and believed that everyone should be their own unique individual and live every day like it is their last.
In class this week, I had to read Steve Jobs' commencement speech and relate it to transcendentalism. In his speech, he was basically telling people to go do what they love and be unique and be your own person and live every day like you won't have another, and all of that relates back to transcendentalism.
However Transcendentalists also believe that death is inevitable so you should live life fully because death will catch up, so embrace it, and don't fear it, as well as that nothing you do is permanent but nature stays constant and continues. In "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls," the poem has a lot of repetition and parallelism to symbolize nature's consistency.
Transcendentalism also makes me think of the movie "Avatar;" how the Na'vi are so nature-oriented and how they pretty much worship nature which similar to transcendentalists' views of nature only one step farther.
Arguments are a natural part of life; almost no one sees everything exactly the same so they disagree, and argue their point. Some of the most important things in an argument are the persuading techniques.
In The Crisis, Thomas Paine uses a mixture of emotional, and ethical appeals, as well as appeals to authority and association to prove his point and try to convince Americans to join the war cause. He succeeds in doing so because his persuasion techniques were so effective; for example he wrote, "There are persons too who see not the full extent of the evil that threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if they succeed with be merciful." which is an emotional appeal of fear. He persuades his audience in the same way Jonathan Edwards did in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," by using fear to make people think they have to do something.
Using fear to persuade someone is still widely used today. For example, when little kids do something wrong their parents would say something like, "I'm going to count to three, and then you're going to be in BIG trouble missy!" or "You better come here now, or else!" The child, of course, doesn't want to find out what "BIG trouble" is or what "or else" means, so they come running back to their parents.
Mass hysteria is when a group of people have hysterical behaviors like anxiety or fear and it can spread extremely fast.
In "The Crucible," the people of Salem go kind of crazy and their fear fuels the mass hysteria affecting the city. Abigail and her "witchcraft" as well as all of her accusations are making everyone in the town afraid that there are witches in Salem. Because they have a Theocracy, witchcraft is a crime because it is against the Bible. So when people started randomly accusing anybody, they would get scared because they didn't want to go to jail or be hanged. This fear kept spreading until eventually most people in the town were afraid, and thus, mass hysteria was created. The mass hysteria only grew bigger as their fear increased and affected more people.
A similar event happened during the "Red Scare" when America was so afraid of Communists taking over. A man named Joseph McCarthy started accusing people of being Communists, except he had no proof and was just picking people like in "The Crucible." Americans were terrified of Communism taking over the country so also like in the play, their fear spread and created mass hysteria.
Basically it happens like this; something happens that affects people, a couple people become afraid, their fear spreads to more people, and then whole towns become taken over by mass hysteria.
Most people don't realize how much power and influence they can have over their town, community or even the world. However, sometimes people do, and have to choose to use their influence for good or bad.
In The Crucible, one of the main characters, Abigail Williams, realizes how much power she has over people, and uses it selfishly. Abigail comes up with a huge master plan to accuse Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch just to get to her ex-lover John Proctor, who doesn't even want her anymore. Abigail enlists Proctor's servant, Mary, and has her plant a voodoo doll in the Proctors' house and frame Elizabeth as being a witch. While Abigail is accusing people of witchcraft, the townspeople are becoming more and more nervous and end up accusing random people and wrongfully pointing their fingers. This is exposing the fact that Abigail has the power to control people even when she isn't around them, and she can indirectly make anything happen.
Just like Abigail, Lord Voldemort, from the Harry Potter series, has such an influence and great power over people and chooses to use it selfishly. He has a large group of followers who end up inflicting horror and mass hysteria on the whole magical world. Voldemort also has one of his followers, Peter Pettigrew, frame Sirius Black just to get to the Potters as Abigail does with Mary and Elizabeth.
When most people hear the word "transcendentalism," they think "ew, that's a long word. It sounds boring." But when I hear "transcendentalism" I think of trees, flowers and forests and how transcendentalists believed nature was true beauty. They were also strong supporters of the whole "carpe diem" theme and believed that everyone should be their own unique individual and live every day like it is their last.
