Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Berlin

As has been the case for much of the semester, Klayton has given us a new perspective on the world (I believe I only saw one Human Element commercial that was sent to me in an email, but I won't be able to ever watch one again without seeing that little girl running in the street), as well as on the perspective of composition. Though he admits that most of his ideas come from others, that could be said of anyone. Berlin, apparently, was inspired by Marx and other so-called subversive visionaries. I have often thought that it doesn't matter who originally came up with an idea or why, but what ideas we choose to embrace, manipulate and execute to serve our own journey.

The real striking idea from Berlin, however, is the tendency toward anti-capitalism, which is an interesting notion in a capitalist society. The game must be played, even if we choose to play by our own rules, and I think that is the real concept behind Berlin: taking strong notions of what is right and, perhaps, individually moral, and using them to help the machine run. This is such an antithetical notion, but yet it must be done.

I can also correlate Berlin's ideas, somewhat, to the study of composition. As teachers we can celebrate individuality and encourage broad thinking without completely breaking down the point of the university, which requires some sort of authoritarian construct. Composition, as is life, is a balancing act. 

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