Personal Thought and Authenticity There Is a Term Paper

Personal Thought and Authenticity

There is a question I always want to ask: Where should we start learning something? For some people, it is not easy to decide where something starts. It is like questioning, "Egg or chicken, which one comes first?"

It is believed that exploring the original meaning from a subject may take years for people to understand. It is a hard learning process that one should take where one wants to bring oneself to the higher level of knowledge exploration. One may start from any point, but it is the process and acknowledgement to the original material that will let one know how well he or she has learnt it.

Sometimes, the problem starts just when someone wants to know that the point he or she knows is where he or she should begin the process and starts exploring. I once thought that "the beginning" might already be there, lies within the soul. The beginning could be a fundamental thought one ever had after another learning process. Another practice that he or she wants to start now is developed after squeezing for more fluids of thoughts.

However we don't live alone. Other people's thoughts were already there, and there are more to come.

I was interested when Jane Tompkins said that culture takes part in determining the learning process. She claimed that our culture had put a judgment to "exclude emotion from the process of attaining knowledge." She thought that the injustice ruling might emasculate women's freedom in their way of thinking. Women, as "required to be the bearers of emotion," had been put in different view from men, "which are culturally conditioned to repress (emotion)."

Could it be that the culture was deciding which one has the original view. Otherwise, it would say that any learning process women commonly perform were not original, especially when emotional aspects join in.

This view gives a reign, to control the knowledge itself. Knowledge that human know is referred as science, whereas, science is conceptual. In science, every phenomenon is reflected as a strict, computable figure, that are possible for scientist to calculate every process on how something happens, including, how knowledge is gained, as it is a process as well.

Women, in our culture, and in the nature, show what they feel in a more explicit emotional expression, if that what was meant. As culture had related this to an authentic figure of women: "bears emotion," and reflects it through the thoughts, point-of-view, must-do and must-not-do, draws conclusion, makes decision, and sees something the different way from men do.

On the contrary, the "authenticity" of men lies in how they successfully keep the emotional thoughts back (though this is a cultural view, despite hormone-driven expression a gender may show). Men never have to show how they feel exemplifying a way of thought. Sometimes I wonder if this is normal. Do they never get a thought cross their mind when a conceptual thing comes without any measurable entity?

It is true however that knowledge is knowledge. In its extent to cope with gender privilege, it still presents as it is. It is the person who undergoes the process of learning that needs to adjust to his or her needs. In the outcome, this person puts the knowledge through his or her mind, and blends it blissfully with the essence of personal coming from within. Now here comes what is unbiased and what is not.

Will emotions drive women's presentation to be biased? If there is nothing wrong with why emotion presents as part of our life, then there must be some other ways to explain it. I think, it must be hurt inside if someone could not let something flow out from the right part of the brain or from the heart, no matter whether one is a man or a woman. As emotion is gifted to every human being, neither men nor women were born separately without it. It is just a matter of custom, habit, tradition, and an educated manner.

I do believe still that lots of women are capable in attaining and resolving the complexity of a concept, or getting thoroughly to master a knowledge, away from emotional desire they need to include in the process.

My mother is a judge. Even after being in charge of the trials she sometimes shared how she felt compassionate on one's terrible fault or degrading soul of a convict, she underlined that people have to do what they have to in some circumstances. It is people, disregarding the gender. Sometimes it is essential to put aside of any compassion after examining the evidences. It is not about feeling; it is about making the right decision. If one adds too much, or too little of his or her compassion, one may be just to one part, but be undeserved to the other part.

Will it give another thought under women's authority to make a fair decision? If emotion is something true, there must be a different point-of-view, that it is not a distraction. It is on the contrary a must-learn range of knowledge that blesses the knowledge to be part of human being.

A piece of knowledge will be useful for human need if someone could use it to adjust what they need. Using emotional aspects in life is like adding some pepper to the soup. That is what makes the soup - soup. However, there is the measurement point, if it could be a pinch of it, then there should be a pinch of it. Too much will spoil the broth.

Jane Tompkins also disagreed on Messer-Davidow's statement, that human position as a critic changes as one changes epistemology. Messer-Davidow said that "knowledge is an abstract representation of an objective existence, or in other words, knowledge is a function of situation and perspective." Tompkins highlighted that knowledge is "perspectival, language-based, culturally constructed." In fact she said, "People do not change something that is believed to be true." She noted how the only thing that is changed is "how people get knowledge (p.65)."

People, in fact, learn from what they have. Preceding civilizations were full of trustworthy scholars who had created masterpieces on their own, believing that human beings were structurally blessed their dignity and power of thoughts. They created many types of fundamental knowledge believed to be true.

The following generations continue to run their lives believing to the presented facts. Each person gains the knowledge individually in the different place and different time, under different circumstances. Each learning process leaves a memory to the person who learns it. Each has different meaning although multiple persons read the same book. This is what possibly "changes" the knowledge. It is not the knowledge that is changed, but the concept on how each individual learns it. It results in how one's perception, understanding, and the way one sees something differ from others'.

If culture had put strong belief where to start, will that be necessary for someone to have another thinking and learning process. In fact, some elements of culture share different vision about authenticity of a material. Klinghoffer said that authenticity is a concept of originality. There is an essence of learning from "experience outside the traditional (p. 84)." For pop music and fashion, it means creating new shape, new song. One may use any source, any ideas, originally derived from his or her learning process. One may use his or her fantasy, as the elements of thoughts to create something new. Because it is new and original, the society would accept it. It is the master of the music that creates a product.

On the other hand, Klinghoffer mentioned that authentic for art and cooking means that the original type is something that is proven in the past. People from the other era somewhere behind us created that concoction, and recent society acknowledges it.

So, what is original? Who determines the tree of origin?

In fact, minds create things and words deliver thoughts to serve other people, after we serve our own satisfaction in mastering a piece of knowledge. It is like writing a song or poetry. I did like strumming on my guitar and walking along on the beach sometimes before I landed a job in the city a couple of months ago. Then one drip of my thought just suddenly flew over my head and moves my hand. The music played mystifyingly (for me) as I write the song from the heart. Then I went home. I found my little brother was crying after he broke his baseball bat. I took him to the porch and sang the song for him. It didn't work perfectly but he stopped crying and start humming a piece of the melody.

That is how I felt that this piece of knowledge could mean something to other people, if we know how to use it. That will make the knowledge worth learning.

If a writer brings a personal approach to gain the authenticity…