Saturday, November 15, 2008

"Transcendentalist vs. Puritan"

I found this video on youtube of some english class project a bunch of kids put together called, "Transcendentalist vs. Puritan."  I thought it was actually a very good portrayal of what it really means to be a transcendentalist because it compares it to an opposite group of people who we studied earlier in the year; the Puritans.
In the video a transcendentalist is sitting in the mountains looking out at nature and talking to a bunny, I think, when a Puritan shows up immediately starts screaming nonsense about hell and church.  It is almost a showdown of completely opposite views, and of course we have studied the faults with Puritan belief, we have yet to think about the faults of transcendentalism.  I am sure to many people their beliefs of nature being all powerful, and valuing intuition of experience are just as crazy as the Puritan beliefs that if someone decides to dance they are immediately condemned to hell.  We have only just started this unit of transcendentalism, so as of now I can not truthfully say any faults of a view that I hardly know, but I think it is a very important thing to keep note of as we continue to study this elaborate belief.

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