I had a great time last night speaking to the North Wake Homeschool Honor Society. They all stayed awake! ;-) And the questions were so good. We talked about the novel Land Run but also about creativity in general.
There is a scene in the novel when one of the older characters asks a younger character - 'is man a machine or a creature?'. The answer is 'creature'.
Much hinges on this understanding because the message of society is 'machine' and that is contrary to the reality. So we talked some about this and other places it might be appropriate to adopt counter-cultural views today. We also discussed the importance of the arts in the development of our creativity. Much of the important matters of life are managed by 'flying by the seat of our pants'...so it is good to get hold of an understanding of who we are as people and where we stand - literature, history, philosophy, and the arts all help us to do this.
This got me thinking today about some very strong themes in Land Run.
Racism
Cultural clashes
Multi-Cultural community
Infidelity
Teenage pregnancy
Aging
Corporate Statism
Greed
Power
Faith
Research that provided descriptiveness:
Oklahoma history
American Indian history (Seminole and Creek)
Construction (home developments)
Banking
Eminent domain policy
Military
Experience that provided descriptiveness:
Having lived in the region (understanding their specific challenges)
44 years of looking at people ;-)
Volunteer work in a nursing home
"The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me." - Lev. 25:23
You bring up a question I have asked often. How can you tell the difference between a machine and a living thing? The interesting thing is that we, in the image of God, can identify living things versus machines pretty easily, but we can't explain it very well. (Here's another hard question: Will we ever be able to build a machine that can tell the difference between a machine and a living thing?))
ReplyDelete