I was reading a fellow student's blog on the intellectual revolution and she posed a question about how intelligent it would be to compare our own technological explosion to the renaissance.  It's sort of interesting to think about.  To many of us now to live without computers and television and all of our little convinces would seem overly simplistic and in some cases barbaric.  I'm sure it was feelings like that that spawned the great awakening in the minds of early philosophers.  It's interesting to see that at some point, the human mind started to grasp exactly what it was we could accomplish, and look how much we've done!  Form morals, to politics and religion, to the way society interacts, we've completely overhauled our lives in the last 600 years.  

I thought it was neat how the author used the words "new human identity" to describe the thought process that went into the shifting of mass thought.  The idea of replacing the old line of thinking with a new, updated, better way of thinking truly pleases me, i feel like our own society has undergone it's own sort of shift in the human identity with the election of an african american president, and with approving the rights to gay marriage.  (i understand that the right to gay marriage was taken away, but i feel like at this point, it is a matter of months before prop 8 is overturned and homosexuals are given back their rights, i'm optimistic.  it is almost ridiculous to think that at this point in our society people are just going to lay back and accept being denied their basic rights. this is why i compare the two.)   

ANYWAY, i thoroughly enjoyed reading about the intellectual change that took place in society, i hope that human beings at as a whole wont stop evolving in this manner.  

The Renaissance-weekly post

I thoroughly enjoy the idea of modern artists trying to improve upon the past.  It seems that in art, there is the original, and the basic, and the first, and all we can do as artists is try and make the past into something different, but still relevant.  In art classes i always wondered who it was that discovered various mediums for art.  Take the oil paintings of flemmish artists, it was adopted by the italians and is still used today.  I'm still fascinated by the fact the the society we have now, art, religion, politics, are all affected by the past, and the foundation that was laid thousands of years ago. 

The experimentation with depth and lines and all the things that makes paintings beautiful also excites me.  in the art classes i've taken, they explained all the methods, i had no idea that the methods themselves were developed by italians so long ago.  

I was very pleased to read about how the artistic revolution took place.