Sunday, July 06, 2008

Humanities and Humania

Dear Marists,

In my first post, I thought it fit that I should define many of the terms found on this blog. Note: my definitions are not the official ones, but those as endorsed by the humanities department. So, after having gone through all those lessons on questioning reliability of sources, please have some sense to check out whether everything mentioned here can be trusted.

But do remember, whatever we say, has to be the truth. And whoever tells you otherwise, has to be lying.

Ok, let’s go into the subject proper. Have you ever wondered what the word “humanities” actually means? According to wikipedia, “the humanities are academic disciplines which study the human condition, using methods that are largely analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences.” And if you actually trust all content from wikipedia, then my next question is, what on earth is it talking about?

Since wikipedia is sometimes lacking in reliability and sometimes incomprehensible, I suggest you believe my easy to understand definition: Humanities is the process of making all homosapiens (note: men AND women) human. In other words, we, your humanities teachers are responsible for making you HUMAN. Otherwise, you will be turned into some formulae-chanting robot, devoid of emotions and empathy for other humans. Hence, the next time you see your History, Geography or Social Studies teacher, we hope you will be infused with a sense of overwhelming gratitude for us.

Next, let’s discuss the blog name “humania”. If some are you are conscientious enough, you will research and find that the term “humania” does not exist in any dictionary. In other words, it is not a universally recognised word as of now. But who is to know? If our blog becomes hugely popular, the people up in Oxford may just give us a line in their dictionary. So what then is Humania? It is a combination of “human” and “mania.” This means that in every human being, your humanities teachers included, is a trace of mania (ie madness). Note that the level of mania is higher in some than others. Hence, my advice to all Marists out there to behave like good little boys lest something disturbs the mania trapped deep inside your humanities teacher and your well-being be threatened.

Oh, are you still reading? Congratulations for progressing so far. I think I have actually run out of irrelevant stuff to blog about and hence, I hope you shall now ignore all I have written above and move on to the other posts to engage your intellectual being.

And if you think our blog is worth some notice, we humbly ask of you to link us from your own blogs.

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