Romantic

I agree mostly with Romanticism. While reason is very important and helpful, I believe it sells people short because it ignores emotion. If we live simply off of reason alone, life wouldn’t be very interesting. However, Romanticism is not reliant on reason but emotion.

Learning about romanticism and the enlightenment has made me realize that our culture today is seemingly split. It is not clear to me which way the population lies (rather romanticism or enlightenment) rather we have a strong mix of both.

The most interesting thing that I took away from this class was the debate on morals. I was specifically interested in the idea that doing something good, but in your own self-interest, isn’t moral. I find this very interesting because I am unsure if to agree with it or not. I understand how acting in self interest shouldn’t be credited, however it is still far better than acting against your self-interest in an immoral way.

Youtube algorithm uniting people unexpectedly

I came across this song randomly one evening. It caught my attention for some reason. Not because it’s a Japanese song in an American 90’s rock-n-roll playlist. It’s the grooves and the way the music feel. It was just pleasantly pleasing. I could close my eyes and just listen to the song. When I went to read the comment I saw that there are hundreds of people who were experiencing the same thing I was experiencing. A random YouTube recommendation of some 1980’s Japanese music. Like other commenters, I had no idea what this song was about. More than half of the song is in Japanese with some occasional English phases like “Im Sorry” “Don’t Hurry”. From the Rhythm of music I felt this sense of urgency. Suddenly the singer began repeatedly sing this English phrase,

“I’m just playing games
I know that’s plastic love
Dance to the plastic beat
Another morning comes”

then the song end. Listening to this song for the second time gave me all kind of mixed emotions. The music is pleasing and relaxing. But at the same time it’s creating this sense of urgency contrasted with a sudden shout of “Don’t Hurry”. The language barrier made me curious of what she is saying. but at the same time I felt like I understood what she was saying. At that point I just gave and said to myself “it doesn’t matter that the song is about, it feel relatable and I enjoy it.”

Schiller’s ideas made me think about this song. A random 1980’s Japanese song uniting people from across the world. It one of those thing that’s just pleasing and we don’t have to know what it’s about to enjoy it.