Definition of art Essay Example for Free

Definition of art Essay A number of people have asked about the value of addressing aesthetics, the philosophy of art, or the definition of art. The reasoning is that if it is so difficult to define, it must therefor be ultimately subjective, and each person should just determine for herself what it is. Perhaps we all do determine for ourselves the meaning of anything. Because, as in the tree falling in the forest example, the meaning does not exist if it does not exist for me personally. I am allowed to define table or chair any way I wish for myself, but if I hope to communicate with others about tables and chairs, the meaning or definition must be shared. And that shared meaning derives from a combination of (a) acquired meanings from those whom we give credibility and (b) connotations developed from our experiences with tables and chairs. If there were really no way to define art, there would be no way to determine what is art, and art could be anything. Fortunately, art can be defined, although not succinctly in verbal form, as we might define table or chair. We learn the definition indirectly through understanding why works have been labeled art by critics and artists in the past, and directly by understanding the perspectives of those critics and artists. From the standpoint of complete subjectivity, if art can be anything, it is meaningless as a term == art is everything and nothing. There is nothing that is not art, so everything is art. The term art has no shared meaning and has no value in communication, and yet we use it all the time. By what criteria do you determine what is art for yourself? Because it pleases you? Because it pleases your friends, or someone you respect, or most people around you? What criteria constitute pleasing? What does it do to please? From another perspective, other than pragmatic needs, by what criteria do we select a season? Or what material we place in museums? By what criteria do we judge quality? How do we determine good from not good? Whatever criteria we use become our criteria for our aesthetic, which then become, in fact, our definition of our art. It is useful and valid for us to question what those criteria are, to challenge the validity of those criteria, and to constantly explore new criteria to define the art experience. In order to comprehend the options of criteria, the kinds of questions to ask of our criteria, the possible limits of our personal vision, it is worthwhile to explore the explorations of others. Understand that the definition of art and the determination of quality are linked and mutually affected. Alter one and the other is changed. One additional concern is the value in trying to understand how art works have meaning. Once we begin to explore this as artists, our work instantly changes dimension. It moves from the surface to the soul and allows us to refocus on the meaningful.

Phobias Essay -- essays research papers

Phobias Phobias are a very common disorder in the United States these days. The definition for phobia is "an abnormal or morbid fear or aversion" ("Oxford" 655). To be considered a phobia, a fear must cause great distress or interfere with a person’s life in a major way. The word phobia is Greek, therefore, any word that proceeds it should be Greek too. To coin a new phobia name, it is proper and only accepted to follow this rule. The rule has been broken many times in the past, especially by the medical profession. The medical profession is steeped in Latin and many times when forming a name for phobia, they use Latin. There are three kinds of phobias: simple phobia, social phobia, and panic attacks. Simple phobias, also called specific phobias, are fears of a specific thing, such as spiders or being in a closed place. Most simple phobias develop during childhood and eventually disappear. Specific phobia is a marked fear of a specific object or situation. It is a category for any phobias other than agoraphobia and social phobia. The categories of specific phobias are 1. situational phobias such as: fear of elevators, airplanes, enclosed places, public transportation, tunnels, or bridges; 2. fear of the natural environment such as: storms, water, or heights; 3. animal phobias such as: fear of dogs, snakes, insects, or mice; 4. blood-injection-injury phobia such as: fear of seeing blood or an injury, or of receiving an injection. (Wood 520). Social phobias are fears of being in situations where your activities can be watched and judged by others. People with social phobias try to avoid social functions at all costs and find excuses not to go to parties or out on dates. This avoidance is the difference between having a social phobia and simply just being shy. Panic attacks are the third kind of phobia. They can change the quality of a person’s life. Someone with a phobia this bad may be shopping at the supermarket and suddenly experience dizziness and a feeling of being out of control. At that moment, the person experiences a fear of dying, with no safe place to go. When this happens more than once, the person might think they are going crazy. Someone with panic attacks soon won’t leave the house because of fear of a panic attack happening outside the house. Soon, depression s... ...6. Generalization from the original phobic stimulus to stimuli of a similar nature will occur; 7. Noxious experiences which occur under conditions of excessive confinement are more likely to produce phobic reactions; 8. Neutral stimuli which are associated with a noxious experience, may develop motivating properties. This acquired drive is termed the fear drive; 9. Responses (such as avoidance) which reduce the fear drive are reinforced; 10. Phobic reactions can be acquired vicariously (Rachman 31). These theories are used to identify how people obtain phobias and other situations that may occur with phobias. In conclusion, phobias are a big part of many people’s lives these days and a growing medical condition. People do not realize how badly phobias can affect their lives so they don’t receive medical attention. There are no cures for phobias but there are treatments which will help the phobic get over their fear. I personally believe that if people care enough about their lives, they will treat their phobias. Phobias can totally alter your life so if you have any of the symptoms I have listed above, please go and get treatment.

The Meaning of Death in “The Dead” by James Joyce

â€Å"The Dead† is a story written by James Joyce as a part of the collection that was later on entitled as Dubliners. It is the last story that he composed but certainly was one of the first stories on the â€Å"rivalry between the living and the dead. † It is considered to be one of the best written stories and account of Ireland in terms of the city’s geographical, historical, and political details. It is even said that most of the local references are â€Å"painstakingly exact† as that of the original scenarios in an everyday Dublin life (Joyce, 2008).While the title of the story suggests gloomy scenes such as a funeral or a wake ceremony, a first reading of the story would tell us that the story is all about an annual Christmas gathering where friends and old friends meet to catch up with everything that is happening in their lives. However, if we look at the story real deep, we will notice that the story really revolves into the characters of the cou ple Gabriel and Gretta Conroy. Like all the other couples in the said party, Gabriel and Gretta are an epitome of a happy couple.It can be said that the love of Gabriel to Gretta is so great that instead of traveling home from the party, they decided to stay in a hotel because he was afraid that she might be ill due to the weather. Gretta, on one hand, is giving back the love that she receives from Gabriel. This is evident in the couple’s treatment of each other in the Christmas gathering. However, there is something in the party that made Gretta feel strange. This is when she heard the song that reminds him of a boy she once fallen in love with. It was a young boy I used to know, she answered, named Michael Furey. He used to sing that song, The Lass of Aughrim. He was very delicate (Joyce, 2008). † Gretta confessed this while they were in the hotel room that they rented to stay for a night when Gabriel is anticipating a romantic night with his wife. At first he felt re ally jealous. Furthermore, he inquired into the very nature of their relationship. Gretta confessed everything that made Gabriel angry at one moment.He even suspected that the reason why Gretta would want to that one place is because she wanted to see her first love. However, as the narration progresses, which speaks of Michael Furey’s death by reason of Gretta herself, his anger ebbed to the point of it being replaced with an epiphany in relation to love, death, and the past. He then realized that lost loves are the most difficult thing to let go in ones lifetime (Joyce, 2008). So she had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake.It hardly ained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death (Joyce, 2008).This epiphany leads Gabriel to recall and reflect on the speech that he had delivered in the party: his idea that the past is dead and that it should be buries in oblivion because it will just bring memories that would either hurt them or impair their anticipation of the future. In the words of Gabriel, â€Å"There are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Therefore, I will not linger in the past. I will not let any gloomy moralising intrude upon us here tonight (Joyce, 2008).However, he also enunciated his admiration of the past especially of the old values of tradition and love in which he said that â€Å"a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, and kindly humour which belonged to the older day (Joyce, 2008). † Therefore, the idea of death that the story is trying to paint to us is the death of old traditions and values that are still living to those who have experienced such in the past like that of Gretta.The death in the story is the deterioration of values that the Irish are known for that Gabriel mentioned in his speech. However, this is an irony because while he talked about the old values that should be retained, he himself is not doing his part in this endeavor of preserving the old Irish values and tradition. As observed by Ms. Ivors, he has become a West Briton because he prefers to travel to places like France, and Germany instead of seeing the countryside of Ireland. He denounced his own place of birth in exchange for the West and rejected his own native language.The We st, even though, more industrialized than Dublin, is still a land of ghost and a land of unhappy things. The West is a place â€Å"where the ghost of the past have a terrible hold on the living, where tradition leads to bigoted religion and terrorism (Hodgart, 1978). The death can also be attributed to a death of the traditional love that everybody would want to have. In the story, while it is evident that Gabriel loves Gretta, his love for her is limited to that of the physical love. When they were in the hotel, all he can think of was a romantic night with her.Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When the others had gone away, when he and she were in the room in the hotel, then they would be alone together (Joyce, 2008). † However, after Gretta had told him the story of Michael Furey, he felt very small and inadequate. This is for the reason that his love to Gretta is nothing co mpared to that of the love of Furey. After hearing the story, he was quick to realize that his love for her is limited and not the kind of love that she has expected of him.His love is so puny to the love that Michael Furey has given his wife. He cannot in any way give up his life just for his love for Gretta. This further suggests that love died along with the death of Furey and that the love that Gabriel offered to Gretta, cannot be considered love in her standards. The image of death in the story is not the same as what we normally perceive, a wake, a funeral, and grief. But the death is on how the glorious past is buried in everyone’s memory that will for a long time or for a lifetime haunt them.

Largest Metropolitan Areas in the United States

Some of the most populous cities in the United States have held on to those top spots decade after decade. In fact, New York City has been the largest U.S. metropolitan area since the countrys first census in 1790. The other long-time holders of top-three titles are Los Angeles and Chicago. To have a change in the top three, you have to go back to 1980 to have Los Angeles and Chicago trade places, with Chicago holding the number two spot. Then, you have to look back to 1950 to find Los Angeles moving down to number 4 behind Philadelphia and keep heading back to 1940 to have Detroit push Los Angeles down to number five.   The Census Bureaus Criteria The U.S. Census Bureau conducts official census counts every ten years, and regularly releases population estimates for consolidated metropolitan statistical areas (CMSAs), metropolitan statistical  areas, and primary metropolitan areas. CMSAs  are urban areas (such as one or more counties) with a city of more than 50,000 and its surrounding suburbs. The area needs to have a combined population of at least 100,000 (in New England, the total population requirement is 75,000). The suburbs need to be economically and socially integrated with the core city, in most cases by a high level of residents commuting into the core city, and the area needs to have a specific percentage of the urban population or population density. The Census Bureau first started using a definition of a metropolitan area for census work in the tabulation of 1910 and used the minimum of 100,000 or more residents, revising it in 1950 down to 50,000 to take into account the growth of suburbs and their integration with the city they surround. About Metropolitan Areas The 30 largest metropolitan areas in the United States are those urban and suburban areas containing populations of more than 2 million. The top five largest metropolitan areas  are still the five largest in population as represented in the 2010 U.S. Census. This list of the top 30 metropolitan areas spans from New York City to Milwaukee; youll note that many of the largest consolidated metros in New England stretch through multiple states. Several others across the country span borders as well; for example, Kansas City, Kansas stretches over into Missouri.  In another example, St. Paul and Minneapolis are both completely in Minnesota, but there are people residing right across the border in Wisconsin who are considered an integrated part of the metropolitan statistical area of Minnesotas Twin Cities. The data here represents the estimates from July 2016; a new census will take place in 2020. The 30 Biggest U.S. Metropolitan Areas from Largest to Smallest   1. New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA 23,689,255 2. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA 18,688,022 3. Chicago-Naperville, IL-IN-WI 9,882,634 4. Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA 9,665,892 5. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA 8,751,807 6. Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT 8,176,376 7. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK 7,673,305 8. Philadelphia-Reading-Camden, PA-NJ-DE-MD 7,179,357 9. Houston-The Woodlands, TX 6,972,374 10. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Port St. Lucie, FL 6,723,472 11. Atlanta-Athens-Clarke County-Sandy Springs, GA 6,451,262 12. Detroit-Warren-Ann Arbor, MI 5,318,653 13. Seattle-Tacoma, WA 4,684,516 14. Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI 3,894,820 15. Cleveland-Akron-Canton, OH 3,483,311 16. Denver-Aurora, CO 3,470,235 17. Orlando-Deltona-Daytona Beach, FL 3,202,927 18. Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA 3,160,488 19. St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL 2,911,769 20. Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV 2,635,228 21. Charlotte-Concord, NC-SC 2,632,249 22. Sacramento-Roseville, CA 2,567,451 23. Salt Lake City-Provo-Orem, UT 2,514,748 24. Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS 2,446,396 25. Columbus-Marion-Zanesville, OH 2,443,402 26. Las Vegas-Henderson, NV-AZ 2,404,336 27. Indianapolis-Carmel-Muncie, IN 2,386,199 28. Cincinnati-Wilmington-Maysville, OH-KY-IN 2,224,231 29. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC 2,156,253 30. Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha, WI 2,043,274