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About Me and this Blog

  My name is Joel Nelson. I like writing, designing games, and thinking about ways to improve the world. I live in Oregon and Alaska currently, and hobbies other than playing and designing games have been eclipsed by current events. I am currently a Junior at Grand Canyon University working on my English major. This blog, “Wisdom of the World,” was created to explore the wisdom of great authors from around the world. While it is a school project, I wanted to use this opportunity to find and express actual helpful things about living, useful information about the nature of humanity for myself and others to find. The project was interesting enough that I intend to continue it later on, if I can find the time. Over the course of the 20 th century, more and more easy means of communication developed around the world. Mass media, ranging from radio to television to the internet, blurred the boundaries between nationalities and countries and made it easier and easier to get news and commu
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Yehuda Amichai - Wisdom among Clashing Peoples

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  Yehuda Amichai was a 20 th century Jewish poet who was of the first generation of Israelis to write in the revived Hebrew language. Living in Israel, the hostility between Jews and the Islamic Arabs in the areas surrounding Jerusalem were a prominent part of Amichai’s life. However, Amichai didn’t take sides in a traditional way. Instead, many of Amichai’s poems, including specifically his An Arab Shepherd is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion and his Jerusalem , emphasize this theme: that empathy between these clashing cultures can lead to a mutual understanding of the humanity on both sides.             In An Arab Shepherd is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion , this is the most prominent theme of the work. This first poem is about an Arab and a Jew on opposing sides of a mountain, and by drawing parallels between the struggles of the two it shows how they are both human, how they both are just trying to live, regardless of the conflicts between cultures. As Amichai puts i
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Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz - Wisdom of an Urbanizing World

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  The world has changed so much over the last few centuries that if a person from even the 1800s were to suddenly be transported to the present, they would have almost no idea what they were looking at. There were a few advantages to living life in modern cities in the 1900s, but there were many who described these urban jungles as vile places that would drive people crazy. Octavio Paz , in his poem I Speak of the City , and Pablo Neruda, in his poem Walking Around , both explored this theme of how these modern cities are filled with terrible conditions that can lead people to despair and insanity.           Pablo Neruda’s Walking Around is the more jarring of the two. Neruda describes with a   manic energy how he’s tired of being a man, how he would love to do insane things like murdering a nun, scaring a notary, or running through the streets with a knife. Surrounding his own madness, Neruda vividly describes the city as a hideous and wretched place, noting things like sulphur-col
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Richard Wright and Chinua Achebe - Wisdom at the Crossroads of Cultures

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  Increasingly, the cultures of different areas come into contact with each other, cross, and even merge. Major examples of this can be found in Africa’s interactions in recent centuries with other spreading societies, both in how Europeans influenced Africa and in how many Africans ended up oppressed and enslaved in America. Richard Wright  and Chinua Achebe   are two writers who explored the topics of racial and cultural clashing in America and Africa. Two of their stories, Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost a Man and Achebe’s Chike’s School Days , both explore the theme that prejudice between cultures leads to conflict in youths. The Man Who Was Almost a Man examines this theme directly, following a young African American man named Dave whose inner conflict between his society’s view of blacks and his own need to feel like a man leads him to getting a hold of a gun. His motives are the most clear when he first feels the sense of power his gun gives him. “Could kill a man with a gun
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Albert Camus’s The Guest – Wisdom of Conflicting Cultures

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  Albert Camus  was a Nobel Prize winner for his literary prowess. His story The Guest is a complex work of art that deeply explores a wide range of topics in a short time. The story tells a tale of a schoolteacher, Daru, who is commanded to transport an Arab prisoner to the neighboring town’s police station. One of the most universally applicable themes of this story is that indecision is unwise in situations of conflict. Daru must choose either to side with the French by transporting the prisoner or to sympathize with the Algerian natives by freeing him. Despite Daru’s attempts at neutrality, the Arab prisoner ultimately ends up on the road to prison and Daru ends up stranded without allies due to his indecision. “You handed over our brother. You will pay for this,” is written on his chalkboard at the end, showing that regardless of his wishes he was viewed as having made a decision. A subplot of the Marvel movie Iron Man 3 depicts a similar case of indecision. For most of the m
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Confucius’ Analects – Wisdom from Ancient China

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Confucius is one of the most renowned figures in history, revered by many as a man of exceptional wisdom. His Analects , a compilation of his wisdom and teachings, demonstrate the thoughts of a man who believed that analyzing the world around him could lead to a wiser, better life. One overarching theme of Confucius’s collective work is this: that people ought to search for wisdom and try to act wisely, in order to live their lives better. Passing Confucius’s wisdom forward through time was the goal of  Analects,  and the goal of Confucius himself as he taught his pupils. It is summarized well in 8.13 of the  Analects , one translation of which reads: “Be of unwavering good faith and love learning. Be steadfast unto death in pursuit of the good Tao (way of life).” Although a life cannot be entirely composed of wisdom, it makes sense to seek it, as wisdom is fundamentally about acting in ways that will make your own life better.              I have not interacted in many things in mod
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