1500 word history essay

I need this essay done by tomorrow night and you can choose what theme is easier and better suited for you. If any questions please contact.

Think about the Principal Themes of our course. (click on the link) In many ways the weekly assigned readings have illustrated these themes. How? That question is at the heart of this part of the Final Examination. Confining yourself to period from 1800 to 1945, (1) choose two of our principal themes, (2) define these two themes in your own words, and (3) then show specifically where these themes appear in the history we’ve examined for this course. That is, what events or persons or series of events illustrate these themes?

Part three to this question is the most important part since it will reveal how well you have read the reading assignments. For each theme, taken separately, give and discuss two historical examples. (Write at minimum 1,500 words: I will not count the question or footnotes as part of this minimum word count.)

Which is to say — prove beyond a doubt that you’ve read this material, that you command it, and can use it effectively in your essay.

Good luck.

In case link don’t open this is whats inside the link

Entering the history of Western Civilization can be like walking in a pathless wood. You enter it hopefully, eagerly, maybe even excitedly. But soon the path behind you disappears, the trees are taller, denser, and they all look the same. What path should you take and where are you headed?

Themes are like paths that keep a person from feeling lost. Like a path in a wood, themes lead to places of rest and reflection, and they reassure the traveler that history is more than a pathless wood at sunset.

For our purposes, let’s define a theme as a recurring idea or objective.

So what are the ‘paths’ — the principal themes that will help a student navigate the history of Western Civilization from about 1500 onward?

Here are a few to help you navigate the history we’ll be looking at in our course:

Primitivism / Civilization

Primitivism is the tendency to believe that primitive or simpler, less civilized customs and societies are inherently better than those to be found in “civilization.” If you’ve ever wanted to “get back to nature” or to return to some simpler “DIY” mode of existence on the assumption that such simpler or older ways are better, you know what primitivism is. In contrast to this theme is that of “civilization” and the belief that civilization is inherently better than earlier, non-civilized modes of existence. That is, complexity is good.

Emancipation / Captivity

Emancipation is visible everywhere today — in the Black Lives Matter movement, the “Me Too” movement, and in our founding document as a nation (“we hold these truth to be self-evident….”) This theme is the belief that the goal of life, of societies and cultures, is the achievement of greater and greater freedom. It assumes that we are all bound in a many, often unconscious ways: are captives. (Captivity is a keystone of almost all great Rock Songs: test this claim.) Though cultures often define differently what freedom means, the theme of emancipation claims that the aim of civilization is greater freedom and (usually) for all.

Individualism

Individualism is the doctrine that the individual, rather than a group, association, or society, is the source of meaning and value. As such, anything that promotes the interests of the individual over that of the group is “progress.” Individual rights outrank the rights of the group. Again, in our society, where we are asked to “become all that we can be,” where we post selfies and pursue self-realization and re-invent ourselves for the spectacle of it, this theme is strong. The political face of individualism is libertarianism.

Secularism

Secularism is the belief that religion should not play the dominant role in determing government policy, educational policy, or who or who should not be qualified for public office. A secular society is one where religious tests cannot be used to disqualify a candidate. If you agree with this last proposition, you are in some degree a secularist. Such a belief may not seem radical in 2018, but we will soon read about a Europe that was plunged into religious warfare over precisely this question of the state and religion. For ‘secularism,’ read ‘worldliness’ or the ‘nonreligious.’

Self-Consciousness

Self-consiousness as a theme and process of modernity appears in our society’s concern with sensitivity training, in the recent and growing movement of Self-Awareness, in our national obsession with our feelings and fantasies and the dark places of the heart. A sign of this theme is the reflection that whereas in older stories people ran about and killed and slew and conquered (think of Odysseus or KIng Arthur’s Knights), modern (more self-conscious) novels place modern man in a chair, lost in thought. And then writing down what he thinks and fear.

Specialism

Specialism or specialization is modernity’s tendency to squeeze all of us in niche occupations, highly specialized and requiring years of training. Specialism is the process of concentrating on and becoming expert in a particular subject or skill with a concomitant loss of a wider or more general understanding of an occupation or a field of learning. Humanity started by being jacks of all trade — hunting and gathering and knitting and herding. Now we’ve become cogs in an infinitely complex machine in which we make our living by being masters of ever-smaller areas of expertise. No one is just a doctor: they are specialists of an organ or a system. No lawyer is master of the Law. Rather, she specializes in family law, sport’s law, the law of copyrights or intellectural property.

Abstraction

This theme is the tendency in modern life to live a mediated existence, at several removes from direct experience, whether that experience is warfare (World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto) or crime or even sex. We live “abstracted” or removed fromwhat earlier humanity would have considered foundational realities — such as the weather, climate, hunger, and extreme heat and cold. Some believe that this process of abstraction and insulation has led to modern man’s sense of alienation, famously documented by such modernist authors as Camus, Beckett, and Kafka.

Keep an eye on these principal themes as we move through the history ahead.

Finally, remember that our history is more than these themes.

We can organize the history we’re about to explore by keeping in mind the 4 Revolutions that occur in the modern period we’ll be exploring. These revolutions are the —

Religious

Monarchical

Liberal

Social

The aims and passions of these revolutions still govern our minds and behavior today. But don’t take that claim on faith. Let’s learn the history of the West and so test this claim along with the themes I’ve listed.