Reflect means grasping the totality of a situation, especially our own role in producing it

 

 

How does a work of art make you feel?
Do you feel recognized by it? Does it address what is best in you? Does it make you feel human? Or does it make you restless? Does it inflame your ego? Does it reinforce stereotypes? Does it make you compare yourself to a standard you didn't think you cared about? Does it divide or heal?

How much time do you spend (hours per week) watching television, on the internet, listening to music, on the phone?

How actively do you participate in culture?
Do you do it for pleasure, stimulation, escapism? Do you question the effect on you and society? Do you try to understand the purpose and motive of the piece? Do you seek out the good, true and beautiful?

What would it take to brighten, strengthen, refine, or form a single living spirit?
“Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, —sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is—we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, —that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.” John Ruskin