Please engage with each discussion post with 75 words each. Totaling of 300 word

Please engage with each discussion post with 75 words each. Totaling of 300 word for 4 discussion posts. Be engaging, analytical, responsive, conversational. Please number each response according to the posts I have provided.
READ THE POEM FIRST.
MUTABILITY by Percy Shelley, 1816
I.
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:—
II.
Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.
III.
We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:—
IV.
It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
1. The main point of this poem is that people and society are ever-changing. We are able to wake up every day as a new person if we choose to do so and we don’t have to be the person we previously were. We are constantly stressed from the daily struggles of life and these thoughts are able to taint our whole day and much more if we allow such thoughts to take control, as stated, “We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day”. More importantly, Shelly emphasizes the fact that individuals in society are not identical and that we all have different paths to take in life.
The meaning of “Mutability” is the ability to change and adapt to situations that have come about. As life and circumstances around every one of us change, we must change along with it, and it is the inevitable change that Shelly is trying to portray in his poem. The only true constant in life is that there is no constant, everything is always changing, and the day that one had today is not going to be the exact as the day before. He also verbalizes that everyone will come to the same conclusion, death, at the end of the day, the one thing we have in common with every other being on earth is that we will all face death.
This poem does not resonate with the arguments about the Enlightenment, in regard to Kant and Pinker. These two thinkers, essentially, both believe in the notion of reason and consistency in the world. They believe in having an answer and a reason for which an event has occurred, however, Shelly is saying the opposite of never knowing what is to come next in an individual’s life. The unknown is what is truly constant in our lives and cannot be planned out to fit one’s criteria.
2. The main point of the poem Mutability, written by Percy Shelly, is that the only constant in life is change. The meaning of mutability can be seen as the ability to change and conform to that change. Humans are constantly dealing with the pressures of life and are always trying to navigate the path to the best of their abilities. Shelly paints a beautiful picture by comparing humans to the clouds that light up the sky, but eventually everything gets covered up by the night sky. This can be seen as Shelly expressing the importance of nightfall, it always comes and indicates that a new day is going to be starting soon. Percy Shelley ends her poem by expressing that “Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow” (Shelly, Line 15). No matter the hardships of the day that one goes through, it will all change by the next day because no matter what; change is going to come.
When compared to Kant’s and Pinker’s essays regarding the Enlightenment, the common theme is that the world is always changing. When it comes to the Enlightenment, Kant and Pinker may both agree that as the world changes, individuals must adapt to the change as well. Change is inevitable but the ability to adapt to change is not so easy. Specifically, in regards to Pinker, every person is different in how they view situations. Not everyone will adapt in the same ways and is okay. When it comes to change, Pinker believes that we should all be changing from the ways of our ancestors and find our own inspirations from the world.
When Pinker was writing, which was during the time of the Enlightenment, science was a new phenomenon and was not taken for granted when in the right hands. There were constant changes going on and people were questioning almost everything that they once knew. This helped people change their views on religion, the world, and the people in this world. When Kant speaks about change, he puts emphasis on the notion that man cannot handle change. He strongly believed that only enlightened individuals can handle and take on such change, which is where there is a difference between Kant’s and Pinker’s views on mutability.
3. When I saw mutability, I assumed it was relating to the word, mutant. I looked up the meaning of the word just to be sure. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, Mutability is the capability of change or of being changed in form, quality, or nature. Mutability comes from the Greek word mutabilis.
After reading it the first time, I decided to read the poem again and break it down line by line to further understand what the author is trying to convey. The main point of this poem is the last line which includes the word mutability – nought may endure but Mutability (16). From my perspective the author is stating change is the only lasting or the most endurable thing. The author compared humans to clouds in the way that we are speedy, restless, and yet, beautiful; But just like the clouds, life moves quickly and when we are gone, we’re gone forever and easily forgotten.
The author uses emotions to express the inevitability of mutability. Whether they’re feeling joy or sorrow, the outcome remains the same. This also gives the notion that no storm last forever, simultaneously, all good things must come to an end (Proverbs). Humans are not able to control the concept of change. No two days are ever the same because change is inevitable.
In my opinion it resonates with the Enlightenment era because it sparked the first significant change in humanity to move towards free thinking society. In Pinker’s essay, he mentioned progress as one of four themes in the Enlightenment era. Their idea of progress was to rebuild mankind focusing on man made things such as the governments, laws, schools, markets, and international bodies. According to Pinker, in the enlightenment era, they were committed to progress under the condition of improving humankind for the better.
4. According to Shelley’s “Mutability”, change is the only constant in life-the only thing that never changes. There is no guarantee that “yesterday” will be the same as “morrow,” especially because people are so deeply affected by uncontrollable emotions which shift with time. After all, lives, moods, and experiences are as mutable (changeable) and transitory as clouds on a windy night. Change, as the poem suggests, is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It is changeless and eternal, leaving everyone at the mercy of their ever-changing emotions. This is all evident when he says, “It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free; Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow Nought may endure but Mutability.”
The dictionary definition of “mutability” is “liability or tendency to change”, and throughout the poem, Shelley uses it as defined. He uses the word to describe us, as people, and how our thoughts and emotions are “mutable” and often change depending on a multitude of situations. The speaker argues that people’s emotions, personalities, and experiences change unpredictably from moment to moment. A speaker describes people as “clouds” that change shape with the wind, or as “lyres” (or harps) that play different tunes in response to breezes. The speaker points out that the state of one day’s “laughter” can easily transform into the state of the next day’s “weeping.”
I believe that the poem, as a whole, has some resonance with the Enlightenment. One way in which it does that is beautifully describing how ever-changing the human mind is, constantly creating new thoughts and emotions. This resonates with the Enlightenment because the Enlightenment itself represents one of the greatest and most dramatic changes in the way people think and feel about the majority of the aspects of life.