Existentialism, part 2

So, I was on vacation in PA last week, but on the way to the airport I listened to more of that CD set on Existentialism. I had to shut it off at some point. Not because I was at the airport, but because of the outrageous claims made on the CD!

"How do we know that we are not alone in the world and the rest of the people are just robots or our imagination?" was the topic that caused the shutting off of the CD player. He claimed that Sartre had a solution to this question. I was intrigued and moved closer to the CD player, even though the sound was coming out of all of the speakers around me, and that one shouldn't really move towards a CD player while tooling down the highway at 65 mph in traffic. The proof, he claimed that Sartre said, was that we react to people as if they were real. That was it. If people weren't real, thinking beings we would react to them as we do trees. Wow... I was blown away. This was the pinnacle of Existentialist philosophy that I dedicated twelve hours of my life listening to CDs to get to? Wow.

There are so many things wrong with that statement by the speaker that claimed he was stating something Sartre said that I just had to turn off the CD player. Sure, there had been so many things in the past that caused me to turn it off as well, but this time, I also took all of the CDs out of the changer and packed them away forever. Other claims of "The object isn't the word, but these are scissors" and "There might be an objective level to the world, but Existentialism says that there isn't, the words are the reality" were definitely temporary show stoppers, but this one...

Well, I'll leave you to ponder the problems with this one for now. I'm late for dinner. ;) I will post my understanding of the statement and my view of some of its problems in part 3.

The Edward

Existentialism, part 1

Well, I bought into this courseware on CD thing. I now have over a hundred hours of CDs/DVDs of various college courses from which to learn. I started with the Existentialism on CD series back in December. 12 hours later, I am almost done with this class - I only listen in the car and I do not drive much.

I found I disagreed with the professor on his interpretations of various philosophers' writings. He would state things like "Camus says that real world doesn't matter since it is absurd, but he couldn't have really believed that so it must be a hint at something else." Kind of like he really knows all of the dates and all of the authors, but since he really isn't an Existentialist, he maps the authors to a more modern acceptable point of view. All of this has made it hard to write over the past month.

See, I always thought I was an Existentialist, so I thought I understood the authors and the movement. But, after hearing this professor, I'm not so sure, I have to think about it some more. My thoughts have been on this philosophy stuff, but I haven't been able to create a coherent set of blog posts about these thoughts. I definitely feel that I have learned a lot from listening to the CDs, since he has brought up many of the points that the original philosophers argued about. I figure I can draw my own conclusions from the original sources.

Emotions are ones point of view on The World. This was the most interesting idea that was presented in the lectures. In thinking about it, I'm not sure I am 100% behind it, but it does lead to some interesting ideas. If one had no emotions, one would just record events without bias. Walking down the street and stepping in dog crap would just be something that happened. With emotions, if one was in a good mood, one would wipe off the dog crap and move on. If one was in a bad mood, one might curse the gods for putting dog crap right there where one was walking. Emotions are a way to experience the world.

But, are emotions a choice? Can one choose to always be happy? What would that mean? It might mean just seeing events as not negative. If one can put oneself in a good mood then all experiences can easily be dealt with. Emotions become the excuse for why one isn't dealing with the situation. "I stepped in dog crap which put me in a bad mood, which is why I yelled at someone later in the day." But it didn't actually cause this. Ones mood is used to determine what one feels about the events. If something one labels bad happens then one can feel that one has a free pass to take it out on others. There is no pass, one needs to take responsibility for all of ones moods and how one deals with everything. There are no excuse in Existentialism.

I'll try to put it all together for future posts. I just wanted to get some of the basic ideas down from the most recent CD.

The Edward

Arranged Marriage

Job hunting. When one is looking for a job, what is one looking for? Let's assume it is a long term kind of thing, so one is looking for a career. Even if one isn't looking for a career, one usually ends up with one. You have to be doing something your whole life, so what you are doing can be called your career. But let's focus on a job at a company.

Say you go in for an interview. You have maybe 5 hours of talking with people who work there. You probably have done some research on what other people say it is like to work there, but you are not them. After 5 hours, mostly with them asking you questions to prove that you are worthy to them, they might offer you a job. What will it be like if you accept? You do not know, and you really didn't have the time to find out. It is not like you can work there for a month and compare what it feels like to your current job.

Jobs are like arranged marriages. So, just go back and reread what I wrote and substitute wife (in my case). From my understanding about arranged marriages, one can go interview a group of women. You can talk with them for a bit, ask some questions, then decide if you want to be with one of them for the rest of your life based on this small intersection in time. Everyone talks about their marriages, but how will it be for you? It is not like you can try out your wife for a bit then decide how it feels compared to what you have now. Okay, so I kind of just did what I asked you to reread, but I was just trying to be helpful - though each has different aspects that are funny...

How does one make a life long decision based on such a short interval of time? It seems reasonable that one would look to green pastures and say, "Just let me take a quick romp through those fields. Maybe a quickie just to prove that I did the correct thing. Then, once I have tried it, I will know I have do the right thing, or if not, I will move on to something better for everyone involved." Yet in a job and in a marriage, both are hard to do this within the relationship. You can not test out another company without losing your job, nor can you test out another wife without losing your wife. Seems kind of silly from a certain perspective.

I personally find it very hard to understand how people do it. How do they make long term decisions without all of the facts? I know it is impossible to know all of the facts, which is why I tend to drift. Maybe people believe that they can fix any problem that comes their way? Make themselves believe that they do not need to test other waters to know that every day they are diving into the correct body for them? I do not have that certainty in my life. I question everything, including all of my decisions. Does this mean I can never experience the happiness that a long term commitment can bring? Probably. Doubt about other pastures will always drive me to test them, since there will always probably be a better one just around the corner.

The Edward

In the news

I shed a little tear today after hearing the final of three stories over the past two days that proved something to me. The first was an interview with a person who was on the Human Caused Global Warming Committee, the people who just came out with the big report: The Earth is Screwed Because of Humans. He started the interview by saying the there is no way to reverse the trend, which is what the headlines have been saying since the story broke. He then proceeded to talk about the changes we should make to reverse the global warming trend. He said we get most of our power from coal and it is very polluting, both of which are true. The interviewer then asked about nuclear power, to which he said there was no reason to switch because nuclear generates waste. Interesting. How much waste compared to the waste that coal dumps directly into the air? The host didn't ask, but he should have. I was almost convinced of his claims until he said that about nuclear, so I revisited what else he had said and realized his bias and the bias of the latest report on global warming. Sometimes, I wonder why I listen to the news...

The second story was about the porn teacher. Well, she was a substitute teacher and happened to be in the room when one of the computers started popping up porn images in a 7th grade class. She was found guilty in court of corrupting minors and the news was reporting that the jurors said things like "She should have done more to protect the children from the porn. Maybe throw a coat over the screen." Because of this, she faces up to 50 years in prison. Luckily for her, she will only spend 18 months in jail, according to the story. Luckily for her...

The third story was about the mall shooting in Utah. There happened to be an off duty officer at the mall, and being one of those, he had right to carry a concealed weapon, which he had been doing. The news stated how lucky those people were that there was an officer in the crowd. Nothing about how lucky those people were that someone was there with a concealed weapon, or how if everyone in the mall would have been allowed that same right, there would have only been one death. Luckily there was an officer there...

All three stories saddened me. Made me not to want to go on with this charade. Here were people reporting stories and missing the point of what was really going on, or how these stories combined with other stories, or how there was much contradiction in all of the news. I realized that they didn't think, not about this, nor any of the implications, they just are.

We probably are not destroying the Earth, it is kind of large, almost as large as our egos. And if we were, cutting back on coal would be the best thing we could do in the near term, even though the interviewee claimed it would take thousands of nuclear power plants to meet our needs (he suggest switching to fluorescence lights instead). Quite oblivious to the howling errors he was making.

I was considered a late bloomer and yet by 7th grade, I had seen many pictures of naked people. HBO existed back then as did magazines. 50 years in jail for this, and she didn't do anything wrong. If she should be locked away for this... wow, the human race is screwed.

And that whole gun thing... I'd rather be safe than lucky that someone happened to have the means of stopping a psycho from capping me.

All of this, and people not merging on highways correctly. (I was driving, listning to the radio when all of this happened.) It takes a second to think "Hey, those other cars are probably going 65, maybe 45 isn't the best speed for me to be going when I try to merge unto the highway. Maybe I will push a little on the petal on my right." and yet this simple thought seems to be beyond the average driver. Too many things like this over the past few weeks and I have been too stressed to deal with them, so I needed to blow off some steam.

Is everyone on this planet a frickin idiot?! There, steam blown off. I feel much better now. I'm sure the people I know are not idiots, and I am sure the people that they know are not, etc. Therefore, there are no idiots, we are all just people trying to get along on this crazy world. Expect for those morons who don't know how to accelerate. And those people in the news. And...

The Edward

Pain

I was dining at P.F. Chang's the other day. The waitress had these interesting tattoos around her arm at the elbow. You know, that place where the skin is kind of thin at the inner joint. Ouch. Being the outgoing person I am, or rather the outgoing person I can be with I am in the manic phase of my manic-depression cycle, I asked her if it hurt. She said that it was the worst pain that she had ever felt, but it only lasted a few days and now she will have these cool tattoos for the rest of her life. After I finished shuddering in imagined pain, I thought about her words. And I now believe she was correct.

At the time I thought, "No way. There is no way I would ever suffer just to gain something long term" but I now know that is incorrect. I have spent a lot of time developing certain skills - isn't the process of learning kind of painful? If it were pure joy and ecstasy people would be doing it nonstop. Then there is childbirth. I tried it once, never again for me. Squeeze out just to be slapped around by a doctor, and I do not even like doctors.

Back to childbirth. I image that it must really, really hurt for a woman to give birth. I had never really thought about it before the tat incident mentioned above. Every day, there is at least one woman deciding that she will gladly go through all of that suffering just to end up with something that will last a lifetime: a child. Though, I guess the child grows up and becomes an adult, which is what it is for most of its life, so I'm not quite sure.

Anyway, I am very tired and I believe I am drifting around more than normal, since I still haven't gotten to my point. Pain is something I was always taught as something to be avoided. I now know that is not a path to being truly alive. Pain is a barrier and it is possible that there is something on the other side of that barrier that is worth the temporary pain. Living a life in avoidance of pain also means avoiding something that might only be achievable by passing through pain. I tend to focus on the pain rather than the benefit.

I'm not saying I will go out and seek pain, but what I am saying is that I believe I need to stop focusing on the pain if it is something that I need to do to get to a better place. It still seems kind of odd to me that one must suffer to experience something better, but it seems to be that way in this world.

I really hate pain, but maybe it is my friend... or at least I should treat pain like an old friend with whom I had a falling out and even though we do not talk much any more he still might have something interesting to say so maybe I should listen to his screams.

Good night.

The Edward