Week 7 Day 1: Choices

This time around, I'll be tackling the idea of choice.  Because in our reading this week, we find that to our author, choice can only be the right choice if the choice is to not follow the herd.  And I for one, find this highly illogical. And to demonstrate this, I will describe to you a game I recently played that is entirely based on choice, called The Stanley Parable.  Honestly, if you want to have some laughs and some serious thought on the nature of free will and the choices we make, go ahead and get this game.  The Stanley Parable focuses on a man named Stanley, who goes to work one day and suddenly realizes that all of his coworkers are gone.  He goes out of his office to try and find out what happened.  In this game, the player is offered many choices, and each of these leads to a different ending.  For example the first choice you are offered is to follow the voice of the Narrator or not.  When Stanley reaches a room with two doors, he is told to take the one on the left.  But you as a player can easily take the one on the right.  Now, say for instance we take the ideals of Nietsche and do not follow the herd, or rather what the Narrator wants.  If we take the path on the right, we lead ourselves to more endings, some good, some bad, and some silly.  And we gain and learn from these endings.  However, if we decide to vehemently follow the Narrator, we find ourselves being led to what the Narrator describes as pure happiness for Stanley: true freedom.  He disables a mind control machine that was making him work tirelessly and never to question his surroundings, and leaves the office into the great wide world.  So, why is this path the wrong one?  In Neitsche's eyes, this path is the path of the herd, the one that everyone follows blindly.  But if someone were to choose that path after examination, what then makes that so bad?  In my eyes, it doesn't.  To me, the point isn't that everyone has taken that path, but rather that I find it is the path worth taking.  And no one can claim that I am wrong in thinking that.

EX Class Week 4 Day 2: Homework in Class

Wednesday's class was nothing short of fast paced.  I felt like the class was whizzing by, and I had to hold on or I was going to be lost in the constant stream of thought.  While this isn't neccessarily a bad thing, it made me feel as others in the room probably felt; I felt like I had more to say.  We started with some of the questions, which really felt like I had to only choose one to talk about, and if no one else talked about that topic, then my notes would be useless.  However, we did end up touching on my topic of choice; innocence.  I felt some connection between the reading for the class and the reading I did for my own presentation.  With the topic of innocence, there are so many questions; but the one posed to us was if at any point in our lives we as a person were innocent.  Looking at it from a strictly rational standpoint, I found myself saying, "Yeah, when we're born we're innocent. There isn't something inherent within us that causes our innocence to be destroyed."  And I yet I forgot that in our reading it talked about the fact that the Original Sin written about in the Bible negates that very innocence, and the fact of our existence and knowledge that is given to us from birth is a sin in the eyes of a church.  And even in masses at churches during part of the prayers the church mentions the fact that they are not worthy of praising god, and they have baptisms to help clean their parishioners of their original sin.  So then should we consider them innocent?  And of course this has implications about what happens in the court room.  Should the jury be made aware that they themselves might be guilty of the same level, if not a higher level, of crime than the man on trial?  Can they be an effective jury with their innocence taken from them?  Would we even want a jury of innocent men?  Furthermore, is innocence even possible?  Should we define innocence based on having our "Original Sin" and have everything we do after that be against our innocence?  So many questions, not enough class time.