Week 14 Blog 2: Feminism

Wow.  I mean, wow.  That was probably the most heated our discussions have ever been, and to be honest, I'm not sure it was really helpful to the overall discussion.  A couple people were asked to "push buttons", and I think that might have been a mistake.  The topic of female inequality is something that has been talked about many times before, and has many negative stigmas associated with it.  Feminism, to me, brings forth mental images of women on soapboxes, shouting about how the male has always oppressed them and how women should take independence from men.  If you've ever seen the Nicolas Cage version of "Wicker Man" you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that the schoolhouse from that film is exactly what I imagine Feminism.  A classroom full of only girls discussing the singular problem from America, and a pair of twins say in unison, "Phallic symbol, phallic symbol, phallic symbol."  This kind of attitude is more hatred than anything else, and doesn't lead to equality, but more of what I consider to be a rubber band effect.  With the rubber band effect, imagine holding a rubber band taut between two fingers.  If you slowly let the two fingers come together, you can slowly relieve pressure and the two sides become equal.  However, if you let one slide slip off your finger, you get a rapid and violent reaction where the band overshoots one side and shoots off the other side.  It's the same when dealing with any form of inequality.  If you have both sides working in unison to fix the problem, while it may take longer it will in fact succeed with no violence and no pain on either side.  However, if one side calls for radical reform there is a high chance that there will be pain, and even the chance that the side that was mistreated will then go on to mistreat their opponents.  This then leads to further violence, and the proccess repeats.

Week 13 Blog 2: Bad Faith

I honestly loved this talk.  Both the talk on Sunday, and the talk on Wednesday were eye opening to me in completely different ways.  The most profound came from my talk on Sunday during the after school mock classroom talk.

The idea of Bad Faith to me is a re imagining of a very old concept that I have held in high regard.  To be in a state of balance between to different sides of the same coin is an age old idea, and one that bears repeating to younger generations.  From good versus evil, light versus dark, will versus fear (stemming from my having just watched The Green Lantern for the first time), or this idea of being stuck in the past versus being stuck in the future, they all have the same outcome; balance.  There is no pure good just as there is no pure evil.  Rather there is good in the face of evil, and we have to choose which side to pour our efforts into.  This idea brought from Bad Faith, however, is a little different.  Rather than being a pull between both sides of the problem and having to choose a singular side, the idea of going against Bad Faith requires that we stand between the two ideals, like balancing on a tightrope.  With Bad Faith dealing with being stuck in the past and the facts versus being stuck in the future and never having anything happen, we as humans find that facets of our lives can sometimes fall into one of these two categories, but rarely does it fall right between.

A personal example I have of this has to do with my love life.  While not a great success, I feel I have the ideals and mindset of a person ready and willing to commit to a stable relationship with the right person.  And indeed, I believed I had found the right person, and all was good within the world.  However, I found myself in a state of constant stress as I tried everything to make sure this person was happy, while never having much happiness for myself, and at the same time straining the relationship.  I was in a state of Transcendence, or being too far into the future.  I had begun to see failure before it occured, and in trying to avoid it, caused more failure than I was trying to prevent.  And then, when the relationship failed, I entered into the opposite, Facticity.  Within Facticity, I was conviced that I was the ultimate cause of all the problems in our relationship, and that my failures would keep me from having a stable, meaningful relationship anytime in the future.  And that was when I hit rock bottom.  I spent hours thinking to myself about what had happened and how much of a failure I was.  And at the same time, Thad was preparing to deliver the talk that would change all that.  Because when I heard about this idea of Bad Faith, it all clicked.  I was living in such Bad Faith that I had forgotten my reasons for seeking that stable relationship that I craved.  It was so I could have happiness in my life, and provide happiness for others in that moment.  There was no need to think of the future, nor of the past.  Rather, there was only a need to make sure that I was in the moment, doing my best to make life worth living every day.  And this was mirrored in class on Wednesday.  I found myself reasserted, and I feel that if I hold onto this idea of Bad Faith, I can achieve more than I ever would have thought possible.

Week 12 Day 1: Philosophy and Action

Well this week's first class period got a little heated between myself and another student, and it really made me quite defensive about my position on this subject of philosophy and action.  So, for this week's blog, I'm going to dictate my stance on the question of whether or not philosophy is useful in relation to the actions we take in our day to day lives.

Yes.  Totally and unequivocally yes.

Why?  Because without philosophy, our lives go around based on instinct.  During class, the student I was arguing against said that philosophy was not useful because it did absolutely nothing.  He claimed that sitting around and thinking about things, while nice, was not the way to get things done in a meaningful society.  I believe that is completely false.  Saying that action is the only useful part in a society is like saying that the grocery store is the only useful part in the food chain because it's the place that actually sells you the product.  And that's completely wrong.  To say that the whole chain is unimportant because the last person is the person that acts is to claim that the last person did all the work.  If you think that way, you build a society based on being the person to be the final link in that chain.  Imagine if the cure for cancer was found, and instead of the team of scientists getting the credit for the work, only the man who gave the medicine got any of the credit, even if that man had nothing to do with the creation of said medicine.  Similarly, to claim that the reasons behind action have no usefulness because they do not take the action themselves is equally faulty.  I will not claim that action is not important, some might say that without action, philosophy would indeed be useless to us.  But to say that philosophy is useless even if it precipitates action is both a false statement, and a terrible way of viewing the work of people around you.

Week 12 Day 2: Writing from Beyond Self Relization

Well I feel like this post is going to be a bit lacking in that this really isn't what I would like to talk about right now.  What I would like to talk about is the amazing discussion we had today about Sartre's writings and how they deal with "Bad Faith", but I will limit myself to what I need to talk about from last Wednesday's conversation about Sartre.

So, let's talk about responsibility.  Trying to understand Sartre's meaning of responsibility is very difficult, and I believe a portion of the class got a bit sidetracked into responsibility relating to how your actions reflect on the actions of others (I was a large part of that side track, apologies).  But after a lot of discussion, it boils down to something a lot simpler.  Sartre was simply talking about responsibility relating to inaction.  As was brought up in class, he lived in a prisoner of war camp during World War 2, and all he had were his own thoughts.  And his thought process, at least to me, seems pretty straight forward.  "Hey, I hate how so many people aren't fighting in this war against these assholes.  Seriously, why aren't they?  They need to stand up and fight in order to stop these people.  They are affected just like the rest of us.  They have a responsibility to their country, their families, and to themselves to stop this war!".  And I think every one of us has had a moment where we think, "Why don't people stop bad things from happening?"  If there is so much bad going on in the world, why doesn't everybody step in?  Some people might not think it will affect them, or that it isn't their problem, or that it will hurt them if they try to help, or any number of "cop outs".  But honestly this is all bullshit.  I agree with Sartre that if we see a problem, we have a duty to try and stop it.

Week 11 Day 2: Transposition of the Great Arteries and how it makes you see Death

So, for this post, I will be both talking about the concepts discussed in class, as well as something that is near and dear to my heart.  But first; Da-sein.

This idea of Dasein has changed for me over the course of our discussions during class.  At first I thought it was simply the lens through which we see the world around us, shaped by our interactions and our life experiences.  It would explain why someone who comes from a rich British family who has problems feeling loved by members of their own family would see life differently than someone who lives in the slums of Africa and has to prostitute themselves to make enough money to keep the family they care about alive.  So after this class, I remain a bit confused as to what this idea of Da-sein really and truly is.  So I decided to try and sum it up in a sentence.  Or at the very least, a paragraph.

Da-sein is our understanding of the universe.  At the same time, it is who we are.  Our good qualities, our bad qualities, our loves, our hates.  Everything we are is rolled into one singular idea.  Some call it Da-sein, I prefer to call it a soul.

So what happens when that Da-sein is over?  What happens when it is gone?  That's what Death is.  We narrowed down in class that Death is the end of that Da-sein.  It is not the absence of Da-sein, but the absolute end of it.  So when you die, you can never come back.  So this brings up some interesting questions and arguments.  Can you experience Death without being dead? No, you cannot.  Without being dead immediately following Death, it isn't really Death according to our definition.

So now onto the part of the blog that is near and dear to my heart.  As some of you may have heard, I have a dear friend of mine who has a heart condition called Transposition of the Great Arteries, where her heart valves are swapped.  This has tons of medical implications, and has caused her much suffering over the years.  She was told from a young age that she would not live past puberty, and today she is 24 years old.  She is a medical miracle in my book and in the book of every doctor she's ever been to.  If you want to learn more, check this link: http://www.childrenshospital.org/health-topics/conditions/transposition-of-the-great-arteries-tga  (as you can see, it's on a children's hospital website)  How does this relate to our discussion?  Well, as I mentioned in class, this woman has had Death thrown in her face more than anyone I have ever met.  So therefore, she lives within that class of people who look at life as a mere inch from Death, rather than most people who live their lives thinking they are immortal.  I value her opinion because it brings me back to earth, and she helps me re-evaluate who I am on a daily basis.

Week 11 Day 1: beings into Beings

Boy, do I not want to ever read or write the word Being again.  But, for the sake of further existential exploration, I shall endure it for a little longer.  So, onto the examination.

The idea of an understanding of the overall Being by taking a look at the life of a single being within it was something that I strongly agreed with, and was excited by the idea of.  I brought up during class that I considered the journey to understanding Being to be equated to doing a 1000 piece puzzle without looking at the box to see what it will look like.  You need to take a look at each piece, and see how it interacts with every other piece in order to fully and completely understand what Being really is.  The question then became, how does one do this?  How can someone completely understand what Being is, if  they cannot get a clear understanding of every being that exists within it?

The answer, at least to me, is that it cannot be done.

Well actually I should clarify.  I can't be done in that exact way.  However, I believe, that a mathematical idea could help us to understand how this works.  Consider a set of data points that closely resembles a line graphed out on a chart.  In order to find the slope of this graph, we use an approximation to understand what the graph is close to.  In this way, we can understand something about the line without knowing everything about it.  Another example is in Calculus, where we study the effects of infinity on equations without actually having a complete understanding of what infinity is.  In the same way we understand infinity we might be able to understand Being.  By extrapolating the data from what we can gather from testimonials, historical texts, eye witness accounts, and every other piece of historical true evidence on the planet, as well as as much info from the present as we can surmise, there must be enough data included within that to give us an approximation of what Being is.  We may not have enough information to completely understand it, but we can get as close as humanly possible with what little we actually have.