week 10 blog 2

              The discussion in class yesterday really hit a nerve for me.  The topic of existential frustration hit hard for me because I feel like I am experiencing it firsthand right now.  For a long time now, I haven’t really been able to figure out what makes my life meaningful.  I don’t have a really well defined sense of who I am, and the more I try to figure it out, the more lost I become.   It’s a struggle I face every day.  Who am i?  Why am I here?  What is my life’s meaning?  What if I never find it? What then? Will I just fade away into nothingness and a deep depression?  I’m honestly scared of what happens after college.  I feel like I’m stuck in the existential vacuum.  For a while I was really passionate about music, but that door shut right as I was getting rolling on making it my life.  Ever since then, I feel like life is pointless and hopeless.  I lack a true, driving passion that makes life worthwhile.  And in the absence of this passion, I find only depression and dark thoughts.  And these thoughts scare me.  One of the quotes form Frankl that the group used really hit me like a ton of bricks.  “No instinct tells him what he has to do, and tradition what he ought to do, sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do.”  This quote really reflected what I’ve been going through for a while, and after I read it I had trouble holding back the depression that I carry with me.  But, the idea that it is able to be overcome, keeps me pushing onward.  I am determined, now, to search and find my meaning in life, whether or not it comes to me soon, I know that it’s out there.  

week 10 blog 1

Unamuno had some very interesting ideas.  One that really got me thinking, was the idea of living without morals.  Living a life without morals seems like a very strange idea, especially in our society today.  We tend to hold the notion that without definitive and precise morals we would all be horrible people.  But Unamuno had a different opinion on that subject.  My interpretation of his thinking is that even without morals, we are still good at heart, that people are inherently good.  We don’t need to have morals that written in stone to live a good life.  One of the other points I liked was the idea that we should do what we want, that breaking your morals every now and then isn’t all that bad because it’s what our heart desires.  I think this conclusion come from the early point that people are inherently good natured, because if we good at heart, our hearts will be a pretty good guide.  But a pretty point was brought up.  What if the heart desires something that isn’t considered “good” or “correct behavior?” Something like cheating on a significant other.  Is it ok because it’s what our heart desired?  I honestly think this is one of the many gray areas that pop up in world views.  The way I see it is, if you truly desire to do something that breaks your morals, its most likely time to rethink how important your morals are, and to really exam why you hold onto it as a moral.  I’m probably making very little sense but put simply, if you constantly break your morals you should think about why you have morals, and what those morals mean to you.  I like the idea, but I really question if people are truly as good natured as Unamuno made them out to be.  I wish it were true, bad I see so many counter examples daily that I don’t think I can truly get behind this idea.

week 9 blog 1

The underground man really got me thinking.  Especially the table, or “the irrefutable formula for human behavior.”  What if this crazy formula or table was somehow discovered tomorrow?  How would it change the way we live our lives?  If there was a way to predict every action I take, what would that mean?  Would my life simply become irrelevant because I know exactly what would happen to me?  I say no.  In my eyes, having this table doesn’t mean a motherfucking thing.  So what if you can predict my every action from here on out and turn it into some kind of a mathematical formula or equation?  Just because someone can predict everything you are going to do, doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to do it.  I don’t think it means that I somehow lack free will now.  I still get to choose what I do.  You can predict that someone is going to murder someone else.  That doesn’t change the fact that someone murdered someone else.  Being able to tell people what they are going to do can’t really accomplish anything.  If the table truly can predict everything, then it doesn’t matter because it’s going to happen whether or not you can say it’s going to happen.  Being able to say the earth will explode tomorrow doesn’t mean shit.  But thinking about this in the way that I do, does that make me the underground man?  I don’t think so because I’m not saying the table is wrong.  But I don’t think I’m the gentleman or scientist either.  I see this table as a novelty.  Just something that can make you say “oh, ok, that’s cool I guess.” If the table is as it was made out to be, then its existence is kind of pointless, because whether or not you can predict something will happen won’t change that it will happen.  

week 8 blog 2

Talked about eternal recurrence today.  Really got me thinking about how we go through our lives.  How differently would we act if this concept is true?  If we really are stuck in a never-ending cycle, of living our life over and over again, how would we act?  Would we sit around and mope all day because life sucks and we’re doomed to redo it over and over again?  Or would stop and think, “You know what, if I get to do this an infinite number of times, why don’t I just try to have some fun with it?”  Because that’s how I view it.  If I have to do this over and over and over again, why not get out and see the world, experience everything I can, do things that make me happy to be alive?  If we are really stuck in this never-ending, godforsaken loop, why not try to live to the fullest?  I mean if you have to do it for an infinite number of times, use this life as a break from the mundane cycle of infinite lives.  But if you really get down into what Nietzsche is saying, even if it’s not actually that way, why shouldn’t we live like we have an infinite number of lives?  I’ll use video games for example.  Say you were playing Call of Duty, or some game like it.  There’s a few different modes you can play on, some let you do more things than others.  But there are two specific ones I want you to think about.  In one, you have one life.  That’s it. That is all you have.  You die you’re out till the next round.  But there is also a mode where you have infinite lives.  Think about how you would play each mode.  In the mode with one life, you’re obviously going to try and not die as long as possible, you’re going to sneak around focus on NOT DYING.  But in the other mode, you’re more likely going to try and gets kills, as that’s the point of the game.  But compare this to how we would live our lives.  If life was a giant multiplayer online game, where you have infinite lives, we would all just go around trying to have a good time, knowing that if we fuck up, theres always the next life.  I think this is where Nietzsche was going.  If we try to think of life as a never-ending loop with unlimited replays, we can enjoy this life a lot more because we can worry less about the hardships we have in this life.  

week 8 blog 1

Did Nietzsche’s the immoralist on Monday.  There were some interesting concepts.  I really liked the master/slave concept.  It made me think a lot, and evaluate myself.  Am I a slave or a master?  Naturally I want to be the master, but am I?  Is it possible for us know if we are on or the other?  The master seeks power.  But how do we define power?  Is it literal?  Or is it this power something that is inside us, like some kind of hidden social ability? Maybe the power is simply power of influence.  Being able to get what you want, do what you want and go where you want.  If that is what power is, then I see myself as more on the side of the master.  I want to be loved by lots of people.  I want them to think highly of me, to say “Oh look, there’s AJ, he’s a good guy.”  If that is power, and the master strives for power then am I the master?  Or am a slave to an ideal created by the masters to keep me occupied while they gain more power?  Ok that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but if power is only a “bow down before me nave” kind of power then is there really any masters?  Could we say the Queen of England is a master then?  I think so.  I think that leaders of countries, CEOs of Wall Street, and religious or cult leaders are all masters.  They could be compared to shepherds leading the flock.  Being a master is about having the mindset of a master.  No pity for the slave, just the pursuit of power. When I think of the master I imagine Leonardo DiCaprio's character in The Wolf of Wall Street.  To him money is power, and you can never have too much of it.  

week 7 blog 1

Nietzsche was a truly interesting philosopher.  The madman was so fascinating. I love the God is Dead concept.  It makes me wonder about world around us.  It gets way deeper because rather than saying god never existed, he made the claim that we killed him.  Acknowledging that he was here makes it so much more meaningful.  God was here for long time but the need for god is dying.  People are starting to realize that they don’t need god.  They just need faith in themselves and passion.  With these two things people can overcome the absurdity of life.  The need for religion is fading away, and being replaced.  But what with? Without religion how will people know right from wrong? All religions teach people a few basic concepts, don’t be an asshole, and just do you.  And without religion, these principles will still exist.  They won’t just vanish.  There’s lots of people out there who aren’t religious, that are still good people.   People spend a lot of time on religious activities.  Imagine what could be accomplished if that time spent on religious practice, was spent on advancing society.  Inventing things, discovering cures for the worst diseases, and going even farther into space.  With god dead, we could change the world around us, we could be our own gods.  But with the herd mentality still raging through society, people still spend their time worshiping god, even if they don’t really believe what they believe.  If people could stop and look into their consciousness, and break free from the mental slavery that is the herd mentality, they could truly find themselves.  I really think I’m starting understand what existentialism is all about.  It’s about recognizing that life is absurd, meaningless and pointless, but we need to bring meaning into our lives through our passions and only then will our lives not be completely in vain.

week 6 blog 2

Kierkegaard had some profound ideas.  The idea of the three spheres kind of interested me.  I thought the discussion on it was very intriguing.  The aesthetic sphere seems to be the hardest to live in.  A life without self-reflection.  Kierkegaard’s aesthetic existence is about momentary and immediate satisfaction.  So what if self-reflection is satisfying?  Does that person leave the aesthetic and go into the ethical, just because they self-reflected? If the self-reflection causes feelings of guilt then it would be fine to say yes.  But what if there wasn’t any guilt?  What if there is but the person decides to ignore it? Are they still the aesthete? Or are they the ethical?  Another thing that comes to my mind is moving between the spheres.  Can a person freely move between the spheres? Or is there only a linear path?  And how does one know what sphere they exist in, especially the aesthetic.    Another interesting thing that came up, was that Kierkegaard pretty much said that it doesn’t matter which sphere you exist in, as long as you have passion.  But what does this mean?  It would seem to me that each sphere would have a different understanding of passion or subjective truth.  Would the Aesthetic see passion as whatever they can do to make themselves’ happy? Or would it be fighting the despair of our pointless lives?  What about the Ethical?  Would the Ethical’s passion be trying to make the world a better place?  Maybe they would just passionate about sticking to their morals.  And then there’s the religious.  Passion for the religious would be following their religion.  Believing just for the sake of believing.  It kind of seems to me, that Kierkegaard is saying something along the lines of, as long as you have passion, life isn’t completely pointless.