The Stranger.

Mersault is so oddly disconnected from his world, so detached, his philosophy had to start somewhere. I imagine that some off-screen force put him so, some alien involvement to shape his views, some event in his life that forced him to face his mortality, to show him the inevitability of death, of the futility of the emotional connections that invariably exist between people.

Who Is this guy?

Meursault is a very confused man. In circumstances that would normally cripple a normal member of society, he finds himself oddly disconnected, isolated. More than that, however, he expresses no wish to be otherwise, nor does he call specific attention to his detachment, he just expresses it naturally through his actions, thoughts, emotions. Meursault is the prime example of a man trapped in his head. I would connect this specific situation to my favorite movie, Garden State, wherein the main character also gets a short, punctuated call regarding the death of his mother. He remains stoic and composed through the funeral and for much of the movie, kept in his detachment by lithium that he has been proscribed for almost his entire life. This character, Largeman, is similar to Meursault in that he is detached from society, though they differ when it comes to their willingness to rejoin the world. Largeman has a reason for his displacement, and thus he stops taking the inhibiting drugs. Meursault, however, does not seem to call any attention to any outside reason for his detachment.

Doth we liveth in a world that doth hath meaning(eth)?

Do we live in a world that is meaningful and makes sense?

To answer a question like that, you need to first address whether or not meaning is natural, pre-existing, or whether it is created by the individual. Do we find meaning or do we make it for ourselves?

The answer is yes. To both. Natural meaning exists, in that we can find meaning in certain things we do, without necessarily putting it there. Although, at the same time, finding this naturally occuring meaning and incorporating it into our lives, we are then creating meaning in our lives, by making space for it to occupy, allowing it to pervade our everyday regular acts, making our lives more naturally meaningful. In this, we give back to the planetary collection of meaning through what we consider second-hand acts.

So, there's that- finding natural meaning and trying to adopt it into your life creates meaning for yourself. This process likely connects to the movie I <3 Huckabees in that everything is connected under the universal blanket of existence, though perhaps only slightly. While there exists that infinite possibility of finding a natural meaning and then enveloping it, these things are not always connected. People may have to fabricate a meaning for themselves, not relying on any natural influence. Sometimes we may find no meaning flowing naturally, and we derive from ourselves a meaning to either collaborate or compete with someone else's.

Then again, doing that is connecting to other people's meanings, people who find it naturally, and building off of that, as an extension of their natural meaning. So it does all come back around.

So, yes, we do live in a world that is meaningful.

Now, as for anything making sense, that's a different story altogether. For something to be meaningful, it does not necessarily have to make sense as well. I would offer that life quite often doesn't. Think this way; with so many people on earth, and so many of these being people desperate to find their meaning, some purpose in life, meaning runs helter-skelter all across the meaningful plane of existence. So many people searching so many places for their meaning makes the world a very chaotic place for the existentialist; everyone wants to be individual, unique, and they all want a custom tailored meaning. So people often invent a meaning for themselves to fit. My purpose, as I define it, may make very little sense to someone else, who has derived an entirely different meaning to exist.

"Making sense" is an entirely subjective point of view, up to interpretation of the person who examines it all. The world can both make sense and not make sense based on who's eyes it gets seen through. However, knowing this, that the world is chaotic from meaning run amok, that people are desperate for sensical existence, the world makes sense at the same time it doesn't - people all have a common purpose of seeking their existence through the murky nether, making one shining light at the end of a dark, grafitti-ridden tunnel. No, not a tunnel, but rather, a labyrinth. The sensible stream is like a sun over our personal labyrinth, lighting the way through, easing our path to meaning, to validated existence, wherever it awaits us.

Commenty wonts

To arden

Arden, I feel bad, not commenting on this before, egh, I did it in class one day but I guess I never published it.

I genuinely like reading your posts, getting your thoughts, it helps my perception on things to have a variety of peoples' views, and I enjoy yours in particular, so thanks for that.

As for your ideas and such, i enjoy the way you incorporate life stories, it makes this seem like a really cool existential journal/diary thing, making it really resonate, that these aren't just ideas and posts for the sake of a grade.

So, when you say you like to think that our lives are meaningful, what do you mean? To who? For whom?

Please keep up the beautiful work.

Omar-

"I believe human happiness cannot simply be defined in one sentence or by one person. What brings happiness varies from person to person."

I couldn't agree with you more, and that's only the first sentence. I also like how you take such a distinguished stance against simple acceptance of a situation that you shouldn't just try to make the best of a bad situation, you should seek other ways of dealing with it, never accepting it as just being a bad thing. But the thing is, If you accepted them and saw the happy side of things, do they continue to be bad things, or are they now good because you see them differently?

I wonder if even Banach believes himself to be free.

After describing at length the Existentialist's "island of subjectivity" we are to assume that our very nature is to be free, to exist separately from the rest of the world. Now, just as a man sick with Alzheimers, Banach is quick to go back on his words and tell us we aren't really all that free.

Crap.

Thing is, I can see his point. While we are naturally inclined to be mentally free, we all, as humans, attempt to confine our nature to what we are idnetified as. Bear with me, as I myself am not altogether so certain of my interpretation. It appears that Banach is telling us that while mentally we are inclined to be free, we limit ourselves by basing perceptions of ourself on outside influences, i.e. pictures, descriptions, other people. It seems as though Banach is convinced that we have the idea that whatever we are made out to be by other people is how we seem to lean when describing ourselves. Banach tells us that we have a mental tv screen through which we view ourselves, a control booth of sorts where we can make our connections about who we are, develop our realities. SO! It makes sense when he says "the self feels a tension between identifying itself with the mind's eye...and the images that appear as partof our experience" as we engage them in the world.

Woah.

Layman's terms being that we have a mental image of ourself that we percieve through experience, a mentality that often conflicts with the physical image as it interacts with the world. The physical self vs. the mental self, with the mental self quizzically cocking its eye when presented with a conflicting image of the physical.

Here! Examples from the horse's mouth. Banach relates to us how we try to excuse our actions by pretending we are simply bodies that yield "to the forces thatdetermine them". Examples he provides are when we try to excuse ourselves for acting rashly due to a third-party factor that is beyond control. He seems to say we fold when presented with an uncontrollable variable, we give up what our mentality says is natural, claiming it is the fault of some figurative drug.

Perfect segue - 200 points. Banach continues, telling us that regardless of how unchangable the circumstance, it is entirely under our control to manipulate how it affects us. It's all relative, based on perspective. If you decide that your circumstance is one thing, that it affects you one way, then, well, that's what it is, and it can be anything. This is where, as humans, we expand and grow. Learning to control our perspective view will allow us to take value and knowledge from what might otherwise be horrible, dire issues.

In this, life is like a blank puzzle. We need to assemble all the pieces, sure, and it might be difficult with no instructions to go on, no box art to guide us, but in the end, we still get to choose what gets drawn on the final product. Call me silly, but my puzzle is going to be so weird, so random, that people will wonder how I ever put it together. And here is where I can almost agree with Banach, that people are incapable of seeing us make the puzzle, that they can only admire the pretty picture in the end, and never really gather the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it's construction. It takes a truly trained mind to see the cracks where the pieces fit together, how they form a complete, albeit haphazard, materpiece.

To Arden
I can understand a bit better what you said in Andy's class now, Arden. Ar-dizzle. About being reluctant to share. This post was really honest, really true to who you are. It relays a sense of who you are, and it makes me think you should do more writing like this, let people see it, yknow?

Maybe some constructive criticism would be to more thoroughly define the concept of perspective feeling.

I like it.

To Omar
I dig your post, I think that you and I are on the same page here, that you see how I see, that people can connect, that if we cannot literally feel each other's feelings, we can at least relate to them because we've more or less been down the same roads. I also like how you addressed why people sometimes find it difficult to relate to people "I think many times the case is that people try to fit in and be something or someonne they are not" and I think it's a really powerful idea, makes me think down a separate avenue of thought.

Though I think you might want to look into changing your layout, the white font, black background is a little difficult to read.

Reeses Peacies.

This is my Titely Witle

'ello! How's things gon' fer ya?

Hea's weah I'll be wroitin me blog posts!

Okay, I have to stop talking like that. It's giving me a bit of a migraine. Anyhow, this is my blog, and this is my first HW post.
Before I do that, I just wanna say we should all read A Clockwork Orange so that you can get my references as I go along. All righty then.

David Banach's lecture indicates to me a couple things. I have a couple conflicting opinions on the whole idea, but yet I still remain sided with the human ability to feel the feelings of others, to empathize and exist on a similar emotional plane. I like to believe in the human capacity to relate. Lauren brought up in class the concept that whenever we try to empathize with a person's feelings, to feel what they feel, we are only revisiting our own feelings. I think this is true as well. I think that when most people try to step into other people's shoes, they really only bring up an example of their own life to reflect on somebody's situation.

But not always. I would say to try, genuinely try, to view things from their perspective. Perhaps you won't literally be able to feel their pain, experience their emotion, but at least you will be able to truly empathize, to know how they feel. Real knowing is a burden, so I don't ask that too many people try to do it. A lot of the time I hate knowing things, I hate being able to manipulate emotions and thoughts in people. It's wretched.

So i suppose, that despite our best efforts, we can't actually feel how others feel specifically, but I think that all humanity runs the gamut of emotion, so we all wind up feeling the same things at one point or another, it is just incredibly difficult to sync things. Which sucks, man. I was just reading on Brandon's blog, which was great-you should all read it- and he said something I thought deeply resonated with me. That we are ultimately all alone. Well, that kind of blows.

I just think that there is something to be said for humanity's ability to empathize, that while we may arguably be unable to truly feel subjectively what each other are feeling, the fact that we've been there gives us a frame of reference through which we can relate. Also, the ability for one to share their feelings makes them able to relate it to people in a context that they can better understand.