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?