Who is this guy ?

It is obvious that Meursault is detached from his life. Why is the question I ask. He seems to be afraid to react to the death of his mother, or maybe he just wasn't close enough to her to really feel sadness. He wasn't even considered with the actual date of his mothers death, just knew he had died. During the funeral his mind was drifting off to random thoughts. This gave me the impression that he really didn't want to be there. I know if it was my mothers death i would be completely devastated.

I know a few people in my life that seem like they never feel any emotions at all. Its like they are never happy and instead of being sad it’s more like they are numb. My friend is like this all the time but it’s because she has sort of given up on any hope of enjoying her life. She's more of the, "life is meaningless" thinker. I don’t understand why she is like this because she is constantly surround by a lot of friends who genuinely care for her. But you know what; I can relate to being surrounded by all your friends and still feeling alone. The huge difference is that I give myself chances to become apart of the whole instead of detaching myself. i assume it cannot be healthy to feel like your basically dragging your body day by day instead of actually living.

WAIT, now looking back, I don’t think he is fully disconnected with life because while he is waiting for the funeral to start he starts to describe the lighting of the sun from the window. “The room was filled with beautiful late-afternoon sunlight.” The usage of the word beautiful shows that he appreciates the situation.

I think he just wasn’t really close to his mother. He mentions how after the coffee he wanted to smoke and then he thought about whether it was ok to do it in front of his mother (who is dead). He then says, “I thought about it; it didn’t matter,” and then he offers a cigarette to the caretaker and they smoke. If I wanted to smoke I would not do it in front of my mother and if she was dead that would make me respect even more not to smoke in front of her dead body.

As we continue to read I’m looking for two solutions, either he comes to realize and connect with the fact that his mother is dead and then starts to feel the appropriate emotions or we find out more about the relationship between him and his mother so we can understand his initial reaction to her death.

Huckabees Blog Post

I believe that we live in a world that has meaning and makes sense but we don't live our everyday lives trying to make sense of it. In the movie, I <3 Huckabees, Albert is looking for meaning in his life. The idea that nothing in life matter is one theory his coincidences and the idea that everything in your life matters and is connected is another. In the end he realizes that both ideas connect with each other. The theory I took out of the movie was that life is meaningless but you can make meaning of it since your stick living it everyday. This is a mixture of the ideas the movie proposed and Banach's lectures.

In this life, society takes away from individuality. For example, they way people dress so they can be accepted among their peers. In the movie, Dawn is the icon of the Huckabees. When she finds her true self, she realizes that the way they were telling her to be wasn’t who she really was. The Huckabees Company symbolized society. Dawn was living her day meaninglessly because she was not being true to herself. She snapped out of it and started to become happy with who she was when she was able to express the real her. It was not accepted by the Huckabees. Now she had a choice, to go back to being the icon of the Huckabees or to continue being happy being herself. She choice being herself. To me, this is like snapping out of the meaningless pattern and finding meaning in your life; being authentic. Like Banach said, you can only be truly happy when you find happiness within yourself.

It’s interesting how Tommy says, “Once you realize the universe sucks, you got nothing left to lose,” because if you think about it , its almost like saying , if life is meaningless , might as well try to making your own meaning of it. He goes about following this idea in the movie. Like when he is hitting himself with the “pure ball thingy”. He believes life is meaningless yet he finds outlets to find “purity” and happiness. Tommy also said “How come we only ask ourselves the really big questions when something bad happens?” This is so true. If everything was going good for you, you would not think to ask what the purpose in my life is or what the meaning is. So why is it that only when things are bad is that people want to know the point? I think it’s because sadness is an emotion that people do not think they should be experiencing so when they do, they can’t handle it and try to find reasons to blame instead of embracing that they can even connect with the world in forms of emotions. Interesting theory?

My favorite part of the movie was when Albert explains that he can not use the church to answer his questions of life. The questions were “if the forms of this world die, which is more real, the me that dies or the me that's infinite? Can I trust my habitual mind, or do I need to learn to look beneath those things?” I love this part because it is such a deep question. One I never thought of myself but now am curious to know the answer. This is something I’m personally taking out into my own life to see what I can find by exploring this question.

Blog Post #3 : Respond to Part III and Part IV

Human happiness is happiness within yourself. We have the freedom to create our own happiness regardless of whats going on in the outside world.

I agree with the idea of finding happiness within yourself. Its true because we should not depend on external factors to be happy. You should be happy with who you are in the inside. If you aren't happy with yourself you can not be truly happy with your life. Until you accept your own flaws and embrace your values, you can really be happy with anything else. The worst thing is to depend on someone else or something else to be happy. People and materiel things are replaceable.

There is no such thing as freedom. Freedom is "the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints". Not even the freedom to think whatever we want to think. Are our thoughts really our own individual creations or a mixture of different influences and how we choice to put them together into one state of mind ? what do you think ? People can argue that we are free in our own minds because we think whatever we want to, but i strongly believe that everything that goes through a persons head is influenced by something in the outside world. From the day you are born, the ideas of what is right or wrong is driven in your mind by someone else (your parents) . As you grow older , influences from different aspects of your life starts to shape your mind. Everyone might not think in the same exact matter but there are common ground in one's thoughts. If there weren't people would never be able to agree upon things.

I believe that the only "freedom" we have is to choice to look at things in a negative or positive way; how to view your life.


*sorry my post is all over the place. I couldn't get my thoughts organized.

HW#4 : Blog comment # 2

Matt's Blog :

Your post always catches my attention. I especially like what you did with this post because you found definitions to help you pose a question and you connected the lecture with a song.

I relate to the feeling of waking up every morning feeling like your just living without a purpose. I wonder if we create our own meaning or find it along the way. Can you imagine knowing your life is about to end and not know what was the purpose of everything you went through in your life.

If we created our own meaning then we would have something to live for but what if there was a life already planned out for us , how will we find it if we live by what we think is our purpose. Would of lives have any less meaning ? hmmmmm



Ariel did not have a second blog post .

Hw #3 : Blog Post # 2

So first I'm going to start this reflection by attempting to answer my own question : "What role does religion play in an existentialist view on human freedom?" The theory of an existentialist is that man was created with no rules on how to live life. "Nobody has an idea about who we are or what were supposed to be like." Now, religion is a culture that lays out the rules of life that was "written" by our creator, God. Its tells you what good things you need to do and what bad things you shouldn't do so then when you die you know you'll have a good place for your soul to rest. These two ides are parallel, so how are there religious existentialists?
It was said in class that religion is like a safety net, just in case there are rules to life. I find this idea quiet interesting because then i branch out to think : "But there are just so many religions, how do you know which one is the right one ? What if you chose to follow the wrong ones?" But then again these are questions we cannot answer because all of these ideas conclude in one thing ; what happens after death ; and no one can die and come back to life to tell us. Its almost as if we live our lifes in fear of dying.

Another topic i want to write about is the idea that who we really are is all mental which leads to our freedom to be individuals. I strongly agree with this idea. We cannot change "the raw materials" that are determined but we have the power to "edit the frames which constitute our experience into the film that is to be our life." This means to me that we cannot change what life brings our way but we have full control of the attitude we are going to use to get through them and the lessons we take away from them. This reminds me of my mother. Since she was a little girl she has made it through some real rough times in her life but she is a hero. she never let the negativity get to her. Every time something came her way she came out even more stronger then before.

These speeches by Banach have given me ideas on how i can view my life and understand others individuality. He brings up valuable points that each one of us can let sink in and begin to use in our everyday life.

HW #2 : Blog Comments 1

Comment on Ariel B's blog :

You have a good idea flowing about how scary the idea of not being able to connect with anyone would make everyone selfish and the world a cold place. I didn't think of it in this way. I looked at absolute individuality as a good thing. Its what separated us from the next. I think that if everyone was able to feel each others pain , at what point would you get to actually develop your own. What i believe Banach is saying is that we can relate to other peoples emotions because we are all human but we will never really actually understand or feel what anyone else does because we are our own persons with our own minds and experience.

I also liked how you related a point in the lecture to your own personal experience.

Comment on Matt B's blog :
I really love how you use the metaphor of a mother and her child to disagree with the idea of absolute individuality. yes you are correct about the relationship between a mother and her child but have you ever felt that you couldn't talk to your mother because she wouldn't understand you. This is the feel i get from his lectures. Banach isn't saying that we don't care about others but that we simply cannot be 100% sure of what another person feels, only how we can relate to their feelings from our own feelings.
In your second paragraph you discuss this idea.

This was a good post , i look forward to reading your other reflections.

HW #1 "The Ethics of Absolute Freedom" by David Banach, Part I

" When you look at the person next to you, do you really see them as they are on the inside or feel what they feel? You see only the images of them that is presented to your mind through your senses. "

This quote reminds me of a person who is always smiling but is actually depressed. We never really know or understand ones emotions or even who they really are. We only go by what we see/ what they want us to see. Is this disability to connect with others emotions a good thing or a bad thing? For example, if your best friend is going trough some tough times so you tell them to vent their feelings. Do you really begin to understand how they feel by the way they explain it or do you just find a time you felt that way and try to relate? Ive been in this position and i find myself relating more then fully fulling my best friends pain. Like banach said, we can only "feel our pains . . immediately."

Im going to take this blog post in a different direction because i dont know what else to say about my first topic. Banach says that our minds are trapped in our bodies "only perceving the images transmitted to us through our bodies and their sences." In other words , our mind intreprets what our sences signal. Can we trust our sences? Im pretty sure everyone has once experinced a time when they thought they heard something but they had actualy heard wrong. Our ears are our only source of hearing whats going on outside of our heads, therfore if we have once experinced hearing soemthing wrong, how do we know that we are always hearing things correctly? Are our sences really that reliable? they can often decive us so how will we every really know whats going on out side of our own heads? I guess we just "hear what we want to hear" becuase at the end of the day, you cant feel or know anything else besides your own emotions and your own thoughts.