Maybe my thoughts aren't sophisticated
enough.
I don’t know if thoughts can even range on
a scale of sophistication, but if they can then mine are in question. I thought
that our first discussion today was relatively straight forward. Regardless, this
is how I viewed Kierkegaard’s essay on choice:
Imagine those carnival games that take place
in a rectangular box. One side of the box (the front-facing side) is made of
glass and inside the box are evenly spaced wooden or metal pegs. The top of the
box has an opening. One takes a ball or a circular chip and drops it in.
Eventually that ball will reach the bottom of the box after moving to the left
or right of each peg that it happens to hit on the way down, and will
eventually land on some kind of marking.
Now imagine that you are the ball. You have
just been dropped in this box and are about to start moving downward very quickly.
As soon as you have been dropped and hit the first peg, you can go either left
or right. However, when you hit that peg you have that moment, and that moment
only to decide which way to go. If not, gravity will choose for you. Something will happen whether you choose it
to happen or not. Reflecting about which direction to go when you hit the first
peg is useless because by then you have hit the third peg, and before you know
it you have reached the bottom, not making any decision or choice on your own.
Life and others, or in this case gravity, made them all for you.
So in a way, by spending too long in a
state of reflection or indecision, you are no different than the ball that was
released sans freedom.
I don’t know why the conversation shifted
in a nature v nurture direction.
Because of "personality"? Like, “Then is there such a thing as personality?
Or is it just the product of never ending choices?” … What?
I actually do have a lot of thoughts on
this, but that’s another thing.
But on the topic of personality…
Kierkegaard stated that by failing to act you lose yourself. Actually he says, "...because he has neglected to choose, which is equivalent to saying, because others have chosen for him, because he has lost his self."
Although, I believe that you lose yourself
either way. Because by making that “either/or” decision, you have changed and
are different and on the path to being different than you were when briefly
contemplating that action.
Was he? Am I missing something? Was he also
trying to talk about what makes people themselves? Besides their freedom to
choose?
Side Notes:
I would like to hear/read more thoughts
about “the group.” If you are reading this and have formed thoughts on it,
please share. I would put mine up, but I've already put this post is getting long.
I loved the way class was set up today. I
was happy to be able to discuss more than one topic. The 60 second writing
stressed me out though.
“What do I write? How can I organize my
thoughts in only a minute? What if I
write something then realize it’s crap and try and cram something intelligible
on the piece of paper with the remaining sliver of time? “
Then discussion
happens.
I lose myself.
I don't think you should worry about your posts being too long, I think all of us who check out your blog posts are eager to hear your thoughts :)
ReplyDeleteAs for "the group", do you mean our class discussions? I'd like to hear your thoughts first to be sure what you're referring to.
I enjoyed the 60 second free write though. I can understand about getting lost or caught up in your thoughts, but I think there's no right or wrong to it so you can just write down the first thought that comes to mind and run with it.
No, I meant the third question that Thad asked that day. I have now forgotten what it was though.
ReplyDeletethoughts can definitely range from a thought of brilliance to stupidity. Some people just utter complete nonsense that is irrational and when they are given a viewpoint that could even be consistent with their own, that may even be better than theirs they simply shut off. I would cringe in poetry class when somebody would make a superficial distinction about the piece and the teacher would nod and tell them that it could be looked at that way. The teacher obviously wanted to say that to them, but didn't want the poor kid to feel bad and do something drastic. It is a disgusting and rude thing to do to leave someone in the dark. SOME ANSWERS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS!!!! I wish people could get this into their heads. Everyone wants to be so fake and nice when really we should be speaking our minds and directly telling people what we truly mean. Also some people are just morons. I was going mad at this point in time so I actually switched to a math major because I wanted a clear RIGHT and WRONG! I found my idea of math too romantic, that's when I came to philosophy.
ReplyDeleteHAHA, on a lighter note, I love hearing peoples different perspectives. Above was just a rant that started going south so I went with it and now i feel a lot better =]! its nice to vent these types of things, but who would want to be such an asshole. Anyways, especially in a class like this where I feel like we are all equally lost and mindfucked that hearing other peoples interpretations is awesome. Sometimes I like to think about people's backgrounds by that I mean academic discipline's that they are coming from and hear their interpretations. It is very nice to be able to discuss freely in an environment where everyone feels so strongly and truly believes what they are saying. It reminds me of my friend who believed in vortex water (or hexagonal water). The stuff he was saying was just ridiculous, but the fact that this was something that he truly believed made me see it as beautiful and it made me want to believe also. In the end I think it all comes down to faith.
Wow, the thought experiment about the ball was amazing! It does seem like we have decisions at certain points and after those decisions are made, that very decision is what necessitates our next set of options even. For instance, say I was the ball and I decided to go left. Then the next peg I would reach would be one on the left side. Say I choose left again, very soon I will be making a left, right decision on the very left peg and if you look at my course of action during that trip down where I was the ball you can see a mold of my decisions, basically my life. What if at the end of life you can look at all your decisions and experiences linearly like they are dangling on a string. During the moments of making decisions there are so many options, but once that decision is made it is a single event. It is like a recursive thing. We can look at a dead man's life as a single string, and theorize about what it would be like he chose another path, another string.
The point that you made about not having the time to reflect on every decision reminds me of something Descartes said. He stated exactly that. We don;t have enough time to thoroughly think everything out and that is why we make mistakes and bad decisions. He tied this to god and said our willpower is that of a gods. Your point is true and cannot be iterated enough. If we are in a moment and we are reflect to long, the moment passes us. I wonder if subconsciously our minds already have answers, like a process that finds similarities in event and acts accordingly. I am thinking about someone getting a rock thrown at them and them automatically ducking. We don't even think about this, it is instinctual. It seems like we automatically know to get out of the way. Its puzzling and we are definitely thrown into the world, cold, naked, and scared.
had to break this up into pieces because it was too long
DeleteOn the topic of personality... I think that we do have personalities and it is not just made up by our actions. I see natural things in people. For some reason, I tend to believe that some people are just naturally curious, they were born this way. I know their personalities can change based on events that happen in their lifetime, but if we deny people's fundamental characteristics, were we all born the same? Are we all just blank slates in the beginning? If so, then we all are manipulated by our surroundings, yes manipulated. Thrown into a reality that someone has created for us. Existence precedes essence in that, everything we know to exist was created by a mind. Somebody has created this place that we call home and we are merely existing within their creations. Is there really a such thing as creation? Can we truly create anything, or is everything just a new reiteration? We dream every night supposedly, but what if some dream are just so bizarre, so out there, that they are so intangible that upon waking into consciousness we cannot even fathom what happened because in this reality out minds are already disposed to certain beliefs, that some things cannot even be conceived. So we wake up and say "whelp, guess I didnt dream tonight!" when really in our dream we existed in the infinity that is before the narrowing of reality.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of this dream I just recently had and blogged about. In the dream I was very happy, then I woke up, sat on the toilet and literally after I got done reflecting on the dream, I remembered I was awake and that i was depressed. It was like my mind suddenly realized I was awake and let me know that I am supposed to be depressed, then I felt the rush of anxiety seep into my stomach and stay for good. it just made me think about how everything was at one point just a conscious decision? It is consciousness that tells us what can be felt and what can be done, It is our minds that believe. It was that state of remembrance that I am still wrestling. All my emotions are triggered by the outside world. If there were not other people,there are a slew of emotions I wouldn't even know. So imagine if there are millions of emotions we don't even know about that exist somewhere inside us, only let out in dreams because they know we wont remember them when we wake up. Stupid body, Stupid host, stupid limitations, expectations.
I found the 60 second writing assignment to be troubling also. It was a fun exercise though, It is kinda like playing blitz chess. That is where you can set the clock to 3minutes and both people have to rush to move. You cant really even think, you have to go or you will run out of time. In order to be a good blitz player you have to prepare for situations. I wonder if Thad was just trying to see if we had done the readings and already formulated some sort of interpretation of the text that we can used if questions are asked. I see myself naturally doing this. Sometimes in the shower I will randomly think about situations and think about things I could've said. I have even imagined situations that haven't happened and thought about funny answers saying "if that situation ever happened, that would be hilarious to say that". Things never turn out that way, but I just learned to write it down.
ReplyDeletedo you think that the answer that is given without thinking hints at personality traits? I used to play this game called the resistance where basically there are 3 spies and 5 good guys. the good people dont know who each other are and the 3 spies know who each other are. It is the good guys job to find out who the spies are, by questioning them. The obvious question, are you a spy? doesn't really get you anywhere, because obviously the spies have set answers to those questions. It is when you ask them a question that they are unprepared for, that you can tell if they are a spy. When they are unprepared for a question they seem to answer it truthfully/ WHOA!!! this might lead to something. Do we have a natural inclination to tell the truth? Ill stop this here, I hope you read it!! Actually i am going to make this longer. So yea, It is the natural inclinaton to tell the truth that fklagh htjfgjkh thsjkghtkghv htjlkgh.