Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Emotions, The Crutch Of The Special.

The extreme views on emotions is something I always find incredibly interesting.  As I mentioned in class, this is an area I am very familiar with myself for many reasons. When I was a child I grew up in a poor household, moved once a year for that reason, was in a school cafeteria in 1st grade with half of the school (grades 1-5, mixed) with me when a tornado hit the school cafeteria killing some and injuring very many in rather horrific fashion, dealt with verbal abuse regularly; the point being, it was a rough time and caused a few issues to say the least. While it lead to a rather early interest in philosophy and religious studies, it also lead to a lot of self-reflection and self-evaluation. Like most people in these situations, I had a lot of anger and was not shy about letting it out when something “triggered” it. I saw therapists, but was left with a bad view of those in the practice, however I hated feeling on edge about the most idiotic things. At this time, I realized something else about myself that showed an interesting contrast the caused me to question how much of my anger and helpless feeling to it was actually my own doing. It always bothered me when people told me how “they couldn’t imagine……” about watching friends die in such a manner as an adult, let alone as a child, and that just seemed ridiculous to me. I was afraid, sad, in disbelief, but mostly, I didn’t want to die and I didn’t want my friends to die either. Really, that was it. I have seen a lot of footage from documentaries that showed images that were equally, and often times far more graphic, than the things I saw that day. I am aware that others have as well. I knew of empathy and thought it was something very common among us humans, I quickly found out that this was not so. People had to willfully choose to ignore empathy and essentially single out themselves and others to allude to some disconnect that is just impossible to mend between people. I still find that to be true to this day. I still listen to endless arguments that they don’t choose, it is just simply not possible. To this argument and answer I say simply, and belligerently, not only is that incorrect, it is incredibly small minded and outright lazy; an excuse.

Now, how does this correlate to my initial point of my seething anger and temper? That is simple, how could I so easily see how people were choosing to disregard the existence of empathy, and yet say my own excuses about my “uncontrollable” anger? I have never liked hypocrisy, and seeing that in myself when I was 11 is an odd thing to explain. When you are so young and ask these questions, you tend to be met with a condescending notion from pretty much everyone, and not having the internet (this was around 1991) made resources scarce. So, I read what books I could from the library, friends parents, friends, but mostly I just put myself on trial (not maliciously) over all of my choices. Through this I found that “controlling” the anger was complete non-sense and nothing but an excuse itself. I had no such chemical imbalance that caused a retardation of my mental functions, no mental behavioral disorder at all, in fact, an incredibly minor amount of people actually do in comparison to those who do not. All I had was a jitteriness and a tendency to lose my place and zone out a bit/become very tired (later classed under ADHD, another topic entirely) most likely due to seizures from PTSD from not dealing with the issues of my childhood when they should have been. Still, those issues I managed to work with and understand them as they applied to my daily choices. Why did I have to “control” this magical thing that simply existed? I found that answer was very straight forward and inescapable, I didn’t. In fact, I couldn’t. It only existed where I applied value and chose to be angry towards because I valued the opposite of what was occurring and in the “trigger” moment, I chose to become angry. While it took quite a while to come to truly accept this truth and then embrace it, however I did shortly before I was 17. To say this improved my life is an understatement. Realizing that while I have confines of birth that align a certain parameter to my physical capabilities, mental capabilities, health, etc, I also have more capabilities and potential to fill those confines with because I know that I am not in dispose of any mythological leash that dictates who I am beyond that of a minor chemical and electrical confine whose parameters I test daily without my choices.


To say that accepting full responsibility for your life is a difficult thing, is to miss the absolute stunning beauty and incredible joy of life.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Death, The Neutral Inevitability.



Death, possibly the topic most feared, revered, discussed and ignored on the subject of life. Few people tend to appreciate the weight carried by ones view of death. It can break friendships, cause family to stop talking to one another, incite violent events such as a fight, wars or even taking one’s own life. However, it can also bring people together, cause enemies to see eye to eye for the first time, create understanding or cause one to bring life into this world. This is generally because, how one views death often determines the path they choose in life. What religion they choose to believe, or not believe, or were born in to and how that view causes them to view death, ultimately comes from the finite life we know we have and that looming notion of its end becomes something we must put in perspective. Some claim acceptance, yet do nothing but avoid actual reflection of “life and death”, supposed faith/and supposed lack of faith for these people often become a crutch that allows the avoidance. I will gladly go a step further on this and say that belief in that of otherworldly existence in and of itself is a complete avoidance of truly contemplating death and the inevitability of it, what it means, how it shapes, or has shaped you. Any notion of eternal life defies death and is to disrespect this life that will end for all of us I believe, which in part is a problem I do have with Heidegger’s philosophy on this matter. Similar to issues I have had with Kierkegaard. I agree with their points, angers, views on how people disregard various aspects of life with complacent behavior only to engage an aspect of that themselves, that being faith in a God and heaven. My larger issue is that of heaven more-so than a “God”. In class, I stated that I believed Heidegger’s view point on “why do things exist?” was a more personal point than that of Camus’ question of “does life have meaning?”, and I stand by that. Does life have meaning can be altered by “why do things exist?”. In fact, most discussions I have come across of this nature, people find that answer of themselves based on why they believe things exist. I do not believe I have ever seen the opposite to be said however. My point being, I do not believe “does life have meaning” effects “why do things exist”, I believe it is instead a symptom, or rather, an after effect of one coming to terms with what they believe as to the point of “why do things exist”. I believe that is the deeper personal question and point, as that has been the driving force behind most, if not, everyone’s view of “does life have meaning” of the many discussions I have had or read of. I believe that life has absolute meaning, because we exist for no reason of omnipotence, only from a “cold” calculative reasoning of events.

While I don’t want to die, like most people, I do respect death and appreciate the greatness that is life I am able to experience every moment I am aware because I have not and cannot experience death. I also appreciate the existential test of eternal recurrence from Nietzsche in this situation as deep contemplation of deaths inevitably leads to deep contemplation of life, and I do not have any aspects of my life I would be ashamed or regret living again. I believe that while I have made many mistakes, had choices where clearly option 2 was better than my option 1, I am proud of the person I am today as a result of those choices. So again, while I do not want to die, I know that I have done well with my life and would not die feeling as though I had wasted the life I have had. I believe my dasein would complete.