To Believe or Not to Believe?

Just quickly I wanted to share this thought in class but I never got the chance to about the picture of the “Just Judges.” I figured the reason he hid the real copy in his cabinet that this means that even if the people judged the fake picture it would not mean anything to him because they were judging something fake. Now if the people were judging the real copy of the picture then it would mean something as if they were really judging Jean himself. I do not really agree with the whole authenticity and exclusivity thing that someone else had said. I do not think it had anything to do with him having the almighty authentic copy in his hands to do as he wanted with it, but he just did not want the wrong people to judge the real copy.

Now switching over to Kierkegaard!

“Suppose, however, that subjectivity is truth, and that subjectivity is the existing subjectivity, then, to put it this way, Christianity is paradox, paradox and passion fit one another exactly, and paradox exactly fits one whose situation is in the extremity of existence” (pg27).

We as humans cannot prove that God exists….We can merely only believe. If one is to be a Christian there needs to be a relationship with God himself. We cannot just try to grasp his existence but embrace it.

Being raised in a family that is predominantly Christian, I too have accepted the objective facts of my religion. Having gone to church every Sunday when I was very little, and pretty much up until I was 17, Christianity is all I have really known. But for some reason, to me, it just does not fit with me. I do not have the passion for it that my family has. I do believe that there is an all mighty entity out there that is watching over us, and I do believe in a heaven. I believe that if I do good things, and live by a good way, I will one day have the benefit of walking through the gates of heaven into an afterlife that no one can prove exists.

There are so many contradictory things that go against religion. Science and supernatural instances, like ghosts for instance. Evolution and science sway my feelings towards my religion. However I feel as if I do have faith, but maybe faith in the wrong thing.

“Faith is the objective uncertainty along with the repulsion of the absurd seized in the passion of inwardness, which is just inwardness potentiated to the highest degree”. (pg27). Only the true believer can have faith. So for this I am lost and a non believer :/

One of the most interesting quotes I read was, “It is easier to become a Christian when I am not a Christian than to become a Christian when I am one…”

That is truly absurd! I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what that could mean. Is it really easier for someone who knows nothing of Christianity to accept it before I can accept it myself? Is it because I have doubt of religion itself due to the objective facts that science has laid out on the table?

For those who were never seriously religious who have had a near to death experience was and meet this “God”, that they never really took for existed or fully believed in, they started to after the incident. For now they had the passion that is required for faith.

“What it is to be a Christian is not determined by the what of Christianity but by the how of the Christian.” ----if someone could clarify this for me a little further I would be appreciative of it.

The Little Prince Chapter 1

Now for a happy twist! I was able to get my all time favorite book in yesterday! I want to share this with all of you who have not read or ever heard of this book. It is titled The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry. Each blog I will post a section of this book as I find it is completely relevant to this class and finding meaning to life. 

Finding True Meaning

I found this class, and its readings, to be particularly influential to me. The purpose of me taking this class to begin with was because of the content of this one class; to discuss finding meaning to life.  

One of the most interesting things I read:

“Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it, we live on the future: “tomorrow”, “later on”, “when you have made your way”, “you will understand you are old enough.” Such irrelevances are wonderful, for, after all, it’s a matter of dieing. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the honor that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.” (pg. 192)

There will come a day where I will look back on my life and find that the meaning that I aspired to achieve by that given moment in my life will more than likely not be achieved. Everyday things happen that hinder my goals and dreams, temporarily offset my aspirations. Some of these things I have no control over, and some I do. I have to look inward upon myself and pull from why is it that I continue to live as I do knowing that one day everything I have ever accomplished will mean nothing to anyone. Knowing that one day I will cease to exist and time will erase my existence. That in itself is truly absurd in my eyes. I cannot change it, nor can I get back the days of my life that have passed.

This is why I find that passage so influential. One day I will realize that I was living for tomorrow when in reality I should be living in the today, not merely trying to pass time, but to enjoy the time that I have. I must live in the moment and treasure what I have now because for all I know tomorrow I could cease to exist.

When faced with the subject of suicide, I found it rather interesting to hear everyone’s’ thinking behind it. Some were saying how people can recover from those emotions, and that they found a new meaning to life. Whereas some students pointed out that those same people could have merely put their emotions aside and continued to live on as if life truly had no meaning. I believe that those who have taken their lives literally found that they had NOTHING left to live for. They no longer found meaning to life… I honestly believe that this sense of “recovery” does not quite exist. Once a person gets to this point in their life where they find they have nothing left to live for and cannot find that meaning from within, they are already in a sense dead. I think almost 90 percent of people who consider suicide snap out of it rather quickly and find a new meaning to life, that it was never a serious deal to them. They were merely lost in their own thoughts, and felt alone and out of place in an indifferent world. But to the other 10 percent who literally contemplated for a great deal of time trying to find their meaning to life, that those people are never going to quite recover from those emotions. In one way or another that dark place will always be in the back of their mind.

Often times I have wondered why it is that we have to live in such a cruel world of struggle and perseverance. Life never seems to be easy, and even when it does it is so cruelly short lived. I was not blessed with the happiest life and everything I could ever want out of it. I have had to work my way up, experience life’s cruelties all on my own, and move forward from it. I admire those who have had it harder than me; those who have lost everything and know what it is to have to world turns its back on you. I admire those people who learned to keep fighting and moving through life feeling completely alone. I question how some people can throw their lives away by jumping off a building, overdosing on some kind of drug, or shooting themselves fatally. How is it that those who continue to live were able to continue living feeling as if they had nothing left, while others just give up and stop trying to live? That is truly something absurd. Where do we draw the line between life and death?

I still have so many questions, and hopefully through further reflection I will find some answers to these concepts.

The Stranger

After a heated debate from Monday night’s class I think I have a better understanding of The Stranger. I found it rather interesting to see other people interpret the story differently than I. Though I may not have agreed with what other people’s interpretations of the story were, or their justification behind it, it was admirable to see people take sides and defend what they interpreted. It allowed for the class to be much more enjoyable, and for me to think into my own interpretations further and question myself internally. As a matter of fact, I even swayed with some of my understandings because of other students bringing up examples of why they sided the way they did. So thank you to the class for teaching me some new things!

I can remember reading excerpts from this book back in high school in my AP English class. I never really thought much of it; much less even understand its meaning. I do admit however, that something about the excerpts did perplex me, and had me thinking about things in a different light (Not like life instances).I was however confused as to what it really meant and what I was supposed to get from it. Half of what I read in that class did that to me. It was the excerpt of the shooting of the Arab that had me thinking the most. After re-reading the entire story again it finally allowed me to tie up some loose ends. You see, when I read the excerpt I thought that it was just an instance of cold blooded murder with remorse. After reading the entire story, I see the situation from a different light. Honestly, I feel as if sun and heat is symbolic for adrenaline. I heard throughout discussion that it could be metaphoric way to describe him feeling anger, but I honestly think it was merely adrenaline. He lived in the moment, and adrenaline only exists in present time instances. You cannot feel adrenaline for no given reason. Anger you can feel for many reasons, but he had no motives behind the killing. Merely him being agitated by the sun and the heat were what drove him to the murder. I honestly think you cannot assume that he was in fact angry because he never did explicitly state that he was anywhere in the book.

 I also found interest in one student who clarified, that in French, the book was really meant to say the foreigner. I should have done more research into the book itself; but after hearing that it completely changed my view towards the book. At first I figured the “stranger” in the book was an internal thing. I figured Meursault was a stranger from himself; that he could not come to terms with his own rational thinking and feelings. As I read further, I was wrong. He knew exactly what he wanted to feel, and what he wanted out of life. He was completely fine with the way he was going through life. He knew himself, and he merely accepted it for who he was. When you take the translation as “the foreigner” you see that it is he who is separated from the society. A foreigner is known as someone that is unlike the rest of the population who surrounds them. They have different expectations, views on life, and justifications for what they do. It makes complete sense that Meursault is the foreigner because he separated himself from the typical thought processes of those around him.

I look forward to learning more about some of Camus’s writings. 

I have not read the stories to be covered in the next class, but it will be interesting to see if these stories are similar to The Stranger.