I find myself thinking again and again about that huge argument that kept coming up in class, about whether or not the teacher has a responsibility to 'make' their students learn. There was a heated debate about the degree to which a student is responsible for their own learning.

After thinking about it a great deal, I feel I've figure out where I stand. I feel like there are two kinds of students. There is the student who, while reading, encounters an unfamiliar word, and immediately asks their teacher 'what does this word mean?' There is also the student who, upon encountering this same unfamiliar word, will open up a dictionary and look it up themselves.

Either way, the student is going to get an answer, but who will remember that answer better? I think that my suppositions are clear :D.

P.S. I am trying out a new reductionist style of blog posting in response to criticism of my general verbosity. How is it working?

I'm Not Dead

The last two days have just been just horrific. Possibly the worst, like, ever. And it made me miss our last 1F00 classes too.

If anyone needs me, I will be curled up in the fetal position watching the Discovery Channel.

The Human Condition

My friend and I had the following conversation tonight:

Them: I have come to the realization that truth is choice.

Me: Both truth and choice, I would argue, are illusions :).

Them: Normally, I would agree, but I've since decided that if choice isn't a part of the game, somehow, then I'm unwilling to continue playing.

This, I think, sums up the human condition quite nicely.

I'm reading (and enjoying) a book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground, and it explores this idea in greater detail. In the first few chapters, the narrator talks about something similar; he says that nothing drives him more insane, as a thinking man, than the laws of nature. He says that anyone with a brain will come to the conclusion that we have no choices, that free will is an illusion, because the path of our lives are dictated by things completely outside of our control - biology, gods or greater powers (if you're into that sort of thing), the laws of physics, our culture - in short, all of the external influences that shape who we are, and determine the courses of our lives. All of the things that put life outside of our control. This idea drives him insane.

He goes on to explain that man needs the illusion that he has choice, that he has a say in what he does and what will happen to him. He needs to feel like he matters as an individual. And this, he says, is what causes people to defy logic in every possible way and do things that make absolutely no sense at all, even to them! He says that sometimes, our best interests don't interest us at all, and that sometimes we will do the exact opposite of what we know is best for us, simply so that we can have a choice. Just so we can regain some measure of control.

And this, I think, is totally true. I've done it, lots and lots of times. Put off an important homework assignment that I knew I ought to do, avoided making an important appointment, or perhaps made a stupid, stupid purchase on impulse despite knowing that I needed money to pay for groceries. And after the fact, I often ask myself 'why on earth did I do that? I know better!'

But now it makes a bit more sense.

Human beings are magnificently stupid creatures, aren't they?

Sartre is Smartre

Jean-Paul Sartre once said,

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

The dutiful existentialist in me takes issue with this; I would drop the last two words, and edit it thusly,

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything."

And it's true, isn't it? We talked about it in class: if we're just one anonymous, meaningless face in a collective of billions, a mere cog in a machine, a disposable node in a network, what significance do we have? What do our lives mean? What's the point?

Existentialism asks us to consider that life is without meaning: that we are cosmic accidents, thrown into existence by chance circumstance, mere biological curiosities without greater purpose or design. But in spite of this, we are here. And as uniquely sentient, conscious creatures, we have the power to create meaning for ourselves, pull some significance and purpose out of the nullity of existence. We each color our view of the world with our unique outlooks, feelings, values, and experiences, wielding the sword of subjective experience to carve out a version of reality that fits us. We have the ability to see that fundamentally, we're just a pile of flesh and bones, going through the motions of biological inevitability, and yet, we also have the power to transcend that knowledge and choose to inject our lives with meaning and purpose, to take the seemingly random, undecipherable confusion of our existences and make them something important.

We are responsible for shaping our own worlds, shaping our own realities, establishing our own Truths. As Sartre said, from the moments we are thrown from comfortable nonexistence into this crazy thing we call life, we truly are responsible for everything. Everything we do, at the very least, but also everything we feel, experience, believe, overcome, imagine, idealize, rationalize, question, hope for...everything.

There's the old adage, "with great power comes great responsibility," and I think this holds true regarding all of our existential freedom. Anything is possible and can be possible; it's up to you. This freedom gives us a tremendous amount of power, and in turn, the responsibility of being accountable for our own existence.

And to that freedom, we are condemned.

And that's what I'm thinking about today. I lead a small life, haha.