Schopenhauer to the Rescue

It’s funny that while attempting to answer this question, I thought of the Monkey’s Paw and the part where the old couple wished for the resurrection of their son but realized it really wasn't their son they were resurrecting. How is that? It was their son’s body- the same flesh he died with. What is it that made this lump of flesh different? The flesh was not their son because it is not the blood that makes a person a person; it is their personality and spirit. (if not, the movie Lone Star would be all the more disturbing).
The car that Vern currently has in his garage, or in his driveway, is really his Volvo and not the scrap parts made to look as the car by Grace. The reason is simple: the sentiments are the object in question. The material it’s made from is not the object in question.
If there is anything to be learned from the last two days of journeying through blood sweat and tears into the world of philosophy, it  is the theory of the Will and Representation (courtesy of Arthur Schopenhauer) which can be magically be applied to Vern’s case (Don’t worry, Vern; it’s Schopenhauer to the rescue).
Everything in our world is actually two parts: Will and Representation. In others words it’s our internal world and what our outside world looks like. In Vern’s case, the car’s appearance is the representation (not the materials, the appearance). Materials change obviously. For instance, there is the saying, “you never walk in the same river twice”. The will is the way the car is perceived: a twenty year old possession of Vern’s.
If you rephrase Schopenhauer’s theory, it’s all about sensation and perception. It doesn't necessarily matter whether Vern’s Volvo is not made of the same parts any longer. The feelings still exist. Just as we are still “us” although we are always changing: our cells are always dying and being replaced, and we never even have the same head of hair at any moment in our lifetime. Also, the River Nile is still called the Nile although the water is always flowing and moving on. In an egocentric point of view, it’s our perception of the object that makes the object.
Even if Grace did create an exact replica of the Volvo from the same parts, it’s not Vern’s Volvo since it doesn't have the same sentiments latched on (it's not perceived in the same way). It’s almost as if you would resurrect me ninety years from now but place a separate soul inside of me. It’s not me; it’s just my body that has been resurrected. The emotions and perception are different.
In response to the last question, Vern’s Volvo never changed.

Schopenhauer approves this message.

Not really, he's dead.

A+B=C

Think about the equation A+B=C.

In this equation, A cannot be C without B and B cannot be C without A. C itself is a combination of both A and B. Now let’s say C is any situation in our daily life like a friendly family game night for example. A will therefore be our surroundings which in this case would be my living room where I would be sitting on my couch facing my brother, mother and father. In the center would be a short wooden table with the game set and ready to go. The variable B will then the most important part of the equation: me.

Every moment of our lives is governed by us and our interactions with our surroundings just as C is a mixture of A and B. Therefore it is important to know ourselves so that we can know what makes us happy, sad, and, on an extreme note, really angry.

It was the day after Christmas for instance. We had just returned home from a family movie night out. I was still giggling and chatting about the insane comedy in the film we had watched. That was when my brother suggested a game night.

Now, I pride myself in being very introspective, so I know much about what makes me lose my temper. Ashamed as I am to admit this, the truth is that although I can be very sweet tempered on the surface, I have a short fuse and I can be very competitive. For that reason, I was very against the idea of a game night.

However, my other family members made the mistake of thinking it was a good idea.

Therefore, we set up the game and sat down to play LUDO where each of us has four pieces that we have to move across the board and try to get to “Home”. The one who gets all pieces home first wins. Here’s the flip side, we are allowed to kill the pieces of the other players. As you can probably tell, in this equation, A and B equal a bad situation.

We all erupted into a series of pointless arguments that ended with a broken laptop which was sadly mine. As I have already explained, I know myself very well since I live with myself 24/7. Such self awareness is the key to minimizing behavior such as destructive anger and violent behavior.  I know I have uncontrollable anger and my method is to avoid situations where I can lose my temper (it has worked for the 17 years I lived on this earth) and if I don’t listen to myself, I could potentially lose my brand new laptop.

It is my ability to listen to myself that I really like about myself. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and that ability allows me to settle down and get my priorities straight. In other words, if I know it is impossible for me to do certain things, I don’t force myself because everyone has things they can’t do (pushing myself to do my best is another matter in itself). However, if I know I can do certain things and do it well, I will do it no matter what and will put forth my best effort. This ability reduces the stress associated with school and it is also the reason for my good humor and level-headed demeanor.

For most people, it isn't as easy to talk about their qualities especially when the qualities are positive and my theory is that it’s because it can be an embarrassing topic. For example, I don’t see myself the same way others see me and sometimes I could call my humor one of my best qualities when others don’t necessarily agree with it. In a way, it could be degrading to place that label because it sets a cap on how high my qualities could go.

Of course, not everybody feels embarrassed about sharing their own qualities and usually the ones who aren't are like me and can look within themselves. If I wasn't introspective, I would have hated to share and set a label as well because then I wouldn't have to face the disapproval of others and their view of who I am.

Life is Not Fair?

Have you ever heard the quote: "life is not fair"? It's a pretty popular saying. Then why do human beings try so hard to be good and honest and trustworthy and worthy when the reward they're striving so hard for might not even be theirs?

Let's rephrase the question: Why do I try so hard in a life that I see as no more than a never ending storm? Why do I try so hard when the shelter I put up has a leaky ceiling and  the more I patch it up, the more holes it acquires? After all, nothing I do will gain results.... or will it?
So, then why should good be rewarded and bad be punished if even when  I am better in nature than a neighbor, his life is going well and mine is failing? Effort doesn't seem to matter.
Here's a theory: we are conditioned. Humans have been brought up to be good by a generation that generally believes in the idea that God will reward us for being on the path of righteousness. My mother and father both believe in this idea and if trace back to the origins of such beliefs, I guarantee it will lead to their own parents, my grandparents. I agree not all people believe in the Almighty God but even atheists believe, to a certain degree, that "what you put into the universe is what you get out of it". Here's an example of the good old conditioning method via our very own Santa Claus: "He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake".
Personally, I believe that the word "good" should be the real question. Really, what does "good" mean? Do you realize that the word "good" really is just a term we humans created to define those who abide by the universal code of human ethics?
If such is the case, then humans should all try to be good. after all the moral code has been put in place for a reason: to avoid chaos. In order to be civilized, something has to be given up: freedom. Then if you ask why civilization is important, I would reply by saying: "it's an inevitable sacrifice in human race for the sake of advancement".
So basically, good should be rewarded and bad should be punishment to keep the golden rules alive and followed. Human beings should act ethically and follow these rules so that the world can stay civilized and move forward  as a result they can get all those shiny things every Christmas. So in a way, the Santa Claus rule of thumb makes sense.
Well, keeping that explanation in mind, why does the Bible disagree with us? The Hebrews, after all, used the Bible as a framework for their own government. God even gave us the Ten Commandments to follow to be essentially "good". Then why was a "good" man like Job punished?
My brother and I had an interesting conversation on this subject Monday night. We somehow ended up on the topic of God and the flood. When I mentioned that the flood was probably a real event mentioned in several texts found around the Mediterranean, my brother asked if God would be likely to punish the human race again. I mentioned the covenant, and my brother replied, "he could always used earthquakes or, better yet, hurricanes". As much as his parallel to the scholastic discussion in humanities class amused me, it got me thinking. What if God did punish us again during the Small Ice Age or the Bubonic Plague or the mysterious  fall of both the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations? If he did, why did he do so?
While I was discussing such topics with my brother, we came came to the conclusion that God probably saw   a greater good in the future that is just difficult for the human race to understand. That was enough to satisfy my brother but I wasn't convinced. I thought long and hard and finally, I gave up... then I realized:
It's simple: The human code of ethics is for humans. They are rules we follow to keep our society on its feet. Meanwhile, God is a divine essence. How could we expect him to abide to them?
That's what Job is trying to explain to us. We're human. How could we expect to keep God at our level? Truth is, no matter how hard you try, you can't expect to understand Him. He is called God our LORD for a reason.


BTW: Enjoy your last chance to savor the simple amusement of a date with three matching numerals like "12/12/12"!

Innocence Lost

It's strange, but as I was contemplating my answers, to the series of questions posed by our  dear Ms. Kimball, in the car, on the way to a sale at Kohl's on Friday night, a song played on the radio that perfectly matched my thoughts. The song's name is "Where are you, Christmas?" by Faith Hill, from the Grinch. The line that stood out the most in the song was "My world is changing/ I'm rearranging/ Does that mean Christmas changes too?"

At the end, the narrator realizes that although Christmas will never be quite the same, as long as one has "love" in her heart, one can rejoice in the spirit of Christmas... and so on.

Adam and Eve changed just as the narrator of the song did, and just as in Emily Dickinson's poem, "Eden is that Old-Fashioned House", they symbolically "sauntered" away from home. they never thought about "returning" because they didn't think Eden would disappear. No one thinks their home would change. The narrator from the song didn't think Christmas would change/ disappear, but it does.

Therefore, Adam and Eve left Eden symbolically by leaving  innocence behind.

It's strange that once one knows something, they can't un-know it. For instance, this weekend I watched "American Horror Story" for the first time (late, i know). So on Saturday night, I sat down in my dimly lit room and switched to Netflix on my tablet. I scrolled down the list of episodes, found that there are 13 episodes in season one, and scrolled back up to play episode 1. 

I began watching what i thought was the pilot episode and was instantly confused. That's because it wasn't the first episode I was playing; I accidentally played episode 6 and, in one move, ruined the entire suspense in the show. Although I tried to watch the show innocently from the beginning and although i tried to forget what Tate had done, it wasn't the same.

Innocence acts the same way. As one grows up and "changes", they can't revert to their carefree 10 year old self no matter how much they may want to be carefree again.

So when we leave for college next summer, we will be leaving our home, our Eden. None of us will be thinking about what we will be leaving behind because we don't really think about what will change. We think about our future instead. In other words, we think about will be be getting in the future. 

Adam and Eve left behind simple innocence when they ate from the tree of good and evil. At the moment,  they didn't think of the consequences. They didn't think that they would be booted out of their beloved Eden  They just wanted to be as God is, and therefore they ate. 

Just as our naive ancestors cannot return home, we will not find home again either. We would all leave our Eden behind forever.

Now, if I somehow was to break the ritual of forgetting that as I leave, I am leaving behind Eden, I would pay respects to the times when i was sick and nursed by my mother, the times i would break something and blame my brother, the times i would stay up thinking about the most pointless things and the times when i could rely on my helicopter mother (because i wouldn't be able to anymore).

Therefore, on Sunday night, as I was typing up these last words and watching "American Horror Story", my mother turned on the radio while telling me to turn the lights up in my room and the song "I will be home for Christmas"  filled the room with its melody.

I cried as Ralph did at the end of the Lord of the Flies for innocence that would be lost.

“If today was your last day”

It was the first day of my sophomore year in high school and I still attended Sound School then so I expected my day to consist of long trips on the Schooner and a lazy afternoon walking along the beach by the lighthouse. Mentally, I wasn't ready for anything more serious than “would you like fries with your lunch today?”

Truthfully, I didn't expect sophomore year to be anything life changing. To me, it was just an extension to freshman year: an easy year with thirty minutes of homework each night and regular trips down to Dunkin Donuts during Tech. Therefore, when I walked into the library classroom to listen the Principal’s class welcome speech, I was not prepared.

Hearing him talk to us about college visits, club activities, PSATs and the all holy CAPT scared me. I hadn't even thought about what I wanted to be yet. Yes, I do remember having those conversations with my parents but those little chit-chats always ended with a simple “I’ll get to it, ma”.

The rest of the day was just an extension of that grueling speech. I felt very left out after I realized that all the friends I thought were as laid back as me were already decided when it came to their future. They knew where they wanted to work, where to go to school and where they could find their first job. Thinking back, I should have expected it since I did attended a “magnet” high school which specialized in the sciences. Every student there already had a general idea of their future. In contrast, I only attended the school to get out of Gym and English.

At first, I played it off. My acting should be commended because not a sliver of frustration showed through in my expression even though my conversations went through pretty much like this EVERY SINGLE DAY:

“So Rebecca, we are going to have a college workshop today during study hall. Are you going?”

“Yeah.”

“So where are you thinking of going for college?”

Time to BS it. “Umm… UCONN”

“Cool. My cousin wants to go there too. What are you going to major in?”

“PreMed”

Back then, I didn't know that PreMed was just a college “track” not really a major. I was feeling increasingly frustrated for the first few weeks of sophomore. Reflecting back, I must have been really patient. However, even with my natural talent and possible future as a lawyer, I was not that patient. I finally snapped one day after my parents tried to have the “chit-chat” again. I was in tears for the rest of the evening.

My mother was the first to console me since my dad was very awkward in these types of situations. She stroked my hair the way she always did when I was eight and stormed into her room every night since I stubbornly believed “Mr. Boogie” was trying to shave my head in my sleep.

“Honey?” she began the conversation that night, “What’s wrong?”

I looked up at her then, with my red, puffy eyes and runny nose, and spilled my pent up frustration. She listened quietly and when I was done, she laughed.

“Seriously, I can’t imagine you to be the type to be worried over such a thing. I mean you were always the one who calmly tackled each issue at your own pace”.

As I tried to digest what she just told me, my mother went into the kitchen to make me a cup of chai tea. She returned with a mug full of the warm, brown liquid and a stunning smile. Then she said the words that changed the course of history—at least my short seventeen year old history.

“Remember life is full of twists and turns. It would be easy if it was a straight road where you could look into the horizon and anticipate the future but you can’t. Therefore, live for the now. You will know what you need to know eventually. Take your time. Do what you usually do and take this as one big issue that you can break down and tackle at your own pace with a smile. Now smile!”

I smiled as my mother and father cancelled all plans for the evening to spend it with me. Okay so maybe that wasn't what she exactly said but it was along those lines: Live for the now. From then on my motto became the echo of Nickleback’s song “If today was your last day”.

I tend to like to live each day as a separate problem easily taking my time and finding my way at my own pace. My mother was right, I can’t see into the future. I didn't know I was changing schools to Amity high (where I had to sadly take gym again). Ironically, many of the girls who supposedly knew their future pathways changed career plans.

I, for one, finally made my choice. I want to be a neurosurgeon and with my calm demeanor I might make it. However, even though I am making my way with that goal in mind for now, I am not going crazy. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

Our Feeble Humanity According to History.

Gilgamesh spent the last chapters of the epic fearing an end and pleading for eternity. In his search for immortality, he sought out Utnapishtim, the only man the gods have ever granted eternal life. However, Utnapishtam answered Gilgamesh with an ultimatum: “there is no permanence” (106).

Humans aren’t meant to live forever. We are all meant to meet our end someday no matter who we are; “what is there between the master and the servant when both have met their doom?” (107). Everything we have learnt, as a race, from science to history shows us that there is a cycle of growth and decay. A typical example is evolution; how many of such cycles do you believe our primitive ancestors have gone through to place human beings as the dominant animals? I can confidently say that even the human race, with all its glory, may one day bend over for a new dominant race just as the Neanderthals did for Homo sapiens.

Nothing is meant to last forever. If I learned one thing from my ninth grade World History class, it was just this. We started the year off with the clever Greeks. They saw some success in the fields of art, sciences and even war. Then they were conquered; that ended the era of Greece. Then we fast forwarded to the height of the Roman Empire. They were successful as well especially in the incorporation of Greek literature and Art. Alas they weren’t to last either. Europe fell to the rule of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. If we were to fast forward a little more, we will land in the wake of the Great British Empire. Where are they now? (It’s interesting how much a World History class focused on just one part of the whole).

If our great civilizations, the greatest inventions of humanity, can’t last an eternity then what can? Nothing… Even so, there is a way to still pass on a legacy.

Here is where my favorite quote takes part and it is ironically taken from Nickleback: “Each day’s a gift and not a given right”. Gilgamesh’s epic mirrors this quote a little bit as well when Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that “Life and death do [the gods] allot but the day of death they do not disclose” (107). We human beings will never know the day of our death and that gets us thinking: “what if it’s tomorrow? What if that’s the day the god’s have set aside for our deaths?”

 Oh and if there is one thing I have learned from the Final Destination series it’s that death can be really persistent; No one can cheat death.

Therefore humans found a way to give meaning to life. One way is through friendship, love and family. The closeness of a bond can give us joy, melt away our loneliness and give us a reason to kick ourselves awake in the morning. If one person has given time to keep another man company then that man has reason to live and return the favor. No one wants to be lonely.

Religion, that has been passed down through the ages and permeated through the population of the Earth, is another way to explain live and give reason to it. For instance, according to my Catholic faith, one has to live and perform good deeds so our hearts are lighter than a feather; that way, we can pass God’s ultimate test and enter Heaven’s gates.

Finally there are our children, our legacy in genes. They are the ones who carry our names into the world (mostly our surnames). When we think about in terms of “legacy” then we realize that we can finally understand helicopter moms. I mean if we really want our children to represent us then shouldn’t we put our best foot forward?

Now back to religion; we humans are always looking for more than just a meaning in life. We are all looking to give our lives eternal meanings. In order to end this exhausting search in the dark, humans have created religion. We bury our dead; why is that? Isn’t it because to respect them by “immortalizing” their memory? We create meaning in our current lives to secure an eternity in heaven. It’s heaven in Catholicism, but it’s different in other religions. However, isn’t it fascinating that all major religions mention a life after death?

Think about the Greeks: they had the great kingdom of Hades. Think about the Egyptians: they built pyramids as gateways to the afterlife. Think about the Hindus: they believe in reincarnation.

We all aim to be famous in science, business, politics or art. It’s just one way we wish to maintain a legacy, a story just about us. After all we all know how feeble life can be. After all, according to the bible and now Utnapishtim, we have been killed off before by a giant flood and there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen again.

Heroism is Universal

Here’s an interesting story:

My English teacher sophomore year believed in the power of creative writing. so I, as a student in her honors English II class, was “encouraged” to come up with a different short story every month. At the end of the year, they were collected and compared. She tried to show us just how much we improved over the year; or, in my case, how lazy we got over the year.

The interesting part of this story, however, is the similarity between the creative abilities of the students in the class. Despite the diversity in ethnicity and gender, every student in the class came up with a similar plotline as the basics. A poor pitiful character, with a problem, embarks on a journey with several obstacles along the way. At the end of the tale, the character’s grief is elevated and he returns home.

One has to understand that the main character usually varies from a toothbrush to a king of a mystical kingdom, but in context they were all “heroes”.

A “hero”, in any culture around the world, is defined as one who is admired for his courage and accomplishes something great, a deed which is then called a “heroic deed”. Or, in a more literary sense, a character who takes a journey, willingly or unwillingly, in the unknown and returns changed; in the process, he changes his world or the world.

Based on this definition, the protagonists from Odyssey, Hercules and Beowulf are all similar. Their stories are reflected in modern day as well, although in more style. For instance, there is Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The popularity of the movies based on DC comics and Marvel and the soon return of Nnja Turtles and Teen Titans reflects our ever growing interest in heroes.

As a human race, we define heroic acts as something generalized like “saving the world” but that may not be just it. Heroic acts can vary from rescuing a cat from a tree to saving the galaxies from erupting into an intergalactic war. The basics are that the acts have to reflect courage; the heroes must go against the odds and they have to accomplish something that’s not only “great” but universally “good”.

Did you notice that in all my definitions of heroes, I never once used the pronoun “she”. That’s because in the usual definition of hero, a man is most likely to be depicted.  King Arthur, Merlin, Hercules and Luke Skywalker were all men. However, those are the “classics”. In the more modern novels, women have stood up as “heroines”. Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, walked the yellow brick road and made a hazardous journey to the Emerald city. Alice from Alice in Wonderland slew the Red Queen. The protagonists from both Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre changed their worlds into what is generally expected positive.

Heroine driven literature is rising to the point where I feel the library shelves are overfilling: Mortal Instruments, Haven, Daughter of the Flame, Graceling, etc.

Bertol Brecht once said “Unhappy the land that needs heroes” and I believe that means that everyone should be a hero not need one. The motif of a hero is the motif of a character that ventures into the unknown, their unconscious, and unlocks its secret. In other words, they reach their full potential as human beings and become changed men and in turn change the world around them.

As the human race, we do not need heroes. Their only role in society is to show us what we can achieve individually.