No Direction… (continuation) to Bad Faith

I ended my last post by saying that mammals, in their nature, nurture their young until the parents feel the child, or young, is ready to take responsibility for their own survival. So, when exactly are human beings ready to take responsibility for their own lives? At the age of twelve? Fourteen? Sixteen? Twenty? Is there even a definitive age where human beings ‘let go’ of their young, and let them assume the responsibility of their own lives?

It seems as though, for humans at least, it is not a question of survival, as it is with ‘unsophisticated mammals’, but rather a question of sustainability.

We are raised, and conditioned, to sustain ourselves in the system in which we find ourselves thrust into. It is not as though we were asked, before being born, whether or not we wanted to live in this world, with these ways of living. Rather we are born without any preconception of what we are being born into, and because of this we do not question the system, we sit back and go for a ride.

The system in which we find ourselves was set up to facilitate our lives, in order to give us an ‘easy’ and a ‘good’ life. What does it mean to have a ‘good life’ exactly? Can anyone describe it for me? Because I have yet to find the answer. For me, good is to be content, pleased, happy, and to have a positive relation to, in this case, life. Do we all stand in a positive relation to our own lives? No, quite simply, if it is possible to point to negatives, un-pleasantries, and sad things in the world, it becomes quite clear that our lives are not all ‘good lives’, even though most of us would disagree. Human beings are blind to the negativity that which they hold in their heart, they do not see the hatred, discomfort, and anger that is right in their own lives. When questioned about whether or not we live a ‘good life’, we quickly say that, “Yes” we are content with the way our lives are. We sit here in our comfortable lives, seemingly content, without despair over our lives. Yet, the reality of life is different, Sartre would call this bad faith, we are lying to ourselves about being content. How can we be content with our lives, when we see millions of people whom are, unhappy, displeased with the way the their lives are. This is not a dream, it is a reality. I am not trying to judge people, but rather trying to shed light on peoples displeasure’s with the world.We are not only happy people, we have a side that is unhappy as well, which is our despair.

We can see then that we live in two states, one of which is our ‘happy’ and comfortable, and another in which we are evidently the opposite. The latter is the despair of wanting to be oneself. How can we be ourselves when for the first twelve, fourteen,…twenty years of our lives, we are conditioned to be, closely, like everyone else? These conditioning years, as I will call them, is the catalyst for our despair and lack of being oneself. We are shown how-to-be, we are told what being human really is, and because of this when we attempt to become ourselves. This can be the most complicated task we will ever attempt to accomplish.

I feel as though some people might be reading this and saying, “what a pessimist, he describes life as this empty shell waiting to be filled up with content. And, then goes on to say that our whole lives are conditioned to be a certain way, because of this we can never be ourselves, and we can only ever ‘attempt’ to become ourselves.” But, this is not everything, it is not as though despair, and conditioning are the end(s) to our lives, but rather, the realization of this should be our enlightenment.

It is the task of becoming ourselves was set before us, it was put there for us to take hold of, and to give us the opportunity to fashion our lives for ourselves. It should be made clear that, in fashioning our lives, because the way in which we live our lives, can and will affect others around us. We should be sure to make choices that do not impede on other peoples freedoms, and their individuality. This is where the negativity that I spoke of earlier manifests itself. The negativity is actualized when people wish to force their views, methods, and lives onto other people. For example, colonization, although on the surface it seems a positive way to extend a society, and also a way to develop other parts of the world, it actually impedes on other peoples freedoms and ways of living without giving them, the people being colonized, a way to actualize their freedom and individuality!

This, becoming, then, should be a task that we undertake in a positive way and in an individual way, and in doing so we should keep in mind that we share this world, this existence, with other free beings that are trying to do the same as we are. If we loose sight of this, we become greedy, we become selfish, and we become hostile, because we feel then that our freedom is being impeded on. If you have ever felt, put down, subjugated, or oppressed, then you should know that it is not a pleasant feeling. Then why do people do it? Is it that they (the oppressor), do not understand the impact of what they are doing? No! They are very aware of what they are doing, but they, either subconsciously or consciously (argue with a psychoanalyst about it) neglect the truth of what they are doing, they are acting in bad faith.

I would like to tie this back to the main topic of this post, and my previous one, which is, having no direction in our lives.

It seems as though we do understand ourselves as in a state of becoming, but it is how to become that is the problem for us to grasp. And because of this we really have no idea what to do, and so our moral values do not apply to each other,because we are, each one of us, subjective beings, with our own morals, and ways of seeing the world. It is precisely because of this subjectivity that our negative aspects actualize themselves in the world. We each think we have the “answer”, but this is very much far from the truth. (Although paradoxical) The truth is that their is no truth for how to become ourselves. Becoming ourselves is a mystery to ourselves, and to others, this is why we lack direction.

I generalized by ideas as the two posts progressed, and in case some feel lost as to where the connection is, here we go. The orignal question posed in the first, of these two posts was “Why do (some) teenagers lack, motivation and direction?”. This lack of direction stays with us throughout our whole lives, we never really know where we are going in this life. But for teenagers it is still quite new for them as they have only recently been given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives. Life is very demanding of them at the stage of progression that they are in, which makes their position be much more complicated than another, who is further biologically advanced.

- Possibly, more might be written on this matter. I imagine their will be, so please comment, criticize, as to help me refine some topics, ideas, etc.

- Check my reference page for information on the book that includes Sartre’s paper on “Bad Faith”.

 

 

 

 

No direction…

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to talk with one of my customers about -something- that she and I both agreed on. Simply put, the conversation was about teenagers not having any direction in their lives. The conversation was sparked after her son walked out of the store before our transaction was finished. When they walked up to my cash, the first thing her son did was walk over to the opposite counter and put his arms up and his head down in exhaustion, then followed by asking for the keys and then stepping outside. As he stepped out his mother looked at me in confidence and said  “What am I going to do” with a laugh at the end of her statement.

Firstly, I would like to make it clear that it is no ones position to judge someone simply because they were tired one morning, that is clear. Human beings get tired, there is nothing wrong with being tired, especially teenagers because they are in a moment of their lives where they are growing and trying their best to experience their lives to the fullest. But the mother seemed to be have a concern for her son otherwise she would not have said what she did.

I replied to her statement with curiosity, because it was not long ago that I was his age, and it is quite possible that I might be able to offer some guidance in the matter. Having no other customers in line I had the opportunity to quickly see what might be bothering her. Some people might wonder why I would be ‘interfering’ with someones personal matters, but I would not say it was interfering at all, but rather that it was a helpful, and kind gesture. She seemed to have been lost in the matter, and I feel that any guidance I could offer her was the correct thing to do.

Never the less, she explained to me that her son, being in high school at the moment, is having a tough time “finding his way” as she put it. She continued to explain to me that she feels teenagers lack motivation and direction. I agreed completely.

We should ask ourselves; Why do (some) teenagers lack, motivation and direction?

To address the first question will be quite difficult without any study of the subject. Everyone is different, and someones motivation in life, or lack of, is completely subjective, but I find that there still lies a common factor that sways people from finding their own motivation. As you should have noticed, own, in the previous sentence was italicized, and this is because people, teenagers, adults, and anyone in between inclusively, cannot be expected to follow the same motivation that someone else has. Rather, someone needs to, or should try to, find something in their lives that they want to live for and strive to achieve. No one can come to you and tell you; “You should feel motivated because of X”, this is because whatever X is, very well might be something that motivates them. So we can see that motivation is subjective.

Although it might be a generalization, and considering I have not completed a survey, it seems to me that a strong factor for teenagers, or even people in general, to be lacking motivation in their lives, is because most people expect to have a set destination in their journey through life. Most of us, hopefully, would know that it simply does not work this way. Life is not easy, and it is not determined for us, there are no set paths. The paths that we choose to take is what defines us as people. Our choices and decisions to experience certain things is the freedom that is there for us to take, and it is not something given to us. With this in mind, we can see how some people might loose direction. If you have ever thought about where you life is going, I am quite certain that at some point or another, in your thinking you have seen the emptiness that is your future. I say emptiness in the lightest  sense possible, because it is not that life is empty, but rather life is there in front of you, ready and waiting to be filled up with experiences and meaning. Some pessimists would argue that life’s journey is filled with sorrow, and despair, but I argue it is quite the opposite. Life is empty if you so will it to be empty. If you take your will and turn it around from that dark view of life, you will see that the possibilities are endless, and that you have complete control over how your life plays out.

Now, back to the young man standing before his own life, without direction.

Quickly, I would like to make it clear that I do not mean to judge him as a person, because he very well might be full of motivation and direction, but the conversation with his mother made me want to address these issues that, some, and not all, people share.

As we have seen, life is an open book waiting to be written in. Why then does the young man not see this? Why does he not take hold of it and create his future for himself? I blame conditioning. By conditioning I mean the way in which young people are brought up to think about themselves and the world around them. As we saw in my last post, Abby’s life was set up before her, her whole life was -almost- determined for her, through her parents eyes. We are raised a certain way by our parents, and this is not to say that they are doing a bad job, because that is not true, they are simply doing what they think is best for us. The problem I have with this is that, the only person who should know what is best for them is themselves. It might be hard to probe a five year old and ask them; “Abby, what do you want to do the rest of your life? Do you want to go to Spring garden Elementary School, or Westpark, or Beachwood?”, but this is where the conditioning begins. Kids are sent off to schools that follow a specific curriculum and it seems that the curriculum is the same for each one of us, as if to say that we are all the same, and that we should all learn the same things to keep this formality. When does subjectivity and free will come into this? At such a young age, it simply does not.

Consider, although they are not mammals, sea turtles abandon their young before the eggs even hatch. It is up to the young turtles to make it back to the ocean and survive. Mammals on the other hand nurture their young until they are fit to survive on their own. It is in our nature, to nurture our young, and that is not the problem. But it seems that in the ’sophisticated’ and ‘advanced’ society that we live in, we feel the need to ensure that our young follow the same, or close to, paths that the parents did. This is the conditioning process.

I believe I have touched on this topic enough for today, as in writing it, it is taking me places, and to topics where I have not yet thought about.

Comments, and Criticisms are welcome! -The above was not proofread.

Are we really free?

Are you, at this moment, a complete transcendence of your freedom? Do you think of yourself as a free being? Is freedom something that we can achieve, or is it something innate within us? What does freedom give you? Hold on; What is freedom?

Most of us would assume, without second thought, that we are free beings, that we have freedom to choose our lives, and to fashion them as we see fit. Is that the truth, or does it seem that the idea of freedom is only just that, an idea. To find out the truth we should look further into the root of our lives, by doing this we will have the opportunity to understand how our lives are not as free as we originally thought they were.

Imagine;

It is Saturday June 15th, 1989, Debra hears her alarm clock ring and slowly reaches over to her nightstand, careful not to knock over the glass of water sitting at the edge, and presses the snooze button. It was not that she was too tired to wake up, or that she had no reason to wake up so early, she repeatedly pressed the snooze button to reflect on yesterday’s joyous event. Debra and her spouse Tim had only just found out  that they would be giving birth to a baby girl. In light of the moment, they both started thinking of names for the child, Stephanie, Jacqueline, Lora, and others ran through their minds, but not one was fitting quite yet. It took them a few weeks to find the perfect name for their child, without second thought when the name Abby came up they both froze and said,”That’s the one”.

Five months went by and they were the most exhilarating, busy and expensive months of their lives. Picking out a crib, buying bottles and toys was a chore and a half, but undoubtedly some of  the most rewarding and meaningful experiences they could hope for. They spent hundreds of dollars buying the cutest pink clothing, the Disney Princess matching furniture set, and anything else they needed to make sure Abby enjoyed her childhood experience.

Abby is born October 27th, 1989 and after having been cleansed, she is dried and dressed and given her first hat! A pink hat.

The next day Debra and Abby were picked up by Tim and brought to their home. Tim carried Abby into the house and gave her a tour. Abby’s eyes were moving a mile a minute taking in all of the new information the house had to offer her. They continued through the kitchen, down the hall way to Abby’s newly furnished and completed room. The light pink wallpaper stamped with ponies made Abby feel right at home, thought Debra and Tim. Abby was exhausted, so the parents of the little girl gave her a kiss, set her in her crib and said goodnight.

5 years later…

“Let’s go Abby, the school bus is not going to wait for you all day.” shouted Debra. Abby hurried to finish brushing her teeth as if she had no time left in the world and rushed down the hallway and down the stairs. She looked so cute in her pink skirt and blouse. Debra walked with Abby down the driveway to the bus, gave Abby an enormous hug and kiss and said goodbye.

Abby’s first day of school was exhilarating, she learned how to do some basic mathematics.

12 years later…

“Abby get up! You’re going to be late for school again, and I am not driving you today I have to leave for work. Get up!” yelled Tim.

Abby rolled over slowly reaching for her alarm clock’s snooze button only to realize the annoying sound echoing through the walls were here fathers. She paused for a moment, and shouted, “I’m up, I’m up!” She stepped out of bed and before she could even stand up to put her bathrobe on the door swung open and her mother was standing at the doorway and began a speech, ” Abby, how many times are we going to have to tell you! You cannot just waste your life in bed!”

“I’m up!” retorted Abby.

“Well, fine, but you do not know how much work me and your father have done to save up for your future, and being late for school is not helping your future! It’s only going to make it worse and more difficult for you. We did all that work for you, so you can have a happy life and not have to worry about anything.” said Debra.

Her mother left the room and followed by moving down the hallway and out the door with Tim, “Don’t be late! Bye!” they shouted.

Something clicked in Abby’s mind after hearing what her mother had said. She felt empty for a moment. When she thought of the ‘future’ her mother and father worked so hard for. “What future…” she thought, “…a future already determined for me? In a world already set forth in front of me, a world where I have no choice in how it runs? This is absurd, I did not choose any of this. Where was I when all of this was set before me?”

She started to think back to her childhood and wondered how things would be different if only she exercised her freedom of choice as a child. But she couldn’t could she? She did not have the power too she thought.

She remembered all of the things her parents bought for her, the pink clothing, the ponies and dolls, “Were all these things given to me to condition the way I think, and the way I am? Why couldn’t I have had a green room, or a cars for toys.”

She stopped and thought for a moment “Wait!, having a green room, or a blue room, and cars for toys instead of dolls, would not have changed anything, except for having been conditioned differently as it would for boys and vice versa.”

She quickly thought, “All these years I have been alive and I have only had this idea of free choice, fine I can now choose what to wear, what to eat, and what to say, but my choices are still only limited to the situation that I am in, and this situation is one that is predetermined for me, in a society that is already built for me to live in.

“I have no freedom.” she said out loud and sat back on her bed and fell asleep.

————————————————————————————————–

Abby’s situation might not be exactly the same as yours or mine, but what is true for all of us is that we have no choice in our upbringing! From the moment we are born there are predetermined categories that we fall into. Gender is of the biggest ones, now I am not saying that there should be no gender, but we should look at what follows through with it when babies are born. As we see with Abby, she is a girl so the parents bought, dolls, and ponies, and pink items to satisfy the social category of femininity. What would be so wrong as to not have these predetermined  categories? Could a young girl not play with a Tonka truck? Could a young boy not play with a Barbie set without being ridiculed?

We are conditioned to be a certain way from the moment we are born. We are told to act a certain way, talk a certain way, walk a certain way, and ultimately be a certain way. Where is our freedom then? Some would say that you obtain your freedom once you old enough to take responsibility of it for yourself. Let us assume that the age of ‘responsibility’ comes at sixteen (this age does not represent anything other than an example), so for sixteen years a child is subjugated and conditioned to be a certain way and once he or she hits the age he or she can then alter the way his or her life is. This does not seem fair to us as beings, those sixteen years although far behind us, they are no forgotten, they are what makes you, you today. We should have more say in what we do, how we do it, and when we do it. It might seem like a hard task to accomplish, but it will start with the parents, please do not subject your children to these silly common senses like, girls wear pink and boys wear blue.

Do your best to give them as much freedom of choice as you can! Yes, there are neutral colors that both genders can wear, not only girlie colors and boyish colors, they are simply colors without difference.

Abby’s parents worked so hard for her future. They saved up tons of money to make sure that Abby could go to the best elementary and high school around. Nothing wrong there, it seems. Wait! Except for the education that is being preached at these schools, they are nothing but regimented and dogmatic lessons that offer each student only the same curriculum with some differences between, arts and sciences. Students should be given more choices earlier on instead of waiting until college begins to pick what they will want to do the rest of their lives. Why not offer a seventh grader the choice to be in a pure music program, or to be doused in mathematics classes, etc… We should help students in high school become creative individuals who are willing and responsible enough to decided for their future on their own, instead of indoctrinating them into the system that we were all thrown into.

On another extreme I would wonder why exactly I have to wake up every morning and go to work? Is there no other option for me as a human being? Can I not just be free and sleep in today, without having to pay the consequences my employer would set to me? Of course not, I have to wake up to go to work to make sure that the world keeps spinning. Oh wait, the world would keep spinning if I and every other human being stopped working. Life would continue, only it would continue differently. Could we not just live to survive and forget about all these things we take for granted such as, cars, toys, gadgets, etc… We create these things to enhance our lives and to help us get more time to do things. I find that the effect is the complete reverse, we have all these things to help us go faster yet we feel as if we have less time than we ever did. We drive cars to get to work quicker, yet we spend so much time in traffic, aggravated that your going to be late. Guess what horses never got into traffic jams, they were not confined to the super-duper roadways we’ve built.

Well back to freedom, our lives are filled with these pre determined ways of being and we blindly just follow along like sheep. Then there are the people whom control our world, namely the banks and corporations, forget the government as much as policy and doctrine are not my most favorite things, they at least offer protection and security. The people on the ‘top of the world’ control everything we do for their own benefit, while the masses scurry underneath, agreeing with everything they tell us to do. There is not freedom there.

Freedom is the means to do what you want to do, to achieve your ultimate happiness in life. It is definitely not what is taking place in many parts of the world. We as human beings should just be able to live as people, surviving without fighting, share our resources, share our knowledge of the world and of ourselves, then we will truly understand ourselves, others and our place in the world.

–This topic is nowhere near complete, there is too much to write, and every-time I try to touch on one subject I seem to jump all over the place with it. I am glad at least to put this down on paper, and hopefully whomever reads it will stop to think about it for a second and see that freedom is not something that is given to us, and it is not something that can achieved either, freedom just is and our societies are moving away from it.

Please voice any comments or concerns here–

Focus…Focus…Focus

As you can see, the title to this post is focused on focus. Focusing is my problem because I find myself lost and without focus. I created this blog to give me a platform to express my ideas, but I can not seem to focus long enough to produce any writings, other than the essays I have to write for school.

I find it clear enough to me now that I was not focusing enough on the ideas I want to write about. I get home after school and usually get through a bit of reading and that is where it stops. No desire to write anything new, no spontaneous writing ideas are coming to mind, I feel lost without a place to start.With that in mind, I am going to try really hard to focus on the ideas I have been thinking about lately, and in doing that I will do my best to focus on writing what is on my mind. If I do not then my ideas will never develop into anything useful, they will remain basic ideas without justification or theory to back them up. It is not so simple that I can just think of a new idea and hope to have it figured out in one sitting, it takes time and energy, and I have not been enthusiastic enough to actually invest the time and the energy required.

This is all a ‘personal’ battle I am having with myself, I am obviously -to some- quite aware of my laziness, yet I do nothing to stop it. I have nothing or no one to blame about this but myself, and hopefully writing about my laziness will encourage me to ignore myself when I want to be lazy, and listen to myself when I am ignoring myself, in turn choosing not to be lazy and sit down and write!

All that aside, although it was irrelevant to anything interesting   I felt the need to express the issue at hand.

The site has had a few changes;

1) Literature/Essays will be found under the -Literature & Essays- link

This will include any and all essays I write for school, and pieces of literature I will write that are not in a blog post format.

This will reserve blog posts for more personal/spontaneous updates about me, quick ideas or interesting things I experienced throughout my day/week.

2) The -References & Interesting Links- page has been update in accordance with the essays that were posted in the -Literature & Essays- page.

I have been having a tough time figuring out what to start working on as previously mentioned but a topic that has been on my mind recently is – Freedom -, and I think that freedom is one of the fundamental issues, whether directly or not, that we encounter everyday, and I hope to take the idea of freedom and flesh it out in hopes to answer a few of the following questions;

1) What does it mean to be free? (As in a existent human context)

2) We each categorize ourselves as free beings, are we truly free beings? (This question will open a lot of ideas on what freedom really is.)

3) Human beings are born into particular societies, particular families, etc… These societies and families feed the new members, that are born into them, particular common-senses and understandings of the world, that being said; Are we free in making our own choices and understandings of the world, or does it not seem that our understandings of the world and the choices that we make are based on other peoples opinions, choices and understandings?

4) Is there such a thing as too much freedom?

These might not be the exact questions I will attempt to respond to, but they should offer a little guideline as to where I plan to take the idea of freedom.

Updated Understanding – Knowledge

If you have read my first post you will see a section  that explains in the most simplistic form what knowledge is.

Merely saying that knowledge is the information that we remember is not enough! There is a lot more to knowledge than that, as we will see here.

**Updated Understandings will be small posts, or large (depending on how much I feel I can write), that will give us better understanding of topics previously posted**

To get a better grasp of this concept of knowldge we have to look introspectively about what we think knowledge is. Knowledge is simply the information that we know.

The know in the word knowledge is the key focus here.

Have you ever wondered about whether or not you actually know something? How can you prove that you have concrete knowledge about anything at all?

Let us look at an example;

Example 1.1

I know that France is a country in Europe.

There are two claims of knowledge being presented in Example 1.1

(a.)  France is a country.

(b.)  France is situated in the European Continent.

Most of us think we know that France is a country, and I am not debating whether it is or is not. It is important to see here is that a majority of people were told that France is a country through what we will call Testimony. Testimony usually is understood as what someone might tell a court room under oath. The word has a larger definition in the context we are using here. It is what other people tell you, when your in a conversation, reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, etc.

The important thing to take out of this is that, even though it is correct in this case, what other people tell you might not necessarily be true! Human beings have the capability to lie, and also to forget. (Memory, ethics and morality of lying will not be discussed here)

So we can then agree that most of us know that France is a country because, either, your elementary school teachers told you that it was, you saw it on a map when you were younger, or you heard someone say France one day and you thought to yourself “What the heck is a France?”. Did any of us ever question our school teachers, or think about the possibility that the map was somehow misleading? No.

Again, not that I am debating Frances sovereignty, but who really has the power to say that France is a country. Most of us would agree that France is a country because the definition of a country seems to fit France quite well. That is to say that, France is a country because of common-sense facts and most of us do not argue that notion. It is common-sense that a country is; a politically organized group of people with one government. We as human beings take these common-sense facts as they are, and without question.What if I choose that a country is a politically organized group of people with one or more governments? (I do not, this is being used to example purposes only.) If the definition was changed to that then a lot of the issues surrounding North and South Korea would not have taken place.

So we can see then that common-sense and testimony play a huge role in what we seemingly know.

There is a lot more that can be discussed here, but I will save it for other posts. This is to get you to think about the validity of the information in which you think you know. Mostly, we think we know a lot, but from this example it seems to me that some of the things we ‘know’ are true only in the context and understandings of other people. It is not necessarily true for you, and that is what we need to think about!