"The Stranger" Free write

I've noticed throughout reading the stranger that Meursault isn't really connected to things. He doesn't pay attention to Marie or his friends he's only really concerned with the physical world, in which case he's only observing things about the world and not really a part of it. This is proven by the fact that he uses descriptive language to describe his surroundings in poetic detail, but he doesn't describe his emotions (which for the most part are non-existent) or describe the people in his life, occasionally he'll comment on how good Marie looks but he doesn't talk about her as a person.

Meursault doesn't care about anything so therefore he can't connect to anything. His friends and Marie are just possessions to him, he uses them to keep himself busy or to entertain himself. I would argue that someone who is truly connected to someone doesn't "use" that person, they respect that person and care about how they feel and feel real concern for them. This connection could be called friendship or love, but those are just varying degrees of the same feeling. Connection also implies empathy, for people to be connected they have to understand each other's feelings. When we talked about Banach's lectures I came to the conclusion that people can share common experiences, emotions are part of that experience and are an experience that most people connect to.

Meurasult is different, he doesn't feel emotions (at least not until the end of the book in which case he doesn't express them) so he can't connect to someone's feelings. He couldn't connect to the woman at the funeral who was crying, or his friends or Marie. As we've seen throughout "The Stranger", not being connected leads to hollow meaningless relationships. By association we have to feel emotions to connect to people to have meaningful relationships to add meaning to our lives.

Who is this guy? Blog Post

The character of Mersault is shown to be very detached after he find out that his mother dies and he doesn't care, at the funeral he even gets frustrated over a woman crying "The woman's sighs and sobs were quieting down. She sniffled a lot. Then finally she shut up." His lack of empathy for a woman crying, at his own mothers funeral by the way, demonstrates his detachment from his emotions and from other people.

The book is written in a "listy" way that makes Mersault's life very bleak and mechanical. He goes throughout his life in monotony, weather he acted this way before his mother died is debatable. In class Sam said that his detachment was a kind of "coping mechanism" he used to ease the pain. Before this he may have been much happier and enjoyed life more, however Albert Camus made a point to start this story when the character was detached from people.

The reason he does this is to make the character of Mersault a mirror image of the reader. In most philosophy books the main character is despised and hated, but the character is a reflection of what the reader is doing wrong, then throughout the book the character will experience a change that will make him change his life for the better. A change that the author wants the reader to mimic and realize so that the reader can follow in this path.

Mersault is meant to be a reflection of "pre-enlightened" or "pre-revelation" man, this is life before we learn a valuable idea later on the book. Mersault is disconnected from everything, this is an exaggeration of how little we connect to each other, Mersault uses people for things, he uses Marie for his sexual impulses and he uses Raymond for company and friendship (and even a cheap dinner). Albert Camus is trying to say that we use people for things, not as blatantly as Mersault does but we still use people. We use our family's for guidance and support, we use friends for entertainment and support as well, we use significant others to make us feel better about ourselves etc.

Albert Camus is showing us Mersault, this detached character who uses people, as a mirror that reflects an exaggerated version of ourselves so we can see how our lives are meaningless. As is the average structure of philosophical texts, Albert Camus will teach us somthing later on in the book that will allow us to connect with people in a more real way, addressing the initial problem he states, what this revelation actually is, is still unknown.

response to "I <3 Huckabees"

"I <3 Huckabees” is an existentialist movie that facilitates the argument between two dominant points of view in the existentialist community. The theory that everything is meaningful and we’re all connected and the theory that everything is meaningless and everything we do gets erased after we die. The movie gave each argument its time, but ultimately it sided with a mixture of the two.

I personally believe that everything has meaning because everything effects something else. Even "meaningless" things like a pile of crap can fertilize the soil and make plants grow which feed other animals and so on. Everything in nature is used so it has meaning, my way of measuring meaning is if that thing was gone would people miss it? and anything in the world that's taken away will be missed by someone even if they don't know it. Disease, while horrible and seemingly pointless maintains populations, without disease we'd all starve to death because we can't grow enough food, so even if we don't know it we'd miss disease. Conversely there are varying degrees of meaning, if you erase plums from the face of the earth people will miss them but not as much as they will miss sunlight, people can live without plums, but they can't live without sunlight. I agree with the blanket theory and that we all have meaning and are connected, but somethings have more connections or have more meaning. Graphically the world might look like a giant web, full of connectors and dots, dots will represent objects and lines will represent connections, some objects will have more connections than other, meaning more things depend on it, meaning comes from dependence. Even though every object is contained within the metaphorical blanket, everything in the universe has at least one connection or thread.

This leads me to believe that the world is full of meaning, however the varying degrees of meaning make us strive to make our lives meaningful. Without that hierarchy our lives are meaningless because no matter what we do we won't ultimately change. In this way Bernard is wrong in his opinion, if everything is meaningful then nothing is because nobody is different and no one can stand out, with varying degrees of meaning we can stand out and be individuals. Our purpose in life is to create meaning, to touch people's lives, to make our mark on the world. I believe that the world is full of meaning, but to truly live a great life you must create your own meaning.

Banach's Lecture Part 3 and 4 comments

Charles's Blog Comment

I liked the ideas you brought up, you talked about how people have to want freedom for other people, which can be a confusing idea in terms of perspective, you thought about it using Banach's reasoning that we can't live other lives. Thinking about it logically, everyone in the class has this thought (because we all read the article) so what if someone in the class didn't think it mattered that other people were free and someone else did, there'd be conflict there. Who decides which desire gets fulfilled? how is it decided? the only answer I can think of is that it doesn't matter weather you want other people to free or not, they ultimately have to choose, much like the saying "you can't help someone unless they help themselves".

You also talked about how the law limits our freedom. Is it really the law that limits our freedom or the consequences of the law that make us limit ourselves? The law itself doesn't prevent crime it punishes crime that already happens. For example, in the case of murder, murder happens regardless of the law, so the law doesn't prevent murder, it only punishes the murderer once they're caught. The law makes people avoid the punishment and not want to break the law. So my question to you is this, does the law limit our freedom, or does the fear of the law make us limit ourselves?

Henry's Blog

Henry, I like how you don't get depressed by the overwhelming thoughts of meaningless life. You defended your beliefs well when you said that meaning comes from improving the world as much as you can. However that bring to mind the question, what happens when you don't make this contribution to the world? is your life meaningless? what if you make the world worse off than it was before, is your life meaningless then? Who decides weather you make the world better or worse? there are a lot of questions like these when it comes to meaning, the biggest of them is "who decides what's meaningful?"

You also said that meaning comes from being true to yourself, but how do you know who "you" are if you're influenced by the things around you, and how exactly does being true to yourself make your life more meaningful? does it make your social life more real, how is "truth" significant? Your post raised a lot of questions which means your thoughts may not have been completely clear, but that also means that you've provoked your readers thoughts and made them think about your post, keep up the good work.

Banach's Lecture Part 3

Human happiness as Banach describes is the pursuit of something, he uses the myth of Sisyphus as an example, he pushes a boulder up a hill and the boulder falls down erasing all of the work he did that day. Banach wants us to believe that there is joy just in the effort of life, he says that because we die everything we do is meaningless because it's erased when we die.

I disagree with this because people make impacts on everyone around them, as Banach said himself, we see the world through our experience, and people make up that experience, so naturally you'll have to remember a person in your life, that person affected you in some way. When that person dies they live on in your memory. Everything they accomplished will also live on through us. Even if someone dies they will live through the people they've affected who are currently alive, as long as that persons actions are seen or recorded, or have impacted someone else's life they will live on.

Having proved that our accomplishments do count for something, I've revised Banachs definition of human happiness to encompass the legacies we pass on. Human happiness is comprised of the joy of trying to accomplish something and the joy when something has been accomplished, the immediate joy being that you've been able to succeed at something and the long term joy that your success will be passed on to future generations. Our lives aren't meaningless as long as we can pass something on and make the future generations easier and better.

Blogs Comments

Carrie's Blog

I like the feel of this blog post, it becomes very thought provoking and insightful as the post goes on. I liked how you were able to connect the idea of what "genuine" is to the idea of regurgitating what we're told. They're very related concepts, I would have liked if you took this idea and went further with it. For instance, how can you tell when someone regurgitates ideas or answers? How can you get a genuine response out of someone? What else to people regurgitate outside of speech and ideas? how can you get those things to be genuine? there are a lot of questions to be posed in that idea, your post would be more compelling if you had asked and addressed those questions, or questions of your own.

I thought your ideas on destiny were very interesting. You compared the idea of destiny to your own life and were able to address large questions in a simple way that readers could understand. I like the idea that destiny is when your essence is predetermined, this is a very concise definition of what destiny is. All in all, good post, I liked the way you were able to convey your ideas in a clear way, keep up the good work

Mara's Blog

I like this idea that humans are compelled to make themselves better, however I'd like you to expand on that idea. How do you know that all people want to make themselves better? maybe thats something that you yourself believe, if you can't share thoughts you won't know if other people think the same way as you?

You also brought up the idea that everything we do is based on what other people do. Are we truly free if all of our actions are subconsciously based on the actions of others? Can we choose anything if we just absorb what we see? I'd like you to ask questions like these and deepen your thoughts in your next posts. Great start, I hope you can expand on these ideas and come to some interesting insights in your later posts.

Response to Banach's lecture part 2

The main idea that stood out to me in Banach's lecture was this debate on weather existence precedes essence or the opposite. He uses the example of a pair of scissors. The pair or scissors is thought out and then created, this being essence before existence. Then the opposing idea to this is that something is made before it has a purpose. The basis of this argument is really "do we control our future?" "do we have destinies?" "Are we truly free if we're bound by our purpose?"

I agree with both of these statements, I've combined these two ideas into one that makes much morse sense to me. Banach assumes that when something is built, it's built with just one purpose in mind, I believe that people are made to be able to do anything, if we are built with a purpose its to be able to do anything. Something can also be useful beyond its intended purpose. Paper for instance is made for people to write and draw on but you can make paper airplanes out of them make origami etc. Just like paper, humans can be useful beyond what they're intended for, if humans are only intended for one thing, and even then, humans could have been intended to fit any purpose.

Essentially what I'm saying is that humans aren't bound by destiny because something can be made to fit a specific purpose, but that thing can be used outside of its intended purpose. I've combined the two arguments to end up with this... "Essence" precedes "Existence" which precedes "Essence" where the new essence doesn't have to match up with the first essence. When something is created, the maker has an idea for what it's going to be in their head, but then when the object exists it can have a variety of purposes.

Proving or disproving destiny can be troublesome in my my opinion, and it's fairly pointless. If you don't have a destiny then go about living your life, if you do have a destiny, then it'll happen anyways and its incredibly unlikely that someone will find out what their destiny is. Even if someone knew their destiny and tried to follow it, there would be no point in trying since its bound to happen anyways. Destiny to me is a very flawed idea, the notion that things are all planned out encourages people to float through life and let things happen, but the reality is that people make things happen, and destiny has nothing to do with it. Sometimes its easier to just live your life and not worry about the intricacies of the universe, and its always important to question how thinking about a certain topic will affect your life.

HW-2 Comments 1

Henry's Blog

Henry, i like the way you were able to casually express your feelings in an educated way. While you do tend to rant about the alien fantasy, I can clearly see your point and even though the example you used was a bit silly I could still get the gist of what you were saying. You mentioned in the beginning that you hear the phrase "Human Nature" a lot which I assume you meant to contrast Banach's idea, thus "Human Nature" implies that we all share a similar experience. I'd like you to expand on the idea of "Human Nature", does Banach disprove it? if we can't share common experiences then can there be a human nature? Silliness aside, nice work, I think you have some already good ideas, if you expanded on them they could be great ideas.

Jenise's Blog

Jenise, I liked how you quoted from the article and were able to back up your arguments without your post sounding like an essay. Your writing style was very casual yet intelligent which made it easier to pick up on your ideas. I think your point about us being able to share feelings is very interesting, we can't dispute emotions because we can see the body language of people and their tone. This connects to what I said in class, in this case we can share the visual aspect of emotion, such as body language and the verbal in our tone. This idea makes me genuinely curious about a loophole in this idea that we're "alone" in the world, maybe we can share emotions if we can't share senses? this idea is definitely worth exploring. Great work, you've got some great ideas that are very thought provoking that are begging to be expanded and explored in depth.

HW #1: Response to Banach's Lecture

I agree with a lot of his ideas, mainly those about how we all perceive our world through our senses, there's really no way to tell weather someone next to you is seeing the exact same thing. We all agree on certain things like the names for colors and other things, but those are just names. We communicate mainly through sound so we can only share sounds with each other, we can't express what we see unless you can draw very well or take photographs, we can't share smells or tastes or textures that we feel.

The only way we can share these things is through common experiences, there's and old zen teaching that's very reminiscent of this. They say "How do you explain sweetness to a man who has not tasted sugar" the only way to explain sweetness is to give that person sugar or something else that's sweet. We all name things under the same names, but how do we know that they're really the same things? The answer is that we don't, there's really no way to test that unless we can switch bodies, which is impossible. We have to assume that since people interpret ideas differently in their minds that the brain has something to do with this interpretation. The same brain that interprets ideas differently will interpret senses differently. The brain (and by extension all of our senses) acts as a filter, screening out the true reality of what things are. Other Philosophers will call this the "Metaphysical", the true reality of something.

Not only are our sense limited by our mind's "screening" process that narrows down the information we gain from our surroundings, but we're limited by the number of senses we have as well. Just as a blind or deaf person wouldn't understand what it's like to see or hear, we can't comprehend other planes of experience, other animals have several senses beyond our five that we can't comprehend, there are infinite ways of gaining information about an object, each object holds an infinite amount of information in each sense, there are potentially an infinite amount of senses and there are an infinite amount of things, both abstract and physical, in this universe. If humans were to gain all this information we would have a sensory overload and probably go insane.

Through this reasoning we can see that people have an incredibly small range of what we can see and learn compared to the universe, not only can we not experience the whole world ourselves, but we can't experience the world of the person next to us. This may make us seem infinitely meaningless in the grand scheme of life, but everything has purpose and even though we may be alone in our small plane of experience we can at least relate to everyone else because they can't experience anything more than we can. In other words, we all experience similar worlds because we're all alone in our different worlds. We all have the same lonely worlds which we either don't think about or can connect to each other because we at least think we share the same experiences.

At the very least we're all connected because we all think we're alone, even before this article came into our lives a couple people I've talked to have had these same thoughts, at the very least we have the common experience of being alone. Perhaps that one common experience we have is what human nature truly is, the need to have someone understand us and the need to share experiences. Maybe we're all just lonely people looking for someone who can understand them, and ultimately people won't be able to relate to you completely, but this still won't effect people's lives because we all think we can relate to each other, and if everyone is told the same lie then it feels like the truth. Sharing one common experience, especially one as big as feeling completely alone, can be enough for us to still relate to each other, and in that way we aren't alone