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.