I am getting older. I am questioning everything. Some things have been confirmed, and those foundations shall be given more care and attention. Other things have been, or may yet be, discarded. The aspects of my life that I have chosen to change, the things that I have let go of, felt like a weight I was obliged to carry on my shoulders, and when I could go no further and had to put down my burden, I found no one and nothing telling me to pick it back up. I was startled at my own freedom. I have since become more wary of my obligations, and just as my sensitivity to undeserved expectations has become more acute recently, so has my awareness of the people and ideas in my life that really matter to me, and might have been receiving only lip service for too long.
I think even more than getting older, I am growing. I mentioned earlier in this blog that sometimes it is best for people to grow out of relationships, and that wishing things were otherwise is not healthy for anyone, but at that time I was perhaps too hasty in my assessment of those closest to me. I might be making the same mistake now, but I know the change is coming, and I recognize now as then that it will happen one way or the other.
I have this image attached to the notion of growth. I suppose I could best describe it as streamlining. That which is most central to who I am has been reaffirmed and strengthened, and even aspects of myself that I had once cherished and had recently forgotten have been uncovered again by this process. Some new elements have been incorporated too, but they seem to share the spirit of what has always mattered to me, and represent a growth out of those ideas.
I hope the following will be somewhat of a disambiguation of the preceding:
Winter break was the catalyst for all this change.
I had developed a rut since I'd been at Columbia, but by the first semester of Junior year, and maybe even the preceding summer, I knew it. I am still struggling with my reasons for being here, and I have been considering many questions the answers to which may illuminate my situation and my path in the future:
What is an academic? Am I one? Is that the same thing as being a student? Am I even a "student" anymore?
Should I be looking around for my career here in college? Is that realistic? Should I be studying my interests or some hybrid of my interests and pragmatic, marketable skills?
If I don't get a job in the field of my major, what will the point of going to college have been?
I don't know the answers to many of these questions. Some part of me gets the sense that I could never be an academic. No part of me wants to enrich human understanding as a whole. It would seem that I am after more personal answers, answers on an individual level. It could be that I'll find those answers by looking outward, but lately I find it hard to find a great deal of affinity for humanity as a whole. These days, it's draining enough to care about me and mine, and I have enough questions for myself without trying to figure the world out. And the problem is that whatever atrocities I may be ignoring, whatever social ills I should be out combating, I see humanity's hand behind them all. There is some idealism left in me, and I know that the ignorance I abhor is sometimes simply a lack of education, a lack of civilization and reverence for thought. We owe it to a great many people to cultivate a human culture of compassion based on reason and respect for our shared human condition.
Maybe people fight because they don't realize how doomed we all are anyways. Maybe if they really believed that all of us only had one life and realized how short it was, people could be more peaceful. It breaks my heart to think of how many things I wish I could hold on to forever, but will eventually pass away from me. Too many people think themselves immortal.
Anyways, I think I got sidetracked somewhere.
You know, I thought this would be an easy blog post. I've been through perhaps the most emotionally tiring couple weeks of my life, and I can't even be poetical and eloquent about it. I was messed up last semester, so much so that even a relatively easy workload felt like a grind. I felt out of touch with pretty much everything, only to come home and find no relief and unlooked for questions about people and things I had always counted on. I think I started losing my mind. And only after that came the most painful emotional blow I've ever experienced. What was meant to be an "intervention" for me, with my friends expressing their concern over my increasingly withdrawn demeanor, resulted in my roommate telling me that in the wake of his father's death last semester, he needed me more than anyone else in the world, but that I wasn't there for him. Ostensibly, he said all of this to tell me how obviously absent I was, but this seemed like something he wanted to confront me about with regard to our relationship. I'm not sure how much my other friends knew about how this supposed intervention was going to turn out, but I hope they didn't know he was going to do that.
I have never felt so guilty, so embarrassed, or so angry. I hope I never will again.
It was clear to me that our relationship was one thing in his mind, and something entirely different in mine. He had made me into something that I was not willing to be to him, and he wanted me to act in a way that I was not willing to act. And so he became disillusioned and hurt at my apparent failure to act the part of his friend. He had made what should have been a discussion between the two of us, taking place months beforehand, into a guilt trip aimed right at me and abetted by my closest friends.
I have many more thoughts on this that I will not share. Things between us now are not good, and most interestingly, I don't really care.
But the most remarkable thing happened after all that, and I felt better than I had in weeks.
I'll tell you all about it later.
Showing posts with label purpose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label purpose. Show all posts
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
"As you adequately put it, the problem is choice"
I now present to you another one of my pet ideas: the illusion of choice.
I hear you asking, "Why talk about this now? Don't you know what time it is? Don't you have some ridiculous book written by a lunatic that you need to be reading right now?". Well, it all started with an IM about the election, and how there will be no right or wrong choice, only a reflection of the country's desires (though I guess this supposition assumes that the election won't be rigged).
If that's the case for the election, why would it be any different for a single individual? Are choices actually choices, or just reflections of who we are? And if that is in fact the case, to what degree do we control who we are, as opposed to the degree by which external factors shape our identity? Are we in fact just pre-programmed decision making machines, acting out conditioned behavior and collecting the resulting data to condition future behavior?
Well this may be anticlimactic, but I think the answer is yes.
In my theory, I exclude the possibility of alternate realities. If we allow for alternate realities, well, then I have no idea what my theory would be, but you can be sure that one of those alternate realities would probably involve what could only be described as extradimensional cephalopods.
Ok, so no alternate realities. What does this mean? It means that any given event only occurs one way, and that there aren't other realities in which the given event happens another way. Under this premise, even without considering motivation, any individual considering any given choice would only ever decide one way or the other, and that choice would have an indelible effect on the rest of reality and future history. I suppose you might say I'm describing fate - that all things, from the beginning of time to the end, only ever had the possibility of happening one way.
Let me take a moment to acknowledge the fact that I'm talking about stuff way out of my league, and that a better understanding about the mechanics of reality would really be required to justify the above theories.
As far as casting human beings in the role of decision making machines, I feel a little more comfortable expressing my ideas. Regardless of whether or not the universe is random or predetermined (or if those things are actually the same...think about it), and come to think of it, even if we suppose that there are alternate realities, based on my own experience as a human being, I would agree with the supposition that choices are a reflection of idenitity. If we exclude the consideration of truly arbitrary choices such as calling a coin flip (though it could be argued there's a reason, however unconscious or insignificant, for choosing either heads or tails), I would argue that people reference what they believe to be facts when choosing how to act (I'd argue they don't actually have to be facts...they can be completely incorrect, but the individual believes them to be facts). For instance, I have decided not to post on the discussion board about this idiotic book for reasons I consider to be factual, such as the inanity of talking about something I clearly don't understand, and the benefit of waiting until after class to post in the hope that I'll have some greater understanding at that time. I also considered my greater interest in writing this blog post as a contributing factor to that choice. The possible disadvantages of not posting, after some consideration, were not adequate enough to make me post. My point is, I didn't choose arbitrarily, I simply performed a cost/benefit comparison that indicated the most favorable course of action.
Yet other people will post. Other people have posted. And from what I've read of those posts, they didn't get it either. So why did they choose to post when I didn't?
Either they weighted the costs and benefits differently, or they took other factors into account, such as the threat of a lower grade or the desire to impress their classmates with their verbosity. But I would have to argue that those even more fundamental choices, the choices that form the mechanism of assessing other choices, are a result of identity. Some people are more inclined to complete every assignment than I am, and some people are even less inclined than I am. Some enjoy this class more than I do, others enjoy it less. Whatever the case, those inclinations are a result of previous experiences. If I thought that not posting wasn't a big deal, it's likely that experience has taught me that fact, or that who I am is a person who, throughout his life, has arranged his priorities in a certain way that lessened the importance of posting in his estimation. Had I learned before that not posting would have had a consequence I was not prepared to deal with, obviously I would have posted.
I would challenge someone to find a choice in which they could decide in favor of one direction over all others without any influence from their past. I don't think it's possible, because the way we think is a result of our past and the influences of our upbringing and experiences. Each choice we make (which is based on past experiences) creates new experiences, which then in turn influence future choices. So obviously our identity is altered with each choice we make, but for every choice we are confronted with, even those we aren't even consciously aware of, the outcome is a reflection of the sum total of the formative factors of our identity.
And don't even get me started on the existential implications of all this.
Anyways, I'm sure there are some other parts of this theory I've left out that I may remember later, but I hope whoever reads this weighs in on what I've said.
In the interest of full disclosure, the thing which provided me with a reason to write this blog post, the possession of which resulted in me writing this blog post, is this video. It's probably the funniest thing I've seen all week. Brian, you will enjoy it.
I hear you asking, "Why talk about this now? Don't you know what time it is? Don't you have some ridiculous book written by a lunatic that you need to be reading right now?". Well, it all started with an IM about the election, and how there will be no right or wrong choice, only a reflection of the country's desires (though I guess this supposition assumes that the election won't be rigged).
If that's the case for the election, why would it be any different for a single individual? Are choices actually choices, or just reflections of who we are? And if that is in fact the case, to what degree do we control who we are, as opposed to the degree by which external factors shape our identity? Are we in fact just pre-programmed decision making machines, acting out conditioned behavior and collecting the resulting data to condition future behavior?
Well this may be anticlimactic, but I think the answer is yes.
In my theory, I exclude the possibility of alternate realities. If we allow for alternate realities, well, then I have no idea what my theory would be, but you can be sure that one of those alternate realities would probably involve what could only be described as extradimensional cephalopods.
Ok, so no alternate realities. What does this mean? It means that any given event only occurs one way, and that there aren't other realities in which the given event happens another way. Under this premise, even without considering motivation, any individual considering any given choice would only ever decide one way or the other, and that choice would have an indelible effect on the rest of reality and future history. I suppose you might say I'm describing fate - that all things, from the beginning of time to the end, only ever had the possibility of happening one way.
Let me take a moment to acknowledge the fact that I'm talking about stuff way out of my league, and that a better understanding about the mechanics of reality would really be required to justify the above theories.
As far as casting human beings in the role of decision making machines, I feel a little more comfortable expressing my ideas. Regardless of whether or not the universe is random or predetermined (or if those things are actually the same...think about it), and come to think of it, even if we suppose that there are alternate realities, based on my own experience as a human being, I would agree with the supposition that choices are a reflection of idenitity. If we exclude the consideration of truly arbitrary choices such as calling a coin flip (though it could be argued there's a reason, however unconscious or insignificant, for choosing either heads or tails), I would argue that people reference what they believe to be facts when choosing how to act (I'd argue they don't actually have to be facts...they can be completely incorrect, but the individual believes them to be facts). For instance, I have decided not to post on the discussion board about this idiotic book for reasons I consider to be factual, such as the inanity of talking about something I clearly don't understand, and the benefit of waiting until after class to post in the hope that I'll have some greater understanding at that time. I also considered my greater interest in writing this blog post as a contributing factor to that choice. The possible disadvantages of not posting, after some consideration, were not adequate enough to make me post. My point is, I didn't choose arbitrarily, I simply performed a cost/benefit comparison that indicated the most favorable course of action.
Yet other people will post. Other people have posted. And from what I've read of those posts, they didn't get it either. So why did they choose to post when I didn't?
Either they weighted the costs and benefits differently, or they took other factors into account, such as the threat of a lower grade or the desire to impress their classmates with their verbosity. But I would have to argue that those even more fundamental choices, the choices that form the mechanism of assessing other choices, are a result of identity. Some people are more inclined to complete every assignment than I am, and some people are even less inclined than I am. Some enjoy this class more than I do, others enjoy it less. Whatever the case, those inclinations are a result of previous experiences. If I thought that not posting wasn't a big deal, it's likely that experience has taught me that fact, or that who I am is a person who, throughout his life, has arranged his priorities in a certain way that lessened the importance of posting in his estimation. Had I learned before that not posting would have had a consequence I was not prepared to deal with, obviously I would have posted.
I would challenge someone to find a choice in which they could decide in favor of one direction over all others without any influence from their past. I don't think it's possible, because the way we think is a result of our past and the influences of our upbringing and experiences. Each choice we make (which is based on past experiences) creates new experiences, which then in turn influence future choices. So obviously our identity is altered with each choice we make, but for every choice we are confronted with, even those we aren't even consciously aware of, the outcome is a reflection of the sum total of the formative factors of our identity.
And don't even get me started on the existential implications of all this.
Anyways, I'm sure there are some other parts of this theory I've left out that I may remember later, but I hope whoever reads this weighs in on what I've said.
In the interest of full disclosure, the thing which provided me with a reason to write this blog post, the possession of which resulted in me writing this blog post, is this video. It's probably the funniest thing I've seen all week. Brian, you will enjoy it.
Monday, August 25, 2008
I shall rule the seas
Not a whole lot went on today for the most part, but while shopping for my dad's birthday present I got conned into speaking with a Navy recruiter by my mom. Seeing as I've actually been glancing sideways at the idea of military service recently, I figured it couldn't hurt to bounce a few questions off of someone.
I decided I'd just loiter up to the office to look at some of the pamphlets and random shit they had outside and wait to see what they did. I had been standing outside the office for literally five seconds before one of several guys in uniform came out and offered me his hand. Then came the questions, standard ones first: age, birthplace, college y/n?, where's your school (Columbia? Isn't that in South Carolina?), etc. Then the fun ones that I seriously considered having fun with: got any tattoos?, are you on drugs?, ever been arrested?, are you pregnant? Anyways, after that was through, I had to get over the first real hurdle: So...what brings you here?
Finally, a good question.
I simply said I was kicking around ideas for after school and wanted to know what joining the Navy would be like and what opportunities were there. While getting in as an officer was somewhat more involved, I learned they pretty much just test the shit out of you and assign you someplace you show aptitude for. And then it hit me: I didn't have to know or want anything to get into the Navy because they would just mold me into whatever they wanted anyways. So here's the bottom line: sign up, do what you're told, do it well, get paid, get benefits forever. What a deal! If it weren't that nagging little bastard question of "to what end" to consider, I might have signed up right there. Problems solved. But I want more, I think, even if I don't know exactly what yet, and I think I need a greater purpose than the general good of the Navy and the good ol' US of A.
I'd heard enough, but I had to ask...
"So how do I become a submarine captain?"
He laughed.
I decided I'd just loiter up to the office to look at some of the pamphlets and random shit they had outside and wait to see what they did. I had been standing outside the office for literally five seconds before one of several guys in uniform came out and offered me his hand. Then came the questions, standard ones first: age, birthplace, college y/n?, where's your school (Columbia? Isn't that in South Carolina?), etc. Then the fun ones that I seriously considered having fun with: got any tattoos?, are you on drugs?, ever been arrested?, are you pregnant? Anyways, after that was through, I had to get over the first real hurdle: So...what brings you here?
Finally, a good question.
I simply said I was kicking around ideas for after school and wanted to know what joining the Navy would be like and what opportunities were there. While getting in as an officer was somewhat more involved, I learned they pretty much just test the shit out of you and assign you someplace you show aptitude for. And then it hit me: I didn't have to know or want anything to get into the Navy because they would just mold me into whatever they wanted anyways. So here's the bottom line: sign up, do what you're told, do it well, get paid, get benefits forever. What a deal! If it weren't that nagging little bastard question of "to what end" to consider, I might have signed up right there. Problems solved. But I want more, I think, even if I don't know exactly what yet, and I think I need a greater purpose than the general good of the Navy and the good ol' US of A.
I'd heard enough, but I had to ask...
"So how do I become a submarine captain?"
He laughed.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Who's to say?
So, my day began with a phone call from my mom, saying she had to be hospitalized because of the multiple pulmonary embolisms in her lungs that had probably developed as a result of a blood clot in her calf. It seemed she was out of danger now, but it was apparently only by chance that these embolisms (which I have learned since then are blood clots that travel throughout the body) did not lodge in her heart and cause a heart attack, or become lodged in a critical area of her lungs and kill her. But because they didn't, the only treatment required is a simple administration of blood thinners, in large amounts at first via IV, and then later in pill form. Whew.
It's not a fun exercise to contemplate your parent's death, but every once in a while it seems that you aren't given a choice, which brings me to my point.
When I think about death (and I really try not to, as a rule), I tend to ask myself what would make someone content enough with their life to accept their death. Many people have said that you can't separate death from life, but the opposite appears to be true - death must be evaluated with respect to the life that preceded it. So, the big question: what makes a good/happy/successful/fulfilling life?
Money.
Make lots of money.
Just kidding. Wouldn't that be awesome though? Anyways, I definitely don't have an answer yet, only some thoughts and guesses.
Off the top of my head, I'm going to say there are two schools of thought on what makes a meaningful life: the journey people, and the destination people. The first group, as you may already have guessed, think a good life is found in the act of living, in the way a person chooses to deal with the realities of their experience. The second group choose a goal for their lives, and their satisfaction with their lives at any given moment corresponds with their success in pursuing this goal. I know I'm painting in broad strokes here, but I'm trying to distill some fundamental ideas about how people look at their lives.
Back to my mom for a second. I have to wonder what she thinks of her life at this point. Sometimes I envy the perspective she has on life, having lived a great deal more of it than I have. She's told me before that children are at a disadvantage because they often don't know the whole story of how their parents came to be the people they are today, and that sometimes it keeps the children from realizing the humanity that they share with their parents, that their parents also often flailed around for years and years until they finally fell into circumstances conducive to a more stable life. I think if I truly believed that, maybe I wouldn't worry so much about my future. But then I have to ask if she's lived the life she wanted, and if, faced with the end, she would be content. To use a tired metaphor, we stand at opposite ends of a gulf, one looking forward and the other looking back.
If I had to choose, I'd say I fall into the journey school of thought. I can't think of any great ambition for my life, or what I want to get from the world. I'm looking for a point of view from which to confront every day, but I lack the goals of the destination people that help them stay oriented on their path. I'm sure I'll go into some of this stuff in greater detail later, and I'll definitely have to flesh out this whole "meaning of life business" (could I have picked a broader first topic? Seriously.). For now I think I'll try to learn as many skills as possible, and try my hand at traveling. Perhaps with more experience, I'll find my path out there somewhere.
One final thought. The greatest virtue of the traveler is courage, and his greatest enemy is comfort, because comfort is what makes the traveler cease to be a traveler.
This'll have to do for a first effort. More later
Bryan
It's not a fun exercise to contemplate your parent's death, but every once in a while it seems that you aren't given a choice, which brings me to my point.
When I think about death (and I really try not to, as a rule), I tend to ask myself what would make someone content enough with their life to accept their death. Many people have said that you can't separate death from life, but the opposite appears to be true - death must be evaluated with respect to the life that preceded it. So, the big question: what makes a good/happy/successful/fulfilling life?
Money.
Make lots of money.
Just kidding. Wouldn't that be awesome though? Anyways, I definitely don't have an answer yet, only some thoughts and guesses.
Off the top of my head, I'm going to say there are two schools of thought on what makes a meaningful life: the journey people, and the destination people. The first group, as you may already have guessed, think a good life is found in the act of living, in the way a person chooses to deal with the realities of their experience. The second group choose a goal for their lives, and their satisfaction with their lives at any given moment corresponds with their success in pursuing this goal. I know I'm painting in broad strokes here, but I'm trying to distill some fundamental ideas about how people look at their lives.
Back to my mom for a second. I have to wonder what she thinks of her life at this point. Sometimes I envy the perspective she has on life, having lived a great deal more of it than I have. She's told me before that children are at a disadvantage because they often don't know the whole story of how their parents came to be the people they are today, and that sometimes it keeps the children from realizing the humanity that they share with their parents, that their parents also often flailed around for years and years until they finally fell into circumstances conducive to a more stable life. I think if I truly believed that, maybe I wouldn't worry so much about my future. But then I have to ask if she's lived the life she wanted, and if, faced with the end, she would be content. To use a tired metaphor, we stand at opposite ends of a gulf, one looking forward and the other looking back.
If I had to choose, I'd say I fall into the journey school of thought. I can't think of any great ambition for my life, or what I want to get from the world. I'm looking for a point of view from which to confront every day, but I lack the goals of the destination people that help them stay oriented on their path. I'm sure I'll go into some of this stuff in greater detail later, and I'll definitely have to flesh out this whole "meaning of life business" (could I have picked a broader first topic? Seriously.). For now I think I'll try to learn as many skills as possible, and try my hand at traveling. Perhaps with more experience, I'll find my path out there somewhere.
One final thought. The greatest virtue of the traveler is courage, and his greatest enemy is comfort, because comfort is what makes the traveler cease to be a traveler.
This'll have to do for a first effort. More later
Bryan
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