Who is this guy?

I open up the Stranger, eyes darting through the book, going through the motion of reading, not caring about what transpires in the book. This guy, this Meursault guy, he's such a punk. He's all "blah blah blah, I'm detached, blah blah blah". What is up with that, man? Oh wait, he's giving me insight into his mind now. Oh wait again, I'm starting to understand. Uh-oh, I'm starting to get along with the guy. I'm starting to read between the lines and the motions are no longer just gone through, but rather I want to read about Meursault.

So this Meursault character. I pity him. You see, he lives a rough life. He lives life outside of this plane of existence, instead he is on his own, isolated and alone. I think that this is not exactly the best way to live life, I mean, how is anything supposed to affect you, how are you supposed to live your life if you are in the back seat just watching cars go by? I sometimes can connect to this though, observing things from a purely objective state and trying to gather information on something rather than experiencing it. This is a state I only enter when I'm doing a project or researching something, I try to keep an open mind and look at the facts in this state and be an observer, much like Mersault does in the Stranger. As a result, I found the chapter with Meursault looking out his window and watching people walking around living life to be quite engaging because it helped me observe his world in the same way he does and I could gather my own opinions on everything going on without his being thrown onto me.

I think that is why Camus wrote Meursault in that styling. He wanted us to be able to look through Meursault's eyes and see our own sights, to view the same facts as his world but truly imagine them however we wish to. I think that this is a very interesting technique for writing, seeing how most writers go into detail about how the main character views everything, which Camus does do with Meursault, but he styled the character in a way so that he has no opinion of his own in some cases which allows yours to take over and you get to live the story which I find to be very engaging and much more interesting than most books I find myself reading.

I can understand what it is like to a be a stranger as a result of all of this. I know what Meusault is experiencing because he is observing and I can place myself into the shoes of an observer easier than I can an active participant. And that may very well be the saving point of the story, because being able to live a story, even if it is simple and uneventful (As the Stranger has been thus far) is always better than just reading another.

Huckabees and Me

Philosophers have long questioned what the meaning of life is. Some of these philosophers have questioned what a meaningful life is. However, none of this matters if life isn’t meaningful or if it doesn’t make sense. Many people will argue that life isn’t meaningful, but to the contrary, I find that life is very meaningful and that if you follow through, everything makes sense.

Growing up, I had a few little theories jumbling in my mind that as I grew older I realized were real things and that I was quite ahead of my time (Toot-tooting my own horn there). One of these theories was that for everything I did, there was a result, and from that result came another result, and from that came another, and so forth. This theory is what people call the butterfly effect, that for one little action a big reaction can occur. If you take this and apply it to everyday life, it all begins to connect and make sense. I mean, if I do my homework on time for example, I get a better grade. If I get a better grade I feel happy. If I feel happy then I smile at somebody on the street and his or her day is brightened. It might sound stupid, but it’s true. If I don’t do my homework, then I’m not happy, don’t smile, and that person goes home in a bad mood and proceeds to have a miserable night. Isn’t this fun? Now this connects to Bernard, a great upbeat character from I Heart Huckabees who says that “Everything is connected and everything matters.” This is in many ways how I look at life. I try to make every action an action for a better tomorrow, a happier tomorrow, so that maybe it can make somebody else feel the same way and we can all gather around the campfire and make something great out of our lives.

I hate people who think life is meaningless. I even hate people who think that people aren’t worth having faith in. In fact, I got into a big debate about how life can exist without trust in people. I mean, I am a firm believer that everything connects, that if you follow the trail of events then you can see how everything became. From this, I led down a train of thought that went dark quickly, if I were to follow another person’s mentality that people aren’t worth trust. If you don’t have faith in others then people don’t matter so you push them away out of your life so you live alone so you have no impact so you have no purpose so you have no reason to live so die. Now, that might sound a bit harsh, but it all makes sense if you follow it through. According to Bernard’s blanket theory, everything is the same, even if it is different, so all of that is just the same thing, said a different way. To think that people are not worth having faith in is the same as saying you should go die in my book. Faith is a key component to life and everything connects so make the best of those connections.

On a final note, any one life is not meaningful to everybody. Meaningful is a subjective term, impossible to define and determine. A life can be meaningful to one person and not to another. This is not exactly news. However, everybody can live a meaningful life. Everybody has the potential in them to live the life they want to, to be happy and find their way so that they can feel fulfilled. A meaningful life might not always be easy to come by, but it is there in the depths of a tsunami rather than the shallows of Coney Island as we might hope. If life is meaningful then, is not the world? If everybody has the potential to live a meaningful life, don’t they have to chance to make the world a meaningful place, to make something better? If Wall-E teaches us anything, it is that even the smallest of events can have a world of meaning and can change everything. All lives are meaningful, life is meaningful, and most of all, our world is most definitely meaningful.

Comments on Banach Part 3

Hayley:

Hayley,

I thought that you started your piece very well, it had a strong intro that showed how the way you feel now is not the way you always have and it is not the way you will always feel, which I thought was a perfect way to show how interpretive the entire subject is.

Basically it seemed to me as though you were talking about how in contrary to what Banach theorized, happiness is not entirely found from oneself, but rather from interactions with other people too. Happiness according to you is still based on oneself, but it can also have to do with how other people see you.

In an earlier post, you said that you felt that freedom came from within, eluding to happiness as well in some parts of your post. I feel that since you changed your opinion here, saying it is not solely from one source, you are partially contradicting yourself, but also revising your thoughts. Now you have a better sense of the way that concepts such as this can be explored

I agree with your view on happiness, that it cannot be truly from oneself. If it were possible, then everybody would live alone, isolated. I am reminded of an episode of Scooby-Doo from my childhood. In the episode, the gang is looking for clues and run into an old hermit who lives alone in a cave. He is crazy, craving the attention of everybody. Not particularly happy now, is that? In contrast, good ol' Mystery Inc. is close nit and help each other, and they seem happy 99% of the time, even having some fun while running away from ghastly ghouls. This supports your proposal and disposes Banach's, all at one time.

This makes me think about my own friends and family in addition to everybody else I interact with and how they all affect my happiness. You know how sometimes just being with one person can be better than a whole party of people, so how does that connect? I think that quality of relationships should always come before quantity, much like how the "popular" kids can have so many friends and be so upset while the "unpopular" kids can have better friends and be way happier as a result.

As always, thank you for the words of wisdom,

Henry

Ali:

Ali,

I really liked your introduction, it was a great rebuttal to Banach's statement and was a great dismissal of his very point in writing this lecture and even his being.

Basically you dismiss everything Banach says about happiness, saying that it is for the individual to determine what makes them happy, and I agree with you there. You also argue that individuals cannot do this on their own, that the interactions they have determine mood as well, instead of complete self-reliance.

I can see the gradual trend in how your opinion starts to veer away from Banach's since the beginning of the lecture. Where Banach proposes contradictory arguments that effectively say nothing, you stay on one path that leads to one conclusion, that everybody can decide for themselves how they feel on all of these subject Banach is talking about. I think that this is a solid conclusion, and it also ties into the arguments Banach made in the earlier sections of his lecture.

I think that you could extent this though, or come up with situations in which happiness is shared between people, like a shared experience causing happiness for multiple parties.

This makes me think about my own life and how people are trying to constantly press their opinions onto me or make me feel the way they think I should, or even put me in a certain direction. I feel as though your argument and opinion here is somewhat like the kid yelling at their parents about their freedom using the parents argument against them, which is always the perfect touch. This makes me think about freedom and individuality a lot, and what they mean and how we are each our own person to come to any conclusion we see fit.

Thank you for the posting,

Henry