Blogging Around

First I commented on Nick's blog. He talked about how blogs were good for recap and carrrying forward ideas from english, but also how at times they could irritating to write.

Brenner-

Like everyone else, I completely agree with what you have said. While the blogs do allow us to solidify and re-entrench what we’ve learned in class, they are sometimes useless and frustrating in that, at times, they seem to be assigned arbitrarily and with prompts that are too specific.

I remember cringing while reading the dialectics prompt and trying to think of something, anything to say that might be anywhere near what Mr. Allen wanted. Like Choi said, the appropriate solution is to just ramble on until you have something that has some decent idea somewhere, hopefully.

Next, I took a look at Jonathan's blog. He commented on how blogs were unique and important because of their flexibility and because the different requirements allowed us to say things that we didn't have time for in class, weren't sure how to articulate etc.

Choi-

Just finishing up the Spanish video. Just realized my computer can’t burn dvds… oops…

Anyhow, I kind of felt the same about blogging, especially in regards to the flexibility and how it allows us to just kind of rant if we want too. That’s what’s best abouot blogging. It’s a space for yourself and your ideas. You can posts things you might not have had time to say in class, and thus it acts as a nice addendum to the learning environment. However, while you talk about how it helped you make your thoughts defined so that you could understand yourself better, I felt that blogging simply allowed me to better articulate more inner thoughts and ponderings.

Metacognition: Blogging

It’s been quite a year. This is one of my last blog posts, I believe, and I’m not sure what to think.

The natural response is that through blogging I have become better able to understand myself. That’s a lie though. I suppose logically, it makes sense. When one is spewing ideas through writing, it should be easier to see aspects of one’s self.

For whatever reason, however, this is not how it worked out for me. Everything I typed I already consciously knew about myself, whether or not the corresponding thoughts existed years before I wrote the blog post, or days, before I actually wrote anything I already had the thoughts formulated in my head.

While I didn’t learn anything from the actual blog posts themselves, I’d argue that I learned from the blogging experience as a whole, and the actual process of blogging. Most obviously, I learned a lot about other people by reading their blogs. But, past that, I learned something that I’m having trouble articulating, in regards to the freedom of blogging.

Aside from very general guidelines, the blogs allowed us to rant regarding pretty much whatever was on our minds. The process of blogging helped me greatly in articulating ideas, bringing them from my brain to the web. Blogging also had a different level of “seriousness”, and I approached them differently than I did other assignments.

All of these things, factors of the act of blogging rather than the content of my blogs, allowed me to draw away skills and experience in working on things that are perhaps more casual, but just as important.

Metacognition: WHAP test

AP test. Countless people will talk about how stressed they were, how much they prepared and pulled long nights studying.

That’s not for me. I would never be able to make myself do that. Heck, I never even got one of those preparation books. And thus, the AP test was not stressful for me.

Now, I actually think this makes a lot of sense and isn’t actually just because I’m lazy.

For starters, let’s talk about the subject matter. It’s world history. How does one study for a three hour test on such a bloated subject? I didn’t. It’s simply impossible. I could imagine a person studying for hours on large topics such as the Crusades, the Renaissance or World War II. I don’t recall a single question regarding any of those on the test, and I remember noting this to myself. The probability that you could actually study adequately something that would actually be on the test is miniscule. So miniscule, in fact, that any benefit of not studying would easily outweigh the meager hope of useful studying.

And this is where stress comes in. In the last few days before the exam, I played computer games, went to sleep early and hung out with friends in AP Euro who had already taken their AP exam while an unfortunate amount of my fellow academites were stressing themselves out.

I sincerely believe my better mood and abundance of sleep in the days prior to the test was much more beneficial than anything I could have hoped to have gained by studying and cramming.

The only question is: how to convince oneself to not worry about it? I don’t know, I guess I was lucky; I imagine that it would be rather hard to change one’s mind regarding how much they care.

Best of Week: Michael K as god

An interesting idea brought up by Margot last week. What evidence in the text supports this? For one thing, Michael K’s escape from the camp is said to be a miracle. Also, when prompted, Michael K says “I am what I am”, which is used in the Bible at some point, I think. And thus Michael K is also godly for his ability to break free of the system.

I’m pretty sure this is ridiculous.

First of all, there is no guarantee that such a commonly used expression is intended to indicate anything other than surprise that Michael K did something that the speaker thought he could not. This is not godly in the least, and I don’t believe Coetzee intended it to be. Countless times every week I use and hear people use the word miracle without any association to god, nor do I ever think of god, religion or the Bible when it is used. But, there can only be so many coincidences, and given the context, as well as some other references, I guess it might be plausible.

Now, “I am what I am”, is definitely the stronger example. At very least, there is some sort of philosophical thought going into this, and it’s clearly intentional. And while it may be true similar lines have been used in holy texts, I don’t think the line itself means anything.

I’m not someone who’s extremely familiar with the Bible, but I believe the meaning in the line as seen in holy texts is that god is too extraordinary for humans to understand. Well that’s the essence of god, god is not understandable, god is the explanation for the things we don’t understand.

But all of this ignores that which makes god god. It’s not a question of how much people understand god, it’s a question of whether god understands us. Humans do not understand each other, maybe not even themselves. Who are they? They don’t know. If two people truly knew each other, they would not be individuals, they would have recognized every emotion the other felt, every event they ever experienced, everything they ever knew. Their identities would merge, they would be one and the same. It isn’t possible.

Unless you are god. God is that universal identity, god does understand. God is not out of the system, god is so engrained into the system we cannot imagine it. God is everything, god is the system. Much like how in the Matrix, it is revealed that Neo, the One, was solely a product of the system, created to balance a system that otherwise would fall apart.

Michael K, for one thing, said “I am what I am” probably because he himself doesn’t know how to answer, or who he actually is. It’s not that he isn’t going to bother trying to explain to a mortal (or in this case someone who is inside the system?), it’s just that he himself has no idea.

And, of course, Michael K does not understand others. He might not even care. And while it’s true Neo did not understand others, this is irrelevant for two reasons. First, so what? Sure Neo isn’t god, but clearly neither is Michael. Second, Neo’s identity, or the identity of the one is the product of the remainder based on the Matrix, which is in effect, the identity of all of humanity. Michael K is nowhere near this at all.

So yeah, at least the way I see it, Michael K failed the god test.

Metacognition - Short Story

I’d like to say that my story is kind of writing itself. I don’t mean that I think it’s meaningful, but it is surprisingly different from what I originally intended it to be. I think this is likely the result of a lot of things. Procrastination on my part, my setting out to write more than was practical, (a) movie(s) I’ve seen lately and music.

Originally, my story was going to be a pure tragedy. A man’s wife gets killed by a policeman and he essentially gets emotionally crushed. He loses all sense of morality as he sinks deeper into his feelings of anger and vengeance. He meets an old friend of his and he joins a local mob. He kills a couple people, and tells himself they somehow deserved it each time. Eventually, he is told to kill his friend, but is unable to, he can’t go that far. Then, his friend kills him.

After a few weeks, I realized I had neither the patience nor the time to write enough in order to get everything necessary written. As such, my first couple of attempts at writing it were patchy and hard to follow. I knew I had to completely change the way I thought of the story, yet I was reluctant to throw away what I had written.

It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what to do.

I kept the very end of what I had written, him trying to kill his friend, but getting killed. But in between I added chunks of boring, everyday life. I attempted to make this second (or real?) life as boring as possible.

The premise is one of the two lives is a dream. I’m not even sure which life is his real one. As the drafting process goes on, I might decide, but I kind of like leaving it up for interpretation.

One of my goals is to try to condense the paragraphs of philosophical thought that are here and there and incorporate them into the story itself better.

All in all, I like where this project is going, as well the steps Mr. Allen has put in place in order to encourage but not force.

Metacognition - Jane Eyre Writing Project

This project... was unique. The thing that is closest to this project was the first semester final, in which we had to create a dialogue of sorts between characters from different books we’ve read.

This was obviously different. For starters, instead of being able to pick and choose from various characters, we were given an author, a character written by said author and a student who has read the book. This is obviously less flexible as we are unable to choose characters in such a way that allows us to best create an interesting dialogue. This isn’t to say we were unable to create thought-provoking things in the Jane Eyre Project, we simply given less ways to reach that interesting dialogue.

Another difference that was rather important is that one of the participants had written the other. It was an interesting thing to approach. Surely the main character has ideas very similar to that of the author? It was a challenge of distinguishing between thoughts of the character and the context of these thoughts within the plot and setting, which then allowed us to access the thoughts of the author. We found they both had similar ideas, yet had found different ways of characterizing them. The author, being a real person, was much more cynical regarding love, though she agreed on what it was.

But how do we go about creating such a dialogue? Interestingly enough, our final dialogue was actually the result of a four hour dialogue amongst ourselves. Although none of consistently represented a certain participant, the ideas from our actual discussion were extrapolated into the writing project (though phrased much more eloquently). In this way, I believe the presence of two other group members largely made up for the lack of choice regarding discussion participants.

iMedia: Cambodia

Cambodia

The song “Cambodia” by Kim Wilde exhibits an interesting analysis of human life. With multiple interpretations and perceptions possible in this song, we are given a window into the nature of life and our relationships with others. A study of the song allows useful insights to surface. I prefer the cover by Apoptygma Berzerk, but the lyrics are unchanged so listening to either sends the same message, albeit in slightly different ways.

The way I interpretted the story is as follows. A man works in the airforce and lives in Thailand with his wife. He gets a call a learns that he is flying to Cambodia. Because of reasons unspecified, it takes much longer for him to come back than expected. When he does come back, he is a different person. His eyes are full of sadness and a part of himself died in Cambodia. Their love also is not the same, as he is a different person.

This clearly exhibits the effect human experience can have on the human identity. The writer is telling us how heavy experiences can be in terms of identity and how much they can change our relationships. This story is common for many war veterans who are scarred by things they see or even do. His experiences and his feelings regarding them spilled over to the rest of his life and ruined the connections he had with other people. Confusion over the human identity and the purpose of human life has plagued philosophers since the beginning of civilization. Who are you? What defines you? What is your purpose? Such questions are exhibited in many religions, as well as Classical Greek drama, in which characters are forced to fight and/or fulfill intriguing fates. How can circumstances change a person? Characters are merely our guinea pigs. In reality we are feeling through them, trying to escape, for we know at heart that we are the puppets, and our minds are the stage.

Who are we? Are we defined by real, physical things, our form, chemicals that flow through us, our DNA? Are we things that can be seen? Or are we defined by interaction, how our physical form interacts with others? Humans are social creatures but are their individual personas thus defined? Do our actions and their consequences play a part? An easy way to test opinions on this topic throughout human history is to look at the literature produced. We can look at what stimulated human change of identity.

Another interesting thing to ponder is the question of perception. Now, it's well known that everyone has a different perception of everyone else. It is also known that it is nearly, if not completely impossible to truly understand a person. Something keeps us individual, defines our identity and keeps us from knowing each other. More on perception, there is a me in your mind, a different me in the minds of my friends, a different me in my mind. It is the same for everyone else on the planet. Which of those is me? None of them? All of them? Of course your mind defines me as your mind knows, but does that affect who I am? It is impossible to understand each other, but can we learn to completely understand ourselves? Our view of ourselves is riddled with bias, but isn't the psychology the most powerful thing? Are we what we think we are?

Everything we think we know, feel, see, hear: this is our perception. This is the world as we perceive it. This is the world in our minds. As our minds, our nervous systems, control how you perceive the world, are we not the gods of our own perception? Are we not the gods of our own perceived worlds? Or are we the slaves of everyone else's reality? Humans are prone to worrying about what other people think about them.

In conclusion, this song leads me to ask many questions. Why do we care who we are? Why do we strive for answers that are not there? It's all psychology. We want to believe that we are significant. We tell ourselves that there IS a reason, there IS a purpose. We don't want to believe that we are puppets of nature. We want to be above and beyond. We want there to be something greater than simple impulse. But we are deceiving ourselves. To atheists, we are puppets of nature. To agnostics, we cannot know who is pulling the strings. Those religious say that we are the puppets of God, but make themselves feel better by emphasizing that we are part of his greater plan. Does it matter? In the end, where is this illusion of free will? It is supposed to be what defines us, makes us human, but everywhere we look; there is nothing to be found...

Dialectic: Utilitarianism and Deontology

How do we view the world? How do we define morality? How can we know what is right and what is wrong? What is our criteria?

You are on a sinking raft in the middle of the ocean. There are four people on the raft. If there was one less person, the raft would not sink. So the question is: do you throw off the heaviest (or weakest or meanest, etc. any) person in order to save the rest? Do you take action that will end this one person’s life and thus commit murder? Or do you try to maintain a “more honorable, higher sense of morality” and condemn everyone to death through inaction?

I would argue that we must frame our minds in order to direct our actions with the intent of doing the best for the most people. Sacrifices must be made and are made, every day. We have to concentrate on doing the greatest good, in the end. Any short-term suspension of morality is merely an embrace of a larger morality that is rational.

But of course we cannot simply suspend our morality, even if we believe it is in order to help more people in the long-term. It is not up to us to act in order to decide to end one’s life, even if for a greater good. If we can find a way to justify murder, then we have no framework for evaluating or establishing any sense of morality whatsoever.

But surely we have to work toward the idea of a greater morality. If we have to sacrifice one life to save two, so be it. We cannot assign individuals more value to life than others. We cannot arbitrarily, based on how we feel, say that we will allow more lives to be destroyed because we cannot bring ourselves to accept the deaths of a few.

Actually I think the best way to frame our minds in terms of morality is to adopt a utilitarian mindset and evaluate terminal consequences, but also somehow think about deontology in order to place a check on the means so that we don’t justify too much horror. Of course this is hardly helpful, there’s no way to know exactly how to view things, so I suggest one errs on the side of the utilitarian. But this dialectic exhibits that there is no ultimate reality, no way of defining it.

Blogging Around

First, I commented on Brandon's blog, he and I had written about similar things regarding the Matrix and what the ideas from the Matrix about reality actually meant to us.

"Brandon, I largely agree with what you have here. If the world were to be “fake”, we would have no way of knowing it, and no way of identifying what it is we actually know. It’s a load of circular logic. That’s why I feel it is best to just ignore the possibility that everything we know might have no basis. If we do accept that it is a possibility, there’s no way we can evaluate anything whatsoever. Even if we think we can get outside of it the system, the same logic applies, forces us to doubt everything and destroys our perception of anything.Anyway, good post and good analysis of what it actually means to you. (in this case nothing :P)

-Deuce"

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Second, I commented on Albert's blog. He had written about the Matrix and postmodern systems in general. Though I agreed with his broader ideas, I didn't accept his example of a possible postmodern system that applies to our lives.

Albert,

You've got some cool points here, but I've got to disagree (with at least the way Eli spun it). I don't believe the claim can be supported that there is a postmodern system in the way the rich man "exploits" the poor, at least not a system that the rich man has created.

The conflicts people talk about with the poor rebelling against the opressive rich does not exhibit a group of people fighting against the system. Those rebelling are just as evil as the rich.

"If you can't win the game, change the rules". I think this quote largely applies to what we're talking about. The poor are not an example of people rebelling against the system in order to get out of it. The poor, exploitated, are people within the system, that maintain a framework according to the system and rebel against those doing better because they are mad that they are not on the top, within the system. When they claim that they want to deconstruct the system, they mean maintain the system, but place themselves in more favorable spot WITHIN it.

It is this framework, which obviously is a mark of evolution, and the desire to survive, that is the system itself. The rich are not the creators, they too are within it, they too suffer as they increasingly do not understand where they find value in life and how they relate to those people and things around them. Humanity upholds this ideal of understanding ourselves, but we cannot escape this endless cycle, we cannot escape this framework that kills our spirits and, ironically, has been key to our survival. In other words, there's no way to truly break out of the system. (At least this, rich-poor system, which is an example of a post-modern system)

This, of course builds up. We think we are different from animals. We are the same, we operate the same, we just confuse ourselves by creating meaning where there is none. Humans, animals, all life, the same goal, the same finish line, the same process, the way we view this process has merely become inflated with our infatuation with ourselves.

The Matrix is the ultimate manifestation of this system. We created ourselves to end this way. We allowed for the Matrix to enslave us. The Matrix is the finish line of the endless drive towards mediocrity and exploitation of ourselves for ourselves. We created the machines, they are merely a metaphor for what we will become, perhaps what we are already or always have been and always will be, machines that operate with a routine, with a goal, to sustain itself and further an existence that is neither meaningful nor fulfilling.

-Mitchell"

Best of Week: Story Fragment

In the past I’ve tended to prefer short stories as opposed to poems or longer “book-length” stories I know some people write. I’ve always had problems with, at a certain point, not being able to create the will in order to write about a certain moment and thus often give up writing that story. Aside from just the fact they require less time to write, I prefer short stories because they are short enough to be read by anyone in a short amount of time, yet are flexible enough to establish a framework and exhibit a lot of meaning.

In terms of first writing fragments, I think it’s a great idea to just write about things that relate to the character. I’ve never tried it before, but I think it’s going to work. It’s interesting how these fragments allow the writer to discover for themselves things about their characters as well as the overtone of the story. Not only to we have a foundation upon which we can build and patch things together to form a plot, but we can access great insight about the character. We can explore things that are part of the character’s life, but maybe not the story, so that in the story, we can have a realistic and interesting character.

I plan on writing a story about a character that, through a very depressing set of events, loses all sense of morality. Especially with this kind of story, I believe it is important for me to be able to understand things about this character.

For me writing the fragments was fun and interesting, I hope things turn out all right.

What If?: I had to choose between the red pill and the blue pill?

I would choose the blue pill.

Although I like knowing things and although I despise ignorance, I would most definitely not go down the rabbit hole. People who would choose the red pill are probably foolish and need to rethink what they think they know.

One obvious reason for remaining in the system is that the “outside” might be desolate and really, really not worth going through all the trouble and giving up your decent life within the system.

The person who would choose the red pill here says that “the decent life” isn’t really a life, it’s a construction of the system to keep you content as a tool for exploitation. When we are separated from reality, when we cannot relate to our true environment, we can access no real meaning, because the things we think we are drawing meaning from or that give us meaning do not actually exist.

That’s a load of crap.

It’s a hard concept to grasp, but I’d argue “fake memories” have just as much value as “real” ones. First off, assuming that your senses can give you an accurate portrayal of reality, how much can you know actually happened? You could fall back on memory, but that might ALL be fake. I mean, really, memory is just an imprint somewhere in your head, it’s just a physical manifestation. So your entire past, your entire memory could have been constructed just a moment ago. I think you understand. “But I remember doing this, I remember what it feels like, what I was thinking” and so on… Obviously, however, what you remember really doesn’t matter, memory is not a perfect source, people forget things or remember things incorrectly all the time, it’s not inconceivable that with some advanced science, or just rare circumstances, your entire past has been simply imprinted on your mind.

But, an even more basic idea… Why are fake memories less valuable than “real” ones. Even when we assume that “real memories” are in fact real, I don’t see any reason for preferring them.

Emotions, memory, they are all chemicals, processes of our body, they are real, but not like we’d like to believe them to be.

For all we know, reality is completely different from how we perceive it. We might leave “the system” to find ourselves in another system, maybe a worse one. There’s always a middleman. Can we really trust our senses? They don’t say anything definitively about reality. You just know what your body tells you, reality could be entirely different, it’s all chemicals, and none of it is set in stone. There’s always a middleman. Whether it’s a plug in the back of our heads, or our senses, who cares? Maybe we are our own Matrix. Maybe we ourselves are the system we can’t escape.

Connection: Heart of Darkness and the Man Behind the Curtain

A very interesting point was brought up by Jenna this week. She compared HoD to the Wizard of Oz, at least in terms of its depiction of Kurtz. I found this comment very insightful, and it stimulated some thought. Kurtz is first depicted as an astounding person. His eloquence, his thoughts all resound with brilliance. Yet, Marlow discovers a very different Kurtz from what he had originally perceived. By the end of the book, Kurtz has been turned basically into an animal (as seen by his crawling). Likewise in the Wizard of Oz, throughout the entire plot, the main goal is to get to the all powerful, wonderful Wizard. Yet, in the end, he turns out to be a small man behind the curtain, pretending to be greater than what he is. Likewise, in Matrix Reloaded, we find out that “the One” is not a miracle prophesized by the Oracle, but yet another construction of the Matrix in order to balance some equation within the Matrix that is never really explained. We find there have been numerous “One”s in the past, and they all existed to fulfill the Machines’ purposes. In all of these popular plots, there is no escaping the system, just as something seems original, unique, humanity pulls back the curtain to find not a God, not a genius, but an small, twisted creature, less of a man, more of an animal. It is a lesson everyone must realize. There is no inherent value, goodness, God, there is only the grim truth of realism.