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"