Today’s discussion was about Nietzsche, who has to be one of my favorite philosophers. The excerpt discussed was taken out of The Gay Science, where a madman runs into a marketplace and exclaims that God is dead and we have killed him. What a statement huh? We humans have destroyed, mutilated, and defamed the story, idea, and representation of God. God! Kierkegaard shares his disgust on how we have strayed away from God and Christianity, and here Nietzsche is, telling us that we are to blame. The madman plays an important role in this story. He has come to a realization, one that the atheists and churchgoers have failed to see and accept. What does “God is dead” imply? No longer is there a higher authority? There is no one to look up to? What will happen to the world if there is no longer a God? Are we doomed or do we as a society benefit from this statement? I believe that by removing God, there is a shift in responsibility. More importance is placed on the individual, and this is what Nietzsche wanted. A huge change like this can only make us transcend ourselves, see what we are capable of doing. Morality is a matter of perception now, not what “society tells us is morally right or wrong”. We take matters into our own hands since the responsibility and morality equilibrium is shifted towards us. This process of transcending your previous self ties in to Nietzsche’s overman. Humanity today is not the overman. We cannot be the overman because of our beliefs today. We are limited. Society has placed boundaries on what we are capable of accomplishing. View us humans as a bridge that leads to the overman. A bridge leads you from one point to another. I think the first point, for Nietzsche, is that we have accepted and realized that God is dead. Religion is dead, it’s over and done. It’s no longer here. As time progresses, we can change modern thinking. We can change the physical and theoretical limitations that we have placed on ourselves. Once we have removed those limitations and are in a constant state of transcending ourselves, we have reached the point across the bridge. The main purpose for us humans is to lead ourselves across the bridge, to point ourselves in a direction in which we have ultimate power and responsibility.

On Monday my group presented Kierkegaard’s “Truth is Subjectivity”. Kierkegaard’s main focus was achieving passionate commitment with God. Since God is a subject and not an object, we can only think of him in a subjective way. This subjectivity is what Kierkegaard was talking about; taking a leap of faith. We touched on subjective truth and objective uncertainty, but I don’t think that it was discussed enough, or the link between them wasn’t discussed. To find passion, or subjective truth, objective uncertainty is necessary. Being unsure of the objective truth sparks desire to question it. If you search for the truth passionately, you come to a personal choice on the matter. This choice is yours alone and it is the subjective truth. Based on the question, “How should I live,” the Kierkegaardian answer would be: live your life by what drives you passionately, and utilize that passion to search for the answers that give meaning to you. A question to consider is in what sense is believing in God necessarily irrational? Believing in God without passion is irrational. This is probably a typical Christian who attends church every Sunday morning at 9 am, never reads through his bible, holds onto his faith loosely, and does not spread the message of God. This is just as bad as believing in God based solely on objective facts. Being in the same routine, not having that connection with God is like being a mechanical robot, emotionless with no inwardness. It might not be a bad thing in the eyes of that person, but they are robbing themselves of the close connection of God. The purpose of passionately seeking the truth of God is to put one at ease with the world and with their mind. It can be seen as seeking nirvana in God. Nirvana will never be reached, but it is the approach that matters.

Today in class we concluded The Fall. The group that presented talked about 5 themes touched on by Clamence through Camus. The first theme was about manipulation. The class then discussed about how it ties in with relationships, throwing in the phrase ‘mental slavery’. I think a lot of the time we do favors (not sexual, or sexual, I don’t care what you do) for somebody with a mindset that we will receive something in return. Is this a form of manipulation? I believe so because it becomes an action—reaction response for both participating partners. This mechanism could be used to get something out of the other person. Some of the other themes were righteousness, pride, and shame. (When I saw the word Shame on the group’s power point, I couldn’t stop thinking of Steve McQueen’s Shame. If you haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend you stop reading my blog and check it out.) Is it hypocritical to judge others for the same faults that you see in yourself? I think we all would say yes, but we want to say no because we are all fucking guilty of doing it. I think if we judge others, but we have the same faults, we just can’t admit it to ourselves and come to terms with it. Why would you need to continue to judge other people if you are content in yourself? Discontent people are the ones who judge others. They cannot find peace within themselves and they project it outward, or at least that’s what I think. The group also coined a term “Jaumness”, which sounds a hell of a lot like jaundice. It is harmful to the human psyche to linger negatively on memories that have already passed. It will just make you into a human shell of anxiety with an inferior complex. Finding an inner peace seems to be the answer once again.

To start off this blog entry, I need to make it clear that The Fall literally killed me with boredom. There could not be any story more full of nonsense and experiences all pushed together as if they are coherent. Clemance bores me with all of his stories, and the narrative… The style of the writing is nauseating because one story falls into another and it seems like an endless cycle of lessons where Clemance simply changes his opinion on everything based on his experiences. With that mini-rant over, Camus has a point in his story about judgment. Every single human being has judged another human, whether it was a positive judgment or a negative judgment. The latter, it seems, is most prevalent and can impact our reality and future experiences. Since we all judge in one way or another, do we feel any remorse for it? Should we feel bad after we have judged someone? What does it mean if we don’t feel bad after doing it? It must mean that we find ourselves superior to whom we are judging. For example, during the group presentation on Wednesday, I noticed two students making fun of one of the presenters, deeming themselves “superior” to how he acted and presented himself, and the material he was covering. I find that judgment is a temporary entertainment that we provide for ourselves. Negative judgments should stay that way: a little comment to oneself to temporarily lighten the mood or to de-stress. Positive judgments have their own place: out into the open. It is important to be reminded that you are no better than the next person. We are all human and our outer appearances are simply containers for our brain and consciousness. If there were a room full of brains resting on desks instead of human bodies, would judgment matter? Would we even feel the need to judge? Camus writes, “What will future generations say of modern man... He fornicates and reads the newspapers.” His answer is very bleak and at the same time describes humanity so well. Is the meaning of life to reproduce and educate? Is that all that we have accomplished?

I finished The Stranger and I thought it was quite an excellent read. At times, Mersault’s emotions appealed to me and I could sympathize and relate to him. His epiphany towards the end of the story, when he realizes he spent his entire life only in the present and thinking about the future, made me sad for him. It only took a murder and deprivation of liberty for Mersault to understand himself and everyone else a little but better. Mersault, in my opinion, was blinded by ignorance, selfishness, and a lack of desire. (He had desires, but it appeared he rarely acted upon them, waiting for someone else to bring them to fruition.) He kept quiet when he had nothing important to say, which made him seem socially inept. Mersault had so many flaws, no wonder he was found guilty. If you could visualize Mersault, I think anyone would find him guilty based on the way he presented and carried himself. It’s not until after the guilty verdict does he see clearly the repercussions of his actions. Mersault reflects on the events that led up to the murder and wonders what would happen if anything were different; if the weather wasn’t so hot, if Raymond hadn’t given him the revolver, and probably if he had never gone to Paris. I loved how The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus can be seen as companion pieces. In The Myth of Sisyphus, I interpreted the absurdity to be the gray matter that separates human life from human death. As we talked about during the lecture today, the end for all living things is death. Death conquers all. So what then is the point to keep on living? If you believe in an afterlife, why not just die to spend eternity there? I think the answers are fear, the desire to keep living (biological function), and the possibility that we can become or make something extraordinary. I don’t wish to comment on suicide because I honestly feel it’s not up to me whether you want to die or not. On a last note, the image that stuck with me the most was when Sisyphus looked back down at the rock and decided to fetch it and roll it back up the hill. It was like realizing defeat and continuing with hope that something will change. I think that says a lot about a person’s character and the strength that they have, mentally and emotionally.