Heightened Senses

When Dr. Talmage started talking about secretly hoping for another 9/11 it struck something in me. My whole life I've been sort of an adrenaline junkie. I love to do stupid things to see if I get caught and just for the fun of it. I love the thrill that you get when you do something crazy that you know you shouldn't have done and get through it unscathed. I am 100% behind what Uncle John said. We are all secretly hoping for something to happen in our lives that will get the blood pumping and heighten our senses. I went on the honors storm chasing trip last year just because I knew that it would be different and exciting. I want the rush, the excitement, and the increased heart rate. That's what I live for and I think it what everyone lives for either publicly or secretly. We all want that but it exists on different levels. Some people want out there in your face, death defying actions while others want mild action. We do secretly want another 9/11. We want a reason to join together again. We want to get our blood pumping and get nationalism on the rise.

P.S. I commented on Will's post

Wanting Tragedy

Yesterday in class, we talked briefly about the desire for tragedy. Of course, no one wants their house to burn down. No one wants their child to die. However, there is something to be said for the rush that tragedy brings. It breaks us from the cycle of everyday life. We are no longer numb. Even though it hurts, we really feel something. For that moment, you go from fuzzy black and white to bold HD colors. I don't necessarily think that it is the tragedy itself that we hope for. It's the intensity it brings.

I remember being in elementary school, and every time I fell, I secretly hoped that I would break a bone or received some other type of injury. I wanted some type of excitement. Something that would give me special attention outside of the mundane.

I do believe there are times when people sub-consciencely want bad things to happen. However, I think that the desire for tragedy comes from people who have not truly experienced it. There is a day in my mind, from my life, that sticks out in my memory in crystal clear HD, but I know without a doubt that there isn't even a small piece of me that wanted it to happen. (If you want to know the story, feel free to ask me in person. I just don't feel like I can write the story down on this blog tonight and deliver it right.)

Crystal Clear

One of the topics that we discussed in class Tuesday really stuck out to me. Dr. Talmage mentioned how people secretly hope for another 9/11 attack to experience the heightened sense of emotions that came with it. I honestly agree with Dr. Talmage. I do not think that we wish for a 9/11 attack again. We just want the rush of emotions and sharpened senses again. I was in a car accident almost 2 years ago. I experienced the same sharpened sense and it really opened my eyes. I can barely remember what I wore yesterday, but I can still see the car pulling out in front of me. I can still hear the sound of the metal scraping. I can still hear the pop of one of my ribs. I can still taste the blood in my mouth. It is a crystal clear picture that has never lost any details. Imagine if life were always like that. Every memory could be clear and precise. Every detail of life could be seen just like it was in a movie. But unfortuantely those feelings of emotions will never be reached again unless there is another tragic event. I know that people are not secretly wishing for another terrorist attack, but you cannot deny that we do not enjoy the rush of emotions after an acident or event.

P.S. I commented on Joy's post, "Guest Speaker."

The Matrix and The Moviegoer

Binx Bolling is "a model citizen" who "takes pleasure in doing all that is expected of him." He lives a peaceful life in Gentilly, Louisiana. He stuffs his wallet with I.D.s and credits cards, he owns a first-class television set, and his armpits never stink. Everything about him appears clean cut, conventional and perfectly ordinary, and in a crowd of other clean cut, conventional and perfectly ordinary citizens, he is invisible.

Binx doesn't like that. Discontent with the world he sees, he searches for something, though he knows not for what he searches. This search is the plot of Walker Percy's Moviegoer, a 1960 novel that is not unlike the Wachowski brothers' Matrix, a 1999 action film. From a strict sci-fi perspective, The Matrix is a pretty cool movie, but underneath its action-packed exterior is a world of philosophical depth.

Like Binx Bolling, Thomas Anderson (Neo) is an upright, respectable citizen. He has a Social Security number, pays his taxes and helps the landlady take out her garbage, and like Binx, he comes to think the world is a lie. He too is searching for something, and this prompts the question: "What is the Matrix?" Neo goes to the sage Morpheus, who tells him:

The Matrix is a system, Neo. The system is our enemy... You can see it when you look out your window or turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Morpheus holds out his hands. One contains a blue pill, and the other, a red. He makes Neo choose.

You take the blue pill- the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill- you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I'm offering you is the truth.

"The Matrix is a system..."

Binx believes that 98% of Americans have taken "the blue pill." Going against fashionable opinion, he questions. He searches. He takes "the red pill." He says,

What is the nature of the search...? The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life... To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

While the worlds around them sink into blandness and despair, Binx and Neo question, which, according to Heidegger, is to be willing to know, and "to know" is not the accumulation of facts but to be willing to learn what knowledge he does not possess. He who thinks he knows does not "know," and he who does not know is far closer to "knowing" than he thinks.

This perpetual uncertainty about the establishments, systems and institutions that make up society is the very essence of postmodernism.

What do you choose?

EDIT : I commented on Kelsey Parrish's "Crystal Clear."

The Gulf Coast Is Under the Sun

"Zombies staring, looking my way, crying out for something, anything.

They can't fill their stomachs with enough to satisfy the hunger growing,

needing something real."

-Project 86, One Armed Man

You know, as I was reading The Moviegoer and observing Jack Bolling's thoughts about the world around him, one thought kept rising up in my mind...wow, this guy is nothing more than a misanthropic jerk! I have rarely seen him satisfied at all with the world or the people in it. Bolling is living in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction to the point where he can rarely find happiness in his life at all. He claims to be on some great search for meaning but at times that search seems almost completely meaningless and self-defeating. No peace, no joy, just perpetual wanderings and disillusionment. He is selfish, discouraging, and as unchristian as it gets...

...except for the fact that Bolling is totally biblical. Wait, what? How could this jerk possibly adhere to biblical principalities at all? Allow me to introduce you to King Solomon, AKA known as Qoheleth, the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes. This focus of the book is that the writer had once been the most successful man on Earth, earning and doing everything conceivable under the sun. He had seen the most beautiful sights, heard the most interesting things, and was considered by all who knew him as the wisest man in all the land. He literally was the most interesting man in the world!

Yet despite all of that, Ecclesiastes is significant in that Qoheleth, looking back on his life, realized it had absolutely no value at all. He found everything he had attempted and/or accomplished, all of the things that he loved, and all the things that he thought to have so much value to be nothing but vanity. In the end, he realized that the world was nothing but a hollow shell of what it should be and those that live in it are not better off. In fact, he could be downright misanthropic at times, and is often considered to be one of the most depressing books in all of the Bible.

Bolling, of course, is a much less successful man who may not be quite as wise as Qoheleth, but he has the advantage of realizing this biblical truth at a relatively young stage of his life and seeking to avoid it. Qoheleth calls it vanity-Bolling calls it malaise. Normal, everyday existence is hollow and pointless, and to follow the ways of the world is the way of destruction. To contrast the two, Qoheleth discovers that only through loving and obeying God can a man find any value and happiness in his life, for God resurrects the man's life and the world around him so that it is beautiful and worth existing. Bolling never really finds a definite answer (and it certainly isn't God) for his search is one that is not supposed to end, for if it did, then he would be both figuratively and physically dead. Of course, Qoheleth's point is that finding God does not equal death but resurrection, but if God is irrelevant to you than so is the aforementioned point. What matters is finding a way to live in the world in a way that does not conform to but stands out, and both these writers search for ways to do this. Existentialism has always existed, but no one really knew what it was-nothing is new under the sun.

Thank you for reading! If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, tell her I bring the horoscope myself. One must be so careful these days. I commented on Rachel Kotlan's Lip Piercing.

Binx the Existentialist

I will be interested to see how the discussion in class goes tomorrow.

We continued some discussion after class yesterday. Binx seems to succumb to the ideas that he hated and to join a profession of science upon the realization that he cannot break away from the categories. I believe that is precisely the problem, though. He has not succumbed to these categories, he has become content with himself. He allows himself to live in the categories without the categories influencing his life. He is no longer hindered by malaise. He has learned to live in the world unlike Banquo's ghost.

This was the goal of the existentialists. It was not to separate self from the world, but to learn to live in it without being affected by the objective categories.

Ad augusta per angusta,

Will Drake

P.S. I commented on Rachel's "Lip Piercing."

Lip Piercing

Picture this. Walker Percy the awkward observer kid in high school watching everyone else observing their movements, conversations, and actions and analyzing them to form his views on human exsistence. I hope that does not sound overly simplistic because I truly believe a lot about social construction can be observed easily in a high school setting because so many people who do not chose to be there are all put in one place.

Slowly, Percy creates his characters who fall into simple categories first, the aware and the unaware. Without surprise most of the characters are unaware.

Callie and I discussed this today and I think that part of the discovery found in this and others of Percy's work is to understand and accept and then through that live a meaningful life.

This semester has been difficult for many reasons, in particular because there doesn't seem to be a theme or a line of thought to follow. (Other than modern) I think that the common thread through this season has been life. Sometimes it doesn't make sense and nothing really does, there's suffering, challenge, disaster, everydayness, existential dilemmas, etc. but we can find comfort in the fact that it is still life and we are still living. Whether or not that is what I was supposed to take away from all this is indeterminable, but I've enjoyed Honors the struggle, the friends, the food, the games, the slow and painful process of grading blogs. And as it winds to and end it's definitely bitter sweet as I am ready to be done and go home and I will definitely miss the fun I've had exploring the meaning of life and whatever else. So Let it be.

I commented on Joy's post (1st on in the section) about the lady who spoke to us last week

Guest Speaker

Okay so we are suppose to blog every week about something we either read or discussed in class. I want to blog about how awesome thursdays class was since we had the privilege of hearing a woman who survived Hitler. She was just an incredible woman!!! I enjoyed hearing her stories, especially the one about her saying she remembered what her mother had taught her when she was little when men got to fresh and she only had to bring her knee up and kick once in her whole life!!! haha... She is a sweet woman who has been through many trials. We can learn much from her, but we must seize that time while we still have her. I just wanted to say I thought it was awesome getting to hear from her and what she has lived through!

PS - Lane

Today's Blog Post is Brought to You by The Number 2

Still trying to finish up the research paper. Since I'm too lazy to type up an original post, here's an excerpt from my paper "Evil, Suffering & the Human Experience."
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"The salvation of a man is through love and in love‒" these words belong to Frankl, but this truth can be gleamed from [the other writers]. In love, a Jewish doctor persevered through the Holocaust by clinging to memories of his beloved; in love, a German theologian joined the resistance to defend his nation from tyranny; and in love, a Jesuit priest did evil to stop a greater evil, the persecution of his apostate brothers. 

This one may learn from Frankl, Bonhoeffer and Endo: that a worthy man, depending on his circumstances, may actively fight or passively endure evil, but when confronted with the realities of human suffering, he cannot ignore it. He cannot be lethargic. He cannot harbor indifference when evil threatens the poor, the downtrodden and the outcast. If he does, self-absorption and apathy will be his death. It will sear his conscience, and he will not dare look into the face of whatever God he serves.

Love‒ the utter death to self and the igniter of all things good‒ is man's last hope for salvation‒ not deliverance from a literal hell, but freedom from the things that most kill a man: ignorance, lethargy and apathy‒ the perdition of man's spirit.