Thanks Thoreau, But We'll Take It From Here

I believe our duty to “society” is a moral obligation to a free society and government. I should very specific in noting that I when I reference free society, I’m referencing liberal democracy in the socially contracted form which it operates in the United States and other similar nations in Europe and elsewhere. The notion that our duty would be to a liberal democracy plays an important role in what I believe to be a moral obligation because the specific role that government and society has historically played in the progression of humanity. The overarching duty that we, as members of society, have to the state is really one to other members as a whole. By participating in the social contract with the state, obeying the laws, practices, norms, etc, established by a free society, we participate in a communal act of national maintenance that holds together the fabric of liberal democracy that has given the world so much. By serving the state, and society, we are serving humanity by proxy. Certainly liberal bourgeoisie democracy is not perfect in its current state, however in a pragmatic sense it has been the most effective and free system which human history has produced to this point. Under its rule, we have substantial individual liberty, of which we must sacrifice a bit to keep stable our government. We as well, most importantly, have a regulated and controlled system in which to institute change in the form of elections and a legislature of representatives at a state and national level. As supposedly active agents in this system, we are not only beholden to the state in upholding its laws, but to be informed and participatory members of that democracy which is so dependent on its constituency.  The efficacy of the state, to which we have a perpetual moral obligation as it serves humanity’s best interests, is reliant on its participants being active and informed about the decisions which the citizen body arbitrates. If the demos is to have the power that it has in a liberal democracy which it so flourishes under, then it must also be responsible members. The duty of the constituent of a free society is two fold: to obey the laws which that society has created, and to be informed and active participants in the process of the creation and execution of those laws so when they are unjust or unbefitting to the nation, there is a conscious effort to remediate injustices. I cannot speak, however, for a society whose system of government is not so free, other than that they should work, as best they can, to progress towards liberal democracy in their own way.
    The act of serving the state, if done in the appropriate manner, should come with some reciprocity. This would befit the state’s and society’s sides of the social contract in that the sacrifice of certain liberties by the people should put a burden as well on society and the state to protect and serve the people. This reciprocation comes in the form of governance as far as “society’s” systematic end of the social contract. By obeying the laws and sacrificing small measures of individual freedom, the state then attains the ability and is burdening with the responsibility of upholding order in society so that the people can exercise what liberty they are granted in whatever way they then see fit. This responsibility manifests itself in the executive enforcement of laws and the provision of national security to protect the safety of the citizens who say, give up the right to own tanks and RPG’s. What society as a whole, besides through the contribution of government, owes those who obey the social contract is a more complicated issue. Delineating exactly the nature of what the body of society consists of is a problem which I’m honestly not sure I can answer fully. The United States, as an example, does not have a “greater community” that seeks to or is responsible for serving the country other than its government. The other side of “society” I suppose would be the generally unintentional amalgamation of private persons. The responsibility of this perhaps unwilling collective could possibly be the service and charity of the greater good. Redistributing wealth on a private scale, providing food and medical care to the underprivileged, efforts normally associated with motivated non-profits and many times demonized when done by governments. Social welfare would be the normative category that these “responsibilities” of non-governmental society would be placed under. Many activists, political theorists and public figures from Arendt to the John Birches believed that it was not in the jurisdiction of national politics to govern over the social practices and welfare of the nation. I personally believe that the social welfare of a collective people must be maintained by some body, and from a pragmatic perspective I would say that private interests do an incredibly poor job mobilizing and distributing effective and widespread aid in the social sense that is necessary to uphold the common good to the standard I believe it should be held to. While the mandate for upholding social welfare may not be popular sentiment, I believe that it should and will be as society liberalizes, and people will realize that the responsibilities of society are best manifested through actions of the state as those actions will be best dictated by an efficient and democratic body. While the efficacy of the state in the US may be in serious question in the present moment, the social welfare it provides and the good it does, combined with its potential, far outweighs that of the private sector of society, better fulfilling the responsibility of social welfare that society is beholden to.
    While I do love Thoreau, and his relentless questioning of everything institutionalized and communal has led us well to today’s liberal democracy, I do not believe that civil disobedience has a rightful place in today’s society. I understand full well the constant need for shifts in policy and structure in government and in our laws to meet the demands of a perpetually changing society and world. I as well understand the need for great flexibility when it comes to satisfying the needs of individual liberty necessary to uphold an effective and free society. However, the reason our republic is wholly in service of human progress, and the underlying reason I believe that its constituency is so beholden to upholding its laws, is that it provides a system in which to contest the laws within the government itself. We can have “bloodless coups”. There can be reform on a massive scale without breaking laws in a liberal democracy. We have free speech, universal suffrage, legislatures of representatives so that when the demos feels there is an injustice, it can be righted with extralegal action and the order of society may be upheld. Impatience is understandable, and widespread reform is slow to take hold because of very intentional safeguards against the “mob” (the main pitfall of democracy). Certainly in the past as well, democracy has failed in protecting the basic rights of its citizens and unjustly took far too long to right those wrongs. However, in an effort to uphold government and society as we now know it, even if the people want to overthrow the government and establish an entirely new one, it can be done within the laws of the current institution (theoretically). In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson says very explicitly the right of the people to dissolve the entity which rules them if they see fit, as they are the ultimate and just wielders of power in any government. Luckily, we have established a government whose systems allow for the maintenance of the state and order while simultaneously allowing for radical reform is necessary or desirable. The effects of such radical reform, judicial activism, etc, within society or government are certainly debatable, however I do believe that the laws and bureaucracy’s in their current state have the ability to function ideally so that all reform can be done within the regulations of society.

I Think, Therefore I Think About Thinking

I believe a prudent place to start the conversation about thyself, or myself as the case may be, is attempt to define me. From a metaphysical vantage point, there is a quarrel to be had over what I am. As much as I have read about the idea of consciousness, be it dualistic (Descartes) or mechanistic (Dennett), there is very little clarity about what it is we are. The main problem in most writings, however the common point of agreement amongst the different sides of the issue, is that inside our physical skull is a brain that in one way or another, functions in a way that is beyond mere machine. There is an “us” in our heads that makes each person unique as an individual, that allows them to process different phenomenological occurrences in distinct ways, and somehow creates a consciousness (and certainly an unconsciousness) that humanity has come to associate with the metaphysical individual, whether or not this consciousness is via a “soul” or a function of the brain. The composition of my consciousness not being the crux of the question at hand, I’ll defer to expounding about it for the time being, however I think the idea of establishing that there is a consciousness, perhaps not separate, but somehow intertwined or a part of, the physical being that comprises our everyday, tangible selves. The first step in knowing thyself, I think, has to do with one’s idea of consciousness, which forms the view of the application of “thyself” in the world, and the minds interactions in context with its surroundings, and all that amalgamates into an individual.
    To know oneself, is to understand ones own metaphysical composition, conscious and unconscious, how it interacts and interfaces with its surrounding environment, and why it does so. Myself is a very broad term. If I were talking about myself, I could very well be talking about my foot or my arm, however this is not the self I am referring to. Those objects may very well be important to my idea of self, but only in relation to the way I thought about them. The process, consciously and unconsciously, through which I think about different objects, ideas, etc, is an extremely important part of self. Predating that in the perpetual chronology of self-formation is why those phenomenological objects are thought of in the way they are, or what effects do they have on me. Let’s say I walk into a room with a friend, and suddenly, I see a giant ice sculpture of an ostrich. My friend remarks, “Is that not the most majestic, piece of avian grandeur that you have ever laid eyes upon.” Upon not hearing me answer, my friend looks over to me and sees that I have fled the room in terror at the sight of the frozen bird. These are clearly different reactions to the same object (let’s assume that we’re discounting the significance of the incredible ineptitude and subjectivity of our physical perceptions for the time being). My friend, quite puzzled, walks out of the room and finds me inconsolable on the ground, and asks, why did I have such an immediate and drastic repulsion to, what to him, seems like a benign piece of ice sculpture. The answer is differences in self. Upon viewing the ostrich, I processed the object in an incredibly distinct manner than my friend. Perhaps physically, our brains actually went through the same transduction of physical sights, however I ended up having a conniption while my friend was awed by the sight. My self, my unconscious brain, upon seeing the ostrich, recalled that when I was five, I has been mercilessly chased down by this vicious, Serengeti horror and was permanently phobic of the mere sight of it. When we say something scars us, like I would lament about this incident, it may have very well scarred our visceral being, however it molded the very malleable conscious and unconscious self which composes together to create the manner in which we will think in the future. That rundown in the desert created an imprint on my “self”, that was unique to my brain, and further shaped my thinking as to create the display of terror witnessed by my very confused friend. Clearly this is an extreme example, however, it represents my view on some of the formation of the self. In the hallway, being the meta-cognitive being that I’d like to think I am, can look back and see the origin of my manner of processing the phenomenological viewing of the ostrich, as well as why that manner of thinking exists. To understand why I have this reaction is a very important piece of my life and my understanding of self, as it is clearly the driving force behind all of my action and thoughts.
    On a very functional level, there is importance in understanding that this ice ostrich isn’t going to hurt me and that I should reenter the room and face my frozen fear, so that I can attend this party and socialize like a normal human being. On a somewhat evolutionary and societal level of function, it is important that I understand that I actually should be afraid of live ostriches that have a very real ability to harm me, and not frozen ones, so I can socialize in this setting a be a member of society. Such a case is rare, however, and I think the real importance in understand oneself is to understand motive and meaning in ones life. I just didn’t decide one day, arbitrarily, that I would be liberal, or that I’m interested in Social Sciences, or that I have pragmatic tendencies. These ideas are meaningful and fundamental to my life because I have explored them internally, with hopefully some depth and my life is given a greater sense of meaning in understanding exactly how I interact with the world. By metacognitively dissecting exactly why I enjoy the things I enjoy, or like to study the subjects I like to study, I can stand on what I consider to be a legitimate grounds and defend my liking of certain objects or ideas, and consider the nature of my liking for them and the ethics involved with their resultant happiness or displeasure. I don’t mean to say that one can’t like something if they haven’t identified the exact moment in their life when it became important to them, or the exact protein in the DNA sequence that predisposes them to being liberal or conservative (if there is such a thing), however for any of those likes to have meaning, one must understand why they like them, why these things are important to them, and then go from there.    
    My greatest weakness is that my mind tends to be inherently dogmatic. In a cliche way, I tend to be a “big picture” kind of thinker. In that way, I do not always validate or qualify certain “truisms” that I may come across, or accept them too quickly on initial positive reaction without further criticism. Its unfortunately to some degree a detached dogmatism that usually takes hold. When I read Ayn Rand, I found a great deal of validity in what she said because I looked at it as a dogma solely in the context of her book. However, when I further thought about her ideas in a relation to the my own inherent beliefs and in a much more pragmatic sense, in the scope of efficacy in the functioning world around me, her ideas were much more clear to me, and in many ways much less true for me or in the greater scope of humanity. Struggling with the inherent sense of dogmatism of my mode of thinking is an ongoing battle and requires much more than critically probing certain ideas to fit them with myself and pragmatically with the world around me. There is a large degree of finding myself in the process, in that I must figure our what in “myself”, what I am using as the standard against these ideas, do I really consider true, and true to me. Fleshing that out is certainly a lifelong process that involved the full scale of the every day experimentation that is life rather than a more abstract discussion of the ideas involved in it.
    I would like to think that my biggest asset is a sincere intrigue in the world around me. The nature of that intrigue is one that is ever-changing as my epistemological and ethical views shift as a student and participant in life, however I have found that engagement, in one way or another, to be intact no matter its manifestation. For that reason, I have never relented in my own self-intrigue. I don’t mean this in a egocentric way, however my first and foremost academic goal is to apply my knowledge internally in an effort to understand myself, and then advance from there. Now clearly I cannot halt all understanding of the outside world, and admittedly considering the conditions of the stage of my life that I am about to enter, my focus has largely turned to external concerns, not just in college but in the subjects which I hope to one day have a profession in, or just have a general interest in getting a head start on for college. (That doesn’t nearly capture the entirety of my fascination with the non-self world around me, however it will have to do for now.) However, I am intrigued by ambiguity and questions, I have an instinctive need, good or bad, to chase that which eludes in an epistemological sense.  Some may take this desire in a bad way, akin to the competitors consistent need to win at all costs, however I do not really see my greater understanding of the world, and its relation to understanding myself, as being some sort of contest deserved of its own entity with winning or losing. I consider its value inherent and in the overall process, as understanding that in and of itself leads to a greater understanding and greater meaning on an individual and contextual level. 
    Metacognition and comprehension of oneself in a complete sense in probably one of the most difficult tasks one can undertake. No study in general is without the inherent precondition of human ineptitude that comes with the nature of knowledge and subjectivity, however the study of ones own consciousness is especially so due to its involvement with the subject and the object of study being the same. No humanistic study, be it social sciences or humanities, is every without the folly of self-importance and narcissism in its own regard. I’ve always wondered what a brilliant psychologist thinks of himself? If he thinks him or herself immune to the silly foibles of those not intellectually as gifted as he? Does he, understanding what really happens to the brain in times of grief, not mourn for the loss of a relative? From a qualitative and quantitative apporach, we are heavily biased for ourselves, how could we not be? How far would we really get if we naturally believed ourselves to be so flawed and illogical, in an evolutionary sense? Looking at ourselves is equally as difficult because, in my opinion and in reference to my first point, there are not two selves in the brain. We are not looking at another self when we think metacognitively, I believe that it is the same brain. Even if there were a soul, whose cognitive function were delineated from that of the physical brain, it would still have to think about itself as the same entity, an almost paradoxical thought. Its a process akin to looking at ones own face. One can do it through mirrors, or a photograph, or scant glimpses of ones own nose if one goes cross-eyed, however they will never see it for it is them. A different perspective, the process to which I would attribute through inter-subjectivity to be about as “true” as perspectives get, is impossible from a first person vantage point. I don’t view this limitation as a deterrence, however. A truth understood solely in the context of the individual, his or her society, and humanity as a whole is in no way incomplete, rather it is lacking the unseemly idea that this truth can somehow transcend the humanity within which it was created, or from the individual from which it sprang forth.

So it goes.

There are two levels to the question at hand, the first one, I believe, lies more in the realm of human dispensed justice. I would say that the punishment and of evil-doers and the exaltation of the good (generally) would be a responsibility of societal structures, governed by rules which are based on the second part of the question: the philosophical vantage point of an inherently inconsistent justice system and its ethical ramifications. I would say the very nature of humanity’s conception of justice, that is an innate subjective and limited epistemological view of good and evil, brings up issues when it comes to dispensing justice (i.e. punishing the evil and praising the good). I think then, that if our perception and use of justice, punishment, and praise are going to be inherently flawed, we ought to at the very least be consistent in our flawed standards so as to ensure judicial equity as far as we can conceivably extend it. I don’t mean to entirely echo Hobbes’ view on justice as a method of definitively controlling the human “leviathan,” as that deals more with the basis of the justice set up by the system. I’d like first to discuss the systemic function of justice and morality in society, and why there is a need for consistency.
    One of the essential questions raised by the Book of Job, and a question I’m being asked in this blog, is why we should punish the evil and praise the good? Why, if we will never know in any objective sense what true morality and ethical practice is, or what proper justice should be, why should we bother at all? Fundamentally, I think that the necessity for some attempt at dispensing justice and encouraging good is an attempt at order. The one universal I will acknowledge is that humanity can accomplish nothing without order. Our minds are programmed to understand order rather than chaos. It’s in our nature to classify, identify and categorize our world to better fit our understanding. There is a likewise social functionality of the order created by having a consistent system of good and evil. Once a society has made some strides in establishing precedent for what constitutes good and evil (which is a whole other essay), enforcing the rule of law becomes essential in uphold some sense of order. How can humanity function if there is no precedent to ethical behavior or morality in any way. I make no claims about the malleability of the values to which humanity are held, however when such values are in place, they should be upheld and upheld with consistency as it provides a safeguard to societal function. It isn’t necessarily the productiveness or the societal benefit of what society deems good, although that plays a significant piece, but rather is the sense that the consistently established value of goodness, however fallible and changing it may be, is upheld. The punishment of evil and the praises of good provides a system in which society is trying its best to create a meritocracy where one clearly doesn’t exist at a universal level. The artificial meritocracy is important in its upholding of orderly, anti-entropic justice, however more important than the system itself is the basis of ethical behavior.
    Another central theme of Job is acting good while there still is an inconsistent and to our understanding, arbitrary nature of reward and punishment for our actions. I think the reason for ethical behavior in spite of the entropic nature of morality that we see is beyond just participation in the societal meritocracy. I can’t say I really have the answer, per se, to the moral dilemma that has laughed in the face of philosophers and justices alike for thousands of years. However, in my limited observation, I think the human experience is a social experience. It is an experience of inclusion, cohesion and cooperation. I know that this explanation is familiar, however ethical behavior at a level of morals beyond mere societal value is indicative of a dedication to a deeper sense of human connection. Humans ought to be ethical, in my view, not necessarily because being ethical is, well ethical. We don’t know that it is, we can’t know the true nature of ethicality. We must act righteously in the face of possible whimsical castigation because it is part of the human experience. To be part of the human experience one must engage with the world around them. It is uniquely human to change the environment around them, especially at a metaphysical level. When we act ethically, we are interacting with a sort of “meta-human” network of attempts to engage with the physical, social and philosophic world. We are acting a part in the pageant of human existence as we participate in somewhat of a grand, futile, social experiment with the world around us as we incessantly poke and prod the unknown to find its true nature. We must be ethically to do this. We must be ethical in the face of almost certain failure to be human.
    Not totally irrelevant to the idea of futile efforts is the act of God punishing Job. We can certainly recognize the intentionality of the act, but nothing more. We can only know that it was not by accident that Job’s health, children, crops and herds were taken from him. That is all the story gives us. If I were to take a guess, I would venture to say that the punishment was a lesson. While God seems to have a reason for punishing Job in the beginning plot, to test his faith, in the whirlwind, God reveals to Job and therefore the reader that the true intention of the punishment cannot be known and should not be known by mere mortals. We had talked in class about how Judaism in a way encourages questioning as God seems to be a willing participant in our lives enough to answer when an answer is due. The Book of Job would seem as though we may question, but the answer will always be an overpowering whirlwind who berates humanity for thinking that it may know the ways of God or that is may question them based on that knowledge. Furthermore, God insists that these questions, even if based on no assumptions at all, have no answers that humanity may know as only God can know them. The last lesson that can be extrapolated, I believe, is that life must go on after such arbitrary acts of punishment. Life technically doesn’t have to go on, one can commit suicide. However, more than likely, humans are unlikely to commit suicide and therefore must just acknowledge the fact that their lives are 100% malleable to the unforeseen and unknown will of God or any authority figure. Perhaps life is arbitrary in the absence of a divine power, but no matter the instigator, or the lack thereof, the consequences of punishment or praise must just be lived with.

Happine$$?

I was watching a TED video on happiness by a world famous behavior scientist named Daniel Kahneman (link: http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html, the video is very cool and does the topic much more justice than I do.) and he talked about a Gallup Poll he participating in creating that asked about the happiness of people relative to their wealth. Now the entire video as a whole was incredibly interesting in referencing the last blog assignment, in dealing with how we value our lives, which experiences we find valuable, and how we view them in memory. In reference to the poll, however, the happiness of those making under $60,000 a year clearly diminished the further down the income scale you went. However, after $60,000 a year, the line is flat. This reminded me of one of the experiences which I had hoped to have that I talked about in my blog, which was being ultra-wealthy to perhaps experiences what Eighton called a "transience of material being." It seems however, from a quantitative standpoint, that the "happiness" which money can buy, and perhaps the needs that it can fulfill, only last up to a certain point. A relatively low point when you think about the happiness that is normally associated with huge yachts and private islands of the billionaires, in comparison with those who have an income of $60,000. What is represented here, which changed my thinking about the matter of wealth and happiness, is a need for something more than material wealth at a point when just basic aesthetic needs are met. I'm not entirely sure what the flat lining of happiness at a very specific monetary number means. The value and functionality of $60,000 is different from person to person, and from single person to couple to family of six, however an interesting and witty observation of the lecturer was that, "money does not buy you experiential happiness, but not having money certainly buys you misery."

Good Experience Hunting

Value is inherently subjective. Just as the song suggests, the “why” of life is a “lesson learned in time,” a lesson that is differentiated among the unique experiences that each person goes through. If for some reason, I could work against the message of the song, in letting “time grab me by the hand” and directing me “where to go,” then I would attempt to experience mostly the things which I desire to know most about, so that one day I may speak truthfully to them in my own subjective way. That is experienced meaning, and here’s why:
    The first “possession” is a bit cliche, however it has a greater meaning to me and in the wider scope of humanity. I would like, one day, to be obscenely wealthy and have a nearly unlimited amount of money. I would be lying if I said this desire wasn’t partly out of a want to buy lots of extravagant items and have an vast amount of political power in the post Citizens United world. However, the true personal value of unlimited capital is in the transcendence of material objects and basic necessities. If all of my basic needs were guaranteed to be met in surplus, if I were to never have to worry about money. Additionally, if I always had the ability to buy the bigger, and the better and the shinier, I would hope to experience a sort of transcendence over material object. It is not necessarily the money that is important, but the experience I hope to have. I hope to one day be able to feel like I can be totally committed to something other than meeting instinctual and other various needs below that of transcendence on Maslow’s pyramid. Exorbitant riches is just a means with considerable other perks that meet other needs as well. The idea actually came from a man who was the opposite of a billionaire. In an essay entitled “On Dumpster Diving,” by Lars Eighner, after being poor so long and finding strictly instrumental, temporary use of material goods for so long, Eighner writes that he comes to a moment in which he truly realized the impermanence and insignificance of tangible objects. It was a feeling he remarked he shared only with the wealthy, of the total “transience of material being” that highlights the relative significance of ideals. In regards to an importance to humanity, I believe the value stems from a similar idea. The progression of humanity as a whole has come from the expansion of our minds and efforts beyond that of basic necessity. From an anthropological standpoint, humanity began to invent, write, speak and form coherent ideas only when agriculture made it possible to have a surplus in food, so that humans could spend their time and energy doing things other than fending for basic necessity. However possible this was without achieving innumerable riches, the concept of totally breaking free from material and necessary goods and objects is intriguing and only known, in my view, through experience.
    When thinking about the significance of experience, I often recall my favorite scene in Good Will Hunting, when Dr. Maguire reams Will out for debasing his wife on the grounds of Will’s lack of worldly experience. He castigates Will’s presumptuousness about his life and claims it unfounded, remarking that although he could probably tell him everything there is to have read about war, and Michaelangelo and love, he has never truly experienced any of those things. This is one of my favorite scenes because I have a strong belief that knowledge is legitimized to a great extent through experience, although not always possible as we cannot experience everything there is to experience. An area of study I particularly value is government, and I think that to be able to speak to it one day in my old age with satisfaction of my knowledge of it, I would like to have experienced being part of it. Again, with the caveat of inherent human selfishness, I can’t say that his desire doesn’t entirely come out of a need or want for power. However, I don’t think it’s importance should be diminished because of it. There can be dual satisfaction to my participation in government, as the value I am here attributing to it, is solely that of experience and learning. For me, it would fulfill a personal desire to learn through experience and know firsthand what the impact of the decision making process and public policy from a perspective foreign to those outside of the process. A distinctly human value of learning through experience, especially through the realm of government, is informative and life-fulfilling. If we could learn all that life had to offer from a book or from some uploaded link, or any other way that didn’t involve living life, I personally wouldn’t see any point in living. In many ways, we live to learn, not just to have the time to learn from a second hand perspective, but to serve the function of the primary receptor of information and subjectively process the world around us to understand it better in our own way.
    Another experience which fits under the experience based learning umbrella of the previous example, is perhaps a contradictory example. I want in many ways to experience war. Much of what I hope to accomplish in life, is derived from the dedication to a human ideal which I believe strongly in, which my dedication to is strongly urged on by the “last full measure of devotion” given towards it by soldiers of our history. While one may look upon this as a naive, romanticism of patriotic values and war, I do not believe war is productive, nor is it the right of any human to impose force on another unless out of utter necessity. That line of necessity is certainly a point of contention, however, my ideas on war as a whole are wholly unformed in my opinion based on the fact that I have never been to a war. Not that any part of me wants to experience the hell of war, however the epistemologically curious side of my mind drives me to desire to experience that which I desire to speak knowledgeably on, for that is a point of ultimate personal satisfaction and value. Perhaps this is a naive sentiment, and contradictory no doubt considering that no rational part of my psyche would willingly place itself in the throngs of battle for merely the interest. What would motivate one to, for lack of a better term than that of Full Metal Jacket, to put oneself “in a world of (expletive)?” Another question which I believe could only be found through application. I believe the human value in the experience of war would be to despise it. Although I am speaking from what I would consider a perspective of epistemological insufficiency, I don’t believe that it would be too baseless to say that war is undesirable if at all avoidable. If all of humanity who hasn’t been to war knew its true personal costs, than war would disappear off the face of the Earth, I think that would be a good thing.
    An experience I would like to have before I die is best described as the Walden experience. True I am ripping off Thoreau’s idea, however I value nature as an integral and often forgotten part of my life and the lives of all of humanity. Perhaps it is just an aesthetic appreciation or actually an enlightening distance from society that could be gained from spending a significant amount of time drinking in the magic of the natural world, however it is something I could not speak to with any certainty until doing it. Although hopelessly cliche, I do think the inherent connection humanity has with nature is undervalued, and we could all gain some amount of appreciation for the visceral beauty and value of the world around us just as it was before technology and as it continues to be in many places.
     A final experience I would like to have, is to write a memoir. I believe this would be an experience of ultimate self understanding. Not just a memoir, but a manifesto of understanding of Nate Gallant. To be able to go through the channels and previous experiences of my life with retrospect and track the events and perceptions that have formed the body and mind writing the memoir, would be the ultimate feat of self awareness and metacognition. It would be the ultimate form of self satisfaction and fulfillment to be able to have a total sense of awareness of my life, tangibly and idealistically, and where it has originated. It would be of the ultimate reflective value, and I think a way of nostalgically creating a meaning for myself through a recognizable relation to the world around me. From a sense of importance to humanity, I think a sense of ultimate self awareness is beneficial no matter what the circumstance. To be able to go through an experience of intentional self understanding in examining your own life through the microscope of writing is a formidable exercise in metacognition and evaluation of worth and place in the world. Whether the conclusion of that examination is good or bad, I believe that the awareness of it is good, and beneficial no matter what the outcome of the search.

On Compassion

While reading the essay, "On Compassion" by Barbara Lazear Ascher, I came across a passage regarding the Mayor of New York City's decision to place all of the homeless in a nearby hospital. The passage reads:  

I think the mayor’s notation is humane, but I fear it is something else as well. Raw humanity offends our sensibilities. We want to protect ourselves from an awareness of rags with voices that make no sense and scream forth in inarticulate rage. We do not wish to be reminded of the tentative state of our own well-being and sanity. And so, the troublesome presence is removed from the awareness of the electorate.

Ascher seems to feel that the lack of permanence as an inherent aspect of human existence, in her words, "the tentative state of our own well-being and sanity," is something that we as humans can be ignorant of and have a difficult time facing. I'd tend to agree, on a political, societal and existential level, these are topics difficult to grapple with, and ones that cannot be looked up in some encyclopedia or plugged into a math equation, if we even decide to face them at all.

Molon Labe - Greek for "come and get them"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUVQ_z6Zcs

To say that, “There is no permanence” is making a powerful statement about the human struggle. The quote reminds me of another by Napoleon Bonaparte that read, “Glory is fleeting, obscurity it forever.” Both men have first hand seen the malleability of man’s impact and man’s struggle. Both saw everything they had ever worked for, everything they had known, taken from them, whether it be by a flood or military coup. The idea that nothing that humanity does or will ever do will have a lasting and permanent impact on the world we live in is daunting. Utter lack of permanence means that no points are given for effort, or even success. All things are equal in the eyes of destruction. The flood that destroyed all of humanity in Utnapishtim’s story no doubt destroyed the good and the wicked because they were all human. The lack of permanence in the world means that all work of humanity is lost at some point, which certainly pokes a hole in the  majority of people who claim to live to leave a lasting impact on the world. It would be pure nihilism to think, however, that just because finality will destroy all work, no effort should be made at all. Certainly an effort is made every day by the vast majority of humanity to act like humans and function beyond just procuring basic necessities. So what then, drives all people to get up every morning? The answer is twofold, it comes in the form of embracing temporariness and it comes from hope.
    There is no science beyond instinct. Nobody actually knows what tomorrow brings with full certainty, or whether tomorrow will come at all. Anyone who claims to know is acting out of some faith. In this case faith is a good thing. One must have faith that we will all wake up tomorrow if humanity is to continue to function. One must hope that tomorrow will come and that our lives will be the same as we left them when we went to bed the previous night. With a lack of permanence comes a lack of guarantee of anything really. I highly doubt the people of Sumer expected Enlil to be hypersensitive to the “noisiness” of humankind and whimsically bring upon them an apocalyptic flood. However even if there is the prospect of complete annihilation, as there is today for example, with the ever looking threats of nuclear holocaust or even those who believe in the Biblical flooding parable, life goes on. With the hope for tomorrow and the embracing of today, life goes on. In the face of mortality, Enkidu finds meaning in life in extrapolating satisfaction out of the joys of the life he lived. More specifically, he is commanded to find particular meaning in relation to his civilized enjoyment, in all of the great things the harlot gave him in spite of the curse of the knowledge of mortality. Although in modern days, appreciation of life and self validation of existential meaning doesn’t normally come through eating “bread fit for gods” and drinking the “wine of kings.” However, this moment of mortal reflection for Enkidu serves as a perfect metaphor for the meaning of human life. The conspicuous lack of permanence and tendency towards chaos of the Earth is the civilized knowledge imparted upon human beings. We are human because we can recognize these things, and yet we live with them in civilization with the knowledge that our lives really are not under our control. It’s exceedingly difficult to then pinpoint exactly where all of humanity derives it’s meaning. I believe that it is the job of each individual to determine their own purpose for living with the fact that not only all of their earthly work, but they themselves will no doubt perish to eventually be lost in a sea of anonymity. The common thread, although loose at best, can be characterized as finding satisfaction in those things accomplished even if in slight or short existence. As well, for me at least, there is a hope that drives forward progression. Perhaps there isn’t any permanence to life or any of its travels or endeavors, but there is life nonetheless. To not make an attempt at finding meaning beyond nihilism would be to denounce one’s own humanity and lay waste to the gifts and wondrous facets bestowed upon humanity by nature. Meaning requires acceptance of the knowledge, and the living of life in spite of it. Joseph Campbell put meaning interestingly when he said, “I don’t believe people are looking for meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” The emphasis on the value of living and just of sucking dry the fruit of life given to us is a good way to imagine the human experience.
    Creating order out of the chaos that manifests itself in a total impermanence is probably the hardest task of all. It is a task that requires the combined efforts of everyone on Earth as there has to be order for humanity to function, as Hobbes and many other’s including myself would argue. Order is a task that requires an embrace of a purely human creation, society. In an entropic world, things such as governments, laws, structure, dictate order as much as they may appear to stifle individuality and are necessary in this endeavor. The search for immortality must come from within them then. Society is the place where civilization exist. It is where the only means of becoming immortal through stories or fame can exist. Through the embrace of these means is where the only immortality can be found. Although a story can be erased, there are thousands of native myth’s every year that do when cultures dye out or its story tellers are long forgotten, the permanence of the story in Gilgamesh is an interesting lesson among the message of mortality and impermanence. The fact that the Utnapishtim survived, and tells the story of Sumer before the great flood, and that Gilgamesh is revered in the final paragraph of “The Return” for writing down the otherwise dead and forgotten peoples is significant. The writers of Gilgamesh certainly intended to immortalize Gilgamesh through this story and the experiences that he brought with him.
    In my head I imagine human progression as an asymptotic graph, however not a perfect curve by any means. It is one that skips, falters jumps and flat out dead drops straight back into chaos repeatedly in history, and one that will do the same endlessly in the future. To push towards that asymptote however is the purpose of humanity. Be it a self indulgent and self created destiny of mortal beings, humanity hopes that it’s progresses can one day lead to better things and greater advancement. As vague as that may sound, it’s a real ambiguity. There is no permanence. Tomorrow is unknown, but humanity must face it with the utmost resolve, optimism and desire to explore lest it have no meaning at all. Tomorrow must be approached with the same natural, human wonderment that caused our ancestors to venture out of their primitive dwellings, to hone fire, to venture west, and to push past our Earthly realm and beyond.

From The Odyssey to Star Wars, the idea of a hero is one that stays consistent no matter the author, story or time. The works in question all have the presence of a hero in common, and just as important, their authors were all people. That significance is not that other stories without heroes may have been written by aliens, but rather that the hero is something that humans seem to naturally conjure up when stories are told. The hero seen in Luke Skywalker or Odysseus doesn’t change, there’s a very similar process and set of attributes in each character. The hero is someone who rises above what is expected of human ability through some extraordinary power, strength or quality otherwise unique to the character. Drawing on Joseph Campbell to address the commonality of all works, all of the heroes in the pieces in question, and in a majority of hero based works through the history of literature, go through what Campbell referred to as “The Hero Cycle.” The most important part of the heroes adventure and the most common theme is what he calls the “transition of consciousness.” A process that primarily involves the hero be taken out of their element, where perhaps their superhuman abilities are now moot, where they are generally uncomfortable and hurled into the unknown. From this they gain new perspective from the world they dared not venture into before and find a new “consciousness” from the experience which they otherwise would never have had.
    From the technical sense that Campbell lays out, the characters in the pieces in question can be considered heroes. However modern society has warped the meaning and definition to put more significance on certain aspects of heroism. For example, sacrifice, especially in a nationalistic sense, dictates a large part of what modern society here in America considers heroism. What better example of a modern hero than the firefighter or the soldier, someone who has put their well being at risk, or perhaps gave the ultimate sacrifice to a cause greater than themselves. Sacrifice, especially in an altruistic sense, lends itself to be implicitly associated by modern society as heroism. Most importantly, that sacrifice in the name of that cause, especially the “ultimate sacrifice,” what Lincoln called the “last full measure of devotion,” is considered by many as of the utmost valor and the most heroic of any act. I think however, the general conduct of a hero can be applicable in more than one sense.
    Joseph Campbell’s concept of a shift in “consciousness” after undergoing some kind of journey is particularly representative of the idea that the important piece of heroic action in the adventure is the way in which the unknown is faced and ultimately dealt with. The hero displays an "archetypical" model for learning from the discomfort of life. The heroes ability to face the unknown is what is looked so highly upon by those who admire them. The manner in which a hero learns from their journey is a process in finding individual truth outside of his or her own element, and a process that authors of heroic myths have been preaching to humanity since ancient Mesopotamia. It is a process meant to be looked at with admiration, and responded to by readers with emulation. Brecht’s quote then, “Unhappy is the land that needs heroes,” reflects the idea that a hero is a role model. That he or she is an icon in which society, an unhappy one in Brecht’s view, looks upon for guidance to face things more bravely than they would have before and for inspiration to go beyond their element. Brecht’s “happy” society would not need such aesthetic and glamorous motivation to perform the necessary task of maturing and facing the unknown in life.
    The exclusion of women from most popular heroic works is unfortunately not surprising by any means. Misogyny in literature is well chronicled and is not different when talking about works about heroes. In my view, however, there is nothing that would logically stop a woman from achieving any of the parts of the hero cycle. It’s absurd to think that a female could not undergo the psychological shifts that a hero undergoes which define the heroic novel in an abstract sense. Where women get left out of the picture in the heroic canon of literature is when the “warrior” is the central hero. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to think that a majority of heroic stories involve some sort of battle or feat of physical strength or test. The role of physical conqueror is not the traditional role of women in society, especially according to the norms of the previous centuries of written works. Hopefully, modern society will either overcome this stigma, or create a greater wealth of heroic works in which the adventure calls for a great sense of psychological “hurdling”, if that's what it will take to create more diversity in the literary body of heroic works.

Testing?