What Does This Mean...

"A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation.” - Soren Kierkegaard

Let’s face it… Taken on its own, the world seems meaningless and absurd. It is devoid of apparent rhyme or reason. This results in the human confusion in the face of said meaninglessness and absurdity. For me, it is the reflection on my own confusion in the face of a meaningless and absurd world that produces some sort of knowledge of the world. I unveil and elaborate on my thoughts below…

Truths for a Confused Human Facing a Meaningless and Absurd Reality

1. Death

Dying is a part of living. This paradoxical truth is an unavoidable dilemma, and ultimately death is the catalyst that causes us to choose what we have (life) rather than what we do not know of (death). Hamlet’s question “To be, or not to be” was the existential choice we are faced with in our lives. Should we deal with this meaningless and absurd world or should we choose death. The existence of death and the pain we feel in dealing with the existential choice between life and death creates the death-anxiety, or fear of dying. We argue, much like Hamlet, that even though life is often times difficult and unfair and meaningless, that at least we have experienced it and know what it is like, unlike death which we know nothing about. “But that the dread of something after death/… makes us bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others we know not of…” So, we experience anxiety over death and all things associated with death. Senescence – the gradual decay and eventual ceasing of internal processes that sustain life – is the face of impending death. We grow older, our knees creak, our back hurts, high blood pressure forms, heart disease is more prevalent, we become weaker, and so on and so forth. The death-anxiety, conversely, displays within each individual the courage it takes to actually live a life. Each one of you is courageous in that you choose to stare death in the face each day and continue to live your life. You may not see it this way. You may look at me and say I am facing death and my case is tragic, but the truth is my days are very much the same as yours. I contemplate the philosophical implications of imminent death and I have anxiety over it, but ultimately I decide that no matter what obstacle stands in my way I will choose to continue to live. And since neither I nor you can determine when it is we will die our death-anxiety persists, and we live our lives courageously in the face of death for however long it is that we live. But death is unavoidable and when we do inevitably die it will be all by ourselves.

2. Aloneness

Another part of life is aloneness. We enter and exit this world the same way – alone. Most of what constitutes as our lives takes place in the “inner world” between our ears – our thoughts, our wishes, our emotions, our desires. Yet, in a meaningless and absurd world where each day we live in fear of death, living in an inner world only serves to perpetuate the anxieties in life. Relationships – between lovers, familial relationships, cultural relationships, social relationships – are the foundations for our survival. We experience a catharsis (emotional cleansing) of our existential anxieties by engaging in interpersonal relationships, because in these relationships allow us to escape the seeming futility of life by offering us subjective meaning. In a world that is concluded to be meaningless and absurd, the establishing and nourishing of interpersonal relationship allows us to CREATE meaning. Caring about a fiancée, wife, brother, sister, or friend makes our actions subjectively meaningful. I say subjective because even though our actions will have no universal meaning to the world at large, which has been established as having no meaning, relationships give meaning to our INNER WORLDS. It is the pursuit of interpersonal relationships that establishes intent within our inner worlds, which is where we are free to exercise our option to choose.

3. Freedom

I am resolved that the ability to make a choice (even the illusion that we are making a choice) is the vessel through which our confused souls can face such a meaningless and absurd world. The ability for us to determine what makes us more or less happy and then our ability to actually CHOOSE that thing over others is what makes all the difference in the world. If death and aloneness are the downsides of a world of meaninglessness and absurdity, then freedom is the upside. In essence, if life has no required pathway that needs to be travelled, then our choices are really not about where we are going, but are instead about deciding what we want to do between the time we are born and the time we die. Our choices are about how we want to live our lives. Our freedom allows for creativity in an uncontrollable reality. Everything from paper or plastic to selecting a job says less about where you are going and more about how you want to get there. Ultimately, though, the freedom to choose (the way we want to spend our time while alive) takes orders from the fourth truth for a human facing a meaningless and absurd reality:

4. Meaning

If the world has no intrinsic meaning, then we are free to give our own meaning to life. If reality is meaningless and subject to change depending on our choices, then it is the meaning that we uncover in our subjective lives that will determine the choices we make (or seem to be making), which will decide how our lives will be lived. It is here, at meaning, that all four truths come together. Confused, we exist in a meaningless and absurd world, but we choose life over death because death is not presented to us as a choice. We WILL die, so we CHOOSE life, even if only because we are afraid to die. Once we make that decision, we are faced with our loneliness in an already scary and confusing reality. So, we resolve to establish interpersonal relationships that attach us to certain things and detach us from others. And through these relationships, we are able to uncover those things that make us happy and those things that are important to us… We are able to uncover individualized meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. This newly discovered meaning acts as a guide in determining how we will exercise our freedom and choose to live our lives.

There are no other things that we can figure out. In a sense it is our destiny to die. But this is not our purpose. Our purpose is to figure out what is meaningful TO US and then to use our freedom to make choices that satiate that meaning.

“What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.” Soren Kierkegaard.

The Gameshow Known as Life...

We return to a popular theme. Why do things in this world happen? Do we have control over our actions and over our futures, or has everything been predestined by God making the future unavoidable. This is the main problem we have with the Judeo-Christian ideology of predestination. It would seem that by subscribing to it, we cannot determine who is culpable for the actions of man. Does man have free will to choose whatsoever he wishes, thus making him responsible for his actions and therefore condemnable to eternal suffering for his moral violations? Or, if God knows already what will happen, then it must already be determined what will happen, therefore we are not in control over our decisions, thus we are not liable for any wrongdoing we might commit. This is where people have a problem, and the problem makes sense. There are passages in the Bible that support both the ability of man to choose his future and the foreknowledge of God coupled with the powerlessness of man. So what’s a person to do?

I think first we have to secularize the conversation. We need to shift the discussion away from religion. It is difficult enough to consider the existential philosophical dilemma of causation without also engaging in a theological debate. So let’s rethink the situation:

You are randomly selected to participate in a game operated by a super-intelligent alien from another planet. This super-intelligent alien is unique in that he can accurately predict the future, he is not a psychic, rather he actually knows exactly what the future will hold, he is infallible, and he is incapable of making an error. Whatever action you choose to take in the game presented to you has nothing to do with why the super-intelligent alien has made the prediction he has made.

The game is as follows: There are two cardboard boxes labeled A and B. You can choose to take the contents of both boxes or you can choose to take only Box B. Taking Box A only is not an option. Box A contains $1,000. The contents of Box B is determined as follows: before the game starts, the super-intelligent alien makes a prediction as to whether you will take only Box B or you will take Boxes A and B. If the alien predicts that you will take both boxes, then Box B will be empty, but if the alien predicts that you will take only Box B, then Box B will have $1,000,000.

By the time you are asked to make a selection, the alien has already made its prediction and the contents of Box B is already determined. So once the game starts Box B has either $0 or $1,000,000, and not a single entity has the power to alter the contents of Box B. As the player of the game you know that Box A contains $1,000 and that Box B contains either $0 or $1,000,000. You also know that the contents of Box B is based on the prediction made by the super-intelligent alien and that the super-intelligent alien has the unique ability to infallibly predict the future. The only piece of information that you do not know is what the alien actually predicted, so obviously you don’t know what is in Box B.

Which option do you select? Box A and Box B or just Box B? Your goal as the player in this game is to maximize the payout, to get the most money. The two choices represent two logically valid strategies that yield conflicting answers to which option will maximize the payout. All of the people reading this blog post who choose to select one of the options in this thought experiment will have a perfectly clear idea of which option you should select. The problem is that half of the people will choose to take both Box A and Box B and the other half will choose to take only Box B, and both sides will be absolutely convinced that they are right and that the opposing half is being irrational. 

Strategy number one says that no matter what prediction the alien has made, taking both boxes is always best. If the alien predicts that you will take Both A and B, then you are choosing between $1,000 (Box A and B) or $0 (Box B only). Obviously the preference would be to take both boxes. But, even if the alien predicts that you will choose only Box B, then taking both boxes gives you $1,001,000, whereas taking only Box B gets you $1,000,000. With the strategy of always taking both boxes you always get more money.

Strategy number two says that you should always only take Box B. These people recall that the super-intelligent alien is INFALLIBLE, thus his prediction must be correct. If the alien must be correct, then you can ignore the possibilities of getting $0 or $1,001,000 because both of these require that the alien made an incorrect prediction. So for these people, the decision comes down to choosing between $1,000 (Box A and B) or $1,000,000 (Box B only). In this case it is obvious that always choosing Box B maximizes the payout.

So does man have free will or is life predetermined? Well, if you believe that you should always choose Box B, then you are suggesting that the alien can know the future with certainty, as such, the alien is not so much making a prediction as it is observing an event and then describing it. In this case, the alien's knowledge of the future is determining its actions in the present, thus future events are causing effects in the past. Your choice will have already caused the alien's prediction. In this scope, free will does not exist, and you are not really making a choice, you are just doing what you are supposed to be doing. If you believe that you should always take both Box A and B, then you are suggesting that future outcomes are continuously changing moment to moment because of our ability to choose, thus at the time the alien makes the prediction it may be true, but things may change between the time the prediction is made and the time the box selection is made.

The paradox presupposes a perfect predictor, implying that you are not really free to choose; however, the problem simultaneously presumes that you can freely debate and decide on a choice. This is the same difficulty many people have with mediating a belief in Christianity and the omniscience of God with the belief in free will. And the debate ends very much in the same way as the above game: both sides of the dilemma have equally logical arguments that strongly support them. In either case, you are going to do exactly what it is you are going to do. I mean, either you are going to fight or you are going to give up, either do the right thing or do the wrong thing, either go left or go right, either study for the test or not study for the test, either believe in God or not believe in God. The discussion of free will versus determinism is illogical since both sides prove equally valid and the answer will forever be unknown. So why worry about it? Just go and try and live your life right. That's all anyone of us can do.

"God does not play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Freedom is the right to live as we wish." - Epictetus

“Try Viagra, now with a NEW and IMPROVED soft-tablet, slow-release formula for extended…”

I've always tried to figure out how something could be both NEW and IMPROVED. I mean, if it's new, then it never existed before now. If it never existed before now, then how could it have been imrpoved? Inversely, if the something is improved then it must have existed in some form and it has since been altered in a way that is believed to be better. If it already existed and thus improved, then how could it be new? Sure you could argue that it had existed but now it's better (improved) therefore the final product is something other than what had existed earlier, thus it is also new. You could, but that makes no sense. I cannot take my 1997 Infiniti Q45 with 220,000 miles on it to the car shop, give it an orange pearlescent paint job, adjust the suspension, add "Spinners" and then walk away and call the car NEW and IMPROVED. It existed before, but now I changed it and made it better so for sure it is improved, but the car is not new just because now it exists in a manner different than before I fixed it. At the same time, if I drive my broken down Q to the infiniti dealership and drive off with a 2009 G35 I certainly have improved my car SITUATION, but the car itself is NEW but it is not also IMPROVED. My point is either something is new or something is improved, but it is not both new and improved.

People spend a lot of their time trying to make themselves new. After a nasty break-up a girl rallies around her girlfriends, they head out to a club, make a dance circle around their bags and shoes, and inevitably at some point between the fourth or fifth Jolly Rancher shot the girl will tell her friends that this is the NEW whatever her name is. Or when a man quits his job and goes out to buy himself a new wardrobe in the hopes that his Prada shoes will make the difference in his NEW life. Somehow their is a correlation that we make between severing the ties with the past and enjoying a more pleasurable life experience.

But I think that most people don't want to become new people. I think what they really want is to become an improved person. What I want to do is take an experience and then use it to dictate my actions in future experiences. Even when you leave behind your old ways or if you move out to a new town and abandon old acquaintances and family, it's not about abandoning or leaving behind the things that you have already learned. It's more about taking what you have learned and using it to make your future more pleasurable.

They say that when a man experiences cancer that he comes out on the otherside a new man. Well, I don't want to be a new man. I just want to be an improved man. I just want my cancer to build upon the myriad other lessons I've already learned. I don't want my cancer experience to be generative, forging a new creation through fire and smoke. In fact, I know cancer is not making me a new man. I appreciate the catharsis that is my cancer, because through it I have rid myself of self-pity and no longer am overcome with fear. Cancer may have been the catalyst through which the change was brought about, but cancer is not the vehicle of change. Cancer is merely an occurrence, like getting a hang-nail; it is something that happens. It is no more in control of itself than I am in control of developing cancer. The human being is the vehicle of change. I can choose to mentally change my outlook, and I DO choose. The ability to choose makes me infinitely more powerful than the cancer.

It is easy to press the reset button and start a NEW game when your tetris blocks stack too awkwardly together; it is much more difficult to choose to IMPROVE the unfavorable board you find in front of you. You cannot both start the game over and still be playing the same game. Don't look outwardly to find the help, just look inside yourself. Don't ask for a miracle, be the miracle and remember that all of life is nothing more than a hang-nail...

"If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make the change. You gotta get it right while you got the time 'cause when you close your heart, you close your mind." - Michael Jackson, Man in the Mirror