Dude, Seriously?!

I find it funny how people contradict themselves and what they (supposedly) support. How hypocrites listen to songs and support what they state, all of a sudden don't care anymore than the people who they criticize. You see, a lot of people are obsessed with the environmental problem and how the world will end. Because we are so used to thinking about ourselves we assume that when we die the world has to die with us. I wish I could shake them down and yell, "snap out of it!" We have only been on the earth a couple billions of years when it had clearly been fine without us. As a matter of fact, it was better off without us cutting down its trees and killing its animals not because we need them but because we feel like it.
Now, on another note, I have always questioned why people feel the necessity to have a purpose in life. Today, I had an epiphany. If you keep yourself busy, you no longer focus on death. Death simply takes everything away from you; Your material things, your carnal relationships and sometimes all you stood for. We simply can’t wrap our minds around the idea that we are here just because. Life is an experience. That it flat out is what it is; No beating around the bush. People have to justify their life. That’s why until we discover what we want to do with our lives, we create god (or a divine authority). It takes away all skepticism of “why?”, “So, what now?” etc.
Here goes the part that makes me chuckle: if extremely religious people have a god, then why are most focused on “the end”? Why do they have to do something about it? Can’t they just ask God to help? If he did in fact make of the world what he wanted, why make it flawed? And for the other people, the ones focused on global warming: how do you plan to solve it? Every solution leads to another problem. Simply live your life because sooner or later it’s going to end. I mean, dude come on! Seriously, be coherent with what you say, how you act, and what you mean!

What's Wrong With This List?

To do:
- wake up
- jog
- shower/get dressed
- go to school/class
- in break study for my math exam
- help out in lunch-a-month and then run back to the next class
- afterschool go to soccer, leadership, english,s cience, go to audition for "Metamorphosis", study for my science test tomorrow, go to choir
- go home, eat and do homework
- call up my friend (who didn't go to school today) and see if she's feeling better.

How would Mr.Tangen put this? I thought. I guess something along the lines of:
“Now, there is a pattern, what is it?”
If you couldn’t answer this, you’re probably not that bright and will be in disbelief by the time you’re done reading . I’ll give you a hint: Epictetus uses it in his handbook. Still no clue? What happens when you try to say two words at the same time? They STICK together…. sort of.
At the beginning of the handbook, Epictetus tells us things clearly and concisely. Follow the steps and you will succeed in life.
Think about it, how is it possible that life is set by points?
You get it now? No? well It’s not possible. Life doesn’t stop every time you achieve something. That’s what Epictetus shows us in the way he wrote The Handbook.
As you carry on reading, the “tips” that would have clearly been separate sections mesh together.
I can’t make it any clearer. If you still don’t get it, don’t worry you’ll get it in a while. Meanwhile, why don’t you run for president?

Oh, That... Just Because

As far as I can tell, Epictetus states what seems to be the obvious that we have somehow managed to miss. Our everyday actions and how things don’t just happen, it’s how we act and react. According to My Ishmael, we (the takers) have decided that what we do is “human nature” and we can’t do anything about it. In other words, it’s not our fault. That we are incapable of acting any other way.

I’ve also heard people suggest everything bad is our fault and we as a society have to assume responsibility. The theory that we are born pure and are corrupted with time is not foreign to us. “ Just as a target is not set up to be missed, in the same way nothing bad by nature happens in the world.” (Section 25) As far as I understand, we aim for what we do in order to make sure that bad things happen. But why would we do such a thing? Why bring badness (you might even say evil)into our lives?

I have asked myself this question many times and I finally concluded that it’s easy; to create sympathy and to make things interesting. Imagine a life without fear. Adrenaline wouldn’t exist and there would be no urge to do things. It was made with a specific purpose, whether we know what that is, is a whole other question.

Temptation

"Which do you want more, money or a self-respecting and trustworthy friend?"(Handbook of Etpictetus section 24)This is a question that most wealthy people have to ask themselves. Which eventually leads to: Does he/she really want me for me, or for my money? Why wouldn’t someone want you for your money? As far as I know money has always been a strong variable to bend morals. Money is temptation. The everlasting curse of wanting what you can’t have. (Or at least shouldn’t have.)
I find it funny how some people say that temptation and longing what you can’t have is taught to us by society thereby corrupting our pure beings. I think it’s purely carnal. For example this test that was done to kinder gardeners.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWW1vpz1ybo They all contemplated the idea of going against what they were told. Challenging authority to get what they want.
Anyway, going back to the original statement. Epictetus implys the importance of friendship or a relationship. I find it interesting how he writes this section. Like a dialogue (between friends). I'm not sure if this is him using metafiction but it is surely no coincidence that he talks about frienship to us through a friendly dialogue.

P.S.

On a side-note I would like to add my conclusions thusfar. As far as I can tell (for now anyways) the Handbook of Epictetus talks about how to be in harmony with life, what you can do to make this happen, and to embrace what isn't up to you. This "peace and harmony" with life seems oddly fammiliar. Maybe something like the Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu which refers to balancing life and harmonizing.

Bailiff

Honestly, I would love to see a parent read and explain to his their very impressionable child. Why? Well, throughout the Handbook Epictetus questions our competence to judge. Or our judgments themselves. We have been taught very little about judgment and how to judge in a direct manner. (Off the top of my head) we have been told upfront not to judge a book by its cover. In other words, things aren’t always what they seem to be. Indirectly (as a life lesson) we have learned how to judge character by looking at someone. Don’t you just love how society contradicts itself? We’re told to know before we judge but then we judge people by appearance in order to judge their character.
To judge character you need to detail the person. Their body gestures, their speech and interaction with others. This just enforces stereotypes. When you make a decision about the person, you then classify them or connect them to some other person in your life. For a moment lets just say that this is terrible and it shouldn’t be done. In order to judge the person you have to get know them better. I’m going to extremes by saying that this might put your life in danger, but that’s what it is.
This lack of knowing how to judge is what has our society like it is. Unstable, greedy and broken up into pieces. I’m not suggesting that I know how to judge, but I’m proposing that we consider other ways to judge.

Crashing Conclusions

Today in class we were asked: "Do we have free will?"
After pondering for a while about what this really meant, I answered yes. I mean why not? We are to do what we like even if we are ordered to no one is making us do anything. For example today in ethics I was told I couldn’t say something. I replied, “I can say it, whether I should say is different.
Upon sitting down, we were told to listen closely. It was a radio recording discussing the matter. Apparently, these people conducted a “Magic Number” experiment. The volunteers were to memorize number, walk down the hall to another room and say the number. They were intercepted in the hall by a woman offering goodies as a thank you for helping with the experiment. People dealing with 7 digit numbers chose the chocolate cake whereas the fewer-digit volunteers chose the fruit cup. According to these people, since the rational part of the brain was occupied by the number, the emotional part of the brain takes over and chooses the sweet. They proved this point over and over with cases such as choosing types of apples in the supermarket and a student choosing what to do with their life after graduation.
Now, this seems like a very reasonable conclusion. I was reluctant to accept it because I don’t like to be proved wrong. As I finally accepted the theory which then brought forth many more questions.
For example if the brain plays tricks on us, can the rest of your body do that also? Let me paint you a picture:
A six year old child is faced with a plate full of fish sticks and fries. He likes fries because he has tried them before. He doesn’t know so much about the fish. He has no pre-established ideals for what this unusual, crunchy stick-like thing will taste like. After his first mouthful, he tastes sea water, salt and bitterness. He spits it out.
Likes and dislikes aren’t up to you, they’re up to you body. Which leads me to my next question. Are we separate from out body as Epictetus suggests in section 9?"Illness interferes with the body, not with one's faculty of choice."(14 Handbook of Epictetus PDF file) Is it a constant battle? Mind vs. Brain? Emotion vs. Reason? Body vs. Faculty of choice?

Tralfalma.. What?

1. What do they know that we don't? (4D)
2. Why billy? Why anyone for that matter?
3. Are the trafalmadorians paralell to us? (They explore other planets, have literature and zoo's)
4. What do they represent?
5. What connection do Tralfamadorians have with war?
6. Why aliens and not something else?
7. Why at his daughter's wedding?
8. Why is he interested in their society'
9. what relevance to the five "fingers" have in regards to the five sexes?
10. WHy are they afraid of ignorance?

Had House

I guess I can relate to vegetarians. Sort of. I mean, thinking about the torture, terrible conditions, and unhealthy plans the animals are put through you lose your appetite. If your reasoning is if i stop eating, the demand will decrease therefore less animals will suffer and be slaughtered.

Slaughter: often associated with animals, bloodbaths, butchery and gore. Now, in order to use this word as an adjective for a human you’d have to degrade them to a point that they are not only classified as humans but their lives are worth so little that they don’t matter.

Inerestingly enough, this feeling of worthlessness is not there at the end of chapter six and beginning in chapter seven when billy is being introduced to Dresden. “Billy thought the golliwog had something to do with the Second World War, and he whispered to him his address: 'Schlachthöf-funf.'”(PDF file) which traduces to slaughterhouse. The house in which lives are worthless pieces of shit.

The Sides To Balance

BLACK
Oh please, make up your mind. Are clichés in fact clichés? As I see it, clichés are clichés for a reason. (Ironic, isn’t it?) When people do something non-stop, it becomes a cliché. Now, why would we want to repeat something over and over again having heard it so many times before? Because it’s good material, good stuff. So we now know what clichés are and how they are created. But when they become clichés, most people try not to use them because they want to claim that they have originality. That they have some new perspective that no one has ever seen before when as a matter of fact they don’t. They just say the same thing but put it in different (everyday) words that don’t sound as cool. They basically go straight to the point.

DCBLOG is a perfect example of what I define as someone trying hard to avoid clichés. Yes, I understand that he is an English professor therefore hates clichés because they make literature almost tacky. But without using ANY and having such a serious tone, it becomes tedious and boring. I mean dude, make it colorful!

WHITE
DCBLOG is almost like the movie The Warrior. By focusing on the little details of life, you can make an attempt to question and improve the quality of life. It’s all about the details. Being that this man can discuss deeply the word many, he shows us that details are what matter. His entries, “On many” and “On the world in which we live in” discuss the importance of word choice. By showing us how the simple altering of a word changes the profoundness, tone and sentimental reaction of the reader, he demonstrates how detail is a part of literature and for that matter, our life.

Problems

Yes, I had heard at some point or another that veterans suffer from mental problems after they come back. It seems completely logical being that they are put in an environment that nobody is used to. Think about it, the panorama is filled with violence, sharp noises, loudness and gore up to a point that it forces itself into your mind in spite of you trying to block it. Of course you’re going to have trauma!

I hadn’t thought much of it until I read Slaughterhouse- Five. Let me rephrase that. I had thought of it being a very serious matter but hadn’t completely thought about how hard it must be to express something like this until is Mr. Tangen enlightened us in class. How Billy only starts traveling throughout time when something death- related or traumatic happens in his life. It’s like when an old man is telling you a story and because he can’t handle the grief that that specific memory entails that he jumps you to another one. Unfortunately that’s not what happens to most veterans; they come home with memories that will stay in their mind forever. “What is seen cannot be un-seen”- Andrew Bravener. It sounds obvious but it’s actually not because we aren’t that picky about what we watch.

The soldiers have no choice. We hadn’t thought of it to be a mental condition and didn’t name it until 1985. “Post-traumatic stress disorder is a debilitating condition that often follows a terrifying physical or emotional event. It causes the person who survived the event to have persistent, frightening thoughts and memories, or flashbacks, of the ordeal. Symptoms include emotional numbing, sleep problems, irritability, hyper vigilance, depression, anxiety and poor concentration.” (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0301-06.htm)

So if this happens to all “war members” (even our guys) then why do we keep on torturing them by sending them off to combat? It’s not like this is an international secret because we have seen this condition present in some TV shows such as Grey’s Anatomy. Maybe it’s that we have one too many problems and one more just adds to the list. I say, FIND A NEW WAY TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS.

Sweet Trafalmadorian Books

What if books were like dreams? Careless, light images that you presence and embrace without any questions or concerns. Tralfamadorians read like that. Apparently their books are very short, almost like telegrams. Wait, that doesn’t even qualify as reading because according to the Free Online Dictionary it means: “To examine and grasp the meaning of (written or printed characters, words, or sentences).” Now that I think about it, you actually can but not in the way that most people think. Technically they are characters and by looking at them and creating this image in your head you are “grasping the meaning” of it. Although, because Tralfamadorians see in four dimensions, they probably have a different experience reading therefore have a different definition.

Anyway, what I understood is that their books are so concise that you end up with an image, a scene or better yet said, a situation in which life is “beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, and no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our book are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” (Slaughterhouse-Five Pg.88) I take this to be a sort of ecstasy-filled chaos in which you can succumb to all your temptations and desires. A place in which there are no consequences and there is nothing that can take away your free will.I can’t seem to find anything else that relates to this experience other than dreams. I considered heaven and hell. I thought it could be hell because it states that there is no moral but by saying “marvelous” it is entitled to be good. But in order to be heavenly it has to be hallow which it is clearly not.

If I read this I would find it funny, almost awkward that someone wrote about the first two pages of the chapter but I wonder if we could read like Tralfamadorians, what would be the point in having a social life, stealing, spending and receiving money etc.? Think about it, if you could be in a mental state of mind that provides you happiness and tranquility, why on earth would you stop? In which case if nobody stopped there would be no communication which would eventually end up in the crumbling of our economies and societies in general. It would become the ultimate weapon. You could make someone do whatever you want and instead of torture you could use the most effective bribe. Endless happiness. So if you could write a Tralfamadorian book, how would it go?

On a side note, I think we all should say sweet tralfamadorian readings instead of sweet dreams. We could start a trend.