2 posts tagged “existentialism”
I've been having a miserable day so to distract myself from losing my mind this is the product of two hours of random thinking:
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Are all anecdotes fictional?
Even if an anecdote is based on a true occurrence, because all anecdotes are condensations of incidents. One can never wholly comprehend the entire event out of details that may have been left out or not, because of considerations which have yet or will never be considered. Also because of the infinite expanse of alternative perceptions, language, details and context will always be be left out when true events become condensed into the spoken word.
Ergo, if anyone would ask me if I prefer to documentary over narrative, I can easily say that there is no difference. After all, equal amounts of effort are put into the making of either. It's just that documentary or anything related to 'truth', education and information weighs heavier significance on our morals. I say morals because there is nothing that we do consciously or subconsciously that has been instigated without a certain measure of our beliefs and what we know. The closest thing we might have to re-representation however, I suppose, is unedited cinema verite.
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Marxism
I am opposed to the purest concept of communism. Indeed, capitalism is a monopolisation by greedy men wearing self-appointed hats, deeming themselves superior to the working and unemployed class. However anyone that can think that the exact opposite of capitalism, that is communism, must be an idiot as extremes benefit no one. Extremes are the either ends of opposites and when we are attempting perfection, note that perfection is a concept, not a single cold hard law. Everything in nature must have equilibrium. Living life under extreme circumstances of either capitalism or communism is benign. It is merely a swap of control and power when it is always that mother and child will learn from one another.
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Love, Death and of course, Religion
I watched "Waking The Dead" today and cried like a bitch. Maybe it's that I'm so affected by mortality that stories about lovers, where one of them dies, almost always get to me. I've always been easily affected by death. Maybe my soul mate is already dead. Or that I haven't met anyone new to love which means he has not come into existence in my life yet. No one can be alive if they have not been born yet.
Is it really that simple? That all you have to do is wait around for the right person, for the next milestone to happen? That sounds like such an uneducated assumption. It is a concept that emphasises the existence of fate and I find that really disturbing. I hate leaving my life to something else. I would hardly call it a higher power. I don't believe in a so-called higher power. I believe in a god in a why-not way. I don't think god is greater than me. If I had the same powers as god and you could tell between him/her and I, who does a better job, then there would be a higher power. I mean, if you think about it when you have athletic competitions they are divided into male, female, age and weight et al why? Because you can't compare and compete everyone in one go when we all have different assets. I don't feel like I need to regard god as a higher power when even if he really did create the world, I obviously cannot compare his power and mine. Am I supposed to be humbled? Instead of just being grateful, need I revere a doctor or lawyer for being able to do what I cannot? Supposedly I will not be given more than I can handle, so what purpose is there to asking for help through prayer? Furthermore I'm an existentialist. What use is there of considering all things but the fact that life is life and it does not need to be mystical to work? I don't require any more purpose to live than my direction in life. I don't need a religious god to steer my life.
The concept of a religious god is inane anyway. Variety in religion is like variety among football teams. It's cultural. It's based on what you were born into, who introduced you to the team/religion, where you were when you first discovered your love for that team/religion. It has little to do with truth or evidence especially since religion is about faith.
When someone tries to sell you any of the three main religions: Christianity, Islam or Judaism they always follow the same cyclical presentation: source. Source, where did the universe come from? Bla bla, facts of life discovered before refined science. They always use hard evidence with such conviction and when you ask them for hard evidence of anything else, you have to fill in the blanks with faith. If you could fill in the blanks with faith, why bother talking about fact in the first place? Why can't the origins of all existence, all our questions about anything and everything be answered with 'faith'? How does the balance between fact and faith bring you closer to the meaning of life? How different is that to the contrast between fact and fiction? Faith is imagination and therefore, consolation.
Even if they get the scientific things right like how fetuses are formed then how does that make the stories of the prophets true? It's like scientific fact is the hook and the rest is a short biography of the past couple of hundred centuries. But then again the church opposed Galileo Galilei's findings on the Earth's rotation, accusing him of heresy, when Albert Einistein considered Galilei the father of modern science. Now what? I can understand the need to feel a connection to a particular religion but how can one do so without considering that every one's choice of religion is pure circumstance, not entirely a decision made out of pure, calculated deliberation. I would at least submit to the idolatry of a placebo before which. I would much rather prepare myself throughout my life for err before aiming as high as attaining divine altruism.
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I hate the end of semester. I can't get myself together or much of a film crew for that matter. I can understand how everyone's so busy and everything here but do the rest have to be so fucking closed off? Bastards. Morons. Furthermore the course here basically requires you to be a one-man studio which is STUPID for film under any circumstance. All I want to do is graduate on time. Jesus fucking Christ is that so much to ask?
Fuck structural education. As if I didn't already have enough to worry about.
My housemate brought a Croatian friend over last night. He was arguing with my other housemate and I about how it's wrong to kill people. Not really the smartest topic to bring up to a couple of existentialists. We come in two different breeds, the Croatian guy and I - those who see things on a microcosmic level and those who see the world on a macrocosmic level. He seemed quite upset but I couldn't really explain to him something that was beyond his comprehension.
The way I see it people like him and I are seperated from believing in a heaven and hell or not. I don't believe in the simplicity of human justice; it doesn't just end there. It also depends on whether you believe that justice can be dealt using the human conscience and how much faith you have in the human race. I personally don't give much heed to human cultural values. I believe that we are alive and we just exist. We are all a part of one another's stories and the world functions continuously. We don't have control but we have action, decisions and conscience. He and I believe in the same thing, yes, killing is wrong but we choose different ways to react to it. I can know that it's wrong in this world but then you consider survival, natural selection, necessity and anthropology. Our conceptions on everything are mere ideas but of course, it's no reason to not do anything about them.
It isn't our choice to determine right from wrong but it's more complicated than a person dying for the wrong reason. There are powers beyond our control and we merely do the best that we can and when we fail (which we will in possibly most cases), we learn. We grow. We evolve and move on. We exist and continue to hereonafter.
