Full Nelson

I won't say that this Indie film is good. It is just that it leaves food for thought. Of course it helps that Ryan Gosling is the lead.

But onto the "smart stuff"..... He says "One thing doesn't make a man" or so he says.

This is true and false at the same time.

Dunne's addiction is but one thing. Yes, it does not make him. His mind, his teaching and many more aspects all make him. Not just that one thing. So this is true.

But yet it is so wrong. It is precisely the nature of that one thing which breaks him. As Epicurus would criticize, that one pleasure of his is not within his control. Worst still, it is beyond his control and controls him. Not only that, it also compromises all other pleasures (like having a meaningful relationship, like being able to function normally and healthily throughout the day)

Thus the danger is apparent to see as it is not the quantity but the nature of it all. The nature of one thing that may break a man.

Franz Kafka- The Metamorphsis

What a great read. I think I have not been impressed thus far since "The Outsider" and that is one tough cookie to live up to. "The Metamorphsis" has left me with many thoughts and bugging questions and suspicions.

Gregory suffers from Alienation. And this alienation is multifarious in its dimensions. Firstly, he is alienated from himself. He has become something that he does not quite recognize. Even if he had not changed into a cockroach, he was already at a point of "non-self-recognition". He is alienated by who he is (who he has to be) from who he is and was. Secondly, Gregory is alienated from his family. Similarly, his biological metamorphsis only serves to highlight the fact that they had developed a complacency towards his generosity and had effectively typecast him as just the provider. Lastly, he is alienated from humanity due to the nature of his work which makes his never stay long enough anywhere to be of any impression and permanence. In effect, his travelling salesman occupation renders his existence among any community a nature of fleeting weightlessness.

Of course, the text is peppered with absurdity as well which always underlines such thought-provoking plots. But it is all true. The absurdity of pressing concerns/ practicalities still remains even though Gregory has had the worst happen to him. As a flailing cockroach which is struggling to understand and discover his biomechanics, he still has to contend with a supervisor which actually makes a house visit on account of him being late. Everyone suffers from wrong priorities in that particular part of the story and this really highlights how perceived importance triumphs over real importance.

Absurdity rears its ugly face once again later in the story when the "normalcy of the unusual" strikes. The family members show us that humans are all but creatures of habit and memory. We can get used to suffering. Is it too tiring to go on mourning forever? Is this a self-defense mechanism? Gregory's plight (which is highly unusual!) becomes normal in due time. Habit and memories then snuff all meaning out of his suffering till he feels himself redundant and guilty of being a burden. And that is when he goes through his last phase of the metamorphsis and becomes null.

Read this with the knowledge that for now this is just my interpretation of the text and I have not studied any prior analysis of it as of yet. I am sure once I have that I will be back eagerly to develop on this text more. :)

Miraculous coincidences

Can you imagine when the universe was not yet in existence? When it was suspended in imaginary time.

If you think about how things come to be and the myriad of miraculous coincidences that have propelled or rather brought us to where we are now.

The fact that I can write this blog post. The fact that I can apply my cognitive reasoning. The fact that the atoms on my laptop are holding up with the strength of its bonds and not disintegrating. The fact that the moon is high in the sky and regulating the earth's waves.

And then I think about us. About our meat vessels, about our consciousness and witness-consciousness and how at our core, we are but a highly complex system of atomic systems. How at essence, we are integrating as a system of atomic systems with other atomic systems. How we must leave energy residues and parts of ourselves with everything that we interact with.

Our lives and all we hold dear are miraculous coincidences. Let us begin at the beginning or rather the point of non-being.

Imagine all (or rather the lack of all) before the "Big Bang", when all that was to be was suspended in imaginary time.

And then the universe expanded out into time and space as a hot, glowing fireball and rapidly cooled while it expanded. Protogalaxies contracted and began to break into fragments. Gravity then caused the fragments to contract even more and to become very hot as they compressed. Nuclear fusion then began within their cores.

Our solar system begins its birth dance as the cloud of interstellar gas and dust condenses. As the cloud collapsed, a dense, slowly rotating core was formed. This would become the sun.

Our nascent earth experienced numerous collisions with asteroids. This produced so much energy that our earth formed a molten core that was composed mostly of iron. the lighter elements then floated to the surface and created our rocky mantle. Our early earth's surface was molten, it had no solid surface.

The atmosphere consisted mainly of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. photosynthesizing bacteria were not present as of yet. We had no oceans either. Most of the water that is present on the earth;s surface was released from the mantle in volcanic eruptions and had come originally from collisions with comets ("dirty ice balls").

Our surface cooled enough for the oceans to form and created a hospitable environment. Amino acids, on the tails of comets that brushed the earth's atmosphere, blessed us with the building blocks from which proteins are formed.

Amino acids and the other organic chemicals were present in the primordial oceans only in small quantities. Darwin suggested a highly likely warm pond where chemical evolution took place. RNA (the primitive form of DNA) then could form. The first living organisms were primitive algae and bacteria.

It then took 3 billion years for multicellular life forms to evolve on earth.

The Monkey in the Mirror

This book has added onto my knowledge and inquiry into the conceptualization of the "soul" in humans.

I stated previously that to understand why and how we came about with our conceptualization of the soul. I then had to ask what makes us so special.

Previous probes have equipped me with certain factors: namely language (both spoken and written).

This new book has given insight into how exaptation (the incidental hero of our 'evolution') has allowed us the ability to find a novel use of our structurally-lower vocal chords to produce speech. Spoken language put us above and beyond other creatures who had and have written language. With spoken language, we were then able to build upon our essentially wonderful ability to re-conceptualise the world around us in abstract logic. This was also another "Big Bang" in terms of cultural-releasing.

We also are gifted with extended consciousness, the ability to add the awareness of the past and future into the mix and factor in such variables into decision-making.

Which came first? Symbolism in language which graduated to abstract meaning to language which in turn helped us scale greater cognitive heights or the ability to cognitively re-conceptualize our world? I guess we will never know. It may forever be a case of chicken and the egg.

Yet again, I find cause to praise our consciousness and the ability to be conscious of our consciousness. (which Satre may deem weak) Weak it may be but still it allows us so much cognitive scope and possibilities that probably makes us the most dangerous animal on earth.

So yet again, I find little reason to purport that we are spiritually privileged creatures. Indeed, we are the product of lucky exaptations and rugged ancestry. But given the power we hold over the rest of terran life, environment and this planet's possible trajectories, I find the question "What is the SOUL?" even more pertinent.

On The Sopranos: Everything I know I learned from TV

Only thing interesting that I gathered from this chapter is about how Pyschoanalysis provides us with aspect-seeing metaphors and how These are metaphors that allow us new ways of looking at and thinking about ourselves. Psychoanalytical analysis cannot be tested right or wrong.

By contributing evil to a personality and mental disorder, Rowlands posits that we cannot achieve meaning in our lives by pitting ourselves against evil anymore, not in this modern world.

But I think this is a commendable point of view that should not be taken too far. By offering help to the "evil", we distinguish what a person is and does from his true nature. Deep down, everyone is "fixable" and can be restored to the order that Plato prescribes (of Reason, Spirit and Appetite).

Of which, Tony Soprano is not. He is evil because according to Plato's view, his order is not in the correct form. Thus he is fractured and he has to put on different faces and accomodate conflicting actions in conflicting situations.

On Buffy: Everything I know I learned from TV

A nice book with which freshness into philosophical inquiry is brought in with the help of some pretty nonacademic language features and phrases. :)

Rowlands interestingly defines modernity as a tendency in all of us to swing towards some pretty conflicting life philosophies, namely: individualism, relativism and voluntarism. So basically we are pretty screwed up.

Buffy is the first to be examined. And he defines her rightfully as a pre-modern girl (with her inability to avoid the obligation of being the slayer) living in a modern world.

This is made even more obvious by her existential counterparts, the vampires whose lives are "light" (read Milan Kundera, "The incredible lightness of being") and no obligations bind them (because our consciousness is what allows us to act and choose and it lies outside the natural order and therefore also avoids the realm of obligation, as Sartre supports).

The next point that Rowlands puts forth is something that I have argued before. It concerns the positive nature of death and the mutually-defining phenomenon of life and death, the infinite made finite by the finite.

Thus, death is Buffy's gift as it is all of our's as it allows us to permanently become our actions by stopping the process of becoming and be fixed and for the first time anything.

Thus our actions, Rowland(as I do) asserts, does have bearing and that is why obligations should bind as we owe it to ourselves to leave positive legacies behind.

Then of course the problem is that modernity, with the help of relativism makes everything "small" and very little of everything in life is left "big". So it is tougher on us on the surface to make significance and meaning to our lives as relativism deludes us into believing that everything and every value is not fixed.

4. The Eccentric Nature of Meaninglessness

A phone call. I pick it up and listen to the shocking story that my friend has to share. And I listen. I become the listening ear. I absorb. I console and the cancer that is Human fragility and sadness within me hears its beckoning and grows in strength.

Through the tale that I am now acquainted with, I remember the horrid truth that we, in fact, are not free. Not free in the least. The only thing that we think we have control and a right to control over is not ours. It is not free. Our lives are not free to us. By virtue of living and association, we owe our lives to those who care for us and the way in which we choose to conduct and carry out our lives is not free.

I hang up after I have done all that I can, which in this case is pretty much nothing. I am spent.