Myspace blog from April 24, 2007

Existentialism. Hooray!
How exciting! Finally something sort of intelligent and definitely not hateful going up on my blog for once!

So today I read up on existentialism. For some reason it just struck me as the right thing to do. I was bored. I could have baked a cake. Instead I read up on existentialism. (It was free of both fat and calories)

I was pretty impressed and also suprised at how well the theory fits with my own personal philosophy (or lack thereof).

For the past…probably 5 or 6 years of my life I have pushed religion and spirituality aside for other things in my life. With all the craziness that was going on during my late teens and early 20′s I wanted to focus on college, making enough money to support myself and of course, social development. It would have been different if I knew what I was doing with that BEFORE I got to college, but I didn’t. It’s still difficult at 24 for me to find a place in my life for this, especially with how crazy my life has been these past few months. It makes me wonder how much easier things may have been for me had I actually stopped to think about faith and such.

Anyway, I just kind of classified myself as agnostic or athiest. It kind of made me sad to think about. I barely have faith in anything and most of the time I don’t even have faith in myself. Sometimes I ask myself, “Why bother?” and my answer is usually something along the lines of “why not?” I have this unexplainable drive to keep going and succeed and be happy but I don’t know what it is, especially since I don’t have any sort of belief that I will be rewarded in the afterlife somehow. I don’t even think it really MATTERS if I believe in a god, or an afterlife. I don’t have any sort of anticipation that I will die anytime soon, so why worry about it right?

So, in reading this article I realized that what I believe is pretty much the basis of existentialism. It was pretty enlightening and it made me feel a whole lot better about my views on life.

According to the entry in Wikipedia, Existentialism is:

a philosophical movement in which individual human beings are understood as having full responsibility for creating the meanings of their own lives. It is a reaction against more traditional philosophies, such as rationalism and empiricism, which sought to discover an ultimate order in metaphysical principles or in the structure of the observed world. The movement had its origins in the 19th century thought of KierkegaardNietzsche and was prevalent in Continental philosophy in the 20th century. Existentialism differentiates itself from the modern Western rationalist tradition of philosophers such as Descartes in rejecting the idea that the most certain and primary reality is rational consciousness. Descartes believed humans could doubt all existence, but could not will away or doubt the thinking consciousness, whose reality is therefore more certain than any other reality. Existentialism decisively rejects this argument, asserting instead that as conscious beings, humans would always find themselves already in a world, a prior context and a history that is given to consciousness, and that humans cannot think away that world. It is inherent and indubitably linked to consciousness. In other words, the ultimate, certain, indubitable reality is not thinking consciousness but, according to Heidegger, “being in the world”. This is a radicalization of the notion of intentionality that comes from Brentano and Husserl, which asserts that, even in its barest form, consciousness is always conscious of something.

Basically, it is the belief that life is worth living simply because it is life. At least, that is how I am able to break it down to it’s most basic definition. The whole article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism.
There is also a nice chunk of information about Existential Psychotherapy which sure sounds like a good time. This lead me to some Psychotherapist dude from the UK who does it. There was all this great stuff about becoming a happier and self-fulfilled person. Sounds like a good time. Maybe I will take a trip to England…

So, now my mission is to snatch some books on this and expand the idea further and see where it gets me. Maybe I can become even more awesome now that I feel like I have a purpose simply because I exist.

Hooray for me.

Myspace blog from March 19, 2007

So, today was my first day off in 6 days and I spent all of it alone (which was awesome) so I had some time to think…

I think that a persons intelligence varies inversely with their level of happiness. I have discussed this idea with various people today. I’m pretty sure it’s true. Anyone want to prove me wrong? [: Seriously. The dumber you are the happier you are. Here’s my reasoning:

If your intelligence level is low enough, you would have no concept of what it is to be happy. You may be able to experience emotion, but not on a very large spectrum. (For example an animal of low intelligence or someone who is SEVERELY developmentally disabled)

Going up a little on the intelligence ladder, you have more intelligent animals such as dogs, more mildly disabled individuals, etc. All have the ability (in my opinion at least) to feel some level of emotion. They have the ability to “know” they are happy or unhappy but don’t necessarily have a concept for it. It also takes very little to make them happy. Why? Because they don’t know what they are missing out on and they have a very vague understanding of the world around them and all of the various things in it that there are to be unhappy about.

Now keep going with this idea…you have your average unintelligent person who does exactly what they see on TV. Think about the things that might make this person unhappy, aside from the obvious such as death, sickness, bills, etc). There really isn’t much to be unhappy about when your life revolves around the latest Hollywood scandals, the latest fashion, the latest pop icon, and that sort of nonsense. Sure, we are all guilty of this at some point but there are people that really have no concept of world issues, politics, science and technology… stuff that is REALLY important to know about. (well, depending on your priorities) The worst thing these people have to be unhappy about on a daily basis is your mommy and daddy not giving you their credit card to buy the newest fashions featured in Vogue. Then on the same level, you have people that have next to nothing. They live in shacks, they have no money, they struggle to make ends meet – yet they are happy because they don’t know any better. They are content with the simple lives that they lead because they have limited knowledge of what they don’t have. Right? (Although I am sure that there are many people who are in a similar situation that are highly intelligent and NOT happy)

Then, you have your extremely intelligent person. If you are smart enough to be a neurosurgeon, rocket scientist, etc., you are most likely burdened with a lot of stress and a lot of knowledge of things not being right in the world. Regardless of what you have or don’t have, all of this crap can make you incredibly unhapp Then you realize that Bob Dumbass is drinking a beer on the front porch of his shack in Alabama and not thinking about anything in particular, especially the bullshit that is going on in this country and it makes you even more miserable! You think, “dammit. It sure would be nice if I could go home and enjoy dinner without thinking about how there are millions of starving people in the world who can only afford to eat a meal every 6 days.” and it makes you curse the fact that you are intelligent. Or at least that’s how I feel.

Somedays, I think it would be great to be just another ewe in a big flock of sheep. What would it be like if everyone had no worries? What would it be like if everyone did?

Sure, there are exceptions to this. But what I am really saying is: the more you know, the more you have to be unhappy about. Think about it.