An existentialist would say that existence precedes essence. You must exist to come up with a purpose to your own life. Sartre thinks that "man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself." I think he is right; a log has to exist before you determine what you can do with it. It does not make sense to think "I need to make a house, what can I use to make a house" and then poof, a log appears. Our ancestors used what was given from nature to create a way of living.
Banach then argues that we cannot accept freedom because we think that we are being controlled by our experiences. We find ourselves "determined by one of the outside influences we find pictured" on our mental TV screen. Then when something goes wrong, we use ourselves as excuses. We blame the outside influences: "I don't know what happened. I guess the beer made me crazy" but really we choose our actions (to drink the beer) so we are really blaming ourselves (Mara?).
Banach thinks that the outside influences act like expectations that we have to live up to but we always have a choice to live up to these expectations or not.
We have become "characters in the plays; we make ourselves into little pictures on our mental TV screen determined by the script written by the expectations of other people." It sounds as if Banach is saying that we allow things to be determined and then act on the determinations. This goes against an existentialist's belief that existence precedes essence. To have others control us eans tto have our essence created for us and we have to live by the essence. Banach says that we do not have to live by the essence created for us; we are absolute individuals who have the right to choose what to think.
Everyone tends to let outside influences choose how we create ourselves. We "let someone else determine what we will be than to do it ourselves, especially when we see our value in terms of the acceptance we get from other people." Other people's values and what they see as "acceptable" change the way we act. Stereotypes are a good example. If someone is born into a Christian family, people are going to expect - who we will call Person A - to believe in Jesus. Person A may not believe in Jesus but Person A is labeled Christian due to Person A's family background so Person A has to follow Christian traditions. This stereotype - label - has created an identity for Person A.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hey Maggiey (xD),
ReplyDeleteI liked how you started talking about how we choose what we think then end up talking about stereotypes.
I thought the major points in your post was about how things need to appear, and us as well but more importantly the things needed to exist before we can come up with the essence. Then you talk about how we get to choose how we live but then we are also affected by the outside influences. o.O
I can agree with what you quoted from Mara's about how we are the ones to choose to do this thing but somehow we ended up blaming on the action or others. Like if I did something that happened the way I don't want, I would blame it on others. (lol, serious I do blame on others xD).
I thought you could have develop the last paragraph more because when I finished reading it, I thought it was like a cliffhanger <(o.o)>. And then your second to last paragraph, when it said, "ean tto", not sure what it is but I thought it was "mean to".
I do think I am influence by the outside but I don't really think I can become an absolute individual even if I am alone. It would be a blank mind that I would have even though Banach is saying that we should sort of have that. What I mean is that I don't think I would be able to think anything because even with the mental tv images it would still be outside influences. But right now, I don't really think about anything when people say anything, just think that that's their opinions, so accept their opinion like that. (Hmm, not sure what I'm saying but I think that's it xD).
Always love to read your posts (even though it is only 2 right now). But in the future too, ^-^ I would love to read more of your posts and your wonderful examples with it. (>'o'<)
i commented your blog but it wont let me post it here - its on my blog if u want to read it.
ReplyDeleteI can clearly see that you have alot to say. When I was reading your post, I can definitly see that we have alot of stuff to say in common. Some of the things we have in common is the subject of how people let other people determine their live rather than themselves making that decision themselves. One quote that you said in your response made a think extra hard. When you you said "Banach thinks that the outside influences act like expectations that we have to live up to but we always have a choice to live up to these expectations or not.". It was so good I had to re-read it about 3 times. I understand what you mean you say that. Banach does think the people around us are influences against what we want. I like the fact that you brung that point up. It show's that you know exactly what he his trying to tell his readers.
ReplyDeleteYou really know how to express your thoughts into writing. You are good at showing your emotions and how what you are saying is right in a way. I like how you bring up specific quote's that Banach says and analyze it. You know how to explain a quote really good and you have good opinions and thoughts about it.
For your future post I suggest that you try and create some of your own question's that you have about his writing if you haven't done so because it can help you. question's can give your reader a better understanding on what you are thinking and what argument you are trying to persuade.
Overall it was a nice post. Nice job!
Jia Min, thanks for pointing out my mistake.
ReplyDeleteCharles, thanks for the compliment; I actually think that I cannot write. But I will definitely raise more questions to deepen our thinking.