Who Are You?

The question is: who are you?

I've mostly been wondering are you the social you (the you that everyone sees and interacts with) or are you the private you (that only you know)?

Or can you be a combination of the two?

Can one person have two opposite parts (if the social and private yous are different)?

Can I be both happy and depressed? It seems you would have to be one or the other.

Happiness

"happiness is all you wanted" -Rhett Miller

Happiness is an interesting fish. How do you describe it? Plus, it’s not something that everyone can get the same way, which makes it all the more elusive.

I often spend time pondering the question, “how can I be happy?” There aren’t any simple answers. Sometimes I wonder if ignorance isn’t bliss; if I didn’t think so much about what it was like to be happy maybe I could attain it. It often seems like the happiest people are those least troubled by the world, and a lot of the time those people are the ignorant.

How do you find it?

How do you keep it?

I often come back to the idea that love and happiness are inter-related and important to one another. Is to love to be happy? No, it seems like being happy is simpler than that, even more basic if that’s possible.

"happiness is not a fish that you can catch" -Our Lady Peace

Faith & Doubt

I’ve had a growing interest in the definition of words and word usage lately. What I’ve been thinking about just recently is, if you can describe how a word is used, do you have a definition? This led me to ponder the following.

Does the word faith have an inherent element of doubt in it?

That’s my question. It seems that one could say, Faith = strong conviction in something you fear could be wrong or fail. This is an interesting description of faith. Take two examples:

Sometimes you’ll hear, “I have faith in humanity,” or, “I have faith in the U.S. dollar.” Both of these statements imply that the person has a strong belief in these two things (humanity and money), but doesn’t it also seem like these statements convey a general doubt that they could fail? When you hear someone use the phrase, “I have faith in humanity,” it’s not as if they are saying they know that humanity will always act in good ways. It seems more like they’re saying, “I think humanity will do good, but I have some deep seeded doubts myself.” Same with the dollar; that person is saying, “I think this paper money will continue to be valuable, but there is a remote possibility that it won’t.”

So does this mean that the phrase, “I have faith in God,” translates to, “I think God will do good, but I have my doubts”? Originally, I thought it might translate to, “I think there is a God, but I’m not entirely sure.” But the interesting thing about the statement, “I have faith in God,” is the implied existence of God.

The God part is not doubted in the statement, “I have faith in God;” rather it is the properties or actions of God. This is the same with the money and humanity examples as well; the doubt is in the actions and value of humanity and the U.S. dollar, respectively, not their existence.

On Love

Love is an interesting fish to be quite honest with you.

You can't really define it; it's hard to even describe it.

The part of love that I was thinking about was the oft-used, pseudo-deterministic "we are meant to be together" line. This is what really sparked me to start thinking about this topic.

In particular, I found the word "meant" to be very interesting. The dictionary defines meant as "To design, intend, or destine for a certain purpose or end." However, this doesn't really seem to me to be the way that people use the word meant.

When people say "we are meant to be together" they mean meant in the way that people normally mean supposed to. They're actually saying "we are supposed to be together,"which is kind of an interesting way to think about it because they aren't actually saying that it's going to happen (like you would expect the word meant to mean). Rather, they mean that it should happen, or it's expected to happen, or that they want it to happen.

People are using this crazy phrase, "we are meant to be together," as if it is deterministic, as if it's going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it. But the way the phrase is actually conveyed it basically means "I want us to be together." It's amazingly no deeper than that. It's not calling out to a higher power, saying that some grand plan is causing us to come together and that we are meant for each other. It's just one person saying to another, "I think we should be together."

Even if the phrase is altered slightly, like to "we were meant to be together," all that would translate to would be: "we should've been together already." Using the past tense were is only saying that something should have already happened, but it hasn't. That instantly would rule out any determinism in the statement.

I really find this to be incredibly interesting, especially since I have, even recently, thought of the phrase "we are meant to be together" to be a sign that the person believes in some grand plan or something greater than themselves. But just by examining word usage it becomes fairly clear that this isn't necessarily what the person means. Intriguing...I'll have to look into this more in the future.

On the Differences, Part III

It's interesting that the individuating force is driving us when we have similar urges to try to "fit in."  Why would we have both urges?  One trying to separate us from society, the other trying to unite us.  Constant internal conflict.

Now an interesting perspective on friends: they serve to satisfy both these desires.  We want to be part of a group, have friendships that will unite us with at least one part of society.  But we also use our friends as a mold, analyzing them for characteristics.  Characteristics that we don't like, we try not to ascribe to ourselves; we individuate ourselves through comparisons with our friends.  We decide how we are like our friends to fit in with society, and we decide how we are not like them to become individuals.

Do differences form our personalities?

On the Differences, Part II

After a night spent mulling over what I'd just written, I came up with some additional insights on the topic. Thus, there just had to be a Part II.

It finally came to me why it is people would focus on differences to differentiate themselves. It's very Spinoza-esque: if people can't show that their different, what's to say there's any separation at all?

I guess from this I could conclude that maybe people just don't want there to be only one thing. People will name things, set things apart from other things, differentiate people, all to try to show that there are multiple things in the world.

How could a ball and a chair be encompassed in the same thing? They have different names, they are not alike, they aren't even close in space to one another. They must be different, we have ascribed all these properties to each of them. Why would we do this if they were not indeed different?

However, even if we want to try to take the view of all-as-one, it seems like we still must try to tell things apart. If everything just blurred together there wouldn't be anything left to experience. It doesn't make sense to think of everything as one.

Well, I can already tell I'm not done with this yet, so I guess that means there is going to be a Part III.

On the Differences

I initially thought that this wasn't a very philosophic observation. However, the more I churn this around in my mind, the more it seems like it is.

I came up with this while pondering why it is that I can't remember people, more specifically, why I can't remember people's names.

My original theory was "The only way you can remember someone's name is by focusing on the differences from yourself." However, this idea seems to go beyond my simple conception. A deeper and more interesting way to think about this is that the only way you can tell two people apart is by focusing on the differences between them.

I haven't thought of every possible scenario to prove/disprove this theory, but if it truly sets up this way it makes an interesting case for racism. Could someone then make the argument that racism is natural? Or perhaps a better question: does an individualistic society makes people racist?

Differences. We focus on differences quite a bit. Probably more so than any of us even realize. It's amazing, try comparing anything. You will mention some similarities, but you'll mostly focus on the differences. What makes something different from another. What makes one thing better than another. What makes one person more interesting than another.

Oh, and for those who want closure to that story, I actually do remember people's names a lot better now, who knows why.

I Don't Understand Logic

Well, maybe it's not exactly logic, probably more like statistics. How 'bout I just tell you what I don't get and you can tell me what it is. It's interesting, that brings up another philosophic problem, how can I possibly know something I don't know? I can't tell you what I don't know, because I don't know it. Anyways, on to what I don't know.

I can best illustrate this with an example about roller coasters. Let's say that statistics have been compiled for a given roller coaster and that there is a one in a million chance that the coaster cars lose their grip on the track and fly-off mid-ride. Let's now say that the roller coaster has been on 990,000 successful "runs;" no cars have flown off and the ride is still running well. It seems to me that the people who ride on the coaster on the next 10,000 runs should be very nervous that the cars will fly off the track. If the odds say that there is a one in a million chance and 990,000 tests have been run without any cars flying off the track shouldn't that mean that it will happen soon?

This is why I don't understand logic or statistics or whatever it is. This makes sense to me, but it usually doesn't make sense to others.

When I was a kid, I used to be afraid of roller coasters for this very reason. I thought that, sooner or later, the odds said that cars were going to fly off the track. My friends would try to convince me to go on the rides by saying, "the cars have never flown off the track before," or, as in the case above, "there's a one in a million chance of it happening." Of course, I would reply to this with exactly what I said above, "if there's a one in a million chance and it's never happened before, isn't it due to happen?"

So ya, that's my logical conundrum. It's probably easily explained away by any logician or statistician, but I still wonder about it.

Nietzsche, Good & Evil

I was thinking today about Nietzsche and his thoughts on morality. Nietzsche thought good and evil are created by humans; nothing is inherently good and nothing is inherently bad. Things are merely good and evil because we, as a people, have decided that they are. It's considered good to be responsible and get things done on time. Why? Because responsible people are liked and they will not burden others with additional problems. It's considered evil to steal from someone. Why? Getting robbed is a huge inconvenience, and the robbed generally has a dislike for the robber well into the future.

I started thinking about this based on a somewhat odd scenario. Take a man who runs into a burning building to save someone. If the man saves, say, a newborn baby, he will be celebrated as a local hero. He'll get his picture in the paper and certainly have his 15 minutes of fame. Now, let's say that instead of saving a baby, the man saves a convicted felon who is wanted on charges of rape and murder. Will the man still be celebrated as a hero? Will he still get his picture in the paper? Have his 15 minutes of fame?

It seems like we have two comparable situations here. A man runs into a burning building and saves a human life in both cases. However, since one life is thought to be bad and the other life is thought to be good, different things happen after the life is saved. This scenario got me thinking that Nietzsche could be on to something here. It appears that we do have say as to what is good and evil. And that in itself is very interesting.