I Don't Believe In Zimmerman

What’s that old bible verse?  Judge not, lest ye be judged?  There is a lot of judging going on with our dear friend Jean from Camus’ novel “The Fall.”  In class on monday, we finished the fall and began diving in to the mind of Kierkegaard, our existential papa.  What I gathered from the Fall and from the class discussion is that Jean makes the bold claim that everyone is guilty.   We are all guilty, not simply by doing evil, but by not doing anything to stop evil.  This would mean that we are guilty for the deaths of starving children, or the witches hung in Salem.  Our compassionate friend Jean confesses that all of humanity is guilty.  Therefore, there can be no justice if everyone is guilty.  Jean, although very judgmental,  is judging himself as he is also a part of this wretched humanity.  

Jean claims that god is out of style and unnecessary for moral judgements.  This reminded me of a Sartre quote from The Flies that goes something like “Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”  So if god is not there to judge our morality, who is?  Someone needs to fill the void, and our dear friend Jean steps up to the plate.  He chooses to do what pleases himself.  He takes the path of hedonism and begins to be cruel to those he at one point tried to help to promote his own self-image.  In the end, he realizes that it doesn’t matter if he treats people good or bad because it is always in his self interest.

I have to admit Kierkegaard was difficult to comprehend.  Maybe I was a bit too tired, or maybe it’s something I need to read a few times to fully understand but I did have a bit of trouble.  Luckily I was able to talk to people in class about excerpts that confused me.  Kierkegaard proposes that boredom (not money) is the root of all evil.  Boredom is what caused Eve to bite the forbidden fruit and boredom caused man to build the tower of Babel.  Humans murder out of boredom.  Kierkegaard is a Christian and I was a bit cautious when I began to read his writings but he surprised me.  His argument for God was one that actual made sense, and this is coming from an atheist.  Kierkegaard states that man could never understand “God.”  He says that one cannot prove his existence or disprove his existence.  The very act of trying to prove he exists is doubting his existence in the first place.  The existence of god is a matter of faith, and it can’t be proved.  He says that essence entails existence.  A criminal does not exist, a person exists and that person is deemed a criminal.  So for God to be proved, his existence would need to be assumed, right?  Kierkegaard concludes that faith alone is all that counts.

Lastly, I would like to talk about a comment a student made about the concept of God.  He told a very relevant anecdote about his grandfather who continues to tell people the santa exists.  Santa’s existence is the “Spirit of giving” and we give it human features so it is easier to relate to.  Perhaps we do the same thing with God?  There is definitely something to our existence that cannot be understood.  We can label it as the universe, as god, as brahman, as the absurd, but it cannot be denied.  If giving this incomprehensible thing human qualities that allows people to understand it better, then perhaps I’ve been too rash in my judgement of religion  (i can be a bit intolerant).  My only confusion is why people insist on calling Kierkegaard a Christian.  Isn’t he beyond that narrow label? 

When An Ego Slips, It Falls

This week we had two readings, an excerpt from The Myth of Sisyphus, and several pages of The Fall, both by Albert Camus.  The Myth of Sisyphus was quite entertaining if not a bit depressing relating the greek myth of the King Sisyphus to the absurd hero.  Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill, but the boulder would inevitably fall back down and he would have to repeat this straining task.  Camus seems to insist that man is similar to Sisyphus in that we all live an absurd life of work, sleep, eat, bowel movement, that repeats and repeats until our inevitable death.  Now Camus claims that once man realizes his inevitable death, he has two options: Suicide or Revolt.  But revolt against what?  Our class discussion led me to the conclusion that the revolt is against the absurd.  Camus made an interesting point about how we are always looking forward to the next day in our life.  He says that one day when we hit 30 and realize that we are still looking forward to the future, we acknowledge our place in time.  Here I am at 22 years old and I can remember a time when I was younger wishing to be older and not much has really changed.  Surely things are not better than they were when I was younger, yet I imagined they would be.  Of course there are things to look forward to in the future, but I think the point is to enjoy your present life and take control of it, for one day you will die, and there’s no use in crying because you shattered the glass on your iphone.  That would be absurd.

Next, we had the fall, a story of a “judge-penitent” named Jean who speaks to the readers as if we were a ‘dear friend.‘  This man is not as he initially appears and is an interesting character.  He tells the story of how his life was a humble one in which he always did noble deeds for others selflessly.  But he later reveals that he has begins to understand that all his noble actions were indeed done for his self-image.  Jean’s generosity and self-image was fabricated.  His first realization of this was in the fact that he tipped his hat to a blind man after helping him cross the street.  As the blind man could not see him tipping his hat, our friend Jean was purely doing it for his own self image.  Every action was self-interested even though he led himself to believe it was sheer generosity.  This realization causes a drastic change in his life, and Jean becomes the opposite of the good natured man he once was.  He realizes he truly hated all those less fortunate people he had tried to help in his past life.

In many ways I related to this character. I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I am overly aware of my own ego.  Oftentimes I think of things I say or do and realize how self centered I am.  Even this blog is layered with the “I” in considering how I will be perceived by my peers who read this.  But is this necessarily a bad thing?  Our image is what we are, and I must remind myself of this.  It is our place in society, and I believe that without it, we are being inhuman.

Finally I would like to end with something I heard discussed in class.  I believe Thad mentioned that there is an important difference between the human animal and the animal.  Some might call it a blessing, but others could see it as a curse.  Is it our degree of self-awareness or is it the ability to think rationally?  

Everything is True and Nothing is True

This week I had the opportunity to read a short but great Novel called The Stranger (L’Étranger).  What an amazing read, though it had me wishing Sartre had written a fiction novel (I stand corrected by the all knowing internet that he has in fact written at least one fiction novel).  Meursault seemed to be a relatable guy with his disdain for the cops.  I laughed inside several times at his conversations.  His indifference to marrying Marie and his honesty in telling her he would have married any girl who asked him.  Overall I found him to be a compelling character and I was rather surprised that many students in class found him to be such a detestable guy. 

Seeing his reaction to the death of his mother was not all that strange, though I now realize that this is the point of the character. He is a stranger.  To me he is perfectly understandable.  Meursault’s rant about death in the end of the book was brilliant.  Knowing his belief system I can understand that to him his mother’s death was just another inevitable thing that would have happened in his life regardless of his actions.  Being that he wasn’t religious, his mother’s body was just a lifeless body, so he didn’t understand the need to see it before the burial.  

I will have to disagree with those who claim he had no emotions or empathy.  For one, he asks Raymond to hand him the gun while approaching the Arab so Raymond doesn’t carelessly shoot the Arab.  Another reason is that Meursault continues to bring up his mother throughout the book, and mentions things she used to teach him.  One of these teachings that his mother passed on to him was that one could get used to any situation after a while.  This teaching is put into action when Meursault spends time in jail, he quickly becomes used to it. He also mentions that “Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about” (Camus, 113).  I believe that the fact Meursault continues to bring up the memory of his mother is enough to show that he truly cared for her. It is simply because he doesn’t talk as much about his emotions as normal members of society that the others get the impression that he never cared for her.

Lastly i’d like to mention the trial.  This was the most absurd sequence in the book in my opinion.  As Meursault himself noted, the trial almost seemed as if it wasn’t even about him, because he was hardly taking a part in it.  The lawyer and the prosecutor took precedent, with the lawyer even going as far as referring to Mersault in the first person.  “I killed a man” said Meursault’s attorney.  Minor incidents of the way Meursault acted at his mother’s funeral were the basis of the prosecution’s attacks against him.

When the prosecutor asks Monsieur Perèz if he’d seen Meursault cry at the funeral, Perèz says “No.”  When asked by Meursault’s attorney if he had seen Meursault not cry he again answers “No.”  This leads Meursault’s lawyer to conclude about the nature of this trial that “Everything is true, and nothing is true” (Camus, 91).

Why was Meursault given such a rough sentence?  It seemed to be more for his indifference to the world than for the crime he committed.  To him, it seemed like a simple case, he shot a man.  Meursault now realizes how insane it is that these men will now have control over the rest of his earthly existence.  For what? Because he doesn’t feel it  necessary to look at his mother’s body?  Because he chooses to smoke and drink coffee at his mother’s funeral service? Because he enjoyed his life the day after his mother’s burial with a woman he was attracted to?  Or is it because he shot an Arab as the sun shined a painful light in to his eyes?

It seems to me the crime he is being punished for is indifference.