24heavven

[24heavven]

Abraham Lincoln once famously said “ Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side". What is ultimately good or evil has been a hotly contested topic among philosophers for generations. Take for example, an american soldier fighting for his life at war. It’s easy to imagine hes one of the good guys, but the soldier across the battlefield in his guns scope must also truly believe what he is fighting for and willing to die for must be righteous. Who is truly to say which one of these men is at fault? Reality is subjective, and one persons viewpoint of good differs from the next. A concept No Country For Old Men focuses of heavily, and Chigurh embodies completely.

Each of the three main characters - Moss, Bell and Chigurh have vastly different ways of being in this world. We have the Lawful good, Sheriff Bell, who does his job to the best of his ability even if he isn’t a true threat to a powerful evil. The chaotic good, Moss, whos reckless attempt at stealing that money in the desert would forever change his life and finally the lawful evil Chigurh who sticks totally to his word and rarely differs from what “fate” has planned, aside from the occasional coin toss. What makes these characters play so well off of eachother is the buffer of the chaotic nature of Llewelyn between them. Both Bell and Chigurh stick to what the “plan” is for the most part, where Moss falters on his course and lets his heart govern him from time to time. 

The circumstance from which Moss comes ties into his choice to become involved in the plot to begin with. He has a lower middle class, but comfortable life. People like him don’t just run across almost 3 million dollars every day - but he does. His human nature compels him to take the briefcase off the dead man, because in the moment of doing so, it seemed so simple. What sinks in eventually is that he has in fact thrust himself into a situation where he’s in way over his head. The choices he’ll make that fall in line with his morality end in his demise. His need to nurture, to take care of the innocent resulted in his choice to pick up that runaway girl. He would eventually pay the ultimate price for that.

Chigurh’s moral code follows a concept called fatalism, “the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable’. This in conjunction with his line of work and set of skills is a frightening combination. What makes Chigurh an amazing antagonist is that on some level, the reader begins to understand his motives. Had he not stopped to potentially spare Carla Jean’s life, he would have never gotten in that accident. In that way, we begin to see that the lens through which he sees the world around him. That car would have always been blazing through that stop sign at that exact moment, and if he had just simply shot her and left he never would have been in that situation. Even this small misstep on his behalf changed the course of his life.

Bell, the simple law following sheriff was but a bystander most of this novel. His aversion to confront this “new kind of evil” left him standing by the sidelines. A latecomer to almost all the major events. He believes that good citizens follow laws, and bad citizens cant be governed at all. This rings very true, it takes all different kinds in this world and people will live the way they live regardless of the rules. No Country For Old Men illustrates that everyone’s moral code comes from how they view the world. Each of these men reached the end of the book confronting what they were running from. Moss met his inevitable death, Chirgurh challenged fate, and Bell confronted his regrets from war. 

[24heavven]

Men abusing power and control is a commonly debated topic this day in age. However, very seldom we put women under the microscope in the same way. The idea of a woman - someone inherently viewed as nurturing and loving - becoming corrupt and abandoning those ideals is abhorring for many. This is why the use of women in the works “Leash” and “The Right to Remain” is such a powerful metaphor. We are very desensitized to seeing men in this way, but something about the main characters being of the opposite gender drives the message home. Do some of our laws need reform? Will there ever come a day where we regulate the interrogation process? Is there a length too great to go to in order to win a war?

The first play, “The Right to Remain” by Melanie Marnich explores the authenticity of the 5th amendment. Of course you have the right to remain silent, but more often than not unethical interrogations take place. The practices of intimidation, insisting they have evidence when they don’t, skewing evidence they do have in order to elicit the answer they’re aiming to get and general questioning in an oppressive manner are commonplace. This short one act play ties those concepts up beautifully. Amy and Josh create an environment of almost derealization that Peter walks into. They begin acting strangely, the stage direction even explicitly says “It’s a tense, bizarre, forced normalcy. A strange current in the room. He tries his best to feel his way around it” (Marnich, 174). As they sit at the table, Amy and Josh are detached completely from Peter. Something he says himself a bit later, was not how it was that very morning. It’s almost as if his family has been replaced by robots. Many things that are far from the norm happen in succession like Amy missing a deadline and cursing at the dinner table. Over just a little time, their camaraderie bring peter to a boiling point at which he snaps. 

Even still, Amy and Josh did not fold their cards. She continues pressing him, with Josh in tow. Reciting the phone number of the woman he’s been cheating on her with. Amy verbally presses Peter into a corner then begins berating him with evidence he’s been cheating. Evidence that us ad the audience are not actually privy to her having. You cannot find someones credit card information through solely their phone number, which is a threat Josh levels against Peter. But at this point, hes under pressure. The environment they have set up, the confidence they possess, the information they claim to have loaded against him, and even her claim that she visited a lawyer. After an anxious few pages, Peter gives in and recites the last digit of her phone number after Josh promised to come sit at the dinner table, call this all off and have a normal dinner. He barely even gets it out - Seven. Her tactics have worked, ethical or not.

In the other work, “Leash” by Peter Maloney it is even clearer to see how horrifying a woman drunk on power and anger can be. This play takes place at Abu Ghraib prison at the Iraq Wars inception. Much like Marnich’s work, this piece delves into the heinous crimes that the iraqui prisoners of war had to endure from the U.S. troops. Our troops fully admitted to, emailed photos of, and even laughed about the acts of violence that occurred. Prisoners were beaten down not only physically, but emotionally and mentally. One soldier even stated “The idea was to exhaust someone”, exhaust them to the point of completely breaking down. They described their methods as “enhanced interrogation” to perhaps soften the blow of the reality of the situation - It was pure torture.

Our main character in “Leash” is Cassie Jessup; described as southern, young and cute. Not the kind of person you’d expect to see screaming profanities the first line of the play. For most of the duration, shes carrying a leather leash in one hand connected to something - or maybe even someone - off stage. Yet the only lines of speech we get are from her insinuating that whatever is connected to the other end is dead silent.  As she yanks violently on the leash, she calls the mystery character by many Middle Eastern names ranging from Abdul, to Kasim, to Abed. Cassie doesn't quite care to know his name, she’s trying to elicit a reaction out of the man we can only assume has long been checked out. We see many direct references to the casual manner in which the soldiers acted at Abu Ghraib, oe of which being when Cassie playfully grabs her breasts after dousing herself in water. She then snaps a picture and sends it off in an email. This is exaggerated, if only a little, of what was really happening in 2003. The speech spanning from page 159 all the way to 161 is when the audience really sees the southern sweetheart lose it. the dialogue here is that of a madwoman on the verge of a meltdown or epiphany. Through her passion, she exhausts even herself, and vomits violently on stage. Another powerful woman abusing the power imbued to her.

We have strayed so far from the constitutions inception in this country. That being said, if we can differ so greatly from the doctrine on which this country was founded, it is not a far stretch to say that we have strayed on lower levels of the law. People in high ranking positions like police officers, investigators, war generals, or even politicians have all in some capacity abused their power and in many cases have gotten away with it because of that power. From cases like Ted Kennedy’s suspicious behavior at Chappaquiddick all the way up to present day with the death of Sandra Bland, it is not hard to get away with crimes if you’re part of a government institution. Perhaps the women in the stories by Marnich and Maloney help illustrate clearer how repulsive this truly is. We expect and maybe even accept power hungriness and excessive violence from men. These two works can help us realize that this is exactly the same. 

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/04/04/472964974/it-was-torture-an-abu-ghraib-interrogator-acknowledges-horrible-mistakes

 http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/132830

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/incident-on-chappaquiddick-island

[24heavven]

Consciousness and unconsciousness; many define this as the borderline between being asleep and being awake. In a grander metaphorical sense, one can say that it can even be described as self awareness and the lack there of. “The fine line between stupidity and intelligence is self awareness” is an old saying I’ve always loved. But how can self awareness be defined? You could argue that the difference between animals and humans is their sentience -  the animal kingdom will carry on with their little lives despite the affairs of humans at war.

In the poems “ They Sail Across the Mirrored Sea” and “Veteran’s Day” many common themes are present: war, appreciation, consciousness, self awareness and the heavy burden of complex thought. The speakers of both come from vastly different situations, and yet they both come together in a few streamlined instances. The poem “They Sail Across the Mirrored Sea” clearly takes place during war time, which becomes more apparent as you keep reading along. The dates preceding each strophe lead the reader to believe the first part takes place in present times, the second during possibly the Vietnam war (1967), and the final during world war two (1944). But if you scratch beyond the surface, it is clear there is another theme. Chen describes the feeling of reverie in the first strophe of her poem when she speaks of her grandmother. The shrimp in the vacant spring breathed life into the seemingly lifeless water. Chen personifies them; likening their small legs to “the oars of many men” and the tiny spring to “ a continent of water”. This striking stanza shows that although the shrimp and the speaker come from different levels of consciousness they aren’t as different after all. To them - the spring is all they know - It’s all they’ve ever known. If she were to swoop down into the still water with a net, they would not be able to recognize it for “what it is”. Putting it in perspective that perhaps there is a grander consciousness beyond our own that we’re unable to comprehend. Yet it is even more apparent that the shrimps inability to have complex thought is what keeps them so ignorant, so happy in their small spring. Prior to the first section of her work, she has a small excerpt from “Dialogue Between Two Birds”  by Mao Zedong. This poignant little excerpt from the work ends with the lines “he looks down, surveying / the little kingdoms of Man.” furthering the notion that sentience may be greatest challenge mankind has to overcome.

The same moment of reflection comes in a different way when reading “Veteran’s Day” when the speaker of that poem realizes the skeletons in his closet have come to haunt him again. The lines “Lately, my counter-thoughts / have been riddled with guilt, / the way a stray wallet / excites before shaming” paint a picture of a man dealing with survivors guilt. As he struggles to rationalize why he gets to be home and his friends died on the battlefield, a news story breaks. Another execution has been reported, this one being the third in recent times. In that moment as he’s doing crunches against his exercise ball - a clearly superfluous purchase - he is brought to his “aha” moment. There is much out in the world beyond his tunnel vision of what he views as an unsatisfactory life. How could he be so foolish? It was a blessing, not a curse, to have been fortunate enough to come home alive. Upon this realization, he must now grapple with his unresolved feelings of guilt in order to heal. In this way, the same theme is ever present. Animals cannot experience things like survivors guilt because they don’t have the capacity to even comprehend war. They coexist on this planet beside us as these atrocities are taking place without ever batting an eye. It is our self awareness and greater understanding of our planet and the world around us that we struggle against to some degree. This poem has a very poignant conclusion; “(ending stanza)” 

“Ignorance is bliss” might just be the common string connecting these two works. Although animals do have the ability to grieve and feel loss, their understanding of life does not go deeper than that. It is our ideals and beliefs that we cling to so tightly that cause strife and bloodshed on such a great scale. Animals however do not have the ability to pass judgement which is why they do not war with one another. Who is to say what is “right” and what is “wrong” ultimately? A famous line from Hamlet describes this notion perfectly - ”...for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” We have a lot to learn from the animal kingdom right beside us. As they flow in harmony for centuries, we falter and kill one another.

[24heavven]

Burj Khalifa once said “The wise man learns from someone else’s mistakes, the smart man learns from his own, and the stupid one never learns”. This is something said to me many times in my childhood and sentiment many parents wish their children could keep in mind while navigating through the world. It is only natural for a parents frustration to grow when they see their child’s life unfolding before them and have to bear the burden of watching them learn from their own errors. A theme peppered throughout the short story “Bible” by Tobias Wolff.

The story opens with a vision of Maureen, leaving a club in the cold and dark and its hard not to feel a bit bad for her. A woman we can only assume is living a very unsatisfactory life. Her own mother and daughter have a better relationship in isolation than she has with either one of them. In fact, her mother takes a slightly twisted enjoyment in keeping details about Grace’s life from Maureen. “But the old bird clearly enjoyed not saying more, being in the know, being part of Maureen's punishment for driving Grace away, as she judged the manner” (Wolff, 313). This paints a painfully obvious picture that there is a 3 generation chain of dysfunction in this family. Parent disappointed and disagreeing with the child’s actions. Grace and Maureen have become estranged to begin with due to an unsavory relationship between grace and her teacher, resulting in Grace dropping out of college to pursue it. Just when you feel her hopelessness at an all time high, Maureen drops her keys in the dark and is greeted by her assailant. 

The mood shifts quickly from melancholy to tense and confusing. The man whose only demand was simply to get in the car and drive allows Maureen enough time to glance over and realize he isn’t nearly as big of a threat as he seemed. His motive was not money or sex, ironically he is in somewhat of the same boat as our protagonist. His son, Hassan, a student in Maureens class, has not lived up to what he had dreamed for him much like Grace hasn’t for her mother. His laziness in school had driven Maureen to report him to the Headmaster which leaves his father in a desperate situation. His fear of his son being expelled and not becoming the doctor he’d always dreamed of had him ready to commit a crime. Much like our main character though, once you see that glimmer of vulnerability, you soften as a reader. You see Hassan’s father’s lofty hopes for his son clearly - “He will be a doctor! He will. And you won’t stop him - you, a drunken woman” (Wolff, 320). Later in the text on page 322, you find out his wife has passed on. The author wants you to know this is not an evil man, this is a concerned father with horrible delivery. These situations are very easy to empathize and make personal connections with. At some point in everyones life, they have been a helicopter parent or faced their own parents unwanted desires for them being projected on to them.

The author does not use much symbolism, motif, or metaphors. To me - this story is one that has character development at the forefront. Both Maureen and Hassan’s father disagree with the lives their children have chosen to live and both have found acceptance by the end of the text. Maureen had already been resigned to the situation her and her daughter were in at the introduction, where as Hassan’s father had come to terms with his sons laziness through his encounter with Maureen. By the time she drops him off in the cold, the words Maureen shared with him about the reality of his son’s attitude and work ethic have sunk in. Although she wasn’t the only one who gained something from this interaction.The bible serves as a symbol - for what though is still unclear to me. “Ah, girl, where were you?” could be interpreted two different ways (Wolff, 323). She is most likely referencing either herself or her daughter here. No matter Wolff’s intent, it shows us a brief moment of introspection for Maureen at a time in her life where she really needs it. Her relationship with her mother and her daughter are broken and dysfunctional, this is likely foreshadowing a mending of those fences or simply recognition that they must be repaired.

Many encounters you have in your life are nothing more than lessons learned, stepping stones to deepening your understanding of yourself and the world around you. Maureen’s interaction with Hassan’s father was a traumatizing means to lead the poor man to acceptance. Had it not been for him snapping and doing what he did - confronting her in the parking lot in such a way - he would have continued to live a lie. This in turn causes a chain reaction in which Maureen finally reflects on the situation shes been in the past 2 years. Has she woken up from her haze? Will she reach out yet again to her daughter? No matter the outcome both characters have realized their parenting techniques are incongruent with what the child needs, paving the way to a potentially brighter future. 

[24heavven]

When was the last time you didn’t have a single thought in your head? When you weren’t worried about running here, or calling so and so, or replaying a conversation you had earlier in the day over in your head. Presence is the enemy of your mind. The more you absorb yourself in the moment, the further your brain gets from the concept of time. Anxiety over the future, regret over the past. Constantly stuck in a pendulum swing from one end of misery to the other. If you’ve ever meditated, you know this process can be reversed and even stopped all together. The process of emptying your mind allows for you to differentiate between the voice inside your head and your true self. Ever hear the expression, “i think, therefore i am”? That was Descartes, and to this day many people still believe this. But to be defined by your mind and thought cages you. How could you ever believe in an afterlife if the only thing that defines your existence is your thoughts? In the last 30 seconds of someones life, their brain will go through a series of events, ending in just the pure “self”. The same feeling you get when you’re meditating.

“OUR SENSE OF SELF, OUR SENSE OF HUMOUR, OUR ABILITY TO THINK AHEAD — THAT STUFF ALL GOES WITHIN THE FIRST 10 TO 20 SECONDS. THEN, AS THE WAVE OF BLOOD-STARVED BRAIN CELLS SPREAD OUT, OUR MEMORIES AND LANGUAGE CENTRES SHORT OUT, UNTIL WE’RE LEFT WITH JUST A CORE.” says Shaw.  

I myself have had plenty of incredibly rewarding experiences meditating. After you get good enough at it, you feel a distinct slip between reality and pure consciousness. Its more like “I am, therefore i think”. You are the watcher of your thoughts, and your emotions represent how you truly feel about them. By not identifying with “the voice in your head” and identifying as the observer of them instead you can begin to let go of anxiety and depression. Eckhart Tolle really said it best - “Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.” The mind is the strongest tool of all and it’s a pity less people aren’t using it to its fullest potential. 

Everyone knows that Nietzsche popularized nihilism in philosophy. This is the concept that life is inherently meaningless and none of what we do matters because we’re going to wind up dead in the Earths inevitable heat death anyway. There is no heaven, there is no hell. There only is what we’re experiencing right here and there is no grander plan outside of what we can see plainly. This could be likened to a darker version of realism, where morals don’t matter and you’re skeptical about everything. Although there are many versions of nihilism like existential nihilism and moral nihilism, this is the “gist” so to speak.

But what if we are actually living in a truly meaningless world? Would it be beneficial to submit ourselves to this mindset? To abandon hope and reject the prospect of a brighter tomorrow? If the world is truly a dark cold place, the only thing you can do is light up the darkness. If nothing you do maters, why not do better? We may be small, but the difference between 0 and 1 is the same as the difference between 1 and infinity. The universe is incomprehensibly huge and it is likely that our whole history as humans wont mean much to the grand scheme of things. When you look at life in this way, your own interpersonal problems look silly. We are here for a very, very short time. Too many people get wrapped up in day to day trivialities. You only get one chance as yourself and to waste time that could be used to bettering your future is a tragedy. At the end of the day, we are all humans. At it’s core, our experience here on Earth is the same and life is such a miracle to begin with. You’re here on Earth at the same time as the people around you that mean so much, doesn't that, if nothing else, give your life meaning? The chance of that happening was infinitely minuscule and yet it still happened. 

This is called Anti-Nihilism and it can be found in many forms of media if you’re looking for it. It’s the characters out there who bravely give their lives up to a greater cause. They recognize we’re all doomed, and give away all they have to make the world a better place for everyone surrounding them, even if that means dying for it. Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Madoka from Madoka Magica, Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid, Ralph and Piggy from Lord Of The Flies. This idea that nothing matters, but order is important nonetheless is present everywhere. The world would devolve into anarchy and violence if everyone abandoned their hope. Hope is really the only thing in this world propelling any of us forward. 

This strikes the middle ground between classic organized religion where youre promised the gates of heaven and eternal bliss, or being an atheist where you go in a box in the ground and its blackness forever. It’s acceptance of the grey area. Life is not black or white, yes or no, on or off. Life is not binary. Many people who have been to the depths of depression and self hatred cling tightly to this. When you’re surrounded by darkness, the light becomes hard to find. But once you see a flicker you do anything to keep it. Accepting life simply for what it is - is freeing. The minute you accept your dissatisfaction with a situation you transmute that dissatisfaction into peace. People walk around everyday searching for their purpose when it’s been under their nose all along, giving your life meaning is the meaning of life. I staunchly believe you are brought into this world to have an amazing time. Your circumstances can be what you rise from or succumb to. 

Esther and Jerry Hicks have written many self-help books. At the time of their writing careers inception, they claimed to have had a spirit called Abraham contact them through meditation. Weather or not that bit is factual - they have a message that rings so true it is hard not to believe they are accessing the “other side”. Through Abraham, they have changed lives and inspired many people to be deliberate thinkers. What they mean by deliberate thinker is someone who consciously chooses better thoughts as they see them happening in their mind. The vibrational power of your thoughts is that which shapes your world around you, and whatever you are looking for you will surely find. The mind is a tool of creation, and not a file cabinet. They speak of manifesting whatever you desire through the power of your mind - and that life can be blissful if only we should choose every day to believe it is. The quintessence of their teachings is emptying your mind through meditation. 

At the other end of the spectrum, we have people like Mitchell Heisman. He was a 35 year old Harvard student who made news back in 2010 for taking his own life as a grand act of destroying self preservation. Beforehand, he had written a 1,900 page document detailing his journey to this conclusion, aptly titled “Suicide Note”. His outlook on life - or rather death - is peppered with religious and political inquisition and the nature of man. Heisman speaks heavily about nihilism. That it is simply in the nature of mankind to want to survive and choose life, a Darwinist knee jerk behavior. That this day in age, the question can be posed - “is choosing death irrational? and for what reason?” Maybe choosing to die is freedom, liberation, the next grand adventure. He goes into detail about his “Me Theory” at the end of his manifesto. His want to know his own nature so greatly overcame him, he began looking at his life experience in abstracts. Mitchell questioned everything so much so, i believe, he became depressed. He states “Disillusioned of belief in my own subjective experiences, at rock bottom, I turned to completely destroy myself. If life itself is without ultimate meaning, and is not fundamentally rationally superior to death, then perhaps the test of the worth of life is found in willing death and self-destruction.” He references Neitzche multiple times, citing that in his journey to self discovery, he can no longer believe anything. The text reads as the ramblings of a madman philosopher on the verge of an epiphany. This is the epitome of a cluttered mind. Heisman thought his way into and out of madness, ending in a bang, taking his own life. 

Our world is one of at least 10 trillion planetary systems in our known universe. A mere grain of sand on the beach of the cosmos. Yet here, on our Earth, we have seen triumph and we have faced heartache as a species. Does our insignificance in size, make our existence insignificant? The short answer is no, just because we are an infinitely small part in the grand blueprint which is the universe does not invalidate us. Much like us humans can see and study and understand ants and yet ants cannot grasp human existence, their conscious experience here does not lack meaning. Paramahansa Yogananda was the first person to come to the West and popularize freedom from the concept of the “self”. Before his coming here we did not even have the language to describe the spiritual teachings he had already mastered. His impact on American society was so profound people began to fear and vilify him as a cult leader or a criminal. He forced physicists to expand the language of physics as they were, introducing consciousness into the equation of matter and energy. He feared that without a radical internal shift towards love and selflessness, we would not survive the atomic age as a species. A concern being brought up every so poignantly again today with nuclear war not far off on the horizon. In the dark landscape set before us today, all we can do is come back to the very basics of whats important here, love. 

Self help literature, Movies, Music, Television, Spirituality, Philosophy. Anti-Nihilism can be found everywhere. Use the space between where you are and where you want to be inspire you, give you hope and excitement. Don’t become a victim to the uncertainty of the unknown. Letting your mind control your life is akin to the tail wagging the dog. The mind is a mechanism, a tool of creation and power. If used improperly, it becomes a cage, a nightmare. Life truly is, what you make of it. “For this is your world. Its the form of realty you perceive.”(Anno, Ep 26)