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[psycholophycrap]

Comment on Kierkegaard's video.

Something that I've noticed is that individuality is more and more visible in our society as time passes. The only time when we decide to open up to someone is to ask for an opinion in order to make a choice, so if the choice was not the right one, you'll have someone to blame about it because human beings cannot accept their mistakes; we have to believe that we are perfect no matter what, because we are scared of losing, to be wrong. And this belief is encouraged when society keeps hoping for perfection in everybody, so when you try to be like everyone else and to be accepted, you end up losing yourself. But what's the point in having a society in which everybody looks and acts the same? How does that help us finding our own purpose of living?

[psycholophycrap]

Kierkegaard

From all postures that we have seen so far, Kierkegaard’s the one that has convinced me the most, but there is still something missing, like there is something that they haven’t said, mentioned, investigated, that just keeps me from fully understanding the purpose of life, the real meaning. 

But Kierkegaard says something that really makes me considerate to see him as the one and only truth in philosophy, even though I think that doesn’t even exist, or not that literal, because he mentions the parts of the existence, and the change from aesthetic to moral is the one that really makes me reconsider everything in my life. And the reason is that even though there are things I don’t believe in, the example that he uses couldn’t be more clear; but then I try to make up new examples for me, to make sure that I understood everything and I think I get it: could it be like an alcoholic who just seems to find beauty in the alcohol, in drinking, in spending time at bars, wasting money and drinking liquor but then one day he decides that alcohol is not god for him so he focuses his life in preparing green tea until it becomes his new job, the reason why he keeps waking up in the morning, the thing that gives him the excitement, passion, that he needs on a daily basis? 

I think that’s one of the most complicated examples, because in order to define our existence, it has to be something simple that everybody do, constantly. But why, tho? We know that the human being loves changes, and for that reason it changes its mind constantly, its opinions, its knowledges, but why does that happen? why can’t we stay with what he have and settle? I honestly believe that we’ve learned to think that we deserve everything from the world, that he are the specie that rules and that nobody else is better than us, so in order to make that thought valid, we step up our game and keep learning, keep trying to be the best, the king, the ones that rule.

But why do we find it necessary to stop what we are doing in order to make a commitment?, to change ourselves?, what we were used to doing and thinking and then one day just keep doing one thing, keep trying to be the best, but now only in one ambit? I think this question is out of Kierkegaard’s limit, and it cannot be responded from his point of view and his opinion, but that’s something that I just started thinking because I really thing that human’s ego is so enormous that we should just like chill for a second and enjoy what we’ve made so far, but without losing from our sight what we’ve been through so we don’t falla again in our same mistakes. 

[psycholophycrap]

St. Augustine & St. Thomas Aquinas.

There has been a lot of debates about soul and body, resulting in billion of opinions about whether they’re dependant with each other or not, whether they exist or not, and so many others. The first ones to talk about this were Plato and Aristotle, but in this case they are St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas the ones who take back their opinions in order to complement their own and make them even more believable. 

St Augustine based his opinions in Plato’s ideas, while St Thomas Aquinas did it with Aristotle’s ideas, feeling free to contradict Platos’ even though Aristotle took some of his thoughts to give his own posture. But the main topic that I will talk about in here is the sensations and the senses of the soul.

The first author mentions that he thinks that the soul is completely dependant of the body, because it is needed to feel, to perceive, to generate new impressions on thinks and that way utilise the rational part of the soul to analyze it and generate ideas. On the other hand, St Thomas Aquinas thought that body was completely dependant on the soul because it determined the things that kept it alive: it determined when to eat, when to breathe, when to reproduce. But the soul didn’t need the body to exist really, it just needed it in order to develop and utilise every faculty that it had. This way, it kept the main idea about needing the body to perceive things so the soul could analyze memories, sensations, ideas, but one specifies that it can’t exist without body, and the other one doesn’t. 

The quote that I want to take back here is one in St. Thomas Aquinas’ part, page 379, and I cite: “There must, for example, be an instinctive operation by which the bird ‘judges’ that the twigs it sees will be useful for building a nest: it cannot see the utility simply by vision, which is directed to colour, while on the other hand it does not reason or judge in the proper sense: it has, therefore, an ‘interior sense’ by which it apprehends the utility of the twigs”. 

Here I have to say that I don’t agree with St Thomas Aquinas’ position, because I think it complicates things too much. That instinctive operation that’s mentioned is, in my opinion, just the natural instinct that animals -and humans- feel because of the empiric knowledge, that even though it involves the memory, it should not be thought so deeply because it is actually pretty easy and natural, it happens whether we want it or not. 

It mentions in other part of the text too that St Thomas Aquinas divided the soul in the same parts that Aristotle had, but made it a little bit more specific. The only thing that I think that was more than it was needed and even could be considered as not necessary is that it said something about categories being imprecise. It said that they made sense if you see them from the outside, but when you tried to understand them deeply, it may be confused between them because they were practically the same thing. 

Even though it is really interesting knowing different opinions about the same topic because it helps me to form my own, I think that Aquinas’ didn’t really contributed to the better understanding of the topic, while St Augustine kept his position all the way and he backed it up with facts and other’s opinions adding his own. So that is why I feel more convinced and in favor of St Augustine’s opinion, but there’s still things that I can’t fully understand. 

One of these is the fact that it mentioned that he said that the desire was for perfect happiness, so he wasn’t fully against sins, but what is perfect happiness? How can you know that you’ve reached it? How can you know that you’re not sinning more than it is necessary? How can you stop once you’ve begun? It even makes me think that the kind of sins that existed then are completely different than now, and I know it has been proven so, but it is really difficult for me to think that they are completely different, I refuse to accept that because I keep thinking that there must be some similarity between them. Would it count as a sin nowadays not believing in God? Could that make me reach the perfect happiness? 

[psycholophycrap]

Soul: Plato and Aristotle

For Plato, the soul was the source of motion, that one thing that was distinct from the body because it had its own brain. He was spiritualist, and divided it in three parts: the rational, spirited and appetitive part. The first one is what makes us separated from brutality, the second one is the one that makes us nobler, and the last one is about all the desires.

Personally, I believe that the first and third one could be somehow considered as one for one simple reason: most of the time, our desires, our deepest hopes and dreams, the things that we are desperate to do or have, make us act like beasts, like we’d do anything in order to accomplish them, even if that means hurting other people. So that’s how they are related: thanks to the rational part, we avoid doing that kind of things, we prevent pain in others. And then I wonder, why do people keep dying –speaking literally– if it’s supposed that having these three parts of the soul makes you immortal? What kind of immortality is the one that Plato’s talking about and how exactly do you reach it?

Once I read that right after the human being dies, a few grams of the body disappear. This could happen because of all the gases that were inside just get out, but there were a few people who thought that it was actually because the soul was leaving the body. But they were not able to prove it; science was against them.

On the other hand, Aristotle thought that, even though body and soul were not the same, they needed each other to exist; they worked together. He thought that the soul was the reason why the body worked at all, why it moved, the real substance because it actually is the essence of every person. He divided soul in human (abstract forms, tabula rasa), sensitive (desire, perception) and vegetable (matter) one, and the scale of being –starting from the last one– was the thing that made us reach perfection.

Taking into account this two visions, one fed from the other one, a lot of questions swirl into my head. Because even though I understand them, there’s something that’s missing. What are dreams? What are hopes? What’s its origin? Why do they have meaning only in the soul? Was the soul made up to figure a decent explanation for dreams and ideas? I believe that we need more information and more hypothesis about the soul to just have a sneak peek to what it actually is. If the truth were already known, it wouldn’t be a need to keep guessing and making up new theories like Aristotle and a lot of people after him did. So, would there be a moment when we’ll know the truth about soul?  

As a conclusion, I personally believe a little bit more what Aristotle says about the soul, but still there’s something that doesn’t convince me completely. But I do believe that the sensitive soul is kind of the most basic one because we, as human beings, started following our instinct, as animals and we did not use our conscious until later. The way I see it is like a pyramid and it starts with this soul, then it comes the passive intellect (tabula rasa)  that’s the one we acquire when we are born and we start having our firsts conscious memories. And then it comes the analysis, the real intelligence, the real meaning of things when we go back to our memories and our previous knowledges and finally reach the active intellect that’s the one we use all the time. But this could also be confused with mind. So what is soul exactly? How do I keep it separated from the rest of the body? My belief is that body and soul are actually correlated so much that the difference between them is too hard to see and to identify, making them look as if they were the same thing.

[psycholophycrap]

Black Museum — Black Mirror (Ep. 6, S: 04)

Before I start giving my opinion about this episode, I need to specify that this is one of my favorite episodes in the whole serie. Well, in the first place, this serie has changed the way I see things now, because it is so critic, so intense, so direct that I think I needed that kind of approach to understand better the world I am living in and the impact that technology has had in the way we act or the way that things are managed.

One of the main reasons why I like this episode so much is because I really like it when people tell short interesting stories, one after another and that’s what happens in this episode. 

The first story is about a man who became addicted to pain due to his job, making him lose it, his girlfriend and his purpose in life. The way I see it, even though at first sight it doesn’t seem like it, it’s pretty easy that this happen to anyone, not just the ones with a technological device inserted in their brains. And the reason why I see it like this is that sometimes we can be so attached to something, to someone that we forget everything that came before that. That thing occupies all our thoughts, time, wishes, desire, and it comes to a point where, if you lose it, it’s like you’ve lost your entire life, because you want more of it all the time. You need it, you can’t live without it so you crave for more and more, and it is never enough. You forget how everything was before that and it is really hard to be the person that you used to be. You’re never the same. The sad thing about all of this is that it’s really hard to prevent. You don’t even notice when it does. But how can you know that the thing you’ve lost is indeed your purpose in life? Why does it feel like that? And what happens if it’s not? 

The last question is really easy to respond: you just have to look for the true reason why you’re here, but as easy as it sounds, trying to find something that makes you feel complete, happy, satisfied and that you are passionate enough to not think in anything else is really difficult. So what do you do, then? I believe that life is about try and failure, to explore and to never, never, say “no” to something you don’t really know. With a few exceptions, of course. That way you can get a little closer, perhaps, to your life purpose. 

The second story is about another new technological device. It was created in order to help people who were, for example, in comma, to help them express themselves (because, as it is known, the people in this situations have consciousness) and, in some way, participate in their love ones’ lives. The problem here was that first, the device put the consciousness inside of someone else’s brain. This made possible that they could see, hear, taste and even feel what the other one was experiencing. The problem here was that they couldn’t do anything else but talk.

This, obviously, caused problems immediately and the reason was pretty obvious: the fact that you can’t do what you wanna do the moment you want to because there’s someone watching you and probably judging your actions as you do them can be pretty tired. It’s like living again what your parents told you when you were little: “God is watching you, so be careful with what you say and do; He might punish you”. And the inmediat solution was to put the consciousness inside of a plushie. But what kind of life is the one that forces you to watch all the time and never participate in what you are indirectly living? Can it really be called “life”? According to the episode, no, it wasn’t life. The reason that the episode gives is that, in order to be human, it has to be capable to express at least five emotions. But even with those emotions, is it life? Can we really summarize life in five simple emotions that are expressed always in the same way? What about communicating in other ways? What about contact (physical and emotional)? What about all of the other things that we do daily and with which we couldn’t live without? And, to finish, what are those things that we need? If we had to make a list, what things should be indispensable to make a human being live in proper conditions? 

The last story is, the way I see it, the deepest one and that plays more with your feelings and emotions. 

There comes to a point where people stop acting with humans with moral and do whatever they can to “survive”, and this usually means being better that the rest, no matter what. This story was not the exception. 

The ambitious and longing for money and power made the owner of the museum, create an hologram of a dead convict’s consciousness in order to make him suffer over and over again the same way he had done when he died at the chair. It was corruption that drove him to death, and it was ambitious that made him live it forever. 

After you’ve lived your whole life in pain, suffering, you come to think in a lot of things: there’s no God, there’s no hope, there’s no salvation or miracles, the only one capable of saving you is you. And when you’re trapped, hopeless there are hardly ways to getting off it. 

Can you imagine forgetting who you are not because you’ve lost something that meant the world to you, but because there’s no reason to remember it? You don’t have a life purpose anymore, you can’t see the light after the tunnel, you just settle with what you have, but are so tired of the pain that you just disconnect and never know about the real world again. You lose your humanity, partly because someone force you to, partly because you weren’t strong enough to take it. How come there’s no guilt in this? How come we can still living knowing that there are people suffering all around us, even if they don’t say anything? How come we’ve become a society in which we don’t matter, and the only thing that does are the likes and the comments in every publication that we do? In what moment our lives in social media became more “real” that the truly real ones? And why do we let it? In a world like this, it is easy to summarize everything in just one phrase: 

Our main purpose in life is to succeed online.

As a conclusion, there are probably more than one purpose in our lives, and for that reason we shouldn’t ever stop looking for it. We change, our surroundings change, the people around us change, so our purposes change too. And we should never lose our humanity, our moral. Even if humanity is subjective (and so is moral), and even if we can’t define yet what makes us human, and what do we need to live properly in a more trascendental way, if we forget, even for a second, that what we have next to us is another human being that feels, thinks, moves, needs, loves... the same we do, there’s no way to go back. We’ve lost our humanity and our purpose in life. 

[psycholophycrap]

Ghost in the shell.

Without a doubt, this movie makes you think beyond yourself, about your whole existence and the essence of the human being. Even about the existence of the people that surround you, the reason why you’re human and not just a fish or even a lion. And this makes us wonder: what makes us human? What’s the main thing that makes us different from the rest of the creatures?

As Major said, she had a face, a voice that made her different from others, but the main thing that made the distinction was their memories, being these influenced by her thoughts and vice versa. By this, we could say that memories are the ones who makes us who we are and that gives us big part of our personality, our essence. And it’s this distinction and differentiation that makes us less predictable, even being more likely to survive under an extreme situation. 

I believe that the movie wants us to think beyond what is obvious, and think of the real meaning of a lot of things shown there. For example, the fact that Major could connect with The Puppet Master, and this one could take her body to move around, could mean that most of the times human beings get carried away with others’ opinions about what we do or say, and we often try to change it in order to avoid being criticized or even because we think that doing this or that may be better for us because somebody else said so. In other words, we base our decisions and thoughts in what society tells us to, and we manage to make stereotypes determine who we are and who we want to be, how we want to present ourselves to the world and interact with it.

But here’s a contradiction, because if we’re always doing what someone else is telling us to, we become predictable and that’s when our existence and our essence are in danger because there is no way to continue being you without listening to your own thoughts and instincts. Also, there’s one thing that The Puppet Master says at one point of the movie. It says that trying hard to maintain you as who you are is what limits you because everything’s in a constant change, so you’re practically avoiding this change. 

But our essence cannot be truly described and defined in a few words, if it could be described at all. Sciences, specially philosophy have tried to explain this, define it, but there’s no way to do it because there aren’t characteristics that apply for each and every human being ever existing, without exceptions. And technology has made this even more difficult, because here’s where we ask ourselves: is it real? 

In the movie everything was fictional, but what if -for saying something- we were actually living in some kind of Matrix? We couldn’t know, and for that we couldn’t even do anything about that. Everything could be fake, just an illusion, because even if we think that we are real, there’s no way to prove it. Just as an example mentioned in the movie too: “have you ever actually seen your brain?” The answer is no, we can only see scans, pictures, reflections, but we can’t see ourselves in the way we actually are, or for saying it differently, as somebody else sees us. 

As a conclusion, I think that there is no human essence, because the only thing that makes us different from animals is that we are a little bit more conscious about our actions, even if this makes us do things that sometimes are not moral. And there is the possibility that the world and life as we know it doesn’t exist and it is all an illusion, but there are several reasons why we won’t know this soon, and one of them is because human being doesn’t really want to know, that may mean that we are not the center of the universe, and let's be honest: human pride cannot take that.