#existential doubt

[manwalksintobar]

At North Farm // John Ashbery

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,  At incredible speed, traveling day and night, Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes. But will he know where to find you, Recognize you when he sees you, Give you the thing he has for you? Hardly anything grows here, Yet the granaries are bursting with meal, The sacks of meal piled to the rafters. The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish; Birds darken the sky. Is it enough That the dish of milk is set out at night, That we think of him sometimes, Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

[omegaphilosophia]

Aspects of the Philosophy of Doubt

The philosophy of doubt explores the concept of uncertainty and skepticism regarding knowledge, beliefs, and truth claims. It questions the reliability of human cognition and the certainty of our understanding of the world. Doubt can be seen as both a philosophical problem and a methodological approach, influencing epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and other areas of philosophy.

Some key aspects of the philosophy of doubt include:

Epistemic skepticism: This is the view that knowledge claims are inherently uncertain or even impossible to justify. Epistemic skeptics raise doubts about the reliability of our senses, reasoning, and cognitive faculties to accurately perceive and understand reality.

Methodological doubt: This is a systematic approach to inquiry that involves questioning assumptions, beliefs, and conclusions in order to arrive at more reliable knowledge. Methodological doubt is often associated with the scientific method and critical thinking.

Cartesian skepticism: Named after the philosopher René Descartes, Cartesian skepticism is a form of radical doubt that seeks to doubt everything that can be doubted in order to find indubitable truths. Descartes famously expressed skepticism about the reliability of the senses and the possibility of being deceived by an evil demon.

Existential doubt: This form of doubt concerns questions about the meaning, purpose, and significance of human existence. Existential doubt often arises in response to existential crises or profound experiences that challenge conventional beliefs and values.

Moral skepticism: Moral skepticism is the view that there are no objective moral truths or that moral knowledge is inherently uncertain. Moral skeptics may doubt the existence of moral facts or argue that moral judgments are ultimately subjective or culturally relative.

Overall, the philosophy of doubt encourages critical reflection, open-mindedness, and intellectual humility in the pursuit of truth and understanding. It reminds us to question our assumptions, challenge our beliefs, and remain open to new possibilities, even in the face of uncertainty.

[i-am-lia]

How could you make someone happy if you are not happy?

what is it to be happy?

What does it mean to be happy?

[edwinisms]

you ever think about how edwin got like. no warning, no time time to process, nothing, when he reappeared on earth faced with the fact that virtually everyone he knew in life is dead. his parents? probably died in the 1950s or so (at best) almost forty years prior to edwin’s return. if any of his classmates were still around, they’d have been elderly, possibly senile, and in a few years they’d all be gone– except, of course, edwin. nothing looks the same, cars look like spaceships, there actually are spaceships, he can no longer see the stars, and everyone he knew is dead.

[uefiser]

[jemmo]

Making sense of love for love's sake: the game

Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:

'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'

And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".

When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.

And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.

And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:

"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."

Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.

"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."

And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.

"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."

And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.

And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.

And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.

The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.

[cringeiknow]

I HAD THE MOST TERRIBLE DAY AT WORK SO LOOK AT HIM! HE WOULD NEVER TREAT HIS EMPLOYEES BADLY! NEVER!

God, working for him wouldn’t be the actual TRAINWRECK working for my current job is. Probably because him (and the team) have more than one fucking brain cell to rub together that they don’t have to split like the fucking Fates. I’ve never wanted to shake a group of adults so hard they get shaken baby syndrome more in my life. Although maybe while thier singular brain cell is knocking around thier empty skulls they’ll have a coherent understandable thought. If you looked up the phrase ‘malignant idiocracy’ the words would be made up of thier photos.

[fatedroses]

That one teacher/mentor moment and Zenos feeling embarrassed for the first time in years (and reacting just about as well as you'd expect him to).

[kaisollisto]

[ficmeouttahere]

if only melissa schemmenti could look me in the eyes and say "you can do this and you can only get better at it by doing it"

[holybagelsstuff]

Me on my way to move to the Matrix where I'm going to live a quiet peaceful life and be protected by three entities with superhuman abilities.

[timelinemh24]

What are glasses like when a monster with dog or cat ears wears them!!???

I'm trying to draw Clawdeen and I want to add lenses but I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY STAND!!!

[sunsetschloe]

It’s honestly heartbreaking to see how each of the characters accept their fate with total resignation. No questions, no doubts, no hope for survival, just pure acceptance. To be taught that your only purpose in life is to donate your organs so real humans could continue living defeats any meaning in life. They are born, they grow up, and they die, like any other living being does, but their lack of purpose in their future makes them so different to us. None of them worry about their future careers, nor their future spouses, or even their future at all. It’s all predetermined, and all they have to do is keep themselves alive and healthy so they can be used. They do have a better life than some humans currently living on this planet, but they’re also deprived of chances of ever being able to work for a better life. They’re stuck in this life forever, and their only escape is death. Maybe that’s why they embrace their completion without fear: they never had hope for a future from the start. 

Something I’ve been pondering about is what I would’ve done if I were in their situation. Would I have spent my entire existence trying to escape this predetermined fate, or would I accept it and move into other things in life. Perhaps it’s not escaping fate that matters the most, because the end will come no matter what we do, and we’ll all complete someday. Perhaps being like Kathy and Ruth and Tommy and all these characters, who accepted their fate and chose to continue making memories and experiencing the wonders of this world, would satisfy our hopes and dreams, because all that’s left in the end are the memories, isn’t it? 

[vintage-tigre]

“The stream of the true is formed by drops of doubt” - Franz Kafka

[betweenthetimeandsound]

--"weeping, watching the Madonna weep" inspired by chapter titles from Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings

I stopped believing in anything-- in your tears, I see seaweed seamlessly float as colorful fish lose their scales and their bones are catching onto shipwrecks. They tried to find your treasure and failed; they took their scraps and cast lots on their survival.

But how would you survive this wretched world, oh mother of sorrows? Why do you stare at us, asking for answers when we rush around in circles trying to find something that never existed?

The knots are untied, but the conundrum is not solved. I hold a sword to sever the threads, but my palms grow clammy, and sweat builds on the hilt. You watch and tremble in your golden finery-- seven swords have already cut through your starry chest-- what would another one do other than make you remember how you cradled your son?

You and I--we're both helpless. You and I--we both watch goldfish die in our hands, but do not bear to save them, for doing so would allow amnesia to reign, mocking our heavy hearts. --Elda Mengisto

[gojonanami]

do you ever feel like you're fighting with your fic to get it onto the page?

no? just me?