Who is This Guy?

I think that Meursault's character is a little detached from the world and people around him. He is an observer, watches what everyone else does and compares it to his life and what he does. Even though he sits back and watches I think that in some way that he is being affected by the world, he might just be holding it in because he does want his emotions to be shown. Even though he didn't show that he was affected by his mother's death maybe in some way he wished that he knew her and that she was apart of his life. That he had some connection to her and that she played a role in who he is. It seems like smoking is what keeps him distracted maybe its his "pure being ball".

I <3 Huckabees Response

I believe that we live in a world that is meaningfull and makes sense to different people in different ways. We all have different perceptions of the world because of the things that we went through and the people we have met along the journey. In I <3 Huckabees Albert's views the world as sort of this sad place where he feels like he is being watched. He feels detached from the people around him because no one understands his pain. On the other hand Brad thinks the world is meaningful because it is full of opportunit whether or not you have to step on people to get there. Its meaningful because he makes it meaningful. Brad in my opinion is concieted. I think we can all connect with Albert in the sense that most of us know what its like to feel disconnected at some point from the people around us. That as much as we try to explain what we are going through they still don't understand. People can connect with brad in the sense that the world is full of opportunity. Everyday opportunities are put infront of us, but what we do with them sort of defines us and gives people a glimpse of who you are and what you are about.
When the dectives ask Brad to say "How I am not myself?" I thought that question was interesting because then you have to figure out what makes you, you. The stuff that makes you is how you view the world as meaningful and if it makes any sense. your make up allows you to view things through your own lens or have on similar to someone else and somehow feel connected.
The "pure being ball" I thought was a way to have blank thoughts where nothing seemed meaningful to you. The ball allowed you to just exist and not have any thoughts. To be disengaged from the world and just be. The ball might even bring clarity to your problems and your life.

Manifesto Draft 1

After Reading Banach’s theories, repeatedly he makes me realize how much I want to feel connected to people. How much I appreciate all the people in my life and how they helped to make me who I am today. The arguments I get in with my parents, the family that I have, the friends I have kept; all my experiences with everyone in my life has a significance, they mean something to me. My authenticity threads from them. My thoughts, feelings, pains, pleasures, hopes and fears stem through and from them.
My mind is endless, but it is a sea of dreams, hopes, and desires. “Only we feel our pains, our pleasures, our hopes, and our fears immediately, subjectively, from the inside.” (Banach) I believe we feel this first in loneliness. When there is no one to share it with. We close ourselves off until someone comes along and tries to understand us or says something that reminds us of our own experience.

HW 4 Comment

Dear John,
I like how you went straight to your beliefs and just answered the question. Your very descriptive in how you view the world and it is through a lens that many people try an avoid. I like how you bring to light things that are everyday routines to most people in their lives. they do them and not realize that there is nothing changing in their lifestyle, so it becomes repetitive and boring.You also use quotes to explain your ideas and to prove you point.

-- Brittany

HW 4: response to part 3 and 4

Does everything happpen due to the decisions we make? Do I have an impact on someone everyday? how true am I to myself? Am I AUTHENTIC? How much of me is an individual? Why do we make decisions? How does this affect me and the people around me? Does our life have purpose? It doesn't because most people aspire for the same things. To go to college, get a bachelor, masters and Ph.D. To succeed in life, have a family. They do what their told or rebel. People find their own way of life instead of conforming to their own. I think AUTHENTIC is sort of bs because we are all authentic in our own ways. We make our own individuality, our own, hopes, dreams, desires and expectations.

Hw #2

Dear Jerald,
I liked how you got straight to the point of whether you agreed or disagreed with David Banach's view. Also how you explained his view and what it meant to you.I think that you could have put in some quotes by banach and elaborated more on how his ideas make you feel. I think that when you say "looks can be very decieving and that just looking at someone else cannot reveal exactly how that individual may necessarily feel." you could have explained more what you meant through a personal experience or used something that happened in the world.You post left me hanging like you had so much more to say yet it wasn't written down.
--Brittany

Dear John,
I like how you used a personal experience to express your view on Banach's ideas. I think allowing us to see this personal experience gave me an insight to why you believe that we are not absolute individuals. That at some point we connect with another person to a certain degree.I like how you related two people knowing each other for their whole lives connecting and two people on the train, sitting next to each other. How can you understand each other or connect with one another?When you said "our eyes may not see things in the same way" I thought about colors and how we each look at colors and have different preferrence. How we each see people differently from the outside even before we meet them and get to know who they are on the inside.John I think that you could have quoted Banach in your response to show more of an understanding of his views. Also so you could show whether you agree or disagree.Your post made me think of personal experiences and how and when I felt connected with the people in them. It made me think of how when I am on the train I look at the people around me and try and figure out their story. Sometimes I can look at them and shed that top layer of skin that protects them and discover who they really are.Most of all your post was very engaging and made me want to read the next line.
--Brittany

HW # 3

In the beginning when I read Banach's Lecture I felt that he was wrong about beginning able to feel what other people are going through. But after reflecting on my life I discovered that there have been times when I have felt that even when explained my feelings someone they would sympathize with me but they never really understood how I felt.

I cannot really express more right now, having a block...

"We cannot escape our freedom" What freedom? There is no freedom, there is only what we perceive to be free. But our perception really is our thoughts in a darkroom with no windows.

I think that I am starting to agree with Banach's theory of you can only feel, your pain, your sorrow, your happiness. The more I realize that many times I have felt lonely even when people have gone through the same thing as me. That even though they went through experiences similar to mine, they'll never truly understand how I felt at that moment. I find this interesting because I always feel the need to be connected to people, to comfort people when they feel at their lowest point not because I am trying to understand them, but because I know what loneliness feels like through my experiences. I hope that maybe by comforting them I can take some of it away, but I know that I will never understand how deep their pain lies within them because like everyone else they are hiding behind a mask. A mask that David Banach identifies as roles:

We are also familiar with the way we all play roles, identifying ourselves, or seeing ourselves, in terms of how other people see us, letting other people determine what we are instead of deciding, ourselves, what we will be...we make make ourselves into characters in the plays; we make ourselves into little pictures on our mental TV screen determined by the script written by the expectations of other people.

Sometimes we get lost in these roles that come with expectations. We believe this is who we are meant to be and if we change then we aren't being true to ourselves. Sometimes you always live up to the expectations that come with your character, that you wish no one expected anything from you and you can surprise them. You can develop your own expectations and not let how other people see you affect the decision of who we will become in life.