DEFEND THE POET

I am so confused right now. What am I supposed to do? Defend Charles Bukowski’s gross decayed corpse from grave robbers and zombies or his point of view in Dinosauria, We and his life from critics? I’m going to go ahead and assume the latter. Although I’m not really sure why I’d want to defend this alcoholic dead man whose corpse is probably fermenting in a stone cold coffin in California, or his extremist poem that sounds like some deranged man at train stops preaching to the masses about the end of the world, I’ll try. I’ll try.

Charles Bukowski’s Dinosauria, We criticizes the way we live now, and then develops a “could be” apocalypse in the future, because of these factors now. We would create our own destruction and own extinction. Critics call it blown out of proportion, but there is some truth in Charles Bukowski’s words. If we are apathetic to the way we live now, there is nothing stopping what we create for the future. He describes all the problems in our lives today early on, but all that revolves around one large problem, apathy. The real problem is allowing these misdeeds to continue on. He views that society is ruined and while we should change it, and could to avoid the catastrophe of an apocalypse, we don’t. He views that our lives are hanging by a thread in balance, and once we go over, all hell, worse than hell, breaks loose.

We should not look at his poem for direct words, but the ideas. The ideas that what we create and our apathy, will bite us back in the end, whether through an apocalypse or some other disaster. We need to take action now to control the future.

A direction

I think the first question should be if we even need a direction. The way the class is moving now is a form of asking questions and then discussing. And isn't that how we learn? From others? We make arguments and discussions with each other, getting viewpoints and sharing our own. If we simply read a textbook that preached about the different viewpoints others had, it wouldn't be the same. We could not talk to the book the way we talk to each other. If we did, we'd simply look crazy. If we simply read a book, we could not get feedback, or opinions. All we would get is solid facts of ideas from dead people long ago.

Learning straight from a book is never good. It's rigid and stiff, with no room for change. To be honest, the textbook you gave us is possibly the driest textbook to ever exist. That’s probably why all of them are falling apart. The discussions are much more active and much more memorable. Reading books such as Candide and the Road are great, because along with reading good books, we get to discuss and question each other about not only the plot points of the book, but the themes and ideas behind it. It’s indirectly learning philosophy I suppose, and that is much better than being beaten on the head with the old and parched tome that is the textbook.

So all in all, discussions are nice as we get to express our thoughts and receive others’. Isn’t that what these blogs are doing now?

ALL THE BLOG ENTRIES

For ease.

9/10 Eulogy
9/17 The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living?
9/24 Who is the Modern Gadfly?
10/1 Candide’s Punishments, Do They Fit the Crime?
10/8 God in 2010
10/15 Our Meaning
10/22 How Do I Know What I Know?
10/29 Father & Son, Mother & Daughter, Mother & Son, Father & Daughter
11/5 A Direction the Class Needs
11/12 Defend the Poet! (Charles Bukowski)
11/19 Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy
11/26 Thankful for a Classmate
12/3 Sports in My Life
12/10 Globalization
12/17 Winter Poem
1/7 I’m a Shoe
1/14 King Still King?
1/21 Good Food Review
1/28 Ultimate Recipe
2/4 I Knows This Means Something
2/11 Album/Track Review
2/18 X Marks the Spot
2/25 X is Known
3/4 McCarthy’s Birthday Week
3/11 We Have the Right
3/18 Art Review
3/25 Movie Review
4/1 A Book to Read
4/8 Invisible
4/15 Save the Earth, Do this!
4/22 Alone
4/29 Together
5/6 Surrounded by Cuckoos, but I was the crazy one
5/13 Thoughts about Earlier Thinking
5/20 Letter to The Prospective Philosophy Student
5/27 Me at the End

DEM RELATIONSHIPS

So the parent and child relationship is always special. The parent is a role model for a child, guiding them along the ways of life, showing the customs. The child always looks up to the parent, and develops an idea of the world from the parent’s actions. The special relationships we look at in America are those Father-Son and Mother-Daughter relationships. Although there has been a rising trend of those Father-Daughter and Mother-Son relationships thanks to the number of divorces and single parents rising in the last few years, the first two relationships are what most people imagine when a parent and child relationship is brought up.

But there are stereotypes tied to each of these relationships. The father and son always have to play baseball or catch at some point in their life in some white picket fence front yard or a field. There has to be some play wrestling in a field after a catch while playing some football. The dad also has to let the kid win all the time. I remember doing some of these with my dad, although I’d always lose when I played with my dad. He’d put me in my place every time.

Mother and daughter relationships… I don’t know too well. I guess there’s the stereotype that girls learn how to become women as some sort of coming-to-age tradition from their mothers, but I don’t know much more. But these ideas are changing and probably will be changed in generations to come. The world is changing rapidly when it comes to social relations, and who knows how these stereotypes will adapt along with it?

How I know what I know?

How do I know what I know? I’m not sure if the question is asking for the process of learning or if we actually know what we “know” to be knowledge, or some form of truth. The former is a much easier question. We know what we know from our life and experiences. As we experience different views from different people in different environments, who, themselves, grew up with their own experiences, we develop our own thoughts.

But how do we know that these thoughts are true? We don’t I guess. We’re never sure about our beliefs. There is nothing that tells us that we haven’t been lied to our whole life. It’s like the idea that we might just be brains floating in a vat, with electrical impulses being sent to us to imagine everything. Arguments that this cannot be true mostly revolve around how having all those impulses to our brains for all we feel in our life would be too complex. But what if the world our brains floated in worked by different rules? If this existence is a figment of our imagination, how do we know that these are the rules that the “real life” follows? Our dreams don’t always follow the rules of physics. There is no reason to believe that we aren’t simply brains floating around.

So that’s the scary thing. We don’t know that we know anything in the end. We may have learned it from our experiences, but we can’t tell if these were lies.

Meaning?

What's our meaning in life? Well, doesn’t that like something super emo to say. I mean, isn’t that what we are here to find out? Why does there have to be some innate meaning that is universal for everyone’s lives? I believe that we are here just to live life. There is no special plan for each and every one of us to find. There is no special meaning. Life is that fabled journey where the destination doesn’t matter. We should take our short time on this Earth and make the most of it for ourselves.

So I guess what I see as the meaning of life is for us to be happy, and spread it. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Sure someone might make a lot of money, or be deemed as successful by others staring in from the outside. But does it matter if that person isn’t happy? This also applies to people around us. This philosophy of a meaning in life shouldn’t allow someone to bring down others, just for their own gain, that’d be selfish. We should do things for a better change in society as a whole, to make everyone’s life better. That’s why I believe in those random acts of kindness. Taking time out of one’s life, no matter, how short, to help a stranger in need. These surprises in people’s lives make them feel better, knowing someone would do that for them, and maybe even empower them to pass it forward. That, is what I see to be the meaning in our short lives.

GOD

What place does God have in our lives in this modern day? God used to be a way of life, a way of control over the masses centuries ago. God fearing populations were led by preachers and monks. They feared the unknown, so they took the words from their leaders. God had united much of Europe, but also waged wars amongst various factions. And in some ways, that is still used today. God is still used as a way of justification. It can be used as a justification of a way of life, and especially in America, political views. The old views of God that the Founding Fathers had set upon the nation, still run on with many politicians.

But in other ways, God is simply a way of life. It is a path for people to take in their life, to guide their decisions and to simply think about. They look at questions such as “Is there a God?” “If there is, what can I do and what role does God have in our lives?” People pray to find some sort of stability in their life. They look for some control. It’s a way to channel their hope of help for whatever it may be. There are people who don’t believe in God as well, and in some regards, God in 2010 is much more open as a way of life than it was years ago. Times are changing, and so is the human perception of God. But people still look to God for the same reason; they hope to regain some control on what they perceive they cannot.