Letting Go Of Control

This song...

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby  (via sunst0ne)

A Question of Morality

Do we do things because they are the moral things to do or do we do them to achieve certain ends? I faced this question in a debate I had with my church's youth group's sort of leader. It was of course a peaceful debate--diplomatically ignoring my views eventually--but this question has been living inside me ever since.

I took a Kantian standpoint and argued in favor of the categorical imperative, whereas my opponent said that, the moral thing is to act to earn God's divine gifts in Heaven. And even though it seemed pretty obvious to me, in the past one week ambiguity has begun to cloud my confidence on this matter.

The heavenly gifts we earn for living a righteous life are quite naturally stimulating and indeed worth living that life for but I thought, that it is not the highest we can get. In my opinion--the one which I had then--acting out completely because of wanting to do the right thing is the most moral way of thinking. Only for the rightness of that action, not for avoiding guilt, or actually finding pleasure in it, or anything of sort.

Using Kant's reasoning however, would actually mean embracing the opposing view, not mine. Kant actually found God in morals this way. His categorical imperative suggests a certain joy felt over the moral act, properly proportionate to how moral the act was. Although he found a problem in this: say--and this is my example--you commit a crime but you have cleaned up after yourself well enough. Still, a clever detective somehow gets to you and you are persecuted. However, when being tried, you find a way to get away by adding just one more lie, that could clearly undo the validity of any evidence they have against you. Now you are faced wih the dilemma, that either you add just one more lie and get away, or act morally and confess. It is problematic to imagine a situation, where a criminal in the midst of trial starts to think about morality but let's accept it for the sake of the thought experiment. Now before moving any further, I add another crucial detail: because of the severety of your crime and the local laws, if you testify guilty, you will be executed on the scene without any delay. So now, acting immorally will just get you life, in which you can try to make up for the wrongs you've done and do probably some even more moral things, than confessing now. On the contrary, in the present state, the only justifiable action is testifying guilty. But this morality, thinking in earthly matters, is completely vain. It earns you nothing, neither for the community, and though everyone will agree, that at least you did the right thing when you confessed of your crime, you will still be marked as overall immoral, and above these, you will not have a chance to feel any joy over your moral act. Impending death, brought forth only by a moral act, which serves only the abstract morality itself, can take away this kind of joy...

In the case above, according to Kant, the only acceptable choice is the moral one. But without a sort of moral joy felt over it and any service implemented through this, it certainly becomes difficult to find any point in it. On the contrary, no matter the contingencies, such as one's lack of time for joy, you should still choose the moral decision.

Now this is a place, where Kant found God. After your moral act, you can have joy over it even after you are dead, in case there is life after death. In case there is Heaven, and it is accessible to you--well, anyone can say a prayer a be saved even right before death--this final moral act of yours, will prove to be not in vain and you will have a chance to have that sort of moral joy in the proper proportion.

No, no one has to agree with Kant. I know, I haven't seen into the depths he has or the depths there are to this question. But--without solidly stating, that this is the right way to think about this question--this is a possible answer, that put some things into new light for me. It's good to get it off my chest :)

Ceaselessly changing

When are we ready, grown-up, clever or wise? Is there a certain phase, defined by scholars of past ages?

Human societies are all about metamorphosis: we always want to transfigure into something we think is sublime. And we very often succeed in our efforts, however, this just opens our eyes to see how vast the unknown is. I don't mean it scientifically; it's meant to be understood in the most artsy way you can imagine, I'm not going to be pretentious though, I'm just in the mood.

The past three or four months have really brought a wave of revelations and I caught a glimpse of the magnitude of the lack of knowledge about grand things I have. I'm well-aware this is terribly confusing but it's difficult for me to put my feelings into words, still, I'm compelled to give it my best shot.

Returning to my greatly eventful time, I must admit it was not at all eventful. All it was is just a period of trying my wings, seeing if I can fly. But I can't, there's just no way I could challenge the gravity and all laws of physics. I mean this, again, in a metaphorical way.

I've read books that showed me a new side of literature, I've seen movies that changed my thinking about film-making, I've had conversations that introduced me to a more humane side that people tend to conceal and I've revisited my early infatuations and through all of these things I've come to realise a great thing. I'm much less like me and much more like you -- like the entirety of us, humans. Through these things I began to understand myself more and more, to appreciate the world and each person around me.

This is an eternally complex and beautiful world. We have so little time to explore it and yet, we can always return to anything and enjoy it as if it was the first time of trying it out. We're so very close to death. But it's okay. I don't mind it because I believe that I will have emptied what fate has in store for me till my last day on Earth and what else could I wish above that? Another life? No, I'll pass. But I'll gladly go to Heaven :)

I'm in love again. In love with the Spring, the Day, Learning, Words and Actions, Traveling and You. I hope you're reading this because I'm madly in love with you Baby :)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/u0zhZVKS1eo?feature=oembed

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0zhZVKS1eo)

sick as frick |-/

The phrase: leap of faith, has been banished from our realities. It only exists in books and films. But why? If we don't have the courage to make efforts for the uncertain, it's certain we'll have no more than what we have now.

Frankenstein? You Certainly Have No Idea

A while ago I wrote a similar post about Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where I explored how we’ve gradually departed from the original concept and eventually turned the whole story inside out--the way it’s usually believed to be today.

Horror and genre fiction in general are looked upon as solely entertaining literature. It is best represented by enormous fandoms around horror stories that are really the shallow water of the stream of art--yes, I’m referring to Stephen King.

Although is it not supposed to be more? Shouldn’t horror really be more than a good fright? Obviously I ventured out to write this post because I strongly believe horror can have more profound dimensions and it should. Actually, my opinion is mainly informed by Stoker’s Dracula and Shelley’s Frankenstein (and a good portion is a result of reading Poe extensively in my teen years, as it shows in the post later).

Let me begin by explaining a bit about contemporary horror’s genesis. As a branch of literature it has very little to do with books, it is only an indirect continuation to the tradition. Today’s horror comes from a set of movies, some of which were book adaptations or remotely inspired by them. Actually one name is a recurrent theme here: Bela Lugosi, a.k.a. the king of horror--much more so than anyone would have thought. His version of Dracula has proven more enduring than the written one, so the underlying themes of Stoker’s novel, which even concerned the metaphysical at times, are lost, quite tragically. Also, the popular image of Frankenstein’s monster comes from the 1939 Rowland V. Lee movie Son of Frankenstein. The shape of the creature, its mindlessness, the castle, the assistant--every bit people associate with Frankenstein is a direct result of the movie, hardly any of which actually features in the novel.

A written genre originating from a visual one is encased in the limitations of both--what could not be visually understood won’t appear, and the same applies to the written part. It is an almost unimaginable thing but originally these horror stories barely ever showed the horror. “Why, we have that today,” the ignorant reader might say but the horror of old times was not filled with the today commonplace suspense and disgust elements.

In this post I focus on the method of Shelley in Frankenstein: Her approach was what we would today call the purist. Her novel embodies horror--the dictionary’s definition of it actually. She only ever tells as much about the monster that it exists, reluctantly adding that it’s too hideous to behold and once dropping that its hand resembles that of a mummy. The main instrument of this story is a very long line of deaths but only in the purist spirit, as well.

A prolonged prologue commences with establishing the members of an extended family. They are talented, intelligent, wealthy, charitable people, who are just the dream of the era. After individually stating about every relation how enviable and admirable they are, the monster is briefly introduced. No lightning is involved here, only the statement that Victor Frankenstein, the visionary, somehow figures out how to bestow life upon things and then, once the monster is created, he instantly regrets it and falls into a state of mental breakdown over the realization of how unhallowed his work is. The monster then lives alone for a while, gradually comprehends that he is frightening to humans and feels that he is forced into a perpetual state of solitude, which he loathes more than anything--so much so that he will burn down the entire world if necessary to get himself a companion. And that’s about it. The monster asks Frankenstein to create him a mate but as he refuses he decides to avenge him as the creator of his desperation through killing everyone he holds dear. Enter the death of all characters...

The horror is how Frankenstein watches everyone he loves being killed at the unstoppable hands of his own creation. His guilt and reflections at it are horror. He is horrified. Horrified. He--along with the invested reader--is not exactly startled, nor disgusted, but profoundly horrified.

But there’s more to this story than just being the original horror. I explored that dimension only because of the framework of today’s horrible, genre-redefining novels.

As contemporary horror tries to grasp what visually equates horror, all content is lost. Shelley operates with what Poe designated as the horror-writer’s most powerful instrument: “The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” In human relations the most extreme loss is that of one’s child but the loss of someone one loves tenderly comes in as a spectacular second, with a much more elevated pathos.

The reason this is preferred by Poe and a myriad of authors is that a parent-descendant relationship is a natural one, where choice has roughly no role, whereas in a romantic relationship, while having a powerful natural component, active choice is central. This is why a parent losing a child usually goes with the line: “A parent should not live to see their child die,” when a lover’s loss comes with: “They were taken from me.” So, while the first kind of death evokes the more profound pain, the second one is the more aesthetic. It is a better case of antagonism: what one actively binds themselves to, pledges to unite their identity to, is actively deprived from them by a second actor, thus their willing choice for whom they would value most highly in life is irrevocably undone.

The peak is then the death of a beautiful woman but it can only be a real peak if the beauty of that woman is fully realized. 

An interesting juxtaposition can be made here between the book’s model and the contemporary one. The book emphasizes multiple faculties, such as intelligence, a charitable nature, intuition and nobility of character, whereas today’s model is derived from the passions of the flesh. Contemporary theories favor a simplifying approach, which marks the core of all traits the sexual of a person. However, Frankenstein is a great example of how it used to be a valid action to discrete the sexual, the intellectual and the emotional. Today it would be called repression of the true motives (the sexual), since all the faculties associated with beauty are just expressions of the deeper, truer core of identity. Feminists of the past would have pointed out that the death of the beautiful woman symbolizes Shelley’s vision of the intelligent, competent woman’s fate, as she is determined to die, even by the principles of literature (or Poe). Today’s most progressive feminists, though, would confine this story to the literal body of women, however, not only a story but women, and all people, are much larger than bodies.

But Frankenstein is not the perfect novel. Whereas it succeeds at many things and has its outstanding merits, it does fail at anticipating what the reader can guess, as Frankenstein misinterprets a supposedly enigmatic line and prepares for his own death, when his soon-to-be wife is threatened. Sadly the target is so obvious that it’s impossible to believe what the protagonist believes to come next but, as I have stated before, this is a completely marginal element of the story and perhaps even Shelley didn’t want to make it a really elaborate twist...

All in all Frankenstein is the beacon of the lost genre of horror. But beside its literary quality it might also be a reminder to the readers that there used to be a way of thinking that thought it possible to abstract from the material.

Dear Hank. As I was reading, I had a revelation: without the little voice in your head, you couldn't read, couldn't think, etc. Do you know how to explain that little voice?? Am I hearing my own voice, but in my head? If so, do toddlers have that voice in their head when processing information? How is this little voice generated? I confused myself asking these questions, so I'm not sure that I've fully gotten what I've asked across. But it mostly is: what is this voice and how did it get there?

The little voice is a construction your mind uses to analyze itself and the world. The little voice saying all of its little words is the culmination of billions of years of evolution and hundreds of thousands of years of culture. The little voice is both you and the thing that created you. No one understands the little voice. It’s probably best not to think too much about it.

First of all: get some sleep.

I am going to offer you two arguments. One of them is as rational as it gets and the other one has a personal example.

#1: As much as it's necessary to realize how things change, how everything's transient and how life can get fairly random, it's way overrated.

HIMYM is a sitcom and it's unjust to set high standards for it, I understand that. But I think my expectations should have been met by it because I didn't want it to end with an ultimate moral that somehow makes everything click. Of course no show can run without standing for something, however irrelevant or stupid that thing might be.

The arc of HIMYM and especially the finale really focused on the dynamics of the core five characters but other than that, the dynamics of life. It is a good observation that things are in motion and that cruel things will happen to everyone, undeniably and unavoidably. I further say that it is an important observation, since one may find him-/herself in the false hopes that maybe a good state of things, a good part of life may be preserved. That way of thinking ought to be reformed, illuminated, as it would eventually lead to bitter disappointment. So I accept the value of this point.

On the contrary, it is inadequate. The lead singer of Switchfoot, Jon Foreman, once said it in an interview that today's people have lost their connection with death and danger. If you read Hemingway, many of his characters meet their ends at some point of the story and it's really not a big deal (in the sense that it's not the end of the world, though death's always a big deal, even in Hemingway's works). I was really surprised by the way Robert Wilson teased the woman, who just shot her husband about how their relationship was already pretty bad anyway in The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber. It wasn't a weightless, irrelevant thing, of course, even so, it was the climax of the story, yet Robert Wilson's reaction was different from how, for one, I would react if I saw someone die. This isn't because of Hemingway's particular relationship with violence but because of a more general concept of life--one that's changed over the course of time.

Our culture has been softened so much that it'd be enough for us to realize that things come and go in life. It is treated as a great revelation because we live in much greater safety and we're pretty sure that our safety will not be seriously endangered and when it is endangered in someone's life, we consider it radical. We're so blinded by our security that we don't see past the possibility of change, whereas it would be mandatory to know how to act in case life should bring a wave of it toward us.

I say that a good story can't stop when reaching the so popular phrase of "the perfect imperfection of life" but rather it should offer some sort of remedy. To try to give us options and hopes is what I see as the primary mission of a writer or director.

#2: Hard things don't always happen to us but they are often made by us.

As much as Ted couldn't save his wife, Robin and Barney were completely responsible for the end of their marriage. One could argue that it was "written in the stars" but their personality traits did not determine how their romance will conclude.

Henri Nouwen wrote: "In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share love and hate, life and death.". Everybody has certain flaws that gradually alienate their partners or that make being married to them difficult. These flaws differ from person to person but in one form or another, they are unquestionably there. It is also true that everyone shares the ability to love.

It's always an invalid defense to say that one was not a good match because of certain qualities or the lack of them and thus the divorce. I wouldn't argue against saying that someone wasn't the one but that should be realized before marriage and not years into it, though it's a sidetrack and I should return to my point...

Let me elaborate by pointing out something in my own life. I've been in a romantic relationship for over three years now. I intend to marry this girl sooner or later and I also intend to be nice to her. Furthermore I'm madly in love with her, what's not a bad thing once you want to marry someone. But there are moments, much like instances of insanity, when I feel distant from her. Sometimes certain traits come into focus that are flat out antagonistic in me and her. I have felt the capability of breaking up. If I ever wanted to end our relationship, there would have been moments for that. Of course, I never wanted to break up with her, that's why we're together, but my point is that I understand how it is in everyone to end a romantic relationship, as I know it is in me, too, whereas I also see that it is also in everyone to hold on to someone, as it is in me, just as well, and as I intend to live my life.

So I say that divorce is not an article of change that happens to some people, inasmuch as it is based on personality traits.

I never made it an issue whether or not the show would have a happy end or take a more dramatic turn. (Personally, I prefer sad ends--well, not in all cases.) And I know it's nonsense to say that a TV show is wrong, especially to say that a sitcom is wrong--but How I Met Your Mother is wrong :) JK

PS: I say it again, have some sleep. Seriously bro.

The famous sit-com, How I Met Your Mother, reached its end finally. It’s been greatly anticipated by many and is currently being hated and scorned by even more. I’ve heard countless negative comments on it but as most people aren’t philosophers, nor particularly good at deeply analyzing films,…

Some may say that I couldn't sing, but no one can say that I didn't sing.

Florence Foster Jenkins (a terrible singer)