musings & ramblings of a 21-year-old college student..

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw

What is “world” anyway? If the world is merely what we perceive and interpret it to be, couldn’t one’s world change if one decided to perceive it differently (or tried to)? Is that man adapting himself to the world, or adapting the world to himself? And how much can we actually adapt the world to ourselves, until we realize that we must accept other “facts” of life as is? Or must we always push for denial of these facts? Is that even humanly possible? All progress thus could not depend just on the unreasonable man, because by then the unreasonable man must be exhausted if not already broken down. The unreasonable man too must understand how to incorporate the reasonable man’s way of life into his own. The “unreasonable” and “reasonable” mustn’t be mutually exclusive.

Today, my friend and I were talking about something too often on my mind: relationships and interactions with other people. It’s a topic that I’ve discussed with my sister multiple times before, and something good to reflect on — occasionally. It’s something that’s been on my mind a bit too many times for comfort, so I figured I might as well put it out here…

As overly-analytical this may seem, I always evaluate conversations I have with people, my personal “conversational style” and ways of interaction with other people. After talking to my sister and some friends, I’ve come to conclude that I am one who is “asking the questions.” I keep the conversation flowing, and mostly direct my questions about that person. Somewhere in-between, I’ll interject my own comments or my personal experiences. But more often than not, rather than being inquired about, I throw in little things going on in my life — perhaps in a subconscious effort to make up for other peoples’ lack of “asking the questions.”

While it makes for easy and non-awkward conversation, it also leads to other “consequences”: first, it leads others to become used to my “quizzical” nature, and people become used to talking about themselves (or continue to always talk about themselves in future conversations, because let’s face it — most people love to hear their own voices). Second, on my end, I learn a lot about the person I am talking to. While this is a good thing, I have recently realized that this also leads to a self-delusion: that I think I am close with someone, because I know so much about them, but that they really know not that much at all about me.

Some people don’t mind that others don’t know too much about them; some even prefer it. I wish I could say that I would prefer people not know much about me, and I wouldn’t be having this dilemma in my head at all, but then I would be lying to myself. As much as I am “independent,” sometimes “closed” or “not available” and “to-myself”, I cannot deny that I need daily interaction with people to be happy. Even if I am more introverted than extroverted, I have always had a need to connect with people or people I am close to. So when I realize that my relationships with people are sometimes more one-sided, and that I actually know a lot more about their lives or about them than they know about me/my life, it’s a bit disheartening.

My sister and I had a conversation that I’ve come back to think about quite a few times now — We were talking about our “questioner”/”listener” roles in a conversation, and I claimed that it is nice when somebody asks how you are doing, as a general question. I said that in the context of what the “opposite” would be, which is not ask anything about you (even if it’s general), and just answer/talk about themselves the whole time. My sister, on the other hand, interjected and said, “Yes — but mostly asking ‘how are you’ is a common courtesy and a lot of times just thrown out there because [the person asking] feels bad that they have been talking the whole time.” She continued to say that, “I don’t want people to just vaguely, and out of a tiny sense of guilt, ask ‘how are you?’” which I proceeded to agree with… And she helped me come to the conclusion that it shouldn’t be so difficult for others to ask about specific aspects of my life/life events/etc., to pick out those details and ask about them, because I would do the same. When somebody just generally asks “how are you?” it’s so easy for the other person to shut down and say “I’m fine,” and continue onto “well how about you, tell me about your life…” While I may do that to people I tend to not open myself up to, I also do not always shut down right away. When I talk to somebody else, I can pick out aspects or have specific incidents in his/her lives to ask about, because I care to remember these things (even if I do not have the best memory in the world) and want to know about it. But does the other party want to know about little things in my life? More likely than not, I don’t feel like they do.

So at the end of the day, what should it be? You can’t change somebody to want to ask more about your life or want to know about how you are doing, over talking about their own lives. If someone has the opportunity to talk out loud or have someone to rant to, more likely than not, they’ll take it. And as a friend and a listener, I am willing to do so. But am I willing to continue to build relationships with people under the false impression that we are such good friends, that we are so close, when in fact it’s really more of a one-way street? I’m not so sure. Do I try and tone down my “questioning” …and see what the other person does — if anything — and says instead? I don’t feel like this so-called “questioning” (although I honestly do not feel like it’s as much questioning as making conversation… am I wrong here?) takes over a conversation, because like I said before, if people do not ask me, I usually will share bits of my life too (again, I guess a subconscious effort to feel like the other party actually wants to know?). Or do I just invest my time in people (and I have, very few but there are those few out there…) who actually care enough to ask about my life and tell me about theirs? Is the world so limited to those few people? Are we all so self-absorbed nowadays that we can listen to ourselves talk for conversations at a time about our own lives that we leave no room/desire to hear about other people’s lives?

I’ve quoted this once before in my blog and I will do it again –

“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.“ – Albert Camus

I hope I’m not a fool..

…we will meet again in less than 8 hours.

Traveling to Hong Kong for three days with my family.

I have yet to write about my amazing, epic 3-week adventure to London, Amsterdam, and Greece. That will come soon enough. 

Until then… I will be enjoying my last days in Taipei, Hong Kong, and EDC!

In a previous post on “Convictions, interconnectedness, and getting out of despair,” I wrote about the conflicting rationales of Ivan’s ways of thinking and my own identification with various aspects of Ivan’s philosophy. I was troubled by Ivan’s inability to deal with his suffering and wavering convictions. I have been meaning to follow up with this post on him and my perceived analysis behind his philosophy, because the next paper I did for this existentialism class infused Nietzsche’s “passive” and “active” nihilist views and Ivan’s “convictions.” Whether or not I “correctly” read Nietzsche’s nihilist philosophy is, as always, in question, but it makes sense to me and I am glad I think I resolved this conflict in my mind… So I went back and re-read parts of my paper and am going to share some of them here now…

However, Ivan’s positing of his world as the truth is problematic: the “escape” Ivan creates is one of wavering conviction. In the progression of the novel, Ivan’s convictions come back to haunt him via the Devil in his nightmare. Ivan characterizes the Devil as his “illness…, the incarnation of…only one side of [him]…, the nastiest and stupidest of [his own thoughts]” (Dostoevsky 592). In his self-proclaimed belief of absolute nothingness, much like a passive nihilist, Ivan gets into a feeling of despair. Ivan claims everything to be “disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos” (207-208). Later on, all the worlds of God and Satan are “not proved, to [his] mind” (597). Ivan clings onto the need for proofs, rationality, and logic in order to justify his true world he has created. However, Ivan’s despair and confusion is the natural result of the “escape” that follows from the first two psychological stages of nihilism.

Ivan develops his philosophy by relying on reasoning, logic, and rationality. However, he does not realize that “the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but… on the degree to which it has been incorporated” (The Gay Science; 169). Ivan has not incorporated his knowledge and philosophy into his character and his being. He created his beliefs through logic, on the notion that there exists nothingness and that faith in a higher being cannot and does not provide value for him. Logic and reason, however, prove faulty for the basis of “truth.”

…

What Ivan would have needed was to reach the third psychological state of nihilism. This last state begins with the realization that the reason one must invent and create a new true world is derived from one’s psychological needs (The Will to Power), just as “achieving,” “becoming,” and “aims” are psychological needs. Thus, one then concludes that one has “absolutely no right” to the truth one has created, by which one can then realize that “the reality of becoming…[is] the only reality” and there remains no reason to convince oneself that there exists a “true” world. When aim, unity, and being – the highest values – devaluate themselves, Nietzsche argues that one should become an active nihilist in order to truly grasp and take advantage of life…[Ivan] did not want to discover another world because he became obsessed with trying to find meaning and make sense of the one sun, the one world he was in.

Ivan should have embraced the realization that there is no truth by becoming a free spirit and living life dangerously. When Ivan’s god began to die – began to lose its meaning –  Ivan slipped into further despair and confusion; an active nihilist, in hearing that the old god is dead, would feel “as if a new dawn shone on [him]” and his heart would overflow with “gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation” (The Gay Science; 280). The active nihilist would view the old god’s death as a wonderful opportunity to venture out into the unknown, into the “open sea,” and embrace “what is beautiful, strange, questionable, terrible, and divine” (346).

Herein lies where, in the past 6 months (however long ago it was that I wrote this paper/took this class…) I think I’ve come to my own understanding of “life” and reconciling the seemingly “meaningless” world with an amazing, “beautiful..terrible..divine” life I am living. So this is my new sun, and while I am relishing in this “new sun” I am going to embrace the meaning I derive from it, until one day — if ever — my god/sun/meaning begins to die or devaluate itself…by which point it will be time to venture onto a new sea.