This semester, I'm in a lot of classes that seem to contemplate things far beyond my intellectual abilities (at least such as my intellectual abilities are at 9:40 in the morning). Psychology, which makes me think about morals and their (apparently) questionable existence, makes my brain hurt most of the time. I find the topics we cover very interesting, but a lot of the time, I'm left thinking, "What is the actual point of thinking about these things?"
Let me explain. I think, up to a point, it's neat to go a little deeper and examine our every day actions and motivations, and the rules which govern society. At a certain point, though, you get so deep into thinking about whether or not morals exist that you have never actually experienced any of your life where you would need to exhibit morals. You'd be an old, moral, wise man (with a ever-whitening beard, certainly) but you'd just be doing a lot of thinking. And where does it actually get you?
That was my train of thought as we were finishing up The Stranger. I enjoyed listening to the conversations about whether or not Camus thinks we have free will, and what Meursault's final conclusions with regards to life actually mean. But towards the end, I suppose I adopted Meursault's mentality (Nothing really matters, I have no impact on the world, etc...) in an inverted sort of way. I thought, "It doesn't matter whether or not I decide if we have free will or if I've been predestined from the beginning to do certain things. Regardless, I am alive and I should be doing productive and enjoyable things. Whether or not they're actually of my own doing isn't really relevant, because the more time I spend thinking about it, the less time I have to do the things that I would do once I had decided if I was actually the one deciding to do them."
Clear as mud?
And what I mean by adopting Meursault's mentality in an inverted sort of way is that he (at least in Part 1) decided that the decisions he makes don't matter, and therefore he is released from emotion and responsibility. When I realize that things don't matter, at least in relation to trying to figure out the world, it's because I want to get on with it and live. I really am interested in the philosophy of the world, and I think it's really neat that some people have spend their lives paving the thought pathway for the rest of us, but I'm more inclined to keep it simple.
This is weird for me, since I tend to over-analyze everything, but when it comes to the big questions, I'm fine with a sort of blissful ignorance. The big questions, sure, they're interesting to contemplate, but I'm cool not really having all the answers.
1 comment:
The philosophical (or resolutely nonphilosophical?) viewpoint you endorse here seems to be quite compatible with our first narrator, the admirable Howie. His reaction to the Aurelius quote isn't one of childish denial--he acknowledges that it's true, in a particular way of looking at things, but he denies that it should be *important* or consequential to how he actually lives his life. He's simply more compelled by the sunny day and milk and cookies on a lunch hour than by dour thoughts of death and the meaning of life. He seems to find meaning in the daily pleasures of milk cartons and escalators--it's not that he *hides* from "bigger questions"; they simply don't matter. Reading his narration, if the reader shares his fascinations, then we implicitly *get* the idea that simple pleasures (is there a more elemental pleasure than *milk and cookies*?) REQUIRE no justification. (And, perhaps oddly, this aligns Howie quite closely with the Meursault of part 1 . . .)
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