ENG 4020: Blog Post 1

The main focus of this exploration will be the relation of action to choice and the will in light of epistemologies proffered by Aristotle and Barthes. First of all, Aristotle makes a distinction between voluntary and involuntary action. The main difference involves the fact that involuntary action requires two conditions, 1: that the act is performed out of ignorance, meaning that it is outside the agent, and thus contributing nothing (Aristotle, 121) and 2: that the action was performed out of ignorance. (Aristotle, 123) Therefore, a voluntary action means that the action was performed by the actor with his full consciousness and in freedom with all required information. Compulsion, while distinct and important to identify in how actions are carried out, still should be part of the actor, because the will initiates the action, although certain circumstances may move the intellect to do something that are not in freedom, one example being that a person threatens your life or another’s life if you do not perform a certain action. Although you don’t will the action in itself, you do will the safety of yourself or loved one more than the undesirable outcome you are being coerced into. With this, the will still ultimately prevails, just not in the direct result of the action one performs, but the circumstantial consequence that was added conditionally. Additionally, Aristotle would affirm that an action done from ignorance is not voluntary because the actor does not have all the information necessary to properly understand the consequences of the action. While this is true, and culpability on the actor would be dramatically reduced, the action itself was still voluntary, and the will is still totally involved, but ignorance may delegitimize the action, and so the actor may act in ignorance, but he/she still acts. In other words, the man still does something, but whether or not he can be held responsible for the ethical implications is contingent upon the awareness of the consequences of that action. Aristotle then contends that choice, which is categorized under a kind of voluntary action, is not related to choices, passions wishes and opinion. (Aristotle, 129-130) Discipline and self-restraint, when exercised properly, keep man from taking voluntary actions that are done out of passionate desires. The reason choice is distinct is because Aristotle considers it a voluntary action that has been done with deliberation, but deliberation is not what distinguishes choice. Choice is a voluntary action, but an action motivated by passion or otherwise is still a choice, and a decision in passion may still have been thoughtfully deliberate upon. The distinction Aristotle makes is not one of choice versus voluntary action that is not choice, but between a prudent, or good, virtuous choice, and a poor, dishonorable, choice without virtue.  Indeed, deliberation makes a choice more intentional, and almost certainly can be considered generally to be done either of less ignorance or without ignorance as a result. Choice, then, is behind every action done by an actor. Whether for the direct result as it affects them or one they care for or for avoiding an unwanted result (affecting them or one they care for) in the absence of an action. The actor chooses, and such choice extends from the will. The degree to which the will was involved is contingent on the circumstance under which the action was taken. A choice to do something one would otherwise not choose to do under threat of an undesirable result otherwise that comes from the action of the one who threatens initiates the threatened actor to choose to obey. The actor still has a choice to disobey, but at the end, the actor will choose to obey or disobey out of a personal cost-benefit analysis of the circumstance they think will exist after their choice. If a man had a gun to the head of another man’s mother and threatened to shoot her if he didn’t kill his father, the man must make the choice based on various factors, such as how likely he thinks it is the man will actually carry out his threat of killing his mother, and whether he thinks it likely that if he kills his father, the man will not kill his mother, These and other factors contribute to the man making a decision that result in the most desirable outcome he thinks possible. 

Citations

1.  Aristotle. The Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Loeb-Harvard UP, 1975. 3-25 (Book I, Chapters, 1-6, 117-141 Book III Chapters 1-3).

It would seem that the natural way of human happiness is fighting to travel down two roads. That the way of satisfaction through natural desire contradicts the satisfaction through grace. That desires of sex contradict the satisfaction of chastity. That satisfaction through food contradicts the satisfaction through fasting. That there are people who see sex as god, or chastity as good. That hedonism is good, and that prudence and virtue fights nature, and thus is not good, or ath virtue is good, and thus any pleasure is bad.
In fact, I see the opposite to be true.
 It is not happiness we find in gluttony or happiness we find in sex. It is not even happiness we find in freedom. The founding fathers of the United States understood we have the right to pursue happiness, but not the right to happiness. It meant we have the right to freedom, but that did not necessitate a state of happiness. God does not give us the right to happiness, but he gives us the tools we need to eventually obtain full communion with him, and thus, eternal happiness. But before we get there, what is the nature of this road?

Nature and grace are not opposing forces, but distinct and complimentary. They are the sun that shines and the rain that feeds. A plant with not enough sun is as dead as one without enough water. Our happiness can be attributed in the same vein of nature and grace complimenting each other. a happy life in freedom is only happy with the right choices, or the void of insanity ensues. Well, maybe an exaggeration, but the familiar taste of bad decisions and a feeling of dissatisfaction is a clear sign of freedom used poorly. So what is freedom used well? It is desires of the flesh satisfied in coalescence with satisfaction of chastity. It is satisfaction in restraint united in the unrestrained love of thy neighbor.

Arduous Antics

I love a girl who I was thrown out of love with, but help me, I still love her. The fact that I don’t deserve her is a piddling thought that has been worn out of thinking.
     I loved a girl whose impact on me I have not evaluated, out of impatience, selfishnessness. My impact of love is not a fleeting action or feeling, it is a compassionate, self giving gift which goes beyond the bounds of real understanding on my part, but my understanding at least understands that much. I must think with intent, love is not a jolly romance everyday. And pursuing true love in my life has proved to be a mountain that only allows you to climb it when its ready to be climbed. I have been tossed in the wake of it’s plinth and the shadows of harsh winters. No, I must center myself before The Father, and all in life follows, love not the least. I must be centered on a splinter, concentrated to a granule of pure devotion to make myself the instrumentation of love in all layers, in all fields, in all triumph and tragedy. Her waving hair and piercing gaze may pierce my pupils for evermore, but a helpless boy to its sway, i shall be, nevermore.

    I am in fact a pidgeon wedged in a precarious rock on a cliff face waiting to be blown by the cough of a gust, to tread down a cliffside without control would be a delight to the pidgeon whose wings are clipped and beak is chipped. 

Life, grace, love, nature

What is love? If I'm not the last person in line to ask this question....no, I am the last person to ask this question, because let's be honest, everybody has love creep into their life at some point whether it has grown from illegitimate lust, a simple romance or the superlative courtship between you, your mate and the Lord. Or, if you're lucky enough, you've committed yourself to the Holy Spirit for the rest of your life, a calling which demands the most, to say the very least. But the concept of love can be hard, nay, impossible to grasp if one eliminates God from the equation, because when it comes to love, God IS the equation. God is love, to put it simply. Infinite love, and from this love, all other love we experience in life can be expressed and experienced. Through infinite love we can love ourselves, love our best friends, love our family, love our spouse, each in a unique manner which has its own unique experience. But more than just this love of the infinity, this love of romance, of friendship and affection, all of which are of God and thus inherently good, what else is of God which ties into love, that which is inherently good? Life? Beauty? Truth? YES. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY. If one has watched the film The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick, one would see these elements of life (duh) beauty, and love and how we experience, learn and grow in them by way of nature and grace. But first, what is beauty? As we now know, beauty is that which is good, that which involves life. So what is good is beautiful, and what is beautiful is good. You don't have to be taught that flowers are beautiful, that a blue sky is beautiful, that love is beautiful, we see this and in an almost inexplicable way, we feel the beauty, and understand it. The same can be said of life. Murder is wrong, I don't think anybody would argue that. But let's take that a few steps further. Bodily harm is also wrong, and is illegal, because one infringes on the right to life. But this isn't limited to physical harm, it also relates to emotional harm. Verbal abuse, which involves unkind words, and not just active verbal communication, but a lack thereof. In a less direct manner, one could even make the case that the absence of a kind act when a situation calls for a kind act does in fact harm someone, it contributes to the same act which is against life itself. Okay, so we seem to agree that life is good, and I don't think any living thing would object, although one could argue that suicides occur because people may rationalize that not existing would be better than existing, having such a lame existence. Now, assuming one does NOT believe in an afterlife, to say it would be better to not exist is a a huge assumption, but the philosophical implications of delving into theses ideas are complicated enough for its own blog, book, possibly library. Now back to The Tree (of Life) How do nature and grace it into the elements of life and beauty? Well, grace is an supernatural gift we receive, one which transcends the natural, and nature is what influences us in the natural world. How is this pertinent to us though? The main character in this film is raised by parents who are essentially caricatures that are the embodiment of one, nature, and the other, grace. Both parents love, but in stark contrast to each other, and thus a very different expression as such. But as the boy says (in voice-over, rather dream-like state) "mother, father, you wrestle inside me" Does this sound familiar? IT SHOULD BE. The conscience is constantly inhibiting the (bad) natural desires and actions which we want to act upon, and depending on the grace one has at any given time, those (bad) natural desires may come out. Of course, people will use logic to determine that nature itself is inherently good, and thus any natural desire should be acted upon, but if somebody truly lived by such a standard, they would probably have been jailed a long time ago. That's why we have laws. Laws come from grace, they are based in the idea that natural urges should be inhibited for the continuation of LIFE, and to prevent harm upon others. And thus, grace must be present with nature, grace and nature are distinct but inseparable. It may seem counter-intuitive, to inhibit nature to facilitate life, because when we think of nature, we think of life. But grace is of God, the Holy Spirit. God created life and nature; God, the infinite love, grace and mercy which we indulge in continually.

Comrades and Corkscrews

There is an epidemic going on that is buried under every epidemic that comes up every day about very imaginable thing that could be wrong with the world. The social hierarchy of academics. First, something very important needs to be established: There are a loads of people in the world that are highly adept at performing well in a school situation that includes tests, quizzes, studying, repetition, memorization, and without a doubt, no matter how much one would try to deny it, a certain degree of hard work, but hard work nonetheless. Now, we are going to focus on the group of academic-oriented people within the top 20% of their school. It goes without saying that when people don't like school, it's because they like something else. And they're probably way better at what they do than the smartest asian kid in the pre-calculus class they're failing. That said, the asian kid could run circles around them in algebra equations. To each his own. Now, there is a fundamental problem with the way society is taught to weigh certain abilities and skills: For one thing, school is required for everyone to be academically educated to be accepted in the working world to make money to buy a car, house, have kids, and continue the process with some important non-economic factors I left out. The main problem with this is that school is designed in a particular way that only certain kids can excel at it, leaving the rest to struggle with the method designed to further one's academic learning. So one kid may have to work harder to understand a concept and skill than another, making for an extremely unbalanced system. To think it could be so stupidly designed makes my blood boil. There are 16 personality types in this world, but there aren't 16 different dynamics of education. Why is that? Well, the school system is run by those who excel at it's process and method of "teaching". A valedictorian of her high school class once said in her speech that she wasn't the smartest, she was simply "the best at doing what [they're] told". And that's what school is. A test of how good you are at doing what you're told. Now, I have said what I feel about how screwed up the education system is and how that makes it highly inefficient. But it's widely accepted. Why aren't areas of the arts accepted as a serious form of learning? They are "extras" that are always cut from funding when money is tight. They're the "easy A classes". Your parents probably never beat you for getting a C in cooking class, or drawing and painting or jazz band. But then again, you probably would never have a C since your grade was (hopefully) based on participation and how well you tried in class. Now, the hierarchy of elitists that roam at the top of the food chain in class rank and GPa and SAT scores are mixed. there are some people who are down-to-earth, work hard, break their backs to be at the top because they were probably whipped as a child, taught that failure is a disgrace and the only option is being the best. Asian countries have an extremely bad case of this, as was brought to my attention by a friend who went to school in Vietnam, where they will kill themselves because school is so overwhelming. And I am not kidding. Doesn't that make you sad? Depressed? I don't even know how to respond to that. At least in my country we can still enjoy our lives and be happy. Think about the cost to being at the top pf your class: Wake up, school, homework, some kind of food consumed, homework, homework, bed, no sleep, repeat. Now, think about kids who go home, watch TV, do some homework, eat dinner, more tv, homework, computer, phone, sleep a decent amount, wake up, and go to school. I think I'd opt for the second choice, but the firs translates to high academic integrity. Enough of that, this is the part that bothers me: Those highly competitive kids at the top who rip each others throats out to be #1, always fighting, always studying the extra hour, taking the extra summer course, whatever it takes to eat anyone in school. And they're filled with malice. It's a subtle malice that they bury beneath their mountains of math homework, but if you can catch a glimpse, it's an ugly one. And they have flocks to group together with. They can only associate with the academically gifted that perform on their level of insanity. They look down upon others, and they look without sympathy. They scoff at skateboards, parties and IM. And the icing on the cake to this perverted system is the way the ranks of smart kids that are below the cream of the cream of the crop look upon them. They talk about them as if they were a new planet found with human life. They are looked upon as super-humans in it's a tragedy. I hear endless conversations going on about college, rank, GPA, complaints about doing above average instead of the best. And don't ask them about their quiz if you did better, or they just might not show up to school the next day. I am tired of analyzing the situation, and I have given up on being hung up on who's ahead off who every week, because it's insignificant, superficial, and it makes me wonder why people don't want to talk about anything else that matters. There's a life waiting for you beyond academia and it's called the real world, which is what I'm trying to prepare for. And I'm not going to let school get in the way of my education.

Celery and Sedition

I strutted to my car and drove home in a mood that could a smile on the face of the corpses buried in the graveyard I passed on the detour home, and it probably did. I made three sales at work on a 5 hour shift on Saturday. That weekend I had to drive to Kendall instead of being picked up, but that’s because my dad has been so busy working on his pieces for his next art show. It’s been coming together nicely, and I really love the techniques he’s used to create these abstract effects on the paintings, it really is brilliant. Anytime he does work, it’s for hours on end, always on his feet, working and reworking in the hot and humid garage studio, but I can already see it’spaying off. The style is really just beautiful and I want to just take his paintings and hang them up everywhere when I buy my own house. Although I don’t mind driving up to see my father if the situation calls for it, it takes away from the drive to and form his house to be able to spend some time without his wife and her children. I don’t despise them at all, but it’s important to be able to talk to my father without his wife taking him away by using trivial and useless things as an excuse. If I had all the time in the universe to explain my frustration about this, I wouldn’t be able to finish without devoting every day to writing down the problems caused by this marriage. I have personally heard my stepmother explain to my father how she hates when he comes to pick up my sister and I for the weekend because she can’t be with him to tell him what to do. And when he does pick us both up, which happens rarely now that my sister is in college, she has to call him at least three times during the drive just to say something unnecessary. It is frustrating to say the least, but considering everything else she does, it takes serious prayer time and mediation to keep myself centered with God well enough to not bother myself with her “overbearing” nature. Okay, she’s a control freak. She must always control a situation out of fear that things don’t go her way, thinking something terrible will happen. She places a great importance on the image of her self, home and her family, and she puts forth an incredibly great amount of effort to keep that image together, and I must say, I am impressed with her dedication to that. In addition to his, she is also incredibly judgmental of everyone, and she doesn’t like anyone in my entire family. There is always a criticism about what someone does, even when there is no fault to be found, such as my angel of a sister. My sister is one of the holiest, nicest people on Earth, yet my stepmother still finds a way to insult her out of the anger built up from her not being to have our dad for herself. If she feels strongly about something, (actually, she feels strongly about everything) she has no problem expressing exactly how she feels, and if that means I need to dress a certain way and behave and eat a certain way for my dad to be able to stay with her, his attitude must always be “so be it”. If my father is one of the greatest men I’ve ever met, and I truly mean that. He is very gentle and loving and always knows how to compliment well. He has great taste and always knows what to do in any given situation. His character is greater than that of most men, and it is truly amazing to be able to be his son, I honestly can’t believe I have a man like that for a father, it’s as if God just handed me a miracle that I didn’t deserve. My father only feels strongly about certain things, and if his wife feels a certain way about something he may feel differently about, he changes that opinion immediately if that means staying with her. If she tells him his son has to keep his elbows off the table to stay in her house, or he has to wear certain slacks to Mass, he immediately enforces that upon his son. It is a process that slowly tames him, and I’ve seen it changing him for the past 5 years. It kills me inside to have this happen, but there’s no possible way to explain it to him. My father can be very patient, but if I bring up anything, he immediately throws himself into a fit of rage and there’s no way to talk to him. He transforms from a lamb into a lion and I’m stuck in a cage with him. I talk to my Papa, my dad’s dad about this and he knows exactly how I feel because he feels exactly the same way. Luckily, he can help me through any trouble I have contending with difficulties of the tendencies my dad has picked up from his wife. I can see in his face how he has changed, and he doesn’t seem any happier. My dad is always stressed, and his marriage seems to be making it worse. He has to worry about 4 more kids that he spends more time with than either my sister or I, which also have been given higher priority when he has to pick them up from something instead of visiting us on a Wednesday for dinner. It seems that almost every week, there’s always something stopping him from coming, either rescheduling or canceling so he can pick up his wife’s children. I do understand that he may have to do that, but all things considered, it’s upsetting to lose my father like this. That’s right, I am losing my father. I am losing half the man that raised me. I lost the part of the man that would pick up my sister and I, take us to his studio apartment, go out to eat, see movies, walk around Lincoln Road, see our grandparents, aunt and cousins, watch R movies and live the life of the laid-back family that we truly are. My dad has lost that part of himself now that he’s no longer a bachelor and he has to take on responsibilities of a house, step children and the thumb that is pressing down harder on him as he tries to get out of bed in the morning. I am a boy who still has half his father, and luckily, half is still better than what I ever deserved.

Undergarments and Umbrellas

When I was little I used to look up to the adult world with these perceptions about it being on a level that I could never imagine being able to understand and fully grasp. It seemed so above everything in my world. I saw the world of people who were much older than me (some like to be known as adults or grown-ups) as knowing much more than small children and who were much more mature just because I assumed their experience gave them a great understanding of the world. I was content with this view of the world, because it left me to be carefree, not wanting to worry about paying for a car, a mortgage, bills, and the stresses of life that were shielded from adolescence. Still, where one thing lacks, another is present to fill the void. When you’re young, no-one listens to you, and you have no control over anything in your life save for the imaginary portions. A child can cry when they get something they don’t want, which happens just about all the time, but they’re young, it’s okay. On the other hand, an older person isn’t allowed to cry, so they transform their frustration into passive aggressive action, anger, drinking, malice, spite, repression and so forth. Perhaps the parameters for adulthood are solely to have the patience to live long enough to be taken seriously. On the other hand, experience is undoubtably attained throughout one’s life, granted it may be minimal, but if that’s what life hands you, so be it. The presumptuous attitude of many older people can be seen either is wisdom acquired through the years, or it can be a perception that is developed from poor philosophical education to think for oneself, wether the education was gained through the self in thought or from another. It can be the accumulation of thoughts for years on end with a mind not developed to think deeply and truly analyze states of being and existence, of human interaction and morals, ultimately, the philosophical questions to our very existence. This would cause a poor understanding of the value from one’s education through experience. Maybe many adults’ visions are corrupt from preconceived notions of earning experience, presumption and having a sufficient amount of knowledge and understanding. Perhaps this is connected to the seed of ignorance and foolishness. Perhaps it is the root of arrogance, close-minded views and outlooks that are built upon infelicitous truth.