Jeremiah Blalock's Archive

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cac99V5cNpE

I was thinking a lot of the bombardment of truth that I apparently found out about myself, i.e. the nazi lover missing the frontal lobe, and just started reflecting on the experiments shown. It seemed as though it was saying that the things and messages around us shape us. Moreover, it showed how easy it was to get us to perform in the way others want, or to pick what another wants us to because of hidden agendas and messages. I do believe in free will, but I also know that it is not so far fetched to think that we can be, “taught,” so to speak, to do and pick what others say to. This is subliminal advertising, and it is everywhere. Take, for instance, the McDonald’s color of the arches. It has been proven that yellow is most significantly paired with hunger, and people tend to feel hungrier when presented with yellow. Thus, they made their arches to be yellow, as well as put a lot of yellow in the joint itself, so that people would more than likely buy and consume more food.

That’s more of a blatant one, so think for a minute about beauty commercials and how they are structured. When you see a hit name artist or celebrity sitting there, all beautiful and tricked out with a bunch of photo shop and make up, you are thinking, “I think I may need to buy this.” They show you how beautiful they are and how beautiful you, “can be,” by showing off their own thoughts of beauty. In a deeper way, they are also showing you what your definition of beauty should be. Even if you say, “well she looks so trashy like that,” it helps shape what you think beauty is, which will then make you look towards another brand or style that has been touched on. Sadly, we wouldn’t even know how to define these words, or even put more than a 5 minute thought or conversation on them, if we weren’t influenced.

This is also why I chose this link. I personally love this link because it shows two things in my opinion: it shows that there are, in fact, people out there specifically taught and educated to manipulate what you want and desire, and that ALL people can be affected. The best thing is, reverting back to me saying that I believe in free will, once we become conscious of all that affects us we can thoroughly define our lives as individuals instead of just people or products.

I found this article that summarized William James’s thought on the healthy vs the sick minded person:

The healthy mind, (described in Lectures IV and V under the title of “The religion of healthy-mindedness”. The healthy-minded have a naturally positive outlook on life. Perhaps influenced by the popularity of the Mind-Cure Movement, a social pressure group of the day that promoted positive thinking as a cure for disease and depression, James assumed that some people simply are happy. “We find such persons in every age, passionately flinging themselves upon their sense of the goodness of life, in spite of the hardships of their own condition, and in spite of the sinister theologies in which they may be born. From the outset, their religion is one of union with the divine” says James. In the lectures, Walt Whitman is a favorite example of healthy mindedness. James quotes Francis W Newman, describing such individuals as seeing God, “not as a strict Judge, not as a Glorious Potentate, but as the animating Spirit of a beautiful harmonious world. Beneficent and Kind, Merciful as well as Pure”.

The sick soul, (described in Lectures VI and VII). Those people having a sick soul are those who are depressed and see the evil in all things. James focused on this “divided soul” personality as the candidate for the benefits of conversion. He believed that the only way for a sick soul to cure itself is to undergo a powerful mystical experience, or religious conversion. He argues these so-called “twice born” souls turn out to be the most healthy in the end, since they have seen life from both perspectives.

I personally believe in what William James says, that in order to be a truly intellectual and wise person, or healthy as it is put, then you must be a “twice born,” or sick soul. He states that the sick soul has seen both perspectives and therefore can make decisions in an unbiased and truly thought out level, and I feel that without thinking about all sides, which in turn would mean to experience all sides, then we cannot really break into a truly individualistic and higher intellectual train of thought. Not saying that it is bad, but without the adversity, the bad, negative outcomes and experiences, and just bad with the good we cannot truly say that we have life or any aspect completely figured out. If I had just experienced nothing but the good, everything I wanted, and never really had the challenge of failing in my beliefs, thoughts, actions, and desires then I would not be the person I am today, nor would I try to thoroughly try to think out and analyze what is presented to me. Not saying that I’m the model intellect mind you, far from it actually, but I know I wouldn’t be on this level of thought without the bad, and wouldn’t try to keep a neutral view in anything, therefore I don’t miss things based on focusing only on positive light. I am sure that many other people feel the same way, that phrase, “wouldn’t change a thing,” in this term because we have all experienced bad, and I just think that we are better minded, better acted, and just better people for them.

reference: http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience#Healthy-mindedness_versus_the_sick_soul

So a concept that really grabbed my attention, amongst many others, was behaviorism. To be more specific, on the ideals of how everything we do, essentially, is an imitation or trait picked up by someone else. We go through life just, “going through the motions,” to insert a horrible pun, or at least the same motions that others have shown us before that we deem as either useful or acceptable. An even sadder thought to come across is the fact that we will do things without thinking really about why we do them, or at least what is inferred but generally accepted in behaviorism.

I personally believe that, although it is not the central focus of why we perform different tasks and think different ways, that behaviorism plays a very big part in our social norms, customs, and just life in general. We don’t go out kicking people in the shins, for example, randomly throughout the day at ACU. This would be deemed as socially inappropriate and therefore would negatively affect our social status and make us somewhat of an outcast for our actions. In fact, there are many actions not suitable for an ACU student to do merely because of the fact that we feel it is wrong. However, I feel it is only wrong because we view others as not performing it because it is wrong, so to speak.

Now up to this point, I’ve pointed out most things that are pretty negative being controlled, somewhat, by our ability to mimic and assimilate other peoples behaviors and views of right and wrong. This being said, it seems pretty acceptable to do this, right? However, what if Society required one person to die every day? Or every month? Every year? To the point where every year you just started killing off the people around you, with the only reasoning as to why you do it is, “we’ve done it for years.” This concept was brought to life in a 2006 movie, “Population 436.” This movie takes place in a town that will ALWAYS have a population of 436, no matter what. In order to keep this, every year the town looks at the current population. Then they get everyone up to a festival where the people draw from a box random raffles, and those with the black raffle must be executed immediately. When asked why they performed this ritual, every person in town said, “It’s what our Ancestor’s did,” or, “everyone is doing it,” essentially. After seeing this movie, I see behaviorism as being a blessed curse, because it can keep the peace in a culture, and it can also damage it and people individually as well.

The question of Perception Vs. Reality has been deep-rooted more than we may think to this modern way of thinking. It is an interesting thought of whether or not what we perceive is reality, and honestly I believe that it depends on the definition of reality. If you mean the truth of the world, all that is will be as it is and what not, then no. There are many times where we all will take a look at the same object, place, or ideal and have a different thought, belief, and view of these things. Sometimes our thoughts are on complete opposite poles, so to speak, of viewpoints. Regardless of where we stand in our views, it neither hinders nor helps, sustains nor changes the reality of the situation, nor of the meaning or existence of the thing we think or debate about. So in terms of a concrete, worldly truth, no.

However, in regards to reality as how it is to US, or a better definition would be how this certain object, truth, or ideal exists to us and maybe even certain proofs that can affect how we think and act, then yes. Basically, if we talk about personal reality, then yes perception is the only truth to that. What we perceive to be right, exist, or the meaning behind something will be, to our own individual lives, the right way to think. It doesn’t mean that it IS right, however to us at that time it is. For Example, look at different thoughts on the War right now. There are some who think that we are doing ultimate good both for ourselves and all the other countries affected by our influence, while there are still other people who believe that this War is a mistake and is doing nothing more than hindering peace and taking lives. No one knows for sure which one is right, we could all collectively, in fact, believe that it is inherently bad, however would not make it more or less true. However, to our own personal thought, we are right and that is the “reality,” of sorts.

The last question would then be, would personal reality really be considered Reality? That is a question that only yourself can answer, I feel. However, that just my reality of the situation!

You see what I did there, tied in personal reality to a pun? That’s right…I went there…

Descartes is a very fascinating individual for me in the sense that he is trying to view the world totally from the point of view of Thought. He gets a lot of bad rep because of this, because most people then just assume that Descartes is out to show that faith is then uneeded because of a lack of physical proof, however it is actually quite the opposite. Rene Descartes does believe in Cogito Ergo Sum or, “I think, therefore I am,” but it is because of this manner that he proves the existence of an almighty, perfect creator, or God. This can be reference, by the way, in his works titled, “Meditations,” which takes some digging to get the full argument, however I feel it is well worth both the research and read.
He first starts with what he considers the Formal Argument, in which he states the world and the ideals behind it involving the perfection, worth, and judgment of an object and it’s purpose and flaws. in this argument there are two realities,; a formal reality and an objective reality. In the formal reality, it is what we as the thinkers perceive and judge something into a finite summary of how useful it is, skillled, some of it’s flaws, etc.. The Objective view is then the actual usefulness, flaws, skills, and all the rest. All this comes together to judging people, places, and things. However, you can’t put God into this category. In fact, God in all aspects is infinite, therefore there cannot be a finite view of God. Then in the objective reality, God is perfection, so there is nothing that God can be compared to that would show any of this that we could possibly understand. I personally feel this goes back to something I heard a couple years back, “imagine how God really is to you. Put him in that box of what you think he is. Do you have it? I bet it’s wrong. In fact, all of our thoughts are wrong, and way off. God is so wonderous, poweful, loving, and father. He’s not just that, he is THE wonder, THE power, THE love, and THE father. He is what all these terms are compared to.” It even deepens God’s roots by asking, “How do we know what perfection is? This idea cannot have just popped in our head if only by experience?” God had to have imbdued our souls and minds with what IS perfect, and the only way to do that is to have experienced something perfect to know that perfect existed, and thus God was our experience. A Perfect God created us.
Descartes then goes into a Cosmological Argument, which takes on the question, “How do I exist?” he states that it is safe to assume that we have not existed the whole time, we had to have been born, therefore we had to be created. We can also say that we did not create ourselves, at least not physically, because if we had then we would have worked out all the imperfections we feel we have, and therefore make a perfect being to our liking. Our parents certainly did not directy make us, because they would have, in turn, created us in their thought of perfection. However, God created us, because he is perfect and he created us as lesser, imperfect being in our thoughts because to him we are perfectly made. This is further supported when you think about when we create something. It is never perfect, especially nowadays when we try to create artificial beings who can work and perform tasks and give off theimpression of adaptive and sentient thought. They still lack emotions and vital organs that we have, so we can never fully create something, only something in our IMAGE, which is what God did.
These two arguments not only validate the perfection and existance of God to me, but also validate Reason. Descartes may not have had the most accurate thoughts, or the most practical, however he did have some of the more inspirational ones.

The Allegory of the Cave is a hot topic right now and while I did not want to jump on the Plato bandwagon for this, I do want to talk about the importance of the many meanings of this tale, but more importantly to truth of how to rise to new truths. He teaches that once you see the truth, you cannot go back, this is a true concept in any situation. However, my focus is on what it takes to be the person to break away and what it will take to make it heard. The man was freed and saw the world for what it truly was, no longer accepting the overall truths and laws from inside the cave, and from that had his eyes, “opened,” to what his world really had to offer. However, when he brought it back to his comrades, they were very aggressive in their position on their world, all of the just knowing that they are right and that this one man is lying. On this topic,

we would have to reference Socrates in an interesting conversation he had with a top student of one of his friends and fellow teachers. I have been searching, but cannot find it (thanks Google, real help there), however if you ever get a chance to take philosophy with Randy Harris, you will most certainly talk about Socrates own thoughts and talk about what it means to know something. In it, he pointed out that everyone has his or her own perception of the world, so knowledge must pass through this perception. In a more direct statement he says that upon first perceiving something we make our own judgments that, to ourselves at that moment, are right. In basic view, we all have our own perceptions and our perceptions are personally right until shown otherwise. I think this is very relevant to understanding both sides of this argument, and to answer the question of, “Why didn’t they just turn around and at least try?”

Moving on, he tries so hard to push this topic, to show his friends that there is something more than shadows and shackles, and that all they need to do is look around them and see. This is still met with much resistance, and goes as far as ending with the statement that the others within the cave would have torn him limb from limb if they were not shackled.

This is a very powerful statement to me, in two ways: one, it shows what you face when you decide to seek higher, or more, knowledge then what society has to give and two, what you must do in order to share that with the world, and the trials. First, what you will face is isolation, at least at first, from the society. You will be kept at a distance and will be constantly bombarded with negative comments either to self or to your ideal. Sadly to me, this makes sense. Essentially, from the establishment of perception in knowledge given earlier, when you present a new idea or outlook on something, you are invading a person’s “world” of perception and trying to change what they see and what they’ve set as their personal truths and answers. The more drastic the idea, the more resistance will be, and proof will be needed to be, presented. Thinking back to different figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. whose ideals greatly rivaled to overall thinking and views of society, believing in equality, had him to receive much pain and discrimination, as far as being sent to prison for trying to have a voice in these times. By trying to change a world, he accepted many different negative actions towards him, even leading to his assassination. However, and also leading to my second point, he still did it and accepted everything in order to change a world. You MUST be willing to accept all pain and suffering in order to change a world, and it will in most cases be initially a lonely pain. However, in order to provoke any change of either action or thought you must be willing to fight through opposition and continue to show what you find or what you believe to be true in order for any different truth to be realized. This is shown in the story by the statement that if he were closer to them they would kill him. I know it said that if they were not shackled they would, but I feel it goes both ways; the enlightened man could not advance for fear of pain and maiming. However, it still leaves the lesson that in order to make someone see you must break them free of their restraints, which will be a dangerous task because people are not too accepting of those trying to change their world. It is necessary to be able to accept this fact, and to press onward regardless of what may happen in order to change views and lives.

I apologize for the long post, it was just a lot that needed to be said, and I am more than interested to hear what others think on this.