Isaac Ryerson
Martin Grant
English 101
6/1/17
Looking Without Seeing “As an adult, I had mastered the art of looking without seeing and hearing without listening and eating without tasting and maybe even existing without living.” (Dan Groat, An Enigmatic Escape: A Trilogy.) What Dan Groat is saying, is that we will live most of our lives not really knowing what we are doing. We will be blind to reality and we will turn from the truth. Because of our ability to twist the world into what we want it to be.
In our world today, we spend our entire lives thinking that we are the center of it all. We think that the world revolves around us and that no one else matters but ourselves. Occasionally we will try to work with each other, but overall,
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It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.” (Wallace: This is Water)
What Wallace is saying is that, because of our pride, it doesn’t matter what other people are struggling with. It’s all about me, so who cares what you are stressed out about. Unfortunately, he is right. We have become so wrapped up in our own lives and our own problems, that we have forgotten that we aren’t the only people in the world. We no longer see our self-righteousness as a problem, it has always been present in our everyday lives, so we don’t try and change it. We look at it, but we don’t truly see
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We become so absorbed in ourselves that we don’t see the other people walking around us. Or we do see them, but we don’t see them as people. We see them as these “things” that far too often get in the way of me and my life. For example, say you are driving home from a rough day at work, the traffic is bad, it’s raining, and you are late for dinner. You get angry and start venting your anger out on the drivers around you. Eventually you see that the traffic is bad because there has been a terrible wreck. An eighteen-wheeler lost control of its breaks when it came up to a red light, and completely destroyed the five cars that were crossing the intersection. What’s the first thought that enters your mind? Not, “Oh my God! How can I help these people!” Instead, it’s, “Now I’m REALLY going to be late for dinner.” It’s sad, but true. We look at the world as self-righteous people, not the humble and caring people that we should be. Because of our pride, we have changed the world into what we want it to be. If we continue down this path of self-centeredness, it will only lead us to
In the Allegory of the cave, Plato stated "what he had seen before was a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being near to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truley." It appeals to me because he's basically inferring what if what we are seeing or what we believe are just our figments of our imagination. A lie that we dwell on, because we are blinded from the truth. Plato statement is something we can all relate. For instance children from our younger years our parents disguise parts of reality to prevent them to live a life of fear. Fear of evil and fear from being hurt. But we as grow older we learn, that there is hate and evil in the world. We learn that not every corner has a rainbow glistening in the sky. And for that
Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He questioned the very nature of why things were the way they were, while never settling for simple, mundane answers. Socrates would rather die searching for the truth than live accepting what he considered a blatant lie. I like to think of myself the same way. I too would rather examine the wonders of life rather than accept what I am just told. The truth is some can’t handle the truth. I on the other hand welcome it with earnest anticipation and fervent enthusiasm.
It is common for human beings, as a race, to fall into the comforts of routine – living each day similar to days before and days to come. Unfortunately, it is often too late before one even realizes that they have fallen into this mundane way of living in which each day is completed rather than lived, as explained by David Foster Wallace in “This Is Water”. This commencement speech warned graduating students of the dangers of submitting to our “default settings” of unconscious decisions and beliefs (Wallace 234). However, this dangerous way of living is no new disability of today’s human race. Socrates warned the people of his time: “A life unaware is a life not worth living” and who is to say he wasn’t completely right? A topic of long debate also includes the kind of influence that consciously-controlled thoughts can have on the physical body. A year after Wallace’s speech, neurobiologist Helen Pilcher, published “The New Witch Doctor: How Belief Can Kill”, which explains the influence of the mind and individual beliefs on the quality of one’s life. Together, both authors illustrate how detrimental a life lived unaware of one’s own thoughts and beliefs can be on the body and spirit. And though it is easy to live by
A human being is a complicated entity of a contradictory nature where creative and destructive, virtuous and vicious are interwoven. Each of us has gone through various kinds of struggle at least once in a lifetime ranging from everyday discrepancies to worldwide catastrophes. There are always different causes and reasons that trigger these struggles, however, there is common ground for them as well: people are different, even though it is a truism no one seems to able to realize this statement from beyond the bounds of one’s self and reach out to approach the Other.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson, spiritual activist, author, lecturer and founder of The Peace Alliance
In This is Water, Wallace effectively uses logical reasoning and the parable of the religious man and the atheist man to explain how consciousness is a choice, not an unalterable state. To do this, Wallace states that in many cases, “A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.” Using logical reasoning, Wallace’s own admission reminds his audience that they are also often wrong, as, logically, humans are not perfect and make periodic mistakes. Once he establishes that people can be wrong, he returns to the parable of the two men and claims “…the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience.” This idea is familiar to his educated audience, as he claims it is one of the primary foundations of a liberal arts education. Thus, Wallace uses his audienc...
... time thinking about OUR wants and how long the wait is but spend the time being happy with what we have because others may not have the same pleasures. Wallace’s idea of not getting caught up in our default setting is true. We shouldn’t make things about ourselves but make everything about what we can do for others.
Attentiveness is characterized with being more observant, thoughtful, and considerate of others. This specific trait will help us understand one another and the world around us much better because it allows us to see and appreciate the little things we often take for granted. Being attentive helps us see the world more clearly because only then are we not blinded by our own thought and feelings that we are unable to see how similar we are to one another; we all share the same thoughts and feelings. In “This is Water,” David Foster Wallace stated everyone is always rushing to get to different places; placing our needs and wants above others and how this lack of awareness of the world around us is only drifting us apart. Wallace uses an example
This has come after years of being raised in a close minded environment. I have also had many life experience that make me step back and try to look at the bigger picture and consider that I am not the only person on earth and I am not the only one with problems and issues. My default settings are growing, I am and have been learning to look at the large problems in life, such as when I deal with a rude person in line to get gas I try to understand that even though they are being rude I do not know their whole problem or what they are dealing with in their lives. It often is easy to get upset given a situation like this but when you start to look at the world with a mindset such as Wallace’s the world really will seem to open up to
...pment. And because it does so, it is absolutely essential that as a collective, as a body, as a society, as a people, that a certain degree of understanding is found. That is so that individuals may have a better understanding of their internal, emotional and psychological processes as well as those of others. And with that, a mutual understanding of one another that helps to promote community and a better state of physical, mental, social and spiritual health.
Even forms of human beings preforming selfless acts derives from ones desire to help others, which in a way makes that person feel importance. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, better known as Mother Teresa, devoted her life to helping those in great need. To many these acts may appear as selfless and gallant acts that are not performed by anyone with any type of ego. Yet when taking a psychological look at why she performed such acts they may appear a somewhat more for herself. Every time anyone does anything, even when for someone else, they are doing it for some type of feeling that they experience. With the holiday season approaching, there will be a specific emphasis on giving unlike any other time of the year. We give yes to show gratitude for someone we love, but also to experience the joy in seeing someone enjoy something they them self-caused. Even while being selfless humans have the unique ability to still be doing something that involves caring for them self. This outlook toward the human condition completely debunks Wolf’s claim that “when caring about yourself you are living as if you are the center of the universe.” When choosing to do anything positive or negative, for others or for yourself, you are still taking your self-interest into consideration, making it
And also my quick needs and feelings are what ought to decide the world 's priorities. However, Wallace claims that this is the automatic, unconscious way of adult life that many may choose to follow and not be aware of it.
Selfishness is the key to happiness, according to Browne. Most of the population believes that putting others before oneself is key to happiness. Browne calls this the “unselfishness trap”. People are told and led to believe that they must sacrifice their own happiness for others, to be “good” and be “truly happy”. In his example, Browne sees happiness as a ball, and when a person holds the ball in their hand, they get to be happy. If everyone is selfless, then everyone would pass the ball off to the next person, believing that it is the best thing to do. The ball would keep going around and around because everyone is willing to give up their own happiness. In the end, everybody loses. Nobody gets to be happy. “How it would be a better world if everyone acted this way”. Happiness comes in different shapes and sizes. What makes him happy doesn’t necessarily make her happy. Because I may not know what makes you happy, me simply being selfless to you doesn’t have to make you happy. Browne says that we are all stuck in the “unselfis...
People have their own judgments of thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. An example of a self-schema could be a person who classifies themselves by certain descriptions such as being liberal, Catholic, an artist, a dog person, intelligent; the list continues on. This is what helps us define ourselves from the group; our self-concepts are what help us create our own identity separate from the society that shapes us. Reading into books nine through eleven in the book of Meditations the author declares, “He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad” (book, ?). We can take this to mean like social psychology that individuals have self-schemas and that ultimately only the person(s) themselves can be held accountable for their decisions and not blame others for how they were brought up. Each person can decide how their life turns out if they are, “…moderate, sincere, honest, and calm” (book, ?). We must be willing to take the consequences that come with positive or negative outcomes even if that means we do not get immediate gratification and more so if things do not turn out they way we imagined they would. In this case we must rely on our own imagined presence of others to drive us to be the ‘best’ person ultimately we can become as
People in everyday life are trapped by their incomplete and flawed understanding of reality. They are able to free themselves from that, but many prefer to remain in the dark.