Worlds of Meaning

"Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself  forms a world."

This is perhaps my favorite line in Albert Camus's essay on the myth of Sisyphus. Can a man condemned by the gods to forever roll a rock up a hill and watch it roll down, only to roll it up again, find meaning in such a repetitive, trivial task? Is there meaning? And we, in a way, are doing that exact same thing: living our repetitive, robotic lives, doing things over and over again, and finally dying. Is there meaning?

No. There isn't. That is, if you look at our existence from that angle. If we look at ourselves on a universal scale, it is true- we have no meaning. We're just a speck of dust in an infinite universe, a planet taking its place among the cosmos, and the creatures upon it unable to have even the slightest ripple of impact on the rest of the universe. But let's zoom in a little closer. Let's look at it from a worldly view. Now, we see some meaning- to impact the world. But that's very broad, and very difficult to do. Only a select few are remembered this way. Let's zoom in closer, to the national view. More names are there, and many more people have impacted this country. And zooming in closer, we see than many more have impacted communities. Finally, zooming into the spheres of peoples' personal lives, we see that there is an uncountable of impact people have had on other people.

We are concerned with a great deal of things every day. But like Sisyphus, we are living in the moment, in the only world we know- our own. Each person I see flooding the hallways has their own world- their own interests, plans, and friends. Here, we are meaningful.

Now the question of what is meaningful is not very difficult to answer. In our worlds, the only meaning we have is the meaning we can have. That is, whatever we can do to have meaning- that's what it is. Making an impact. That's what we can do. We may not be able to change the world, not the country, not even the community. But we can make impacts on our worlds, our lives- and the lives of others.

The stone, the mountain, the night- that is Sisyphus's world. And, knowing only his world, he can find momentary happiness. He can feel joy and meaning in what he's able to do. He may be meaningless in the larger picture. But he is meaningful when he is in his world.

As are we.

Crime & Punishment

Do Candide's various punishments throughout the novel fit his various crimes?

The punishments Candide faces throughout this tale are varied and intense. Foremost and most obviously, we see Candide being punished for kissing Cunegonde and being subsequently banished from his castle. But this isn't the only punishment Candide has endured: he was at the mercy of Bulgarians who punished him for what seemed to be dissent from their army; he was caught in the middle of a hurricane outside Portugal; his friends were persecuted, killed, and ravaged; his goods were stolen; he has had to face great uncertainty, hardship, and swindling in a new world. What crime did Candide do to bring about these great hardships, from others and from Providence?

First of all was his ignorance which brought him persecution from Bulgarians. His ignorance in philosophy prevented him from doing the right thing when situations called for it, believing that all was already the best it could be. He killed two men, and a third in a new land. He rejected happiness and security in a Utopian society for his lover and greed.

And upon viewing his various punishments and crimes, we can now ask if they are of equal magnitude.  To me, the simple answer is that they are not: the punishments are far harsher. His physical, mental, and emotional tolls he has had to pay throughout this story (considering him having no previous preparation for such hardships) seems astronomical. Furthermore, some of his "crimes" seem like no crimes at all- the biggest one being ignorance.

In fact, looking deeper at the motives of all his crimes, ignorance is the root. He came together with the woman he loved, not knowing any better. He ignored honest men drowning based upon his belief that it was "the best." He took a careless stroll without knowing the misconceptions it might entail. He killed men based upon his innate hatred of them, not knowing how else to react to them. He wanted to succeed and get ahead in the world with riches from another.

So why should Candide be blamed? It is his ignorance which causes his crimes, and why is that punishable? It is clear that his punishments are far worse than his "crimes."

One thing's for sure, though: after all this hardship, the ignorance which engendered it all will most likely die, and die quickly.

Our Knowledge

How do we know what we know?

It's a tough and age old question- where does out knowledge come from? Do we learn everything from scratch, or are we born with some instincts that help characterize out intelligence? Do we learn more from teachers and stories or our own experiences?

Last week, the folks at my lunch table had a very heated discussion about weather intelligence is totally earned by experience or weather there's a genetic component as well. For me, while I believe that everyone thinks differently, most of our factual knowledge is given to us by our experience- though some learn faster and more than others. And most of our instinctive knowledge  how to sleep, how to blink, who my mommy is- is given to us by mother nature.

For me, a parallel piece of knowledge I have is my steadfast belief of some divine supernatural entity. I believe in God. At the same time, I have many friends who are atheist or agnostic. How could we, all born the same way, have such different religious beliefs? I suppose it has to do with how we're raised and what we're taught- but at a certain age people can start deciding for themselves. That's when my personal experiences with religion kicked in- not only was I taught that God exists, but I truly believe in it.

Religion is a tough, controversial issue. The whole nation is like this- some have a strong belief in God, and others question the existence of any supernatural power at all. People around the world have fought, killed, and died over it. In a larger context, this means that what we know can be violent. If we weren't friends and united by similarities, the heated discussion my friends had last week could have gotten much worse. Our differences can be great and extensive. And this can only come from people's own experiences, not what they're taught- for if people were all critical thinkers and questioned what they did, I doubt there would be war in society.

Indeed, while some of what we know we learn, others are reinforced by our own experiences. And that's where I think the differences start, since it's a lot easier to teach people the same thing than to simulate the world in the same way for everyone. For me, I was raised in faith, and I still cling to my faith; at the same time, I do not hesitate to question my world and think of more questions to answer and add to my store of knowledge.