Consolation for Difficulties in the movie "Joy"

It is common for people to want to eliminate as many hardships and struggles as possible. This may seem like an enticing idea, but may actually be detrimental to one’s life. Nietzsche talks about how pleasure and displeasure are so tied together that you cannot have one without the other, in his “Consolation for Difficulties”. After reading his thoughts on this subject, it reminded me of the movie “Joy” starring Jennifer Lawrence.

This movie is about a young woman who creates a revolutionary mop design, but struggles to get her product on the market and successful. She goes through many struggles to get her product to sell. Some of these hardships included getting money together to make the product, convincing people to buy the product, and keeping her product’s design safe from other corporations. Throughout the movie, she is put under extreme stress trying to achieve her goals, but in the end, it is all worth it, as she eventually is successful with her invention.

Nietzsche explains his ideas on the relationship between pleasure and displeasure with diagrams of a flower and a mountain. The diagram of the mountain shows mediocrity at the bottom, pain as the climb, and fulfillment as the top of the mountain. This diagram is applicable to the movie “Joy” because the main character was originally just a typical person with big dreams, at mediocrity, but she went through lots of pain and struggles (going up the mountain) to get to success, or “the top of the mountain”.

Without going through pain or displeasure, it is not possible to achieve success from mediocrity. Pain and pleasure are always intertwined, as pleasure is not achievable without some pain.

How much is too much?

Several of the philosophers that we have learned about this semester have firmly held the belief that we, as humans, should not strive. However, this is how progress is made within society.

In the movie Geostorm, one man, named Dekkom, goes completely overboard in his attempt to reach his goal of becoming the President of the United States. Instead of working harder and developing his platform, Dekkom decides to take matters into his own hands. It turns out that he bugged the largest satellite in the world, "Dutch boy" and was using it in his power to start a geostorm that would win him the presidency.

The geostorm progressed across the world as it destroyed city after city. Dekkom designated the storm to end in the destruction of the city that the national representatives and legislators were meeting in. His plan was to get out of harm's way himself so that in the aftermath of the storm, he would be the only one left to fill the United States presidency.

The logic that Dekkom uses is extremely irrational. While he is striving for the presidency, there are much more reasonable ways to go about reaching his goal. He was already popular in politics, and could have used that to promote his platform; however, he took an extreme plan and it all went up in flames (literally, the entire satellite imploded). In this situation, Dekkom should have chosen the intermediate, as Aristotle suggests in his literature. The two extremes would include ambushing the election, as Dekkom does, or not campaigning at all and never having the opportunity to fulfill his desires.  Dekkom should have chosen the intermediate and waited for the next election in which he would have ran a reasonable and pure campaign. In doing so, Dekkom would have likely have been mroe successful that he was in the movie plot.

Epicurus and Minimalism

This school year, I watched the documentary Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. This documentary starring Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus shows what it’s like to be a minimalist and why they do what they do. They say that “Minimalism is a tool to rid yourself of life’s excess in favor of focusing on what’s important—so you can find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom.” Through living a minimalistic lifestyle, people have found lasting happiness through life itself instead of through material things. A minimalistic approach to life allows people to find freedom from fear, worry, stress, and toxic ways of consumer culture. In class, when we learned about Epicurus and living prudently, I immediately thought back to this documentary. I think Epicurus would be in favor of the Minimalistic lifestyle for many reasons. First off, Epicurus says in order to live a pleasurable life free from stress and anxiety, you must live prudently. You must think carefully, plan ahead, and manage your desires. He says we shouldn’t follow after unnatural and empty desires. Secondly, a Minimalistic way of living allows people to become happy and satisfied with all of their belongings. Epicurus says when you reduce the amount of material things that you own, you become more appreciative of occasional luxuries. Lastly, many modern Minimalists are jokingly seen as hippies who don’t own televisions or cars, and they just sit in their tiny homes writing blog posts every day. While this is very stereotypical and not 100% true about Minimalists, I do think that they are different and hip in a certain kind of way. This lifestyle reminds me of the “Epicurean Garden”. The “Garden” was Epicurus’ ideal way of living in a hippie-like community with supportive people who all take care of one another, disbursing burdens and living a simple life full of ataraxia. After learning about Epicurus in class, I have seen how Epicurus and Minimalists have very similar methods of finding happiness. If you have seen this documentary yourself, do you think that long term happiness can be found from living a Minimalistic lifestyle and living prudently? If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out! It's on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and many other platforms.

Letting Pain Affect Your Art- Hemingway and Nietzsche

“Write hard and clear about what hurts” 

-      Ernest Hemingway 

This has always been one of my favorite quotes, while thinking about it this week, I realized how well it went along with Nietzsche philosophy. Nietzsche differs from other philosophers in that instead of running from pain and making his life as clean and sterile as possible, he argues that people should embrace the hurt and allow it to grow you. He says that without that pain, you cannot reach full potential.  It is clear Hemingway agrees with this philosophy. He is telling readers that to create truly great art (whether that happens to be writing, painting, etc.) you have to create about something that matters, that is relatable. He is saying channel your pain, your heartache and create something truly memorable and messy. Embrace the hurt and don’t try to sterilize life, rather write (or create) hard and clear about what hurts.  

Messing with Memories?

As I read Dr. Rider's post on traumatic memories, another example came to mind.

In the book series The Mysterious Benedict Society, there is an invention called the Whisperer.

It is a machine capable of erasing memories and manipulating people's thoughts and beliefs.  A Mr. Curtain created the Whisperer to aid his attempts in what was basically world domination, and "whispered" thoughts into every mind through radio, television, and cell phone waves, gaining people's trust and support without their knowledge or consent.

In the right hands, its effects were reversible, but the machine was used wrongly on many people, essentially turning them into one man's minions.  The world was a darker, colder place overall.  And like Lacuna's treatment in the "Eternal Sunshine" movie, people were changed...not always for the better. 

That is why I do not think people should seek to erase memories.  It may start with horrid and traumatic experiences, but the more used to the idea people got, it would progress to embarrassing or simply sad/depressing moments.  And if it were continued for long enough without being kept in check, soon we would be erasing memories like we do pictures, because one tiny detail was wrong -- a hair out of place, or my nose looks too big.  Messing with the mind is dangerous territory, and not something I'd recommend.

Deception and the movie "Click"

Click, Compared to Haybron's Idea of Deception

In his book, Happiness: A Very Short Introduction, Daniel Haybron introduces the idea that it may not be enough for a person to just simply feel happy. He outlines three major areas, where a person may seem happy, but their life is lacking something important. These areas include deception, impoverishment, and deprivation.

I would like to focus on the idea of deception and compare it to the 2006 film, Click. Click, starring Adam Sandler and Kate Beckinsale, shows an average businessman, who spends too much time at work, and not enough time at home with his family. In the movie, he meets a bizarre inventor, who offers him a remote that can control time. Of course, Michael Newman (Sandler), uses this remote to his advantage at first. He skips through the hard, boring moments and presses pause on the good moments. Because he is a man consumed with work, some of these boring moments include time spent with family. He soon learns that he is deceiving himself of what life is really like. He realizes that the remote has taken control of his life. Towards the end of the movie, he sees that the hard times are what shapes him and his family into the people that they are.

In comparison, Haybron explains that by being deceived, we miss out on genuine experiences. Haybron makes a similar connection by including The Experience Machine in his argument. The Experience Machine is a simulation that can allow a person to experience anything they desire. Moreover, Haybron also includes that when we are deceived, we miss out on building a life for ourselves and we deprive our desire to succeed. By having a remote that controls time or a machine that simulates experiences, we are allowing ourselves to be fooled. We miss out on what real life is like. We miss out on the good moments.

Finally, at the end of Click, Michael Newman looks back and cherishes the times that he is able to spend with his family. I think Haybron makes a valid point when he argues that there is a need for more than happiness. What are you thoughts on this subject?

What is Friendship?

Should you erase traumatic memories?

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is one of my favorite movies.  It stars Jim Carrey as Joel and Kate Winslet as Clementine. They’ve been in a relationship for several years, and their relationship has been both powerful and contentious because they are complete opposites.  Joel is careful, quiet, and timid, while Clementine is wild, impulsive, and emotional.  When they have a nasty fight, Clementine (perhaps impulsively) goes to the Lacuna Corporation, which has a procedure for erasing memories.  When Joel goes to her work to apologize, he discovers that she does not remember him or anything about their relationship with each other.  She’s had Lacuna erase her memories of him!

In anger, Joel goes to Lacuna to ask them to erase his memories of her.  As the procedure proceeds, he goes backward through his memories of their time together, and he realizes that it was a huge mistake.

Besides being a great movie, this scenario is interesting in part because the technology to erase or at least dampen memories is currently being developed, partly as a treatment for PTSD. 

What do you think?  Should a person seek to erase painful or traumatic memories?  If you could erase the worst moment of your life from your memory, would you?  Why or why not?

Nietzsche and Parkland Shooting

The Teachings of Nietzsche in relation to the Parkland Shooting

On February 14, 2018, tragedy struck Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen lives were lost as a result of the mass shooting. This was one of the world's most deadliest school shootings as of now. 

On the other hand, Friedrich Nietzsche, a professor of philosophy, shuts down the idea of minimizing suffering. Instead, he advocates that we should embrace our sufferings and grow from them. Alain de Botton writes on the philosophy of Nietzsche and states that "most of us fail to recognize the debt we owe to these shoots of difficulty" (228). He goes on to say that most of the time we cut out suffering like "weeds" but little do we know that we are "choking off the positive elements that might arise form it further up the stem" (228). This is so powerful! Often times we cut off things when they become hard or emotional. We should instead endure the pain and keep going because according to Nietzsche, fruit will come from our difficult situations. 

Now back to our original topic. The students who attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas could have chose to let their emotions and suffering get the most of them. They could have avoided going back to school. They could have shut themselves off from society. 

There are so many possibilities for what could have happened as a result of this tragedy. Instead, the students chose to stand for what they believe in. Instead of cutting off their suffering, as suggested by many philosophers before Nietzsche, these students chose to cultivate awareness through their tragedy. The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas adopted the hashtag #MSDStrong. They also participated in the March for Our Lives in Washington D.C. just last week. 

This isn't about what your personal stance on gun control is. This is about students, just like you and me, taking a stand and growing through our suffering. 

If these students would've avoided this situation and shut down their feelings of suffering, change would not already be in the works. These students are working to make sure that other students and teachers don't have to fear going to school. Unfortunately, there is a chance that more school shootings will happen in the future, but because of these brave students, there is hope for a better tomorrow. 

Do the Patterns of Your Life Predict Your Future?

On the radio this morning I heard an interesting story that relates to our discussion about free will and determinism last week.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/30/597974076/invisibilia-do-the-patterns-in-your-past-predict-your-future

The story discussed the research of sociologists (particularly, Matthew Salganik from Princeton University) trying to use computer models to predict the path of people's lives.  As computer algorithms have gotten to be more powerful, they've become better and better at understanding patterns and predicting the future.  Pandora can guess which songs you might like; Netflix recommends movies and shows for you personally, based on your previous history.  So can we predict what path a person's life might take, using the patterns from their past?

The story describes the project: 

"So Salganik set to work. He got a massive trove of data on 5,000 kids who had been followed from the day they were born, then made that information available to data geeks and researchers across the globe. Four hundred teams were given incredibly detailed information about the kids from birth until age nine, then told to predict their grades — and a handful of other outcomes — at age 15."

What did Salganik find?  In fact, the predictions were all very inaccurate.  No one was able to create a model that could reliably predict where the person would end up based on the data they had been given.

Duncan Watts, a sociology researcher who works at Microsoft Research, explains:

"We find exactly the same pattern everywhere we look... when you're talking about individual outcomes, there's a lot of randomness," Watts says.

"And the other half of this conversation is that people don't like that answer, and so they keep wanting a different answer. They say nature abhors a vacuum. Humans abhor randomness. We like deterministic stories," Duncan says. 

We like the idea that patterns can tell us what will happen in life because that idea makes us feel more secure, he says.

"If you think you can predict things— even if you're wrong — it means that you get up in the morning and you feel confident," Watts says. "And so you can invest your time and energy today in things that won't pay off until tomorrow."

We want to be able to predict what will happen, to feel like we have some kind of control over our lives or over our children’s lives.  But maybe there just is a lot of randomness in life and how things turn out, and we have to come to terms with that.

What should we think about this research?  What does it tell us about human life and the problem of free will?

One possibility is that the lack of deterministic patterns is evidence that humans have free will.  Of course human behavior looks random--that's because each person is a free agent and makes her own choice.

But maybe that's not it.  Maybe where we end up going is random because the situations that people face are so random.  The bank robber in the story because a law professor because of random things that happened to him, not because of something he clearly chose.

Another possibility is that human behavior really is determined by external factors and patterns, but we just haven't learned what they are yet.  Presumably there are things that determine, say, the weather, but they are so complex and hard to measure that we haven't yet been able to model and predict weather perfectly... yet!  But that's no reason to think we never will be able to predict weather, or predict human behavior, if we have more data and better models.