Doing new things

I thought that Dr.J's speech about doing new things in your life was extremely powerful. His lesson was the second profound lesson that he has brought up in the last two weeks. I have read a lot about the idea of doing new things in your life in self-development books; therefore, when Dr.J brought up the idea, I found it interesting. I brought up this idea again because I think it is very important for people to gain the benefits from this lesson.

Most people constantly look for ways in which they can improve their lives. Many times, the people who want to improve their lives do not know where to go to make such improvements. They feel stuck, and they believe that nothing they can do will help. Most people in this position do not realize that the easy way to fix this problem is by making changes in their lifestyle. This may sound like an obvious decision, but most people do not realize this. In general, people are afraid of the unknown, and therefore they are uncomfortable with changing their normal habits. Making sometimes-drastic changes does not seem to them like a good idea because they do not want deal with new things. These people believe that improvement in their life will only be caused from making progress in the things that they currently do; they need to realize that making changes in their life will open new opportunities for positive change in your life. You cannot find success in the forest of life if you keep looking for it on the same path.

I feel that the reaction of some students who listened to Dr.J’s lesson shows a major problem that humans have. I could tell from many students that they enjoyed Dr.J’s lesson, but they would not implement it into their life; they are comfortable with the food they eat, the people they talk to etc, and therefore they find no reason to change. As far as I know, as long as people are not fully satisfied with their life, then there is absolutely no reason why they should not be ready to make drastic changes in their life. It is important to mention that, when I am talking about drastic changes, I do not mean decisions that will obviously cause problems. The changes I am talking about relate to things that are clearly beneficial, but people do not make them because they are different. One of the worst obstacles with success is being comfortable. If someone is not ready to change the current habits that they have, then it is not likely they will see improvement in their life. If you keep doing what you have always done, then you will keep getting what you have always gotten.

Dr.J’s lesson was important in itself, but I think that his act of teaching this lesson shows something important. Some of the most important things that I have learned from my professors were not a part of the curriculum at all; I find this fact interesting because it shows that the so-called life-lessons that we learn are often the most important. In addition, I believe that is important that people listen to any type of advice that they receive. I think that many people were too quick to throw away Dr.J’s lesson on trying new things, and that it is the main reason why I wanted to bring up the idea again. People need to understand that getting too comfortable with their lifestyle can be a waste of their life, and I believe that functionalists would be strongly against the fear of change that many people have.

Do you think the fear of change exists? And If so, Do you believe that it is problematic in the lives of most humans?

In Response to Megan Cooney (4/17/2010)

Q: “What do you make of the phrase "live every day as if it were your last?"

We went over the idea of living everyday as if it were your last day in class briefly, but I would like to expand on it. Dr.J originally made the point that it is irrational to live everyday like it was your last because there is an extremely high probability that we are going to be alive the next day. I think that Dr.J made a great point and he is completely correct, but I also believe that your point at the end of your post is important to analyze. You make the point that the phrase of living everyday as if it is your last could be helpful if people followed the idea of the phrase and not the phrase itself. I think this is a powerful idea because it seems that people could benefit from thinking of everyday as their last day to live.

It seems to me that the act of implementing the phrase of living everyday like it’s your last needs to be a balancing act. As long as a person does not cause major problems for their future, than I believe that living everyday as if it is your last is a great idea. I think it is great that you mention that living everyday like it is your last is similar to living without fear. While I do not believe that the living without fear is exactly what that phrase means, i think that living without fear would be extremely beneficially to people. Fear is something that causes a lot of trouble in the lives of people, and therefore I feel that people need to find ways to start living fearless. Taking risks can cause many benefits, but most people are too afraid of the possibility of failure. Many books on success that I have read bring up a similar idea; they ask the question of what would you do if you knew you could not fail. I think that this is a very powerful question because I believe there are many things that people would do if they knew they could not fail. Fear of failing can be helpful but I think that it also can hold people back greatly.

The phrase of living life if it was your last day can be extremely helpful if people used the idea to take more smart risks in their lives. By smart risks, I mean risks that have a much higher rewards than risks. Sometimes people are afraid of making a decision because of possible problems that are not that bad. An example of this would be going to a party, or joining a group that you never have experienced before. Many people are afraid to do things like this because of the problems that could happen as a result from making the decisions, but the rewards greatly outweigh the risks. Even if some risks may cause problems, at some point at least one risk will be very beneficial. I think that the phrase living everyday like it was your last could be very helpful if the phrase was looked at as meaning living with out fear. If people started to live without fear, but not take unintelligent risks, then I believe that their lives would be tremendously improved.

What types of decisions would you make differently if you started to live everyday like it was your last?

Existentialism is a lesson that all college students should learn

After learning about existentialists, I personally feel that every college should learn about some of their values. More specifically, I feel that every student needs to learn the problems with living for a future moment. It is scary to me how many young people are so focused on their future lives that they forget about what is going on in the present moment. The problem is that people believe that some future moment in their life will fulfill them or make them happy. I have read many stories about successful people who could never reach satisfaction with their lives. These people would keep telling themselves that some future moment will make them happy, but once that moment arrived, some other future moment became the new moment that will make them happy. A person who is internally unhappy will never become happy because of some external event.

College students need to stop thinking that their college experience is only a bridge that will get them some future dream job. I have seen personally the problems that people who think this way will face. The main problems that they run in to relate back to the decisions that they make while in college. Students will become business majors so that can become wealthy after they get out of college; most times they will never reach the wealth level that they want, but even if they do, they will never feel fulfilled.

If college students began reading about existentialism, then I feel they would reach a sort of wake up call in their lives. Their reading may cause them to rethink what their true purpose in life is. Even though existentialists say that there is no absolute purpose in life, I still feel that people who read about existentialists may feel that they need to be looking for a deeper purpose in life. I feel that college students may realize that the main purpose in life does not relate to anything outside of them, such as money, and other materialistic things. After reading about existentialists, they would start to understand that they could only be fulfilled by living in the present moment, and living for future fulfillment is a major mistake.

I feel that existentialism is group of beliefs that would be extremely helpful for people to understand in today’s society, but it would be most helpful for college students. I do not agree with all of the ideas that existentialism represents, but I believe that college students could learn a lot because they generally have an open mind about things that they learn. Existentialism goes against many things that our society teaches, and I feel that it would be good for college students to learn about something that goes against society’s norms. Society teaches us the importance of having wealth, and that having materialistic things will make us happy. Society also tells us that certain ways to live are the right ways to live, and everything else is wrong. Existentialists instead encourage people to enjoy the process of living moment by moment, and they also tell us that there is no exact truth, and therefore people should find out what is true in their own lives.

Are the ideas of existentialism to vague to be taught as a class in college?

Response to Laura Laureano (4/10/2010)

Q: “Why [do humans] not have the ability to understand dreams?”

I believe that humans may have the ability to understand dreams, but there would be no way of scientifically proving this ability. There have been numerous theories about what our dreams mean, including Freud’s, but the problem is that we can never prove that these theories are correct. There is no black-and-white answer when it comes to understanding something like dreams. We have nothing to base our ideas about dreams off of, and therefore we can never know if our ideas are correct.

I thought the idea of describing dream theories as an attempt to describe what is in a closed box was a great idea. The fact that we may remember some of our dreams may provide us with the ability to shake the box, but we can never fully know what it is in the box. That is why Freud’s theory on dreams is interesting, but it can never be used as empirical evidence. I think it is great when certain Freud supporters will say that Freud’s ideas are just a gateway to an improved theory. I do not believe we could ever understand what dreams meant, but I do like the idea that we could use Freud’s theories as a gateway to maybe a improved theory of the human mind.

I also find that your question could be looked at as maybe wondering why humans are not biologically capable of understanding dreams. If this was the point of your question, then I think I may have an interesting answer. If humans are biologically not capable of understanding dreams, then maybe dreams do not have a true purpose. I say this because, in natural selection, Humans develop things that would give them an advantage to survive; therefore, I feel that if dreams have a true significance, then humans who could understand them would have a great advantage over other Humans. For example, if my dreams were telling me an internal conflict that I was hiding from my conscious, then I could discover it and then solve my conflict. Maybe Humans do not have the ability to understand dreams because dreams do not actually have any purpose; dreams could just be a random activation of experiences that are stored in the brain.

I think that one of the most interesting ideas related to understanding dreams is the act of lucid dreaming. The fact that there have been scientific tests that proved that people could be conscious in their dreams is extremely interesting. Lucid dreaming provides me with another reason why I do not believe that dreams hold any significance. If people can be conscious in their dreams, and then control their dreams, then I do not see how a dream could really have a purpose. How can my dream have an inner meaning if I am controlling every part of it? I feel that dreams have always been analyzed to find a true meaning only because dreams are part of the unknown. Anything that people do not know will constantly be analyzed, and people will make theories about it. With that said, I do feel that Freud’s ideas about dreaming are important; for this reason, I did dome research about Freud and lucid dreams, and I found out that Freud actually wrote about them briefly. When discussing his own lucid dream, Freud said, "I won't go on with this dream any further and exhaust myself with an emission." It seems that Freud did not want to discuss lucid dreams because they brought up too many conflict into consciousness.

What do you think about Freud’s feelings regarding lucid dreams?

Response to Alex Massar (4/3/10)

I think that your revisions are good, but I still think that you are forgetting about the fact that we are talking about humans. Much of your theory depends on the human ability to follow a set of strict rules that prohibits individuality, which is not something humans are not good at doing.

I understand your idea to pay people differently on how much they do or contribute to society, but I think that this solution has problems. Who is going to decide how much a worker should be paid, and do you really think every worker would be satisfied with this process? It seems to me like this would not solve the problem of workers being angry because another job receives more money than theirs does. Deciding whether one job should earn more money than another, when each job is totally different is not a simple process, nor do I expect every worker to agree with the decisions made. Also, if people were paid for how much they contributed to society, then it seems like this is getting away from the main idea of a socialist community; it does not seem like anyone should be paid more than someone else because that would provide people with the ability to have more material possessions than their neighbor; paying people different wages sound more like a mixed economy, rather than a socialist one.

As far as workers not being satisfied with their jobs, I do not feel that the punishment you outlined would be a perfect solution. I do think your idea makes sense, but my problem relates to deciding which people should be punished. I feel that some people may not put in their best work at their job, while others put in effort but they still get punished; it seems like this type of punishment will create many unhappy workers. Even if the punishment did work, I do not see how a person would not just slack off at their new job; these people who were punished could not be left unemployed because a socialist society wants everyone to work. Also, if they were forced to a job with no pay, then I doubt they would want to work to their full potential.

All of these ideas lead up to your finally point, which is to create a rehabilitation type of jail for people who do not want to comply with the governments rules. I think this is absolutely your best point because it fixes most of the issues I have raised so far. If people complained about how much they were being paid, and therefore did not work to their full potential, then they could be sent to this type of jail. I think that having this type of facility would fix most of the problems within a socialist community because it could teach them to follow the rules of the community. Furthermore, if this rehabilitation center taught the idea of caring about the whole of the society more than the individual then I think it would help the people of the society function correctly under the socialist standards.

I do think a socialist type system could have a chance to work if a rehabilitation type jail like you pointed out was created, but I feel that the long term outlook on this type of system would not work. Unless there was an overall awakening in the human consciousness, I do not think humans could handle not living in a society where the whole is more important then the individual.

Does the idea of certain jobs being paid more than others (depending on their value to society) get away from the whole idea of having a socialist government?

What if Humans Did Not Have Superego's?

In class, we talked a lot about Freud’s description of the three parts of the human psyche, which are the id, ego, and superego. This discussion soon lead to the topic of how animals relate to these principles. I found it interesting that most animals have an id, ego, but not a superego. This means that many animals will understand how their actions relate to the environment, but they will not have a greater vision of what is going on in their world. It seems like the superego is a purely human characteristic, and even if animals will have enough intelligence to understand their world in a human-like fashion, they will never have a superego; these animals will never be truly human.

I feel that these ideas bring up an interesting point when you look at some of the main characteristics that humans have different from animals. The main characteristic that comes to mind is the human ability to have strong emotions about any type of situation. For example, I do not think a monkey would ever be sad about the way they look, or because they did not have enough money. I understand that monkeys do not handle money, but the point I am trying to make is that human’s develop strong emotions over learned wants, and desires. Animals can be happy when their simplest needs are covered, while humans have trouble staying happy even when all their simple needs are covered. Animals tend to be always in the present moment, focusing on what task is in front of them, while humans tend to be stuck always thinking about the past or future.

The fact that animals are generally easier to keep happy is very interesting to me. I have read books on human spirituality and happiness, and many times, one of the main subjects in the books is the present moment. If humans can stay in the present moment, all of their stress and worries will disappear; once you fully immerse yourself in the present moment, it is extremely difficult not to be happy. Ancient spiritual practices like meditation and prayer all have something in common: they cause the person performing the actions to be in the present moment. Since being in the present moment seems so important, I find it interesting that animals are good at doing this because animals also do not have a superego. All of this has lead me to wonder if humans would benefit from not having a superego.

I understand that there are many advantages to having a superego, but if every type of being in existence did not have a superego, it seems like our world would function better. I do not think humans would want to take advantage of other beings as much as we do now if we did not have a superego. I also think that the environment would be in a much better situation then it is now. Most importantly, if we did not have superegos, I believe we would be a generally, much happier.

What do you think would happen if humans did not have superegos?

In Response to Jennifer Johnston (3/31/10)

Q: "Do you believe dreams can become reality? Is it just because we spend so much time subconsciously dwelling on situations, that they secretly become our desires and needs?"

I do believe in principle that dreams can become reality, but not in the way that you outlined. As far as I know, everything in the universe is made up of energy; are thoughts are no different. I feel that because of this, things we think about tend to manifest in our outside environment. I know that everyone has had crazy coincidences where something happens that they were just thinking about. People tend to think of the term coincidence as meaning a random occurrence of something that relates to something else. I myself tend to think of the word coincidence in the same context as the math term coincide, which means that two things correspond with one another; this means that coincidences are not random at all.

I feel that once you begin to think about something a lot, that thing will show up in your universe in some way, shape, or form. I do not think it will always be exactly the way the you thought about it, but it will show up. As far as I know, none of this can be scientifically proven (or has been), but I personally feel that there is some relation between are thoughts and our reality. With that said, I tend to think of dreams from an anti-Freudian point of view which means I do not believe they should be looked at as having significant meaning. I think Dr.J was right when he brought up the point that our brain functions at a lower level during sleep, and therefore the pieces of each dream are randomly put together. With that said, I do believe that our brain does choose significant thoughts in our lives to be put in dreams, but I just think that the way it organizes the complete dream is random.

The idea that dreams secretly become our desires and needs is a little to Freudian for me. I think people just make up a story that something was in their unconscious when they cannot explain a theory related to Freud’s Idea's. This relates back to the idea that Freudian supporters often will try to make his theories scientific when they absolutely are not. I think Freud brought up many ideas about our unconscious that have been extremely helpful with modern day science, but the use of the unconscious to explain things like dreams appearing in real life is problematic. The main issue with explaining the unconscious mind is that in principle, it is not testable. For that reason, I am not going to say my theory of why dreams appear in real life is better because I cannot prove my theory scientifically either. I just feel that the energy we send out to the universe through our thoughts (which could be in our dreams) tends to come back to use through the experiences that we have in reality.

Do you think that finding meaning in your dreams would make a significant improvement in your life?