So I have to write a paper for philosophy next Thursday, and the rough draft is due Saturday, so it's time to get into philosophy mode now. Today, we talked about existentialism, which is the idea that we are fully responsible for our own lives and decisions, and that we are free at each moment to choose our own values. A big proponent of existentialism (besides Mr. Crocker from The Fairly OddParents, if you remember your Nickelodeon childhood movie days) was Jean-Paul Sartre, who has a quote that just hit me in the middle of class today:
"Life is nothing until it is lived, but it is yours to make sense of; the value of life is nothing other than the sense you choose."
Everything about this sentence is 1) wonderfully constructed, and 2) totally true. We determine what is valuable for us as individuals, instead of accepting the system of value that our cultures and societies set in place for us. Which leads us to the question of why things are valuable. Are they valuable because we think they are? Or are they valuable because simply, they are valuable? I think there is a lot more truth in the first question - things are how we believe and perceive them to be, and shouldn't be determined by what anyone else thinks other than ourselves. Take something you've never experienced before - let's take something trivial, like a food. You've never heard of this food item before, never seen what it looks like, tastes like, smells like, anything. You have literally no knowledge or experience of this food. Well, when you first experience that, wouldn't you then make a determination as to whether or not it's good or valuable? (Valuable in this sense means something along the lines of something that has a positive impact on your life.) You wouldn't know what the rest of the world thinks about this food so you apply your assessment of the food's value to it. The obvious counterargument is that anything could be valuable, like murder. My response to that is, alright. Fine. I mean if you really think murder is valuable, then to each his own. I'm not saying I condone murder, but I'm condoning the idea that different ideas can hold differing levels of value for different people.
We also talked about Nietzsche, who established the word "Ubermensch." Well he didn't establish it, but he used it. It means "Overman" in German, which can be considered someone who doesn't submit to any code of behavior except for his own. He doesn't conform to any majorities in society unless he believes that that is what it should be. I totally agree with that, which brings me to my blog post title. It's ironic that I'm buying into this expression of existentialism, but it just goes to show that that is what existentialism is - you believe what you wanna believe, and sucks to anyone who tells you that you can't.
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