Hw #8 Who is Meursault

In the book The Stranger, Protagonist Meursault is a depressed men that is detached from his mother and the people around him. In the beginning of the book Meursault's mother dies and he does not show any kind of feelings or reactions. He just goes to his boss at work and asks him if he can take days off to arrange the funeral and the come back straight to becoming the working zombie that he is. This shows that Meursault is completely emotionless and is living just to get through life. Once Meursault is where his mother is being held, he mentions that in the past visiting his mother was always a burden. He says that he did not go to visit her because "it took up my Sunday not to mention the trouble of getting to the bus, buying tickets, and spending two hours traveling". This also shows that his relationship with his mother was not very stable. These are the words of a cold and selfish man. As I read the book, It seems that Meursault is narrating his life rather than living it. It makes me feel pretty neutral. It just feels as if a story if a narrator is telling the story. Everything that happens is just being said but there are no inner thoughts about why or how. He never releases his feelings and I always resolves to smoking when he is under some kind of stress. I understand why Meursault might have not very expressive when his mother died because he was not very close to her. I have family members that by orthodox values should be very close to me but unfortunately are not and nowadays when they decide to make a major decision that I am not aware of until after they have done it, I am not very much affected by it because they do not feel part of my life to me. However, it does not seem that Meursalt is not making a effort connected with other people and that is why he is isolated from society.

HW#7 Do we live in a world that is meaningful and makes sense?

To us humans, everything scientifically and mathematically makes sense. Everything has a logical explanation to why things happen in our planet, but in reality, nobody can really prove that it really makes sense. We live in a system invented and structured by human beings. we follow rules and the order of life but it is all really just fake. Everything around us is fake. It is a system that we have gotten used to since the begging of time and we have gotten used to thinking that it is the right way to live. we are supposed to go to school, have jobs, industrialize, modernize, etc, but who says that that is the right way to life? Also, nobody really knows what our purpose in life is so we do not know if we are doing what we are really suppose to and maybe the world we live in does not make sense. Now, is the world we live in meaningful? yes, well, I hope it is. It must have some kind of meaning or else we would not exist. But even though i belive there must be a meaning to our world, nobody can prove to us that we really live in a meaningful world. In the movie "I Heart Huckabees" protagonist, Albert Markovski, tries to find himself and the answers to life biggest mysteries. He encounters an inexplicable coincidence and attempts to figure out what the meaning of it is if it even has a meaning. Later on Albert discovers that the coincidence did not have much of a purpose and it was just a coincidence. Many rare coincidences have happened in my life. Many of them have been so impossible that sometimes i think that it could have to do with a higher power such as destiny which I believe exists but there is no actual prove so it could just be a coincidence. Albert makes a friend, Tommy, who helps Albert find himself. In the beginning of the movie Albert talks about a rock. A rock has no meaning, it just sits there, it doesn't think or act in any way, Albert thinks to himself. Albert and Tommy do exercises to stop thinking and find nothingness just like the rock. They accomplish to empty their mind for a few seconds by hitting each other in the face with a ball. At that moment they were equivelant to the rock. unable to think or act in anyway. Without much meaning. Does this mean that even though we are able to move and think, we are still like the meaningless rock? does something have to be alive to the human perspective in order to have a meaning? I personally do believe and hope that the world we live in has a meaning. Even though there is no way to prove it, I believe it does or else we would not be here in the first place. However I do not believe that the world and everything we live around makes sense. Us human beings try to make sense of things and make it reasonable in our own way.

HW #6 Blog Comments

Hi Rachel,

Its cool that you stated what happiness means to you. however, You did not agree or disagree with David Banach's lecture. You should be trying to argue a point and not just assert your opinion. You should also give examples and make connections. I would recommend you rethink when you wrote, "you will never find happiness if you don't challenge your weakness and change yourself from within"? What if we are happy with who we are and do not want to change anything about ourselves?

-Juan Soteldo


Hey Ian,

I really like your creativity, its funny how you made me take my cellphone and wallet out of my pockets. I completely agree with you that we are forced to believe a piece of paper means power and the more we have it, the better we are.

I was watching a show last night where a man was completely broke and he felt as if he was "drowning". Even though he was healthy and had a family that loved him. Then he became a gigolo in order become rich because he though he was going to obtain more power.

HAHAHA "less leg hair"

I understand what you mean when you say that materialistic things will only keeps us happy for a certain amount of time. How were are brainwashed and stuck in a cycle in which we feel like we must continue purchasing those things in order to maintain our happiness.

-Juan Soteldo

HW #5

In David Banach's lectures, he argues that true happiness comes from within, "If we find ourselves isolated from external value by our own radical individuality, we can make a world of ourselves, a universe of our own experience". What David Banach is trying to say is that people should be less materialistic and less infatuated with external values in order to find true happiness. I disagree with Banach's idea because it is too radical. He is almost saying that we must be autistic in order to find true happiness. I do believe that that people need less materialistic and more realistic with what is important and what is disposable, but there are other external values that offer us happiness. One of them being the people around us such as our friends, and family. Those people are all part of our external value and create each of our individual happiness. How can somebody be truly happy without being loved by someone or without giving love to someone?

David Banach uses the story of "The Myth of Sisyphus" as an example of how everything we do in our lives is worthless since we will die someday. I strongly disagree because if that is the case, then why not kill ourselves right now? I know it sounds a little emo but life must have a meaning or else we would not exist. There are other things we love and bring us happiness that are not alive such as our careers. Even though at the end, everything does lead to death, we need obstacles to achieve in order to feel importance and happiness or else life would be very boring. There are many external things in our life that offer us inner happiness but we just need to find out which ones are the ones that truly have an importance and a purpose.