Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

Everybody has their own way of seeing the world, their own behaviors and beliefs.  There are a lot of conflicts that arise out of this and at the core of the conflict is the belief that whatever ideals we hold are the “right” ones.  I would say that one of my own beliefs is that there is no “right” belief, there is no objective moral truth.  Of course this creates somewhat of a paradox since this would also negate my own claim, but I will explain it nonetheless.

If we can look at the world and everyone in it through the lens of knowing that there is no objective meaning to be sought, a very different picture emerges.  Without the meaning, all of our attitudes, personalities, and ideals become completely arbitrary.  We can see them as a result of environments and biological proclivities.  Whether I am an extremist Christian or an atheist, an environmentalist or an industrialist.  All of these balances have no pull to either end.  I might as well be any of them.  I think that this is somewhat of an inevitability with human beings.  There are so many of us that everyone will never think the same way.  We take on these roles to play because without them, the stage becomes lifeless.  The roles make our lives interesting, even give the semblance of meaning, and provide us with comfort.

We need everyone else to play the roles as well, that’s the only way it all works.  What point is there to protest for peace in the absence of war.  We all need each other, even our enemies, to give us the chance to live our roles.  I need the murderer to show me fear, hate and anger just as I need a beautiful woman to show me lust, love, and happiness.  It is easy to marginalize the negative things simply because it would be more convenient, but they’re all part of the game.

Maybe you don’t agree with me, but that’s okay.  Even to think about this picture in a hypothetical sense offers some curiosity.  To imagine the whole world, with all its plights and delights as just a whole lot of people pretending in order to escape the meaninglessness.  It lends some sort of appreciation to even those we despise, if only for a moment before we cast it aside.  You then get reminded that this is my role, to show what I think, to convince you as we all try to convince one another.  But that’s what makes it all so interesting.

Photo by Mr. Kris

Every relationship that we cultivate has it’s own dynamic.  We do not behave exactly the same with everyone, and the greatest difference that can be observed is in our “romantic” relationships.  For some reason, we treat our lovers differently than our friends, we have different expectations of them.  Perhaps, this is partly because of what we’re taught by our surroundings, from seeing others do the same.  But it is also partly because we are more doubtful with our partners, as we have more to lose.

It is because we open ourselves to them much more and are fearful of this feeling not being reciprocated.  Maybe it’s because of this fear that we hold them to a higher standard.  Maybe it is because of this fear that we demand so much more from them in order to believe that they truly care about us.  When a relationship is in this dynamic, there is no real trust and there is no real giving.

If we are insecure of our love being reciprocated, then there is no real trust in the other person.  If we are able to absolutely believe in their expression of love, then we would not have any fear of not being loved.  Without this fear, we would not be as sensitive to their actions when they do not align with our expectations.  With this belief would also come a relinquishing of our expectations, because we might realize that we can still be loved without someone following what we expect them to do.

We must also look to see if our actions are motivated by an attempt to meet expectations.  Our actions must only be those that we truly want to do, not what we think we should do and not what we want reciprocated.  If we give our time and effort in this manner, it becomes something different, true giving does not come with an expectation of receiving.  Only if we can give without any expectations of reciprocation can we free our partner from us.  Expectations can become a limitation on whoever we love, and their expectations on us.  A relationship where both people are acting in this way is a false image, because neither person is acting according to their own wants.  The more this becomes so, the more the relationship will decay, as the real people inside grow farther apart.

The unlearning we have to do in order to achieve a state of no expectations might be an arduous task, but the chance of having an honest and freeing relationship is a great enough motivator to take on the task.

Photo by Procsilas

It seems an especially difficult thing to love everyone, as some people might.  In my understanding of love, there would be no desire to change the thing that you love if you truly loved for what it was.  So if one were to love everyone, the problem I’m about to describe wouldn’t apply.  The problem is that people are so complex that it is impossible to find a person that could be deemed perfect in the eyes of anyone.  There are so many different sides to a person, that even someone we deeply respected or admired might have a side to them that would be unappealing to us.

As I see it, there are initially three possible attitudes we could adopt in our view of others.  We could choose to like everyone, dislike everyone, or be indifferent to them.  Each of these must be applied to everyone, because choosing to like or dislike only certain people would be to suggest that there is some level of perfection, or some level of inexcusable faults.  Also, if we were to choose only certain people, then everyone would choose different sets of people.  Even the person we might most despise would be liked by someone.  In this case we don’t approach any conclusive decision about the population because our own liking or disliking would be meaningless.

The problem I see with loving everybody is that if we really were to love everybody and accept people as they are, then we would not be right in trying to change them.  This creates a conflict because everyone holds certain values to be important, if we loved everyone, we would love even the people that embodied the opposite of our values.  If we are to accept everyone, then why hold our own values to be important at all?  If we are accepting of everything and do not seek to change anyone, why speak of such values at all?  Of course this is under the assumption I have made that loving entails unconditional acceptance.  This may not be true for others’ view of love.

So I decide to choose between like, dislike, and indifference.  This also became quite perplexing as I would waver between the three of these over the course of the last couple of years, depending on different experiences with people.  I still feel there must be some way to resolve this inconsistency.  I don’t think we can be indifferent completely because nobody is born indifferent.  People are driven to indifference through negative experience, and just the fact that this experience affects us defeats the purpose of indifference.  We are left with dislike and like.  Every person I know has sides that I like and sides that I dislike, so it’s hard to write anyone off to completely dislike or choose anyone to completely like.  My solution has become to like or dislike based on the sides within each person.  This way, there is someone to like in everyone, and someone to dislike.  This view also leaves room for change.  I can still hold my values and desire change based on those values in the sides that I dislike.  Right now, this is the best balance I can strike between complete liking, which I feel excuses too much, or complete dislike, which is too harsh.

This view is very much something I thought of recently, so I would be very interested to hear your own solutions or opinions so I can improve this idea or see the faults in it.

Photo by Richard0

Beauty is one of those concepts that has been questioned for thousands of years and yet its true meaning eludes us.  What makes something beautiful?  Why do we feel pleasure from it?  Why does perception of beauty differ?

I like to separate the things that we perceive as beautiful for only their form without any meaning that they might carry.  A lot of the debate about what makes art beautiful could be defined by this.  In this category, it is easy to see why the perception of beauty differs from person to person.  When our reaction is based on the meaning we see, it will always be different because everyone has a different mindset and so their reaction will be different.  The pleasure we may get from such things could be traced to the relationship of the meaning we perceive to our experiences.

The other category, of things that are seen as beautiful simple for what they are, is a little harder to understand.  A tree, the moon, the ocean, all these things could be pleasurable because of certain meanings, but I think they are also capable of being beautiful by themselves.  A person might have memories of the sea and so might like the ocean, but I’m inclined to think that someone that has never seen the ocean might still find it beautiful.  This sort of perception of beauty, where it isn’t based on any experience or bias, is difficult to grasp.  What is it about the ocean that is beautiful?  First, I can’t make the claim that everyone would like the ocean.  It is a matter of whether there are things that are just objectively beautiful independent of perspective.

Which things are beautiful in and of themselves and which things are beautiful because of bias is something that would change from person to person.  For me, sunsets are independent of experience, but the lawns at the University of Miami are not.  This might be different for someone else.  Maybe the fact that we have formed opinions based on experiences takes away our chance to like something for what it is.  When I look at the lawns, it brings memories of past experiences with friends.  If I was able to look at the lawns without recalling these memories, maybe I could appreciate them for what they are instead of what hey mean to me.

I feel that at some level, if we can manage to look at things completely objectively, we could see beauty in everything, just because they exist.  It is intriguing to look at leaf patterns and cloud formations.  Just like that we could let millions of other things intrigue us.  It’s hard to call this objective beauty because everything would be of interest to us.  If we can alter the way we perceive our world, maybe the question of beauty or no beauty wouldn’t arise.  This is the way I can somehow blend the idea that everything is subjective with the idea of an objective beauty.  How do you see it?  Subjective or Objective?