HW 2: Blogs Comments 1

Kate,

Your post includes a very nice summary of Banach's points in his lecture. I like how you almost reworded that whole section of his text and made it so it was easier to understand.

You talked about how the idea of absolute individuality can only remain an idea and can never be duplicated as a physical representation. There is no way that a person can be hidden from influences other than himself. You then brought up the point that I remembered being confused about and having to ask you about: how Banach contradicts himself. He starts off by telling us absolute individuality is impossible to achieve and then he goes into the idea that each of us is trapped in our own minds where everything there is attained only through our senses. So what is he driving at?

It would be nice if you included some of your own thoughts about the subject, an emotion that was triggered as you went through the reading. Have this affected the way your viewed life as an "individual"?

"We can not know how they are feeling but since we ourselves have been through some thing similar, we project what we felt onto them and reason with ourselves that we have in fact felt what they have." I liked this line a lot. I always find myself telling others I know exactly how they feel and I am so convinced that I do because the situations are so alike. But after the reading and much thinking on my own, it makes a lot more sense now. Everyone has their own variations of emotions and there's no way we can tell that what we've felt was exactly like theirs when the only entrance we have for accepting information is through our senses. Emphasis on "our" because another person's senses definitely will not take in their surroundings the same way ours do.

Your last paragraph really makes me wonder if these influences can be controllable. Going back to the second part of Banach's lecture (the one about freedom), he talks about how everyone has freedom even if it looks as if we are being limited or controlled by outside forces in some way because we were given the choice of whether or not we want to be altered by them or not, therefore it is our freedom to choose to be influenced or not. You say we're a "collective group of society being influenced by the things that we come into contact with on a daily basis makes it so there is no objective." Do you think it's possible to ignore the effects these things are possible of injecting into your lifestyle and the way you view life so that you can be an absolute individual? Or do you think that's completely absurd and impossible?

Your post has really stimulated me into questioning whether the absence of absolute individuality in a person is by default or as a result of the decision he chose to make by letting his daily interactions play as a puppeteer in the way he perceives the world.

Henry,

I know you already have 2 comments on your post but I had to comment it. Your own experiences with the idea of how limited we are in terms of the lens we perceive the world through remind me of some of my own. The extreme examples you gave might not make much sense but it does prove a point. Knowing that we are trapped in our minds where we can only interpret our surroundings based on the information our senses give us is weird especially when the human race loves to think that it knows the world better than any other creature.

I remember how I used to confuse myself with thoughts similar to your alien story (well not really that similar). I would think well, what if the corner of this chair looks round to another person? What if the sharp I feel is the curve she feels? What if the edge that digs into my skin is what she interprets a curve thing to do except that instead we both call it sharp? I see words as just representations of what we see, feel, and sense. It never does the description of an object justice.

"To be an 'absolute individual' we have to be trapped in our minds, with no distractions at all. I take this as earplugs in, mouth closed, eyes shut, no smells, suspended by wires in the air so we can't touch anything. This is clearly not a suitable way to live life, and I think that we don't have to go to such extremes to be an 'absolute individual'." This made me question whether absolute individuality is really that important. Why do we stress over it so much? It's like setting a goal we know we can not reach. What is so fascinating that lies after the achievement of absolute individuality? I feel like everyone is striving too hard to reach an identity that is different from everyone else, like absolute individuality would do just that. I mean even if a person does come to a state where he becomes an absolute individual, then who knows if his ideas will still end up being the same standard ideas everyone else has? We don't know because no one has ever been in that position before. And that is why we are so obsessed with the idea of individuality because we like to be different and becoming something no one has been before.

While reading your post, I found dozens of questions popping up in my mind so I knew I had to write them down. One thing I suggest though is pointing out some of Banach ideas that you disagree with since you said you only agree with him under conditions. And maybe posing some possible alternatives that can get us as close to absolute individuality as we could without being (as you said) blindfolded and suspended into the air.