Blog Comments #3

Maggie,

I enjoyed your post so much. It's clear and I can understand the points you were trying to make and why you thought that way. I agree that it is difficult to understand how you would find happiness within yourself when happiness is usually defined as a feeling you get from something that happened or from someone you love. But happiness can also be viewed as finding peace within yourself and being satisfied with the person you are excluding the outer world. But that type of happiness seems too hard to achieve as well. Like you said, Banach's beliefs do seem too idealistic.

I liked your explanation of the slave masters and how by becoming slave masters they're now subjected into a role where they have set expectations. They're now slaves of their own expectations and go about their lives living with this set of restrictions. They've lost their freedom by taking away others' freedom. This makes me wonder if expectations are necessarily the good thing that most people say they are if they're as bad as Banach says. Are expectations - something that's supposed to be seen as motivational towards human growth - also the gate that keeps us from being free and authentic?

I agree with your argument against Banach's viewpoints of a painter's freedom. We may be limited to the resources given to us, the landscape, the colors, etc., but our imaginations are not limited and we can think of whatever we choose to think of.

I think you've covered a lot of ground in this one post, so I don't really see any areas you need to expand on or revise. Your post was really insightful. It made me question the idea of happiness and what it really means to be happy and how you know when you're happy. It made me think about how I can find something in myself that is "infinitely better" than the things I find outside or if I have already and I just didn't realize I have.

I can't wait to read more from you. Your ideas are so clear and well written. (:

Sam R.,

Your post was really fun to read. It looks like you just spilled all your thoughts into one post, slapping one thought on top of another but it made complete sense to me. I liked the quote you picked out: “Is it true…that if God is dead then all things are allowable?” Aside from laws and religion, I think everything's allowable. It just depends on what your conscience decides is the line between what is morally right and wrong.

I agree when you said that to be free we have to abandon all morals. Morals are like invisible lines set to restrict us from certain behaviors. It's like a universal language when we automatically know right from wrong because it's been drilled so deep into our minds since the day we were born. And like you said, I also agree that not having complete freedom might not be such a bad thing after all because restrictions are what keeps the world running properly. So why is our world so obsessed with having freedom? What is the balance between too much and too little?

I think you should look at Manley's question of "Are we free?" from a different perspective, maybe one involving our mental freedom as opposed to just our physical freedom.

Your post made me compare how much happiness I actually take from my external world to how much I find from within myself and I realize I have no idea. Happiness to me is just one big ball of mush taken from all angles of my life. Every time I find myself laughing about something from the outside world, I find myself finding that same happiness within myself. Like the feeling you get initially from your outside influences generates even more within yourself and vice versa. I don't know if that makes any sense though because I can't really put it into words.

I also thought that it was interesting that you asked: "Does happiness even play a role in something being meaningful?" My initial thought was yes it does. All people want is to be happy. It's the drive that goes in all the things that we do.

I enjoyed reading your post a lot. It really made me think about my own life and how much happiness plays a part in the meaningful aspect of my life. Hope to read more from you (: