Journal #2
David Ziegler
September 21, 2006
The Human Condition
This week we discussed the Human Condition. The Human Condition is a situation, or condition, in which every human being finds himself or herself by virtue of being human. We all share some of the same experiences no matter what type of person we are. We listened to George Carlin’s euphemisms that illustrate how we deceive ourselves by softening the way we describe things in our world. Example: Shellshock has become post-traumatic stress disorder. We did the right speech experience while studying the Human Condition. We watched our speech for a week and recognized the times we were lying. I found out that I lie a lot more than I thought I did. When we start to deceive ourselves it becomes second nature to us. We do things without realizing that we are doing it. We learned about M. Scott Peck and his theory about mapmaking. He said that we all have maps and how we were raised and our society develop them. We need to revise our maps constantly though and people don’t do that. “Transference is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood…” (M. Scott Peck) We can’t go by our original maps from childhood because things are constantly changing. The Human Condition deals with every human and that is why it is so important to study.
Three most important ideas:
“The Truth About Lies” video taught me a whole lot on how people can be deceived. The video focused on how people were tricked by people in major situations. The Challenger disaster, Watergate, and Vietnam were the three events that were explained in the video. The Challenger disaster could have and should have been prevented. People knew that there was a problem with the O-rings before the launch, but nobody stood up and said anything. They let the astronauts believe everything was okay to launch when it really wasn’t. They allowed the ship to blow up and kill the astronauts. It talked about the scandals of the presidency during Watergate and also the knowledge that we had going into Vietnam. These two examples show us how our own government deceives us.
M. Scott Peck talked about the need for mapmaking in our lives today. He talks about how we need to revise our maps constantly because our world around us is constantly changing. He teaches about Transference: is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood. He uses a story about a computer technician to explain transference. As a child his parents would forget about him because they were so busy. They forgot his birthday one year. His parents would promise him things, but they never did them. Going through this disappointment he learned not to trust anyone. He carried this with him throughout his life. He wouldn’t put his trust in anybody and struggled through his life because of it. His map was created in his childhood, but he never revised it as he grew older. That’s why he couldn’t trust anyone because he just kept that same map.
We worked with St. Paul and “Cats in the Cradle”. St. Paul said, “I don’t understand what I do. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate…” We connected “Cats in the Cradle” to this because in the song the father knows what he needs to do to be a good father but he doesn’t. He is so busy with work that he doesn’t have any time for his son. He teaches his son how to be just like him and when he is older and wants to talk with his son, his son doesn’t have the time. I agree with St. Paul because we usually do what we actually hate. We do this to be cool or popular even though we really don’t want to do it. The peer pressure gets to us.
Challeger Disaster
This photo was taken from:www.open2.net
One Good Question?
If evil is brought into this world from our free will, then why did the all good, all powerful God give us free will? Did he know that by giving us free will we would create evil?