Journal 2: The Human Condition
1) One paragraph summary of the key idea summarizing the topic of the week.
During this week our main focus was on the human condition, also known as the "human situation" or the "human predicament", as defined in the reading the Human Conditon is the situation, or condition, in which every human being finds himself or herself by virute of being human. This refers to all the experiences that human beings share despite age, sex, culture, religion, social status, or time period they live in. The human condition can be looked at from different points of view, and some of these have been offered by Blaise Pascal, Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, and Erich Fromm. Pascal describes the human condition as "inconstancy, boredom, anxiety"; Buddha describes says that "all life is suffering"; Marcus Aurelius says that "You will soon forget everything. Everything will soon forget you."; Erich Fromm says "The deepest need of man, then is the need to overcome his seperateness, to leave his prison of aloneness". These men have mentioned the desire for happiness, ignorance, boredom, and alienation when referring to the human condition. Original Sin is an aspect of the human condition, because we believe that the world once lay untoched by evil until the Fall of Man and we are the result of the fall of man. The three effects of original sin are concupiscence, which is our desire to do evil, wounded intellect, and death.
2) List and explain three of the most important ideas you want to remember from this section/week.
1. One idea I want to remember is M. Scott Peck's article "Choosing a Map for Life" and his idea that we are all on a constant search for truh, but we are blinded by the falsehood of the maps, or transferences we set for ourselves. M. Scott Peck believes that all of us have set up maps in our heads that come from when we are young kids. The experiences we go through affect the way we think and act towards our surroundings and other people. For example if someone grows up with parents that are never there for them, then they will always think they can put their trust in nobody and always be afraid of people leaving them. M. Scott Peck urges us to update our maps frequently, so that we are not always caught up with the same experiences. He says that we need to grow and constantly search for the truth instead of living in the shadows that we have made for ourselves.
2. Another idea that I want to remember is the problem of evil. The problem of evil is that if God is all loving and all powerful and evil exists, then this contradicts the existence of God. Saint Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas have tries to deal with evil by finding ways to prove and contradict God's existence. The two types of evil that exist are moral evil and physical evil. Moral evil is sin and is the result of human choices, and is only possibke because humans have free will. Physical evil is evil that cannot be controlled, this includes disasters and mental retardation. Many people blame God for these problems, but they need to understand that God is all loving and all powerful, so it is not his will for horrible things to happen. Evil is actually a privation of goodness, therefore it does not exist.
3. Another idea that I want to remember is the effects of Original Sin. Original Sin brings about concupiscence, wounded intellect,and death. Concupiscence means that even though all humans are called to do goodness, we are attracted toward evil. Wounded Intellect is our view of the world as the result of Original Sin, this includes we believe that Christianity is true, but if tempted it is easy to forget about our Faith. Our death is the result of Original Sin.
3) One image of that reminds you of the topic. Attribute, link, your source.
This is the Holocaust memorial and it reminds me about Harold Kushner's speech about "When Bad Things Happen to Good People"
4) One good question you should keep with your to ponder.
Am I ever questioning the God? Do I sometimes blame him for my problems and other problems when I know they are not the fault of him?
5) What should you try to do to make you a better person, a more faithful person, from this study?
To make myself a more faithful person after this study I need to try and get rid of any maps or tranzferences that I have still built in my head. I need to update those maps and be more open to the truth and try to avoid the shadows that my maps create for me.