Challenger Disaster
Topic of the Week: The Human Condition
The Human Condition is "the situation in which every human being finds himself or herself by virtue of being human, regardless of their sex, age, culture, religion, social status, or time period lived in." Theologians and philosophers such as Blaise Pascal and Erich Fromm often define this Condition as inconstancy, pain, anxiety, and separateness. We all experience these feelings at points in our life, and to battle them, we look to each other for comfort and we create distractions for ourselves. At the same time, we are oddly skilled at furthering our own suffering because of our defective nature. Hubris, concupiscence, and transference hurt us as people, yet we ourselves are the cause. The problem of the Human Condition is compounded by the fact that we rarely, if ever, accept that we are, as ever, in the cave.
Three ideas that I would like to remember:
1) Life Map- M. Scott Peck defines our world view as a map that we create to guide ourselves through life. As a child, we use our experiences to form our first map, our first set of values an ideas. As we grow, learn and gain new experience, we must alter these maps accordingly. Holding on to outdated views and beliefs is what Peck calls "transference." Transference can be debilitating. In the case of the computer technician, his abnormal childhood led him to create a map that kept him comfortably safe from the truth. Instead of confronting this, he kept his map until he was an adult, ruining his relationship with his wife and nearly loosing his children.
2) Right Speech- This experiment opened my eyes to how much, and more importantly why, I lie. Dr. Paul Eckman says that everyone lies for one basic reason, and that is to avoid punishment. Every reason to lie is some form of this primary motivation. An example from my own experiment would be when I perverted the facts of a story to portray myself in a better light. I did this to avoid judgement from my peers, a punishment in it's own right. So often we deceive ourselves by thinking that if we do not lie outright, then it doesn't count. But bending the truth, hiding the truth, or not telling the whole truth i just as bad as stating a false fact.
3) The Problem of Evil- St. Augustine of Hippo summarized the problem of evil like so:
A. If God is all-good, He would desire nothing but good.
B. If God is all-powerful, then He can have anything He wants.
C. But evil exists as well as good.
D. Therefore, either God is not all-powerful or not all-good, or possibly both.
This is a problem that all people of the world must cope with, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist or gnostic alike. St. Augustine presented an answer to his problem, and it is the best answer I have come across. This answer is the theory of "Evil as a Privation", which basically states that evil does not exist the way goodness does. Evil has no being, no entity, but rather evil is the lack of good, much the same way that darkness is the absence of light.
One question to ask myself: how can I break the habit of lying?
Lying is not a healthy habit to have, but I found myself lying repeatedly during this past week. How can i break a habit that I did not even notice adopting? Continuing the Right Speech Experiment, whether as a journal or in my mind, will help me stay focused on identifying my lies, analyzing them, and finally, stopping them. As Thomas Jefferson advises, I can act as if the whole world is watching.