Faith Journal #2
by Paul Marsek
The Human Condition
Summary of the key idea summarizing the major idea of the section.
Every human is born into the human condition. We are born into darkness, born in the cave. Sometimes truth hurts, and we encase the truth in illusions or euphemisms. We need to come into the light, but it hurts our eyes. We need to make the truth more comfortable by decieving ourselves. Pascal said that disire for happiness is part of our human condition. Sometimes, this leads us away from the truth. Buddha stated in his first noble truth, that suffering is at the very core of our existance. Another part of the human condition is death. When discussing the human condition, it brings up the problem of evil and concupiscence. Basically concupiscence is that we desire goodness, but we are attracted by evil. Because of this, and our free will we have original sin. Original sin, we are taught is the source of all evil in the world.
The three most important ideas I want to remember from this section.
1.) The first thing I would like to remember is George Carlin's routine on euphemisms. If a euphemism is meant to portray the same meaning as the original statement, then why use the euphemism? After reading George Carlin's opinions on this subject, I've realized that one reason euphemisms seem to be much less offensive, is because they dehumanize the phrase whose meaning they are trying to convey. When the English language changed from old people to senior citizens, Carlen says, "Bloodless. Lifeless. No pulse in one of them. A senior citizen." When the condition, known as shell shock became known as battle fatigue, it no longer sounds like a human affliction. According to Carlin,"Operational Exaustion: sounds like something that might happen to your car." Euphemisms not only make phrases sound nicer, they conceal the reality of the phrase. I know what stupid means, but if you were to ask me to give you the meaning of minimully exceptional, I couldn't. The meaning of a euphemism can become lost each time it changes.
2.)The second point I would like to remember is the problem of evil. When talking about evil, we must break it into two parts, moral evil and physical evil. Moral evil is sin, results of our negative decisions and actions. In theory, if human beings did not posess free will, moral evil would not exist. Physical evil, is natural disasters, death, birth defects, certain illnesses, and destruction caused not by humans but by an unknown source. When philosophers tried to answer this question, they came up with four parts, three of which can only be true at a given time. a.)God is omnibenevolent b.)God is all powerful c.)but evil exists d.)Therefor God isn't omnibenevolent or isn't all powerful or both. St. Augustine, characterized evil as the lack of or privation of goodness.
3.) The third thing I would like to remeber is the M. Scott Peck article about choosing your map of life. Everybody posesses a map of their life, but some never revise it. It is necessary to keep changing our map and our worldviews, because the world is always changing. If we dont change these worldviews nad just carry over expired ones, we are suffering from transference. Changing our maps, is challenging, and many people don't make these changes. Peck tells us that sometimes the truth is painful. When something is painful, we tend to avoid it. He says that only through discipline, can we revise our maps and overcome that pain.
key images:
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Question to ponder: Is evil nessicarily the lack of goodness?Evil is the opposite, of good, but is it the abscence of it? Like goodness, doesn't evil take actions or decisions and not just the lack of them?
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