THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

There is a very major difference between Plato and Sartre's works of literature.
Though they are both dialogues, in The Republic, Plato's companion, his brother, merely agrees with what Plato has to say. He is mostly an literary symbol to bounce thoughts off of, and not very involved in the conversation. Sartre does not put himself into his dialogue, and instead creates Estelle, Inez, and Garcin to carry out the extended metaphor. Like Plato, Sartre uses dialogue completely to describe the setting and actions of the characters. Plato does so in a more intellectual way, while Sartre focuses on the personal problems of his characters.
Plato implies that the limitations of our thinking is how closed we keep our minds, and only when we are open to new ideas can we become enlightened. We can not be taught Enlightenment though, only guided towards it. The Allegory of the Cave is a metaphor for humans to break out of the chains that hold us toward "only seeing the shadows." Knowledge is like the sun, bright and confusing, but eventually our eyes will adjust and we will be able to guide others towards our new-found knowledge.
I think that what Sartre is trying to get across in his dialogue of the three strangers trapped in Hell together is that Hell is not actually other people, it is how you feel about what those other people view you. The three characters would be at piece if it wasn't for their shallow fears. Garcin was too afraid of being thought a coward; Estelle was too afraid of not having a man's love. In the Hell that Sartre creates, Hell is really only the company of other people and your own thoughts. It is not physical torture or in any way spooky or terrifying. Like Plato, I believe that Sartre is trying to get a point across that when you open your mind and not let yourself be brought down by peer pressure or anyone else, you will truly reach your highest level of self.

NO EXIT: Reading Notes

- Valet brings Garcin into a room with Second Empire style furniture, though Garcin is expecting torture devices. After he realizes he isn't being tortured he asks for a toothbrush, which Valet finds amusing but normal.
#1- Yes, my own hell would probably be an empty room as well.
#2- Hell could really be anything without a break, no matter how much you usually enjoy it in normal doses.
- Garcin learns that he can no longer sleep and that also the lights never go out, which he doesn't react well too. He is a romantic thinker and speaks a lot about his thoughts.
#3- Not being able to sleep could be enough to be hell for me, honestly. Garcin first is restless and beats the doors before finally giving up and accepting his fate.
- Inez enters and assumes that Garcin is the torturer because he looks afraid, but Garcin refuses to believe he looks afraid. Next Estelle enters and begins to talk about how horrible the couches are. Garcin admits he would rather be alone. Inez is not polite.
- The three "absentees" talk about how they died. It seems that they can see what is happening in the lives of their families, all who are attending their funerals.
-They talk of why they would be put together, of which they are not sure. They all thought they would be with old friends or relatives. It seems that Inez is attracted to Estelle.
-Estelle claims that she does not know why she was sent here and they she lived a good life.
- Garcin pretends he has no idea either, and that maybe it was because he wrote a newpaper and was a pacifist in a war time.
- Inez says that is was no mistake and that they are all murderers, which upsets the other two. She also figures out that they were places together to torture each other. Garcin suggests that they don't talk then.
- Estelle becomes distraught when she realizes she has no way to see herself, so Inez offers to be her mirror. They argue on how Estelle really wants the attention of Garcin, who acts like he wants nothing to do with her.
- They all admit their true sins. Garcin abused his wife. Inez had an affair with her cousin's wife. Estelle killed her child and cheated on her husband.
- Garcin gives into Estelle but is more focused on the people he knew on Earth talking about him, and saying that he was a coward.
- Garcin kisses Estelle while Inez watches, screaming, but wants trust from her more then physical needs and her to say that he is not a coward, though he was killed for running away.
"Hell is other people"

ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE SONNET

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Is really an extended metaphor 

Of the way of thinking to which we are enslaved

Since outside the cave we are fearful to explore 

Only when a prisoner breaks off the chains

Can he take the first steps toward Enlightenment

He is at first met with confusion and pains

But this new world also brings delight to him 

Because he opened up his mind 

He can now see past the shadows

But the other prisoners remain blind

For they are stuck in their old values 

Only when they realize there is more to their reality

Will they become unshackled and see what the first man can see 

BRAIN WITH 14 LEGS

My group is reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. We don't formally have a certain number of pages that we plan to read each night, we just want to finish by the end of Thanksgiving break and in time to also complete to literary analysis on this book that we can receive for extra credit. Each member in my group has a certain task that we are to complete and post 1-3 blog posts about whenever we feel that we have enough material to make a post about. In my group I am focusing on the characters.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

1. According to Socrates, what does the Allegory of the Cave represent?
It represents  "the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world," or the journey from false beliefs to Enlightenment.  

2. What are the key elements in the imagery used in the allegory?
The Fire, the Cave, and the Shadows.

3. What are some things the allegory suggests about the process of enlightenment or education?
That some people's minds are more open to it, but you can not fill the mind but instead point it in the right direction toward Enlightenment.

4. What do the imagery of "shackles" and the "cave" suggest about the perspective of the cave dwellers or prisoners?
They have a negative connotation; the tone of the words suggests that they are trapped and uncomfortable. This suggests that the perspective of the cave prisoners is trapped, or chained, in their old way of thinking and that they can not easily escape their reality.

5. In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?
In a way the public education system does, as well as our own human insecurities. People are too afraid to stray from the track that society has taught them is "right" in fear of no longer fitting in with their peers. In my life I think it is the fear of being wrong that kind of "shackles my mind" in a way.

6. Compare the perspective of the freed prisoner with the cave prisoners?
The freed prisoner is now less comfortable in their view of the world because they are no longer sure if it is the "true" view. The cave prisoners are still in the darkness and do not have a fear of what lies outside their cave because their cave is all they know.

7. According to the allegory, lack of clarity or intellectual confusion can occur in two distinct ways or contexts. What are they?

8. According to the allegory, how do cave prisoners get free? What does this suggest about intellectual freedom?
The cave prisoners become free when they want to, which suggests that we are in control of our own education. We are only as constricted as we let ourselves believe we are.

9. The allegory presupposes that there is a distinction between appearances and reality. Do you agree? Why or why not?
I agree very much with this. You can see something to be a certain way when you are standing at a certain perspective but the way it truly is can be completely different. If you are trapped by a small level of experience, you will not be able to see things as they really are because you do not have the knowledge to analyze them, only to take them in.

10. If Socrates is incorrect in his assumption that there is a distinction between reality and appearances, what are the two alternative metaphysical assumptions?

HAMLET REMIX

SONNET REMIX

A POETIC INQUIRY

My Big Question, which I wrote over the summer, reads: "In the end, does good really triumph over evil? Obviously bad things happen every single day, but do those bad events really guide us toward an end that is ultimately just and fair? In the whole scheme of things, are horrible events, such as an innocent child dying or a wicked man getting off free from a crime he committed, really justified, or can life be ultimately unfair for some?"

Since writing that question in summer, I would have to say that the question that I would probably ask now wouldn't be 100% what I had written then, but I get the gist of what I was saying which is this: Is there really some supreme balance of good and evil, yin and yang, or is the world just unfair, and is karma not really there to punish the unfair deeds that slip by unnoticed? 

To find a sonnet that related to this question, I pretty much just went on Google and searched "Sonnets about good and evil" and then, after finding nothing, "Sonnets about fairness" which led me to a site, poemhunter.com, with a wide variety of poems relating to the battle between good and evil. I finally settled on Bring Back Fairness and Justice by Dr. John Celes, because I felt like it captured my question the best. 

I wish to cry but cannot do so now,

For things are moving in the stupid way;

My fight must go on; I’ve no other go

Till God shows me ahead a better day.

This place is ’cursed for none can settle things;

It needs a major reshuffle/ repair;

It needs persons with super-natural wings;

The remedy is making all things fair.

No place with corruption progresses much;

No place with injustice exists for long;

All hearts and minds and souls need soothing touch;

Hopelessness can’t be allowed to prolong.

When righteous men are not given right jobs,

The place will end up in unending sobs. 

Dr John Celes

This is a Shakespearean Sonnet. 

SONNET ANALYSIS #1

WE HANG TOGETHER

-Benjamin Franklin used this phrase during the signing of the Declaration of Independence
- "Strategic alliances": incomplete contact between two firms, where each partner has limited control; a type of interdependence
-  Charles Darwin described the struggle for existence as " a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture. " This vaguely means that to survive, firms should be more focused on attracting "moisture" then fighting each other.
- Interdependence depends on communication and trust
- The type of individualism taught in schools, "going it alone," is not actually very helpful in the real world, where you need to know how to work with others and compromise to get the job done. American culture puts a pedestal on people that "do it all for themselves," or heroes, but in reality that type of independence isn't necessary or helpful
- A collaborator must be able to justify his investment in a strategic relationship by promoting the benefits of it or creating fear about the ramifications of it.
- People can enter a strategic relationship out of self-interest, but in the relationship must be willing to do for the other party what the other party would do for them.

The Performative Utterances of Hamlet and Beyond

 When making a performative utterance, you do not just describe the world, but instead you create new facts in the world by speaking and influencing reality. This means that there is a difference between swearing to change something, and acknowledging that something needs to be changed. In Hamlet, one of Hamlet’s biggest dilemmas is that, though he is in control of his own language and very persuasive in what he says, he is not able to take the next step and physically complete the idea that he has brought into the world through his speech. Through performative utterances, it not only Hamlet that is able to find himself and changes his reality, through altering the plot and other characters, but also myself that can create a new sense of memory, expectation, and real- world results through my speech.

One of the most severe crisis’s in the play is Hamlet’s own search to find himself and understand the social climate in which he lives, after the unfair death of his father. When his father dies and his uncle Claudius takes the crown, his former ideas that power is rewarded to the just and honorable is attacked. He must watch his father, a man who he looked up to and loved, be overthrown by his uncle Claudius, a devious man who swoops in on the throne and Hamlet’s mother only a very short time after Hamlet’s father’s tragic death. Hamlet, in a sense, has an identity crisis. He knew his role for so long, as “Hamlet the prince” and “Hamlet the scholar,” that he begins to question his new roles in an aristocracy where murderers rule. This leads him to question his new status: “Hamlet the avenging son.” To figure out his new role in life, Hamlet begins playing someone that is crazed, and under this disguise he is able to navigate his own true identity by throwing off questions by appearing unable to answer them. It in his crazed persona that he is able to trick his parents and friends by playing off his madness by implying it was brought on by love, instead of his father’s death, through letters and declarations of love to Ophelia.  

But also in Hamlet’s speech he is able to change the reality of his own situation. But sometimes this is where his intentions go awry. When he learns of how his father truly died, from his father’s ghost who is not at rest, he is unable to make a true statement that he means to avenge his father. He only actually swears that he realizes what has happened and what he has to do. This is a performative utterance in the sense that he creates an idea that he seeks revenge that the audience believes in, but he is not actually tied by his word to completely this act. The power of Hamlet’s words is his shield. While talking with the players, he makes it very obvious what he finds to be good acting, and therefore the masks he puts on himself when he wants to appear crazy. Before the play, he gives a talk to the players, saying to make sure not to overact by using a “naturalistic style” when speaking, not use “overly showy gestures,” and in general to “acquire and beget a temperance that may give [your passion] smoothness" (3.2.7-8). It is in this scene that it becomes clear Hamlet’s madness is truly an act and that the death of his father has not made him crazy and blood-thirsty, though sometimes to the audience he may appear this way, and not at all calculating and in control of his emotions like he really is.

In a way similar to Hamlet, I am affected by my own self-overhearing. Thoughts are a framework to my beliefs and how I will act, but it my speech and the statements I make that will affect my reality. Unlike Hamlet, when I make a performative utterance I can truly carry out the facts I have brought into the world by speaking because my self-overhearing comes from ideas that are already there. In a way Hamlet was double acting; he was a character playing a character while I am not. Hamlet, through self-overhearing, was also self- creating, while my utterances are self- revelation. When Hamlet goes into his soliloquy of “to be or not to be” he is self-creating a character that is questioning whether he should continue to live, while I am merely completing lines that don’t at all define how I actually feel. With performative utterances, I am able to in a way convince myself and others around me of how I may feel or even be by calling “facts” into the world and then continuing to make these statements reality.

So forth, this is the greatest difference between the performative utterances of Hamlet and myself. Hamlet is creating a person through his thoughts, which he speaks out loud, by introducing a character to the audience. I can change my reality through self- revelation, and, as a person in complete control of my actions and the way I want to be interpreted, I can carry through with these utterances, changing my memory, expectation, and real-world results.