Absurdist Commencement Address

It has been 13 long years since you first walked through the doors of your elementary school and began the journey that we call education. For those next 13 years, school was your constant companion, an escape for some and a nuisance for others. 4745 days has it been since you, the class of 2013, first conceived of each other as classmates. 

113880 hours have you now completed of on your odyssey. How many of those were spent bickering in the halls,, browsing the internet, or carefully ignoring a teacher’s lecture.

832800 minutes, which were leading towards this day have now passed. And we are left with a single question, Why? What purpose has this day, for which so many preparations have been taken? What reason is there for this celebration, which you and your families have all gathered.

As much as you may hope, it doesn't have any at all.

Every second, of every minute, of every day, there is an unfathomable amount of horror and suffering for which most of us are oblivious. While we sit here, sheltered in an air conditioned auditorium, people have been born and people have died. Wars has caused the death of hundreds. There are droughts, famine, thirst, natural disasters and genocide. Helpless children are killed by virus, disease, and epidemics. In the time we’ve sat here entire species have risen up while others are silenced forever. While we sit here, there is intolerable suffering, Yet this arbitrary ending of four years of schooling is what we focus on.

In comparison, all these events, no matter their meaningfulness or distinction, are equally nothing but a blink of the eye in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. In fact, humans themselves have been little more than a flicker; the species Homo sapien have survived for only 90,000 years. If everything goes right, those of you in the audience will experience 90 years or so of life, or in other terms two hundred millionths of a percent of the time in which Earth has existed. And this is before we take into consideration the 13 billion year age of the universe. Our lives are fleeting, miniscule amounts of time and yet we choose to spend it here. We, frankly, don’t have time.

It may have occurred to a few of you that this is a bit harsh; that I am undermining the accomplishments of these students. Regardless, my words are not without reason. The goal of the education they are currently receiving is to prepare them for their coming life. This preparation would be incomplete without an understanding of what life really means. Allow me to elaborate:

Simply put, it has no meaning. 

Since the dawn of time, humans have focused intently on finding reasons why this is not true. The emptiness and hollowness of life proves to be a torturous realisation to many of us and we create delusions to distract ourselves from it. There is no better evidence for this then from the geocentric view that was commonly held for most of our history. We placed ourselves at the center of the universe because that is where the most important object should reside. It was not until the efforts of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton that this view was overturned (Gaarder). Even with their evidence, the heliocentric theory was said to “pervert the course of nature” by John Calvin. It was met with resistance every step of the way. Again, it was our narcissistic view that led us to believe that humans were a higher class of beings, separate from the animals which have no purpose in life. We were important because we were different; different, that is, until Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution turned this notion on it’s head (Gaarder). He said that were not separate from the animals but of the same family. It goes without saying that this too was met with resistance. 

The point in all of this is not to dishearten you or tell you that life is not worth living. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. In spite of the nihilistic nature of life proposed by Kierkegaard, you still have the potential to make life worth living (Wolff). Of the little time you have, you must make the most of it. Steve Jobs used to say that every morning he would look himself in the mirror and ask ”If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” This is a question we must all ask ourselves. If you were to die tomorrow, would you watch TV or browse the internet today? Would you sit at a tedious job with no future? If the answer is no then you realize where change must be made. Even this ceremony must come into question. You chose to sit here and celebrate these students’ accomplishments and waste precious time while  you could have gone out into the world and exercise their knowledge. The meaninglessness of life, ironically, gives us reason to go out and experience the world. With so little time, you are almost forced to go out and have an adventure; sitting on the couch is no longer an option. the frivolity of life makes us focus on what is really important to us. Be that family, friends, or self-discovery. By realizing the absurd nature of the world, we can truly live our lives to the fullest.

Our existence takes up an insignificant amount of time and space to the world. You can sit here and waste your only life with useless events that no one enjoys, but ultimately you will one day die and dissolve into the nothingness that you were before birth. The universe will not care and, ironically, you will never know how wrong you were. And furthermore, what was that life spent doing? For many of you, it will be spent behind a desk working a nine to five job that is neither challenging nor interesting. A job that only further emphasises the meaninglessness of your life on this planet. It defines a life that is not worth living. A life that made no difference and is quickly forgotten by the world. I beg you to learn from this and change this. The conservative and most “realistic” path in life is not the one worth living. I leave you with these words, “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not where ships belong.” I urge you; stray from the routine of port and experience the ocean that is life.


Thank you and congratulations to the graduating class of 2013.

The Ethics of the Justice System

        As I was driving home from a recent track meet of mine and interesting story was played on NPR. The story was about the disparity between the death of a victim and the murderer's death. In the case presented, the victim was brutally murdered in a road side ditch after suffering in pain for hours while the murderer was silently and respectfully killed in his sleep. The point was that we give the criminal too much respect in a sense and that they should be treated as they treated their victims.

        I, for one, completely disagree with this sentiment. The idea that the Justice System's purpose is not ruling out justice as the name implies, but instead revenge is an abhorrent stance. By promoting the killing of violent criminals they have reduced themselves to the level of those they are committing. The idea that you become less of a human just because of an action is deeply immoral. This only furthers the idea that humanity is an attributed characteristic, which only leads to the creation of a subclass of humans. No one in there right mind would openly decry that humans not all equal, yet anyone who believes in revenge towards criminals is saying exactly the same thing (this may be a strawman or red herring; I'd appreciate a correction).

        This brings me to my second point. If the justice system is not in the business of revenge, what is it in the business of? The obvious answer would be correction and you would be right. But, in this lies the problem with capital punishment; it doesn't correct anything, it simply redacts the problem. The criminal is never given a chance to defend themselves or show how they've changed. I understand some will probably never change but is that reason enough not to try? Regardless, the fact that some criminals will not change is only evidence that further treatment is required. Killing the criminal is only a sign of laziness on the system. I, for one, would rather not be a part of a society that would rather take the easy route instead of a path thats bound to get results.

        We must not forget that criminals, above all else, are human. When we try an strip this from them we act immorally and unethically. These are terms I would rather not be attributed to a judicial system that represents me.

Why the Tenet of Abstinince is Morally Perverted

        My family is extremely religious and until a few years ago I was too. I've been to church every Sunday of my life and gone to Sunday school for most of that time. During the latter end of those classes, in my teen years, ever single lesson seemed to be focused on a single topic: virginity. Every single Sunday night my classmates and I were told that the best thing we can do for our future husbands and wives(as if they were already chosen for us and our free will meant nothing, but I digress) was to maintain our chastity and be abstinent. I didn't think much of it at the time but mostly because I had never been put in a position were my "faith" was tested. Later, when I began to question my faith, I came back to this lesson and decided to look into it further.

        Its funny how this tenet is accepted almost universally among religious people without a seconds though to its deeper purpose. Its yet another example of the ignorance necessary of religious believe but the point of this post isn't to bash religion that openly. To simplify the dogma it would be that the best thing you can give to your future love if your body. Now this seems utterly ridiculous to me. The best thing my future wife can give me is not her unbroken hymen, that is absurd. What strikes me as odd is that the Christianity and most other religions are openly against the objectionable of people but that is exactly what they have done here. Your future wife or husband is only as good as the condition of their body, a physical object. Lets just forget about the life they have lived; it is all about their body according to the church. To any rational person, the best thing a spouse can give is unconditional love, never-mind what else they have done in their life.

        I'm just going to note here at the end that marriage can not only be based on mental and emotional compatibility. Physical compatibility is just as big of a component. I would talk about it further but i don't feel educated enough in the subject to get into it. So please take this with a grain of salt, after all I'm only 18, I'm not some expert of marriage or sexuality. Anyway, thanks for reading.

-Nate

Altruism for the Betterment of Humanity

The most common source of unethical behavior in the modern world is self-interest. We, as individuals, tend to believe that our interests are worth more than those of others. This makes sense, given that our own needs and wants are evident to us, but the needs and wants of others are slightly harder to understand. What this has given us is a society whose main focus is the individual and the improvement of said individual. This is, in fact, a backwards way of living. Our priority must be the advancement of humanity; improvement of the individual will come as a result.

Now before we can assert that improving society is of the utmost priority, we must understand how the individual can help society. In this case one can perceive altruism as the basis of improving human culture. It is no wonder then that kin selection and reciprocal altruism are all necessary to the evolution of the human race. Humans, as it turns out, are “a species whose members are so pathetically helpless,” and as such require help from each other. We see evidence of this in humanity’s antiquity, when we congregated together and did what was best for the group. For our ancestors, altruism was not a choice but a necessity. Roko Belic states in his documentary “Happy” that happiness is an evolutionary reward for cooperation as evident by the fact that people who lead virtuous life have the highest overall well being. We see parallels to this idea in the ancient greek’s word eudaimonia. Usually translated as happiness, it is actually correctly translated as human flourishing. Both Belic and the greeks saw the affinity between our everyday lives and morality. How can we ignore the human trait that has allowed us to propagate into the most dominant species on Earth?

A simple look around will show you that the human race has changed. It is no longer a struggle to survive. Now the question here is how this change came about? How did we go from a heavily altruistic culture to a heavily materialistic culture? This change is likely due to population size. In primordial humans’ age, the group size was small; they could possible know everyone in your assembly. It is easy to assume you are more likely to help someone you know than someone you don’t. This is merely Richard Dawkins's idea of kin selection in action. Over time our population size grew while our kin size stayed the same and as a result overall altruism decreased. Now what did this change cause? The difference is how we judge our own lives. If you asked your ancestor how his life was going, “you are asking him to make a moral evaluation of his life” says Matthew Pianalto. In essence he would answer with how good he had been to his fellow man. Ask the same question to a present day individual and they will most likely answer with how well they are satisfying their wants (Pianalto 8). So we can now see that the only change in the human species is a change in thinking. Does this necessarily constitute a new way of acting? No, our goals and purposes in life are still the same yet now we insist on improving the individual. There is no good reason for this.

We see repercussions of this self-centered culture everywhere. Ask anyone what constitutes a good life and they will answer “happiness.” Because of our culture’s fascination with materialism, one can assert that society believes monetary worth is a quantitative measure of happiness. If self-improvement is in fact the right way to go about living, then we should see a direct correlation between monetary worth and happiness. It turns out, though, the opposite is true. The United States ranks #1 in wealth yet scored 12th in life satisfaction. Denmark, ranked 16th in wealth, scored 1st in life satisfaction. What this shows us is the amount of expendable income accumulated after basic needs are provided for correlates indirectly with happiness. Money, and to a greater extent materialism, is only a fraction of happiness. The rest of of your life should be focused on leading a virtuous life.  If this is true then we must assume, as Pianalto says, that “ scores of people who are failing to live up to the standards of moral and intellectual excellence are not leading happy lives.” I believe this is true, unfortunately.

Ask anyone and they will answer that our culture appears to be backwards. As a species who survives on nature, began in nature, and is still a part of nature, we have strived long and hard to distance ourselves from it. Even what makes us human, our human nature, we have long sought to separate ourselves from. We have romanticised this past as if ancient humans knew something we didn’t. This assumption, though, is right. What our ancestors knew was that we needed to work together to survive, and while we need not try hard to survive, our goals must remain the same. It seems odd that we would not want to cooperate with each other; we are all the help we are ever going to get.

Happiness

It is interesting to me that when ever a discussion on happiness arises, two points are always brought up. The first is almost always stated as "Happiness is different for everyone," while the second is always a restatement of the phrase "Money can't buy happiness." What strikes me as interesting is that no one understands the logical fallacy presented here. How can we state that we don't know everything about happiness but in an instant sweep secular happiness off the table. If one was to take a survey of the homeless in America, I assume the results would be heavily shifted to the unhappy. What these people are saying is that its the homeless man's fault for being unhappy. Getting him back on his feet won't make him happy, he just needs to change the way he thinks. This is a backwards way of thinking and anyone who believes it is being pretencion.

This idea, Real Happiness vs. False Happiness, is in essence a form of elitism. It is one group of people feeling superior to another because they are "happy" without the advantage of money. I find it akin to summiting your local hill without bottled oxygen and considering it a victory.

Happiness itself is a private experience and as such any study of it is anecdotal at best. To each his own, yeah?

-Nate

A Note on the Style of My Posts

I would just like to point out that most of my post on this page will be in the form of a Montaigne essais. A complete description can be be found here. If you don't want to read that a tl;dr would be a roughly page length writing that is straight from the authors thoughts.