by Robert Dominic
13 June 2013
Discussed Text: David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water"
It isn't overthinking if we try and analyze if something happens or occurs for a reason, or simply comes about as pure coincidence. In fact, choosing not to exercise this human capability to seek and define the occurrences around us is a dismissal of this capability, and a submission to our default setting of self-centeredness, that if an ordinary thing that occurs does not strike us immediately as intended for us, we assume it simply happened by pure coincidence.
In the matter of open-mindedness and what is morally right or wrong, the basic truth that is self-evident is that we will all look at one thing with different interpretations. That open-mindedness is not meant to establish what is universally and morally right or wrong, because it is not open-mindedness if the aim or goal is to define, and possibly usurp, what is established in our society and in our world as right and wrong. That does not promote the lessening of arrogance that David Foster Wallace sought to highlight in his commencement speech; if open-mindedness deviates from exploring the truths around us and aims to establish what is right and wrong, then open-mindedness becomes a declaration or a claim, not the intended process of choosing how to think and establishing the control and discipline of what truth and point-of-view to observe.
I do believe there is a certain order governing the events or circumstances which surround the lives of each individual, be it ordinary or extraordinary. And it is up to the person how he will interpret that certain experience. His own way of thinking will interpret a certain event or circumstance as ordinary or extraordinary and ,at the same time, not dismissing other possibilities connected with that experience viewed from a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteKathleen Gayle Ching Ph101 C
I think being open is really important as being open allows us to see what is otherwise unseen. It allows us to create meaning and gain meaning. It is choosing how to think and what to think of as being open is being open to different possibilities of life. It is deviating from our egocentric goals and looking at reality in a more humanistic point of view. Humanistic in a sense that we recognize that we live in a world filled with different people.
ReplyDeleteFrenchi Baluyot (A)