by Kate Bonamy
In class this morning, people started blurting out what they loved doing just cuz, or jouissance, for short. I was too embarrassed to tell them that I loved playing Pokémon up until now.
I am just amazed, because on the onset, it seemed that that video game is the very opposite of our lessons in Philosophy. For example, a Pokémon can be very easily totalized into knowing its stats, its type, and its nature. You literally have a list of what you need to know about the Pokémon. You see every trainer as an obstacle. You battle them so that you can get them out of your way. You take advantage of the experience points you gain from battling them. There is even an item called repel, the very opposite of our task to relate. You can very well know the ins and outs of this game.
I only shared a gameboy with my siblings, and none of my cousins played with us. So for the first time, I battled with another real human being, my classmate. I am really so glad I found a playmate! It was so different from playing with the trainers in the game. There is a sense of knowing the game too well, but unlike normal battles in the game, there is a very significant sense of surprise. I was surprised with the moves he taught his Pokémons and how he would strategize them. I did not even know who he had in his team.
I compared this to knowing a person too well, yet there will always be an element of surprise with that person. This means that no matter how close you are to someone, you will never be able to fully grasp the other. Clearly the surprise in my story is due to the fact that I am now playing with another thinking human being. But if a game is capable of giving us this element of surprise (technically, at least), then a relational human being is more than capable to do so. Just like in this game, I was the one who approached to battle, sometimes in life, we would have to reach out to experience the other. Unlike in the finite programs of Pokémon, we would always be able to see the infiniteness of another human being once we begin to look at more than what "we need to know about them" but actually acknowledge them as a human being entirely different from us.
"no matter how close you are to someone, you will never be able to fully grasp the other" no one ever will be able to know everything about the infinite other. Each of us have their own dimensions and own experiences. Your similarities have both made you relational beings and found out that there is more than him than meets the eye. A Good thing about being human is that there is always an element of surprise that we constantly experience. This is because we cannot truly grasp the other.
ReplyDeleteJoel Magturo
Ph 102 A
Yes, we may think we know another person fully, but the fact is, we really don’t. There will always be things we don’t know and when we do find out, we get surprised or even shocked. I think this is why best friends who have known each other for a long time still get into fights from time to time. Because we don’t know all of their thoughts, when a situation arises wherein we have conflicting opinions, we disagree. There will always be that element of surprise in our relationships. But, we must also keep in mind that we shouldn’t impose what we believe in to other people. We should respect their views and acknowledge their otherness.
ReplyDeleteMarika King
PH102 - A
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ReplyDeleteAs I remember from a lesson in psychology, a famous psychologist stated that, we only show a portion of who we really are, so totalizing a person just because of a single encounter isn't right. As you have written, a person is really lot more than what we see.
ReplyDeleteTrixia Tan
Ph102 C
I like how you related our lessons to playing pokemon because I also enjoyed playing this as a child. Though I am not exactly addicted to it, I can say that it truly was fun playing the game. I agree with what you said that if this game can constantly keep surprising us maybe through the cities or places you have to go through, the different people you meet, or the different trainers and pokemons you have to battle and capture, all the more that life or this reality can surprise us. I can relate this to levinas' idea of texts as texts allow us to gain insight on life and I think playing this game allowed to do exactly that because similar to this game, we also realize that through traveling, through the different people we meet, through the different battles we may face, life will always keep surprising us.
ReplyDeleteFrenchi Baluyot A
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees naman pokemon monster hoho!!!! There are actually surprises around us, imagine even a pokemon game that seemed like a leisure that we are doing everyday can bring to us this much surprise, not to mention about the other things that we seemed to miss out the meanings they want to reveal to us. It is just a matter that we've figured them out or not. There will be people that constantly doing things that we haven't done before, and things that we've not seen before. This is what life is about: the "AH!" moments.
ReplyDeleteWai Yiu So (A)
I think that seeing the infiniteness in the Other is something that takes time and effort to really see. Sometimes, we take the Other for granted or we see them as obstacles. Sometimes, we even interact with them just because we find it fun for us, we're just interacting with them because there's something in for us. We have to go beond this and realize that there are more important things, that they are more important.
ReplyDeleteMiguel Co
PH102 A
Very insightful, Kate! :D I also feel the same way whenever I play tetris battle, hearts, and chess versus a thinking human being. Sometimes I feel that I completely know the game and that my strategy will always win anytime I play with a computer, but then I realized that there is more to the game. Just like relating with other people, just when I thought that I knew what a person's next action would be because I thought I knew that person already, he or she surprises me with unpredictable decisions that he/she makes. So, I think we don't have the right to tell a person "kilala na kita" even to closest ones. We should be able to see beyond their actions, and realize that they cannot be grasped in our minds because they are others.
ReplyDeleteCarlo Nuñez
Ph102 A