Vern's Car

The first thing that came to mind when I read this scenario concerning Vern’s Volvo being slowly taken apart and replaced piece by piece is the story of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Physically, almost every part that was once Anakin has been discarded and replaced with the mechanical components of Darth Vader. But as we see at the end of Episode VI when “Darth Vader” saves his son Luke, the emotional entity of Anakin has always been there, simply buried under a physical monstrosity who was put under a lot of emotional stress in his younger years. Even though Vern’s current Volvo is in no way a physical monstrosity, I think the same rules apply.

The car may have been replaced bit by bit over the course of twenty years, but the intrinsic value of the car for Vern has always remained. The idea of the Volvo being Vern’s is what really matters. From Vern’s perspective, the car is something that he’s been through a lot with. If you have a car for twenty years, chances are good that you will grow attached to it. Vern’s attachment to the car is surely what drove him to repair it so many times in the first place. He made a conscious effort to keep his car in working order because it has that innate value to him. Telling Vern that his real Volvo is the hunk of parts sitting in Grace’s garage would probably offend him. In fact, the process of repair and replacement that the car has been through adds to the intrinsic value of the car.

If Grace were to take all of the parts that she collected during the years of repair she did for Vern’s Volvo and create a functioning vehicle from it, that car could not be considered Vern’s. It would only be a sum of parts collected over time. Vern did not experience any part of his life with that particular form of the car. The repaired form of the car that he currently owns is the only one that could actually be considered his. This is because in those twenty years of ownership, even though he made the conscious effort to repair and replace what is necessary, he always held on to the same idea of the car, which has innate value to him. This once again leads me to the comparison between the Volvo and Anakin Skywalker. Even though Darth Vader was replaced part by part thanks to his scars from various egregious deeds, the emotionally troubled but true Anakin Skywalker has always been under the surface. If someone found all the “spare parts” of Anakin Skywalker (which would be rather disturbing) and reanimated some sort of separate version of him, it would not be Anakin because no one could recreate the emotional journey, from cocky pod-racing kid to fratricidal emotional wreck, and make it a part of the reanimated Anakin.

Consider even the history of humanity applied to this logic. People born, live, and eventually die. The people that are around today are a completely separate group of individuals from the people that were around hundreds of years ago, but we are still considered the collective of humanity. Even though each individual has died and been “replaced” it is our history which makes us humanity, which is an idea that has stuck with us since the rise of civilization. No one would ever dare to rename “humanity” simply based on the logic that we are not the same group of individuals that we were a few centuries ago.

The last thing I have to get off my chest is that, from a scientific perspective (which I know that not everybody finds fascinating, but I am obliged as a “science person” to point out), our physical entities are not the same physical entities that we remember from years ago. Atoms and molecules move from place to place and are constantly replacing each other. For example, other water molecules have replaced the water molecules that composed the majority of our bodies as children. That same rule applies to the other atoms and molecules in our bodies. We may each be a constantly changing set of matter, but we still consider ourselves the same people that we were when we were younger. This is because we hold the idea of ourselves as near and dear. Vern’s car may have been reconstructed into a different physical entity over time, but Vern’s concept of his car over time has remained constant and near and dear to Vern.

Know Thyself

In a world where everybody experiences a heavy dose of social influence on a daily basis, it’s hard to even define what it means to know oneself. I would imagine that knowing me would have something to do with judging my persona in an unbiased manner and knowing exactly what I search for in life. But it’s difficult to do that because I, along with probably everybody else, have some sort of delusion about myself, even if it is only to a minor extent. In Layman’s terms, I have a better opinion about myself than what the truth reveals, but that’s natural. And because I have that loftier opinion about myself, I could have difficulty in my search for true happiness. In fact, I think that the most important benefit of truly knowing oneself would be being able to make decisions in life based on what really matters to that person. Whether it’s in school, on Facebook, or on the Iowa Caucuses flickering on CNN a few feet away from me, society has made it pretty obvious that a lot of people actually have no idea about what’s good for them. It’s a shame, because if people actually knew themselves and what their real goal in life was, their life and the life of those around them would be much easier.

I’ve gradually noticed that my greatest weakness is my tendency to over-dramatize a lot of aspects and events in my life, especially during these recent years in high school. I try to take it easy more often, but I find some kind of strange enjoyment in making a big deal out of a lot of situations that don’t deserve to be. I’m not really sure why. It’s nothing out of control or over the top (I don’t pretend my life is some sort of play or reality show) but I do like stressing the importance of certain parts of life more than is necessary. Then again, I surely can’t be the only one who does that. The most unfortunate result of dramatizing would be that everything became very important in some artificial way and what really does matter gets lost in that sea of dramatic confusion. That goes back to where knowing oneself is determined by what path you ultimately take in life. If everything is considered of the utmost importance, than the truly significant parts of life get degraded. Although, I am glad that recently, especially as a senior, I’ve come to accept that life doesn’t always go my way and the best thing to do is just accept it. I can’t sweat the small stuff. I hope this realization of mine carries into college and permanently replaces my previous tendencies of over-dramatization.

I can’t really say what my best quality is, but one facet of my personality that I’ve always liked having is my ability to make people, especially my closest friends, feel better. Because I recognize how seriously I sometimes take life I use that knowledge to comfort people who make the same mistake by telling them how things are almost always bound to get better. Just because life is difficult at that moment doesn’t mean that it’s going to suck forever. People that get caught up in what essentially are their delusions lose track of what is ultimately best for their well-being. I think I do a pretty good job at helping people realize those inconsistencies and through that help them off the ground when they slip on any unstable path they might’ve been attempting to get across. I don’t really like being arrogant about it, but the truth is that many of friends have come up to me and thanked me for helping them out and comforting them in their time of need. I always respond with “My pleasure”; even though I know it is a pretty cliché response, I mean it. Nothing makes me happier than to see those closest to me be happy.

I think the main reason it’s so difficult to judge myself like this is because I and people in general really do have some sort of notion where we hold ourselves well above the average. But I think it’s only natural. The human brain may be rigged through the process of natural selection to think in such a way that supplies us with sufficient confidence to survive in our environment. And in the modern environment we dwell in, social superiority is essential. I may find it difficult to express my weaknesses to other people because I don’t want to admit they’re true. On the other hand, I may be uncomfortable conveying my strengths to other people because I don’t want to come across as arrogant. I really think that deep down everybody has a pretty defined sense of self, it’s just the different aspects of it that they choose to share with other people distort that sense of self to a certain extent. Some people’s sense of self gets distorted beyond recognition or repair, and that’s thanks to the enormous amount of social influence that we get bombarded with in almost every waking minute of life.

Eden is that old-fashioned House

                The poem tells of a cozy home where we dwell in ignorant bliss. We spend our time in such a magnificent place without realizing how good we feel there. Only in retrospect do we recognize the joy that came with living there. In the fable of Genesis, Adam and Eve live in Eden, where they spend what is essentially a mindless life enjoying the wonders that God has given them. Both Adam and Eve ultimately end up eating from forbidden tree, which grants them the knowledge to distinguish between good and evil. They are, in Layman’s terms, set out into the “real” world. Emily’ Dickinson’s poem deals with the same matter. We dwell in our individual ”Edens” until the time comes where we are forced to leave. We look back at that Eden with much longing. Unfortunately, even if we do eventually return to it, we don’t have the same emotions towards it because we are no longer in that previous state of mind.

                My situation is very similar to that of Adam and Eve’s because in leaving my home and my parents for college, I am becoming a more independent and, presumably, more conscious being. I’m being thrown into a world where I don’t have too much experience and it’s up to me to make what I can out of it. Just like God influencing Adam and Eve, my parents will still be helping me along when I’m out of the house, but it will be very different from when I was a public school student who came back to his cozy home every single day. I know that right now my home is what I’m used to every day, but when I’m sitting in some far away dormitory there is no doubt that I will be looking back on simple things like watching television with my parents or on the day that I left home to continue my life in a different setting. Leaving for college will undoubtedly be a surreal experience. And when I come back home for short amounts of time, it just won’t be the same as when I spent every day in it.

                What I fear most about returning home from college is the lack of a certain warm feeling that I know is going to missing when I do return. When I think of my early childhood years when I lived in Derby there is a certain exuberance about that time in life that is lacking in my current life. I believe that college will be the same way. When I return to my comfortable little home in Bethany, it just won’t be the same as when I was still just a naive brat in high school. I returned to my home in Derby on one occasion a while after I moved to Bethany and I felt as if a ghost of an emotion was haunting my every step through those empty rooms where I first learned how to perceive the world. Maybe coming home from college will be different though. Maybe I’ll be overcome with joy and feel the same way I do now. I’m just going to have to wait and see.

I Wish Some Had Told Me…

Most of the advice I’ve been given during my seventeen years has been all but completely forgotten. The morals I live by usually correspond to past experiences, how I reacted to them, and the lessons that I learned from them. To be honest, I haven’t really had a wide variety of what would be considered wise things said to me. Maybe it’s because I’m still so young. But the one piece of advice that I am sure will stick with me for the rest of my life was something my mother told me. I was under a lot of stress from school, among other things, and when she realized this she simply said, “Do what you have to do - it’ll all turn out somehow.” At first it seemed to me to be such an obvious and simple statement. But the more I think about it, the more meaning it has. When something is important to me, I just have to do what I can to make something happen. But I also have to remember that no matter what I do, there will always be an end result; it’ll turn it somehow. Knowing that there will eventually be an end to certain challenges is comforting. Even if the result ends up being slightly undesirable, I have to put it behind me and just keep on trucking.

At the beginning of my junior year I attempted to expand my horizons a bit. I decided to take an Honors Pre-Calculus course even though I took Level One math for the previous two years and my sophomore year teacher recommended me for Level One. I thought, “Hey, if I just put a decent amount of work into it, chances are I’ll do just fine.” Oh boy was I wrong. From the get-go I started falling behind. The vast majority of my fellow students were completely adjusted to fast-paced mathematics from their previous year, and even some of them had trouble with the completely foreign math known as Trigonometry that was being introduced to us. This was a form of abstract math that was completely unknown to me and I quickly realized that I chose the wrong year to move up a level. I was just barely passing when I thought of what my mother told me: “Do what you have to do - it’ll all turn out somehow.” What I had to do was drop back down to Level One. I recognized that I overestimated myself, and I couldn’t drag that flaw throughout the entire year. Even though it would feel like defeat, what I was really doing was saving myself. The week that I strolled into Level One was the week that I started getting A’s and I enjoyed the subject infinitely more (OK, maybe not infinitely more, but a value approaching infinity). I liked the friends I had in the class and I thought Mr. Barretta was a cool a teacher, but my net sum of happiness was going to be greater at an easier level. I did what I had to do. Maybe it wasn’t an optimal outcome, but it was an outcome nonetheless, and I was happy about it.

Utnapishtim Replies

Utnapishtim is telling Gilgamesh that he has to accept the fact that he is a mortal and is bound to die eventually. Everywhere we look – books, poems, plays, movies, etc. – death is a prominent theme. It seems as if everywhere we look death is mentioned, even though the majority of people look at it as one of the worst aspects of life. Even in Gilgamesh, he takes so many risks just for a quest to gain immortality. Only after he does not succeed in this mission does he realize that even though he will die, people will always remember him. After all, we’re still talking about him thousands of years after he was around. People remember Gilgamesh and people like him, fictional or not, because he was a significant influence during his life. He made the best out of the years he had on Earth. The reason people get up and go about their business is because they know their time is limited; they should make the best out of what they have. In fact, I believe that if people were immortal, they would be less likely to make the best out of the time they have. People would put things off because they knew they had and eternity to get what they want, and eternity is a long time. Humans create a sense of order and eternal life by making an impact on others while they are alive. Even though William Shakespeare is long gone, his works will be remembered forever. For the rest of our history, the names Romeo and Juliet will always have remarkable significance. Isaac Newton may have constructed his theories concerning the physics of celestial bodies hundreds of years ago, but they are prominent in modern physics and will always be known for revolutionizing our view of the cosmos. Human beings eventually die, but every positive impact they made in the time they spent on Earth will live forever.

What is a Hero?

            I believe that the “heroes” from Star Wars, the Odyssey, Beowulf, etc. should actually not be considered heroes. The concept of heroism should be more about individualism and achievement than about strength and bravery. Some naïve elementary school kid can call Luke Skywalker a hero, but a real hero could be defined more accurately as what Oprah would be to an impoverished African-American girl. As opposed to saving a science fictional galaxy, the young black girl sees in someone like Oprah Winfrey a chance at success in life regardless of race, gender, or economic status. A hero isn’t someone who can keep the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis; a hero is a person who impacts someone’s life on a personal level. When I think of a hero, I think of someone who makes me feel better about myself and helps me live life to the fullest. A hero should serve as an example of an open-minded and compassionate individual, not just a guy with a long sword and shiny armor who knows how to fight. Women can be heroes just as well as men. As stated before, Oprah Winfrey is a potential heroine to many. There are just as many women who are heroic, like Eva Perón and Marie Curie among others. The main reason examples like Star Wars or Indiana Jones don’t have any heroines is, as I mentioned, that those protagonists aren’t really heroes. They don’t have any personal impacts on people, they just know how to use a lightsaber or whip. Also, most of the stories like that are written by men, about men, for the entertainment of men. That usually has to do with the author wanting particular characters to be more like them. Then again, there are some heroic female figures in certain fantasy tales, like Princess Leia from Star Wars.

            Humans don’t necessarily need heroes, but, for many, they can be useful. Many people think of their heroes when they try to summon courage. They think “Oh, one day I can be like this person and surely I’ll get past the troubles I am currently experiencing”, and that gives them comfort. The quote "Unhappy the land that needs heroes” I believe is very pessimistic. It seems as if Mr. Brecht believes that folks in a dire predicament are the only ones in need of the hope given by heroes, but that’s not true. Heroes have intrinsic value. It is the idea of someone that gives people comfort. No matter how successful someone is in life, they have someone who they believe is an example of a good human being, and they hope that they could be a hero like that to someone at some point in their lives.