My 'essay'
I'm usually a teacher's pet.
Usually.
But there's this ONE CLASS this semester that I cannot STAND. I've been spoiled in my previous philosophy classes, so I thought that this would be awesome on the merit of being a philosophy class.
It turns out that "Spiritual Awareness" is...product placement. We watch advertisements about spiritual retreats, and our 'textbooks' are just a bunch of spiritual/self-help books that landed on a bestseller or Oprah's book club. I am not kidding.
Sooooo...at the 'open ended' essay that I was assigned, I decided that maybe a little snarky payback was in order.
I submitted a Hetalia fanfiction.
I present to you:
En Saga om Kärleken, Dumhet, och Döden (men inte Döden, mer om Dumhet)
One must find it in their heart to forgive the composer of this piece for dallying closer to narrative than the traditional format of an essay. As requested, this work shall consist of five paragraphs, no more, no less, and shall have a persuasive leaning in dealing with the matter at hand, for surely one knows that hypothetical situations can prove to form a most persuasive argument. The essay shall also begin with this, and introduction, three supports, and conclude with a conclusion. Gleefully, the writer now presents the subject and conflict, which is the intertwining of that which has been defined by the high text of the classroom as “ego” and that which has many names but is never truly captured by human tongues, unless perhaps the tongues are locking, which one refers to as love. The dramatis personae for this hypothetical situation is thankfully brief, for there is but Alfred, a brash young American, his beloved Ivan, his endearing if not intimidating Russian lover, and Arthur a rather bitter and sardonic Brit who is both Alfred’s friend and Ivan’s secret rival. Of course, in the interest of having a persuasive essay there must be a claim to be proven, and here is the hypothesis, other that when bored to near tears a student will turn in the most shameless homework assignments: unchecked emotion will become saturated in “ego” and the desire for wanton self fulfillment, and neglect of emotion will lead to despair, but emotion that is acknowledged and dealt with logically will allow one to become aware and free from ego and drama, such as our Glorious Leader Eckhart Tolle would have us live.
In the first case, our protagonist, Arthur, follows his emotions blindly. He recognizes that making Alfred his has become his sole goal in this lifetime, and that he believes that by winning him over, all of his life will be blissful and complete. But every day, he sees Alfred and Ivan so deliriously happy together, and he knows that they will likely never break up on their own accord. Since Alfred has no longer become a friend or even a regular person but an objective to Arthur, Ivan becomes a sub-human obstacle that is not to be regarded or respected, but rather dealt-with in one way or another. The happiness that Alfred feels is in all ways inferior to the happiness he will feel once he has a relationship with Arthur- after all, they had been the best of friends long before Ivan and Alfred had ever met! In the painfully illogical ‘logic’ of the obsessed, this is all the justification Arthur needs to be able to pursue Alfred with abandon, and claim him as ‘rightfully his’. Of course, ego is hard at work in the mind of this poor fellow- his friend’s feelings are only regarded in the realm of his fantasy, that Alfred must secretly be unhappy or willing to break up with Ivan because Arthur’s illusion of a perfect life is dependent on Alfred not being together with his boyfriend but, rather, with Arthur. Ivan, the poor dear, is completely demonized because, as the writer has stated, his emotions only matter in the context of getting him angry or hurt enough to leave Alfred. Arthur plans this operation carefully; intimidating Ivan is quite out of the question because Ivan is actually rather well built and looks like he could bench-press Arthur’s equivalent weight. Convincing Alfred to leave Ivan seems much more doable- the loveable git trusts Arthur a great deal. So he goes about a process of starting a game of ‘he-said-she-said’ and maybe managed to snap few ‘scandalous’ photos of Ivan bumping into his ex, Toris, and them having lunch together in order to make Alfred doubt his relationship with Ivan. However, what Arthur didn’t expect was the idea that their relationship was actually built upon, of all things, trust and understanding! The lies get traced back to Arthur, a great deal of shit hits a high-powered fan, and Alfred becomes very angry with Arthur and seeks comfort from his beloved boyfriend. Arthur weeps at his misfortune and moves on to the next paragraph.
In this next scene, rather supporting paragraph, Arthur has become full of despair, because Alfred does not and will not ever love him the way he wants to be loved. Instead, Ivan and Alfred will remain together forever: they’ll share a flat and go out on weekends and argue about trifles but then kiss and make up as loving couples are wont to do. They will possibly even be wed if homosexuals were to be considered as human beings, equal in all respects to heterosexuals, and therefore deserving of basic human rights in countries worldwide and not just in Canada and parts of Scandinavia (apologies for the digression). Regardless, poor Arthur, having spent all this time just wanting to be loved by someone to not only lose any chance with him, but also possibly their beloved friendship, has decided that now he wants to go to the other extreme- to renounce emotion altogether, and close himself off from everyone and everything around him. He shuts himself in his home and does nothing but what is necessary. He works from home anyway, so he doesn’t have to deal with people. He pays his bills, shops when he needs to, works obsessively, drinks even more, and takes up knitting to make the days go by a little faster. Everything that needs to be done, he does by his own hand, and when that doesn’t work any mildly attractive bar floozy will do. But Arthur failed to understand that there is no way to effectively shun all emotions- they’re going to be there whether one accepts them or not, and therefore he is not accomplishing what he had first set out to do- instead of feeling nothing, he feels progressively worse. Isolation in this sense becomes more of a self-inflicted punishment than an actual escape from anything. Instead of feeling better about his situation of being alone and feeling unloved, he feels even more like having a loving partner would make his life much better. Since not having a loving partner had led him into his situation, surely having one would take him out of it, which of course begs the question of whether or not Arthur genuinely loved Alfred, or if he seemed to be the most desirable ‘target’ at the time. Let there be no doubt that Arthur has always thought the world of him as a friend, and was attracted to him on a base level. But let it also be said that Arthur was beginning to think that just anyone would do- anyone to make him feel loved and worthwhile and happy.
Luckily, before Arthur can get into a toxic relationship in which his desire to be loved backfires as he’s manipulated cruelly by someone who actually intends to control and cause harm, Arthur has a bit of a wake-up call. Whether or not he is sat down by a family member, or passes by the bookstore and is inexplicably drawn to a volume by one Mighty and Infallible Eckhart Tolle is up to the imagination of the reader, but nevertheless Arthur decides to change his outlook on the way things have been going. He realizes firstly that the way he’s been handling life so far has made him miserable and is therefore not working. He also realizes that, Alfred in fact does have a life of his own, and can make choices on his own, and is completely entitled to want to be romantically involved with Ivan and not Arthur. Alfred would not be able to solve the fact that Arthur is often depressed, lethargic, and tired of life. In fact, not a man alive would help Arthur feel better about his life, mostly because romantic partners get together to build something new, not fix something old. The only kind of relationship where one intentionally fixes personal problems is that between a counselor and a patient, and so Arthur gets himself a counselor, with whom he explores deep-rooted fears and troubles, and is encouraged to pursue activities that would help him feel better and excited about his life- his secret dream of acting in a Shakespearian theatre troupe was met when he landed the part of Tybalt from Romeo & Juliet. He called Alfred to check in on him, and of course the idiot had been worried sick after Arthur had ‘dropped off the face of the planet’ and of course forgave him for the set-up, no real harm had come from it, etc. etc. While things were perhaps tense between Arthur and Ivan, they at least knew to be civil and not interfere with the other. Egoless being, while not trying to gratify oneself and not trying to completely deprive oneself, is really something of understanding the origin of emotions and knowing what is desire versus what is fear, and to let things be rather than push or pull at them. The friendship between Alfred and Arthur continued seamlessly because Arthur decided to let it be as it was, and did not actively seek to find someone to make his life wonderful, but rather interacted with people and let relationships develop on their own time. Sure enough, a most attractive Frenchman struck up conversation with him one day, and despite initial misgivings they eventually hit it off and gave that whole ‘trust, respect, and understanding’ the old college try.
To put a conclusion to these shenanigans, and perhaps to have said all of this much more concisely: ego exists when the mind tells the self into being miserable. While life is not without its pitfalls and missteps, the problems given to the self are given by the self, and likewise for all solutions. Perhaps this writer has rambled on for long enough- and perhaps the story of a silly man struggling to understand the most complex facets of the human psyche is not quite a dazzling show of insight, any more than any inane romantic comedy following the same general plot. Nevertheless- what are all of we but silly people making life extraordinarily more difficult for ourselves?
Usually.
But there's this ONE CLASS this semester that I cannot STAND. I've been spoiled in my previous philosophy classes, so I thought that this would be awesome on the merit of being a philosophy class.
It turns out that "Spiritual Awareness" is...product placement. We watch advertisements about spiritual retreats, and our 'textbooks' are just a bunch of spiritual/self-help books that landed on a bestseller or Oprah's book club. I am not kidding.
Sooooo...at the 'open ended' essay that I was assigned, I decided that maybe a little snarky payback was in order.
I submitted a Hetalia fanfiction.
I present to you:
En Saga om Kärleken, Dumhet, och Döden (men inte Döden, mer om Dumhet)
One must find it in their heart to forgive the composer of this piece for dallying closer to narrative than the traditional format of an essay. As requested, this work shall consist of five paragraphs, no more, no less, and shall have a persuasive leaning in dealing with the matter at hand, for surely one knows that hypothetical situations can prove to form a most persuasive argument. The essay shall also begin with this, and introduction, three supports, and conclude with a conclusion. Gleefully, the writer now presents the subject and conflict, which is the intertwining of that which has been defined by the high text of the classroom as “ego” and that which has many names but is never truly captured by human tongues, unless perhaps the tongues are locking, which one refers to as love. The dramatis personae for this hypothetical situation is thankfully brief, for there is but Alfred, a brash young American, his beloved Ivan, his endearing if not intimidating Russian lover, and Arthur a rather bitter and sardonic Brit who is both Alfred’s friend and Ivan’s secret rival. Of course, in the interest of having a persuasive essay there must be a claim to be proven, and here is the hypothesis, other that when bored to near tears a student will turn in the most shameless homework assignments: unchecked emotion will become saturated in “ego” and the desire for wanton self fulfillment, and neglect of emotion will lead to despair, but emotion that is acknowledged and dealt with logically will allow one to become aware and free from ego and drama, such as our Glorious Leader Eckhart Tolle would have us live.
In the first case, our protagonist, Arthur, follows his emotions blindly. He recognizes that making Alfred his has become his sole goal in this lifetime, and that he believes that by winning him over, all of his life will be blissful and complete. But every day, he sees Alfred and Ivan so deliriously happy together, and he knows that they will likely never break up on their own accord. Since Alfred has no longer become a friend or even a regular person but an objective to Arthur, Ivan becomes a sub-human obstacle that is not to be regarded or respected, but rather dealt-with in one way or another. The happiness that Alfred feels is in all ways inferior to the happiness he will feel once he has a relationship with Arthur- after all, they had been the best of friends long before Ivan and Alfred had ever met! In the painfully illogical ‘logic’ of the obsessed, this is all the justification Arthur needs to be able to pursue Alfred with abandon, and claim him as ‘rightfully his’. Of course, ego is hard at work in the mind of this poor fellow- his friend’s feelings are only regarded in the realm of his fantasy, that Alfred must secretly be unhappy or willing to break up with Ivan because Arthur’s illusion of a perfect life is dependent on Alfred not being together with his boyfriend but, rather, with Arthur. Ivan, the poor dear, is completely demonized because, as the writer has stated, his emotions only matter in the context of getting him angry or hurt enough to leave Alfred. Arthur plans this operation carefully; intimidating Ivan is quite out of the question because Ivan is actually rather well built and looks like he could bench-press Arthur’s equivalent weight. Convincing Alfred to leave Ivan seems much more doable- the loveable git trusts Arthur a great deal. So he goes about a process of starting a game of ‘he-said-she-said’ and maybe managed to snap few ‘scandalous’ photos of Ivan bumping into his ex, Toris, and them having lunch together in order to make Alfred doubt his relationship with Ivan. However, what Arthur didn’t expect was the idea that their relationship was actually built upon, of all things, trust and understanding! The lies get traced back to Arthur, a great deal of shit hits a high-powered fan, and Alfred becomes very angry with Arthur and seeks comfort from his beloved boyfriend. Arthur weeps at his misfortune and moves on to the next paragraph.
In this next scene, rather supporting paragraph, Arthur has become full of despair, because Alfred does not and will not ever love him the way he wants to be loved. Instead, Ivan and Alfred will remain together forever: they’ll share a flat and go out on weekends and argue about trifles but then kiss and make up as loving couples are wont to do. They will possibly even be wed if homosexuals were to be considered as human beings, equal in all respects to heterosexuals, and therefore deserving of basic human rights in countries worldwide and not just in Canada and parts of Scandinavia (apologies for the digression). Regardless, poor Arthur, having spent all this time just wanting to be loved by someone to not only lose any chance with him, but also possibly their beloved friendship, has decided that now he wants to go to the other extreme- to renounce emotion altogether, and close himself off from everyone and everything around him. He shuts himself in his home and does nothing but what is necessary. He works from home anyway, so he doesn’t have to deal with people. He pays his bills, shops when he needs to, works obsessively, drinks even more, and takes up knitting to make the days go by a little faster. Everything that needs to be done, he does by his own hand, and when that doesn’t work any mildly attractive bar floozy will do. But Arthur failed to understand that there is no way to effectively shun all emotions- they’re going to be there whether one accepts them or not, and therefore he is not accomplishing what he had first set out to do- instead of feeling nothing, he feels progressively worse. Isolation in this sense becomes more of a self-inflicted punishment than an actual escape from anything. Instead of feeling better about his situation of being alone and feeling unloved, he feels even more like having a loving partner would make his life much better. Since not having a loving partner had led him into his situation, surely having one would take him out of it, which of course begs the question of whether or not Arthur genuinely loved Alfred, or if he seemed to be the most desirable ‘target’ at the time. Let there be no doubt that Arthur has always thought the world of him as a friend, and was attracted to him on a base level. But let it also be said that Arthur was beginning to think that just anyone would do- anyone to make him feel loved and worthwhile and happy.
Luckily, before Arthur can get into a toxic relationship in which his desire to be loved backfires as he’s manipulated cruelly by someone who actually intends to control and cause harm, Arthur has a bit of a wake-up call. Whether or not he is sat down by a family member, or passes by the bookstore and is inexplicably drawn to a volume by one Mighty and Infallible Eckhart Tolle is up to the imagination of the reader, but nevertheless Arthur decides to change his outlook on the way things have been going. He realizes firstly that the way he’s been handling life so far has made him miserable and is therefore not working. He also realizes that, Alfred in fact does have a life of his own, and can make choices on his own, and is completely entitled to want to be romantically involved with Ivan and not Arthur. Alfred would not be able to solve the fact that Arthur is often depressed, lethargic, and tired of life. In fact, not a man alive would help Arthur feel better about his life, mostly because romantic partners get together to build something new, not fix something old. The only kind of relationship where one intentionally fixes personal problems is that between a counselor and a patient, and so Arthur gets himself a counselor, with whom he explores deep-rooted fears and troubles, and is encouraged to pursue activities that would help him feel better and excited about his life- his secret dream of acting in a Shakespearian theatre troupe was met when he landed the part of Tybalt from Romeo & Juliet. He called Alfred to check in on him, and of course the idiot had been worried sick after Arthur had ‘dropped off the face of the planet’ and of course forgave him for the set-up, no real harm had come from it, etc. etc. While things were perhaps tense between Arthur and Ivan, they at least knew to be civil and not interfere with the other. Egoless being, while not trying to gratify oneself and not trying to completely deprive oneself, is really something of understanding the origin of emotions and knowing what is desire versus what is fear, and to let things be rather than push or pull at them. The friendship between Alfred and Arthur continued seamlessly because Arthur decided to let it be as it was, and did not actively seek to find someone to make his life wonderful, but rather interacted with people and let relationships develop on their own time. Sure enough, a most attractive Frenchman struck up conversation with him one day, and despite initial misgivings they eventually hit it off and gave that whole ‘trust, respect, and understanding’ the old college try.
To put a conclusion to these shenanigans, and perhaps to have said all of this much more concisely: ego exists when the mind tells the self into being miserable. While life is not without its pitfalls and missteps, the problems given to the self are given by the self, and likewise for all solutions. Perhaps this writer has rambled on for long enough- and perhaps the story of a silly man struggling to understand the most complex facets of the human psyche is not quite a dazzling show of insight, any more than any inane romantic comedy following the same general plot. Nevertheless- what are all of we but silly people making life extraordinarily more difficult for ourselves?