Saturday, January 31, 2009

Sartre and My Thoughts

According to Sartre, people hate interacting with others by nature for three reasons: one, others take us out of an absorbed state of life where we only concentrate on obtaining what we desire and caring for nothing else. And when we are interrupted of this deep and complete absorption, we get irritated and threatened. I feel this way constantly. We are born selfish creatures and when we interact with others, we tend to consider others as competitors instead of colleagues. Secondly, others tend to objectify us, and for creatures that define ourselves as souls instead of bodies, seeing ourselves as bodies is simply unacceptable. It is often hard to connect with others as emotional and sensible beings, we judge others based on their physical characteristics. Therefore self-consciousness is created by our perception of others and what we believe to be their perceptions of us. And lastly, interaction with others means that we do not have control over how the other person acts or interacts. We like to be in constant control and it is a uncomfortable situation when we have to share this control with someone else. We no longer dictate the outcome of our actions and we have to sometimes face the negative consequences caused by the other person's actions. Also, it is apparent that very rarely do we meet people that share with us almost all the same beliefs and ideals. Therefore, it is also unpleasant when we meet people that we think are unreasonable or wrong. These ideas of Sartre's make me believe that it is remarkable when people are able to carry out almost authentic relationships. It is unbelievably hard to accept the other person and trust in him/her because you are actually taking a great risk. People don't really think about it when they meet others and choose to connect with them on a spiritual level. It is really a miracle that people stay friends and forgive their foes. However, it is also contradictorily easy, to open up if you just don't think about it and not take everything too seriously.

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