My definition of an absolute individual is someone who is a complete/pure individual. Thus in reasoning no one is an absolute individual and no one can ever be. The only possible way to have no outside influence is when you trap yourself in a dark room with out any outside influence. Though after taking the time to review the text and discuss it, Banach contradicts himself. Saying we are not an absolute individual because of the fact that we are influenced by the people around us and our surroundings. But he also states that "Only we feel our pains, our pleasures, our hopes, and our fears immediately". He is saying that no one else can experience what we ourselves do making us individual of other people because we experience different things. We can not fully understand what other people go through. We can not know how they are feeling but since we ourselves have been through some thing similar, we project what we felt onto them and reason with ourselves that we have in fact felt what they have.
Knowing that we are not individuals but rather a collective group of our society being influenced by the things that we come into contact with on a daily basis makes it so there is no objective. The only thing that confuses me is where the point of focusing on only ourselves comes in to figuring out individualism.
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Kate,
ReplyDeleteYour post is nice and concise, everything I need to know in a nice little handy package, something many people try to do but fail at, but you manage to do and maintain actual intellectual content with.
You generally seem to agree with Banach that people are individuals, but argue his reasoning in that he contradicts himself, which upon reflection, he does do. People are absolute individuals to you and everybody is different as a result of how they experience the world around them. What I don't fully grasp though here is how you really feel about the subject, since most of what you say seems to be your interpretation of Banach's lecture rather than your ideas on the subject matter.
I think that you brought up a good point towards the end of your post about where the line between individuality and society lies, and how it is often hard to distinguish. I think that this is quite a common question about one's self, although at the moment I cannot come up with a direct reference to refer to.
I think that the idea that people are largely their environment is true, which is one of the reasons that a person cannot be cloned and be the same person, as they experience things differently. This ties into the whole society vs. self discussion, because society has such a grand impact on people. Unfortunately, this is nearly impossible to observe in reality. The only way to do this would be to have 2 people live the exact same life in controlled environments and then have them experience something different and see how society affects them from then on.
Your post makes me think largely about how people project themselves onto society, appearing as a little blip in a sea of plankton, having just making a large impact as everybody else does the same. Self vs. society is a very difficult topic to clearly observe, and I think that it makes people question who they truly are.
Overall, though just 2 paragraphs of analyzing Banach's lecture, you challenged my thinking of what I previously considered a relatively clear concept (Society) and made me think about the real role it plays and how our roles reflect that.
Kate,
ReplyDeleteYour post includes a very nice summary of Banach's points in his lecture. I like how you almost reworded that whole section of his text and made it so it was easier to understand.
You talked about how the idea of absolute individuality can only remain an idea and can never be duplicated as a physical representation. There is no way that a person can be hidden from influences other than himself. You then brought up the point that I remembered being confused about and having to ask you about: how Banach contradicts himself. He starts off by telling us absolute individuality is impossible to achieve and then he goes into the idea that each of us is trapped in our own minds where everything there is attained only through our senses. So what is he driving at?
It would be nice if you included some of your own thoughts about the subject, an emotion that was triggered as you went through the reading. Have this affected the way your viewed life as an "individual"?
"We can not know how they are feeling but since we ourselves have been through some thing similar, we project what we felt onto them and reason with ourselves that we have in fact felt what they have." I liked this line a lot. I always find myself telling others I know exactly how they feel and I am so convinced that I do because the situations are so alike. But after the reading and much thinking on my own, it makes a lot more sense now. Everyone has their own variations of emotions and there's no way we can tell that what we've felt was exactly like theirs when the only entrance we have for accepting information is through our senses. Emphasis on "our" because another person's senses definitely will not take in their surroundings the same way ours do.
Your last paragraph really makes me wonder if these influences can be controllable. Going back to the second part of Banach's lecture (the one about freedom), he talks about how everyone has freedom even if it looks as if we are being limited or controlled by outside forces in some way because we were given the choice of whether or not we want to be altered by them or not, therefore it is our freedom to choose to be influenced or not. You say we're a "collective group of society being influenced by the things that we come into contact with on a daily basis makes it so there is no objective." Do you think it's possible to ignore the effects these things are possible of injecting into your lifestyle and the way you view life so that you can be an absolute individual? Or do you think that's completely absurd and impossible?
Your post has really stimulated me into questioning whether the absence of absolute individuality in a person is by default or as a result of the decision he chose to make by letting his daily interactions play as a puppeteer in the way he perceives the world.