In the second ten sections of the Handbook of Epictetus, we are shown how to confront destiny in a patient fashion, not showing necessity through our actions. According to Epictetus, you should “not stretch your desire toward it, but wait until it comes to you” (15). He compares destiny to your behavior in a banquet, where you wait until they offer you something to eat, you don’t stretch your body to get food. There is an obligation to wait and not to act, a predestination requisite, to understand that the universe’s energy will flow and eventually reach you with its intended and unique might. Through his descriptions on how to act, the reader is assured that there is a partial free will, the decision making of a soul’s opinions and desires. These are the two complementary pieces to the Handbook of Epictetus, as I mentioned in my previous post Death Is Destiny.
The handbook shows that a person depends too much on his/her judgments or beliefs in order to act. It concludes that it is a human necessity to do so as it states that when someone “irritates you be aware that what irritates you is your own belief” (16). We are often told that there is always something positive in everything and everybody. Epictetus has another way to narrate another take on this belief, by pointing out the tendency of most people to find mostly mistakes in others and place more emphasis on these.
This may imply that there needs to be awareness training for humans, to learn to use their minds consciously towards uplifting thoughts than wasting their energy on promoting and empowering the draining negative.
Epictetus continues his narration on predestination, in which you are “an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be” (16). There is an obligation to concentrate in playing your part the best way you can, changing the human’s mentality from worrying about death and events he can’t change into accepting and confronting the variety of obstacles that will come in his way and making intelligent choices. There is a tendency in Epictetus’ words to guide a lost soul back into what he considers a good path, by showing the things he can’t do in order to change what he can. What seems to be destiny in Epictetus’ writing are the set obstacles that come instead of the specific decisions and paths the living soul may take. This “playwright” isn’t described or given the appropriate importance it should have for the handbook. Will Epictetus include in his piece that religion and the belief in god/the divine playwright are necessary to a more complete understanding this sacred game of life?
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Death Is Destiny
As the reader begins the Handbook of Epictetus he is immersed in a world of knowledge which changes his perception about human destiny and anger. In the first section, Epictetus classifies life factors into those that are out of human control like disease, death and reputation, and those that can be controlled through a person’s actions like opinions and aversions. According to Epictetus, you will be miserable and lost if you “think that things naturally enslaved are free or that things not your own are your own” (11). This means that you have be able to know which things you can control and which things you can’t, a similar statement to that of the serenity prayer we repeatedly found in Slaughterhouse Five. The acceptance of this conclusion will lead a human being into a world of limits, by which he will be self-guided to understanding his life as dependant on the events that happen in his life, his perception of them, and roads taken on his arduous quest of his own unique and personal destiny.
The ideas, conclusions and life models you favor and those you are against, of are will determine who you are and what you’ll do. You also have to be able to determine which of these you can control and which life factors such as death can help you be wiser on how you choose to spend your time on the planet. In order to create a path in the right direction, you have to “detach your aversion from everything not up to us, and transfer it to what is against nature among the things that are up to us” (12). In order to accept death as your ineludible last step in the life cycle, you have to take it off the list of things you are against and help “death” keep your decisions in perspective. Death not as the destructor of life but as the final teaching ingredient of life.
In the Handbook of Epictetus, you are also confronted with the deceit of human judgment. As you begin to open your soul to the new input on death as part of life, Epictetus bombards you by saying, “death is nothing dreadful […] but instead the judgment about death that it is dreadful” (13). We have arrived at what I thought was Epictetus’ main point, humans build up opinions on judgments of opinions, on and on endlessly over time and in the end, they mistakenly accept these misleading conclusions as the truth. They become facts that become the basis of a human life’s, the race to escape death and suffering, but in the end if you are not able to accept death and suffering, you will not have fully lived.
The ideas, conclusions and life models you favor and those you are against, of are will determine who you are and what you’ll do. You also have to be able to determine which of these you can control and which life factors such as death can help you be wiser on how you choose to spend your time on the planet. In order to create a path in the right direction, you have to “detach your aversion from everything not up to us, and transfer it to what is against nature among the things that are up to us” (12). In order to accept death as your ineludible last step in the life cycle, you have to take it off the list of things you are against and help “death” keep your decisions in perspective. Death not as the destructor of life but as the final teaching ingredient of life.
In the Handbook of Epictetus, you are also confronted with the deceit of human judgment. As you begin to open your soul to the new input on death as part of life, Epictetus bombards you by saying, “death is nothing dreadful […] but instead the judgment about death that it is dreadful” (13). We have arrived at what I thought was Epictetus’ main point, humans build up opinions on judgments of opinions, on and on endlessly over time and in the end, they mistakenly accept these misleading conclusions as the truth. They become facts that become the basis of a human life’s, the race to escape death and suffering, but in the end if you are not able to accept death and suffering, you will not have fully lived.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Serenity Prayer In Tralfamadore
Thesis Statement:
The serenity prayer and the Tralfamadorian teachings are complementary to understanding Kurt Vonnegut’s philosophy on war given to us through Billy Pilgrim’s quest.
Sections for close reading:
-“Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. ” (Vonnegut, Pg. 69)
-“Billy Pilgrim says now that this really is the way he is going to die, too. As a time- traveler, he has seen his own death many times, has described it to a tape recorder.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 50)
-“I've visited thirty-one inhabited plants in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 31)
-“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present and the future.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 22)
The serenity prayer and the Tralfamadorian teachings are complementary to understanding Kurt Vonnegut’s philosophy on war given to us through Billy Pilgrim’s quest.
Sections for close reading:
-“Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. ” (Vonnegut, Pg. 69)
-“Billy Pilgrim says now that this really is the way he is going to die, too. As a time- traveler, he has seen his own death many times, has described it to a tape recorder.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 50)
-“I've visited thirty-one inhabited plants in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 31)
-“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present and the future.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 22)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Ending The Endless
Not being able to fully appreciate what life has given you, the sweet and the sour, and at the same time appreciate and fully attend what is happening in the present moment, is the repetitive fault of every human life. As I write this entry I’m waiting for my mother to arrive in a couple of minutes with my delicious dinner, from my favorite Italian restaurant. As I think of this event, I realize that in a couple of hours, after I’ve finished my food, I will not even remember how anxious and impatient I once was for my dinner. Being in this extreme futuristic state of mind is usually unhealthy. Living in the future is not a good idea to enjoy a truly happy state of mind. This is what Kurt Vonnegut shows us in the last two chapters of his novel, Slaughterhouse Five. As the narrator reflects on the conclusions an extra-terrestrial community has come up with, his mind races to know how truthfully happy he has been and if he could be able to live with the eternal repetition of his life’s good moments. “If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still- if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 74) This is a different kind of eternity than the one we can extract from Gilgamesh, which narrates the eternity of one’s actions. Here we can see an eternity of the mind, a process by which you are able to control your present actions by the thought of having to live those events forever.
Being conscious of how the present becomes your past in a second by second basis, you target your life to be the most passionate and richly wonderful possible, so you become the most fulfilled and wise human being you can be. As Billy realizes the state of the horses which are transporting some of the American prisoners of war through the destructed Dresden, we are able to approach Vonnegut’s mind in an understanding manner. “When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn't cried about anything else in the war.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 70) It is truly difficult to accept something like this, when you just lived a massacre of the dimensions of Dresden, you can’t understand how a human being only cares for some horses. There is more empathy for the animals than for the humans. This may be a defense mechanism to protect himself from the human horror. This brings me to my next conclusion about Billy, he isn’t completely cognizant of what he has lived and is too concerned with living in the never-ending repetition of events to be accepting of his present. Billy doesn’t notice anything, he is just there to live it. There is no other way to understand war in a positive attitude than to accept it as something that we just had to live, a terrible fate of sorts.
Allowing oneself to explore the limits of our minds, and the capabilities of our soul to appreciate what we are living and all of the positive events that make us up is one of the crucial pieces to be in a relaxed and accepting state of mind. There is always a necessary step to not take things too personally, it isn’t that the universe is against an individual being, but that there is a strong tendency to take our spirit into a quest to find ourselves and ultimately be able to live in a moment by moment basis, as the following maxim describes. “Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. ” (Vonnegut, Pg. 69) Fate is a strong character at the end of this novel. Fate is the messenger which lets us know that it is our task, and our task only, to try to live in the greatest state of mind we can possibly obtain with effort, discipline and acute awareness, ultimately finding a balance between our sealed past, our live present and our ripening future.
Being conscious of how the present becomes your past in a second by second basis, you target your life to be the most passionate and richly wonderful possible, so you become the most fulfilled and wise human being you can be. As Billy realizes the state of the horses which are transporting some of the American prisoners of war through the destructed Dresden, we are able to approach Vonnegut’s mind in an understanding manner. “When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn't cried about anything else in the war.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 70) It is truly difficult to accept something like this, when you just lived a massacre of the dimensions of Dresden, you can’t understand how a human being only cares for some horses. There is more empathy for the animals than for the humans. This may be a defense mechanism to protect himself from the human horror. This brings me to my next conclusion about Billy, he isn’t completely cognizant of what he has lived and is too concerned with living in the never-ending repetition of events to be accepting of his present. Billy doesn’t notice anything, he is just there to live it. There is no other way to understand war in a positive attitude than to accept it as something that we just had to live, a terrible fate of sorts.
Allowing oneself to explore the limits of our minds, and the capabilities of our soul to appreciate what we are living and all of the positive events that make us up is one of the crucial pieces to be in a relaxed and accepting state of mind. There is always a necessary step to not take things too personally, it isn’t that the universe is against an individual being, but that there is a strong tendency to take our spirit into a quest to find ourselves and ultimately be able to live in a moment by moment basis, as the following maxim describes. “Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. ” (Vonnegut, Pg. 69) Fate is a strong character at the end of this novel. Fate is the messenger which lets us know that it is our task, and our task only, to try to live in the greatest state of mind we can possibly obtain with effort, discipline and acute awareness, ultimately finding a balance between our sealed past, our live present and our ripening future.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Characterizing War
Is there a way to understand the horrors of war? Is there a justification to any war?
The readers of Chapter 8 of Slaughterhouse Five are shown Kurt Vonnegut’s views on war and its destructive characteristics. As Edgar Derby states, “Mere are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after an, is that people are discouraged from being characters.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 58) It’s not only the casualties of the actual act of war but the huge repercussion it has on the specific communities and individuals who suffer it. This can be seen in the vast quantities of war veterans which have to be treated after the war because they just don’t know who they are and what they want to do anymore. Their appetite for life is gone and they have no way of returning to who they once were before the war. War not only kills people it kills the souls of the living. They are too devastated by the lead boots they have to drag through their lives, the memories of destruction and indescribable horror and pain.
At his eighteenth wedding anniversary, Billy Pilgrim is astoundingly affected (gets pale, has to sit down and finally leaves to his room) by a quartet which was playing at his party. “Billy thought hard about the effect the quartet had had on him, and then found an association with an experience he had had long ago.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 63) This is extremely significant in proving Vonnegut right about the effects war has on veterans. Being the eighteenth anniversary means that the relationship between Billy and his wife is of age and has become another problem in Billy’s life. This quartet in his wedding anniversary is connected to four guards back in Dresden, a story he narrates to Montana in Tralfamadore. “He told Montana about the four guards who, in their astonishment and grief, resembled a barber-shop quartet.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 63) These four German guards, are the first one’s to emerge from the room under the Slaughterhouse and see the destruction of Dresden. It is incredible how a simple event in such a traumatic situation can mean so much for so long. It vividly shows that no one is immune from the disaster, the guards, the prisoners, those who win, those who loose. All are victims of the insanity of war. If this seemingly minor event means so much to Billy, what would a devastating memory such as the assassination of his friends do to him? One wonders what other events will soon be uncovered to show us more complexities of Billy’s intricate and traumatized inner landscape and Vonnegut’s mind?
The readers of Chapter 8 of Slaughterhouse Five are shown Kurt Vonnegut’s views on war and its destructive characteristics. As Edgar Derby states, “Mere are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after an, is that people are discouraged from being characters.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 58) It’s not only the casualties of the actual act of war but the huge repercussion it has on the specific communities and individuals who suffer it. This can be seen in the vast quantities of war veterans which have to be treated after the war because they just don’t know who they are and what they want to do anymore. Their appetite for life is gone and they have no way of returning to who they once were before the war. War not only kills people it kills the souls of the living. They are too devastated by the lead boots they have to drag through their lives, the memories of destruction and indescribable horror and pain.
At his eighteenth wedding anniversary, Billy Pilgrim is astoundingly affected (gets pale, has to sit down and finally leaves to his room) by a quartet which was playing at his party. “Billy thought hard about the effect the quartet had had on him, and then found an association with an experience he had had long ago.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 63) This is extremely significant in proving Vonnegut right about the effects war has on veterans. Being the eighteenth anniversary means that the relationship between Billy and his wife is of age and has become another problem in Billy’s life. This quartet in his wedding anniversary is connected to four guards back in Dresden, a story he narrates to Montana in Tralfamadore. “He told Montana about the four guards who, in their astonishment and grief, resembled a barber-shop quartet.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 63) These four German guards, are the first one’s to emerge from the room under the Slaughterhouse and see the destruction of Dresden. It is incredible how a simple event in such a traumatic situation can mean so much for so long. It vividly shows that no one is immune from the disaster, the guards, the prisoners, those who win, those who loose. All are victims of the insanity of war. If this seemingly minor event means so much to Billy, what would a devastating memory such as the assassination of his friends do to him? One wonders what other events will soon be uncovered to show us more complexities of Billy’s intricate and traumatized inner landscape and Vonnegut’s mind?
Thursday, September 10, 2009
When A Equals B…
One of the main ingredients in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is irony. From the beginning we are forced, or maybe taken through the process, to understand how absurd war and life really is. By making us laugh about the adventures of Billy Pilgrim, we notice how the goal is always present, to make a joke out of a horrible story. In chapter seven, we encounter irony in the first couple of sentences. “Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and plant in the Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 55) In Billy, the novel’s protagonist, we see a perfect example of a machine. He goes to work, marries the person with the best connections, has children as his society stipulates and is depressed due to the horrible events in his life. The irony in this maxim is that the only beings that can really evaluate if we, as part of the Universe, are machines have to be outside of our planet. What Vonnegut is referring to here is how we continue doing what our society tells us to, how it has become the work of a machine to do our daily activities.
Vonnegut plays with the definitions of events and objects through his characters as he makes them unaware and ignorant of what they’re confronting. As Billy is taken in a toboggan down Sugarbush Mountain after his plane crash, he passes under a seat lift where he sees young people flying through the air in yellow seats and he, “supposed that they were part of an amazing new phase of the Second World War. It was all right with him. Everything was pretty much all right with Billy.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 56) The complete unawareness of the situation and his machine identity caused by the war have made Billy believe that everything he sees must have something do with the war and has to let go of, as he had to do in order to reintegrate (in a partial way) with his life as an optometrist. As everything was all right with Billy, Vonnegut builds up on his previous conclusion, that war makes people machines. This makes it easier to live hard times and be satisfied with the bare minimum, never striving for more. Blind acceptance or full denial become the survival mechanisms to continue living after the unthinkable horrors of war.
Another example of how Vonnegut shows irony in a direct fashion, using his characters as puppets is the conversation between the cook of the Dresden camp, the guard of the slaughterhouse and the two American soldiers. “'All the real soldiers are dead,' she said. It was true.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 57) Stating that Derby was too old, Werner (the guard) too young and Billy simply inappropriate for war defends the conclusion Kurt is making, war is inappropriate.
Vonnegut plays with the definitions of events and objects through his characters as he makes them unaware and ignorant of what they’re confronting. As Billy is taken in a toboggan down Sugarbush Mountain after his plane crash, he passes under a seat lift where he sees young people flying through the air in yellow seats and he, “supposed that they were part of an amazing new phase of the Second World War. It was all right with him. Everything was pretty much all right with Billy.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 56) The complete unawareness of the situation and his machine identity caused by the war have made Billy believe that everything he sees must have something do with the war and has to let go of, as he had to do in order to reintegrate (in a partial way) with his life as an optometrist. As everything was all right with Billy, Vonnegut builds up on his previous conclusion, that war makes people machines. This makes it easier to live hard times and be satisfied with the bare minimum, never striving for more. Blind acceptance or full denial become the survival mechanisms to continue living after the unthinkable horrors of war.
Another example of how Vonnegut shows irony in a direct fashion, using his characters as puppets is the conversation between the cook of the Dresden camp, the guard of the slaughterhouse and the two American soldiers. “'All the real soldiers are dead,' she said. It was true.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 57) Stating that Derby was too old, Werner (the guard) too young and Billy simply inappropriate for war defends the conclusion Kurt is making, war is inappropriate.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Accepting An Uncomfortable Truth
Being aware of death as the final, unavoidable last act in every human life, is just the beginning to trying to explore the unconscious effects this fact has on how we live our lives. Society’s views also affects our understanding of this most important issue. In the sixth chapter of the novel, Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut we are introduced to the position of the main character, Billy Pilgrim, to his own death in the hands of his killer, Paul Lazarro. Lazarro, one of the people Billy meets during the war, is convinced that Pilgrim was responsible of the death of Roland Weary, Lazaro’s only war friend, threatening Billy of sending someone to kill him after the war. “Billy Pilgrim says now that this really is the way he is going to die, too. As a time- traveler, he has seen his own death many times, has described it to a tape recorder.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 50) Being able to confront death as a natural part of life is one thing, but being able to document it on tape with the greatest serenity possible is simply incredible. We are not used to having these types of encounters in a sentence of a book, even with the greatest clues an author can give us. It is probably one of the techniques Kurt uses in his book, to clandestinely bombard the reader with statements that change the perception of his characters and the story giving it suspense, depth and action.
How convinced the reader is about Billy Pilgrim’s tranquility with death, is something we are assured, as Billy states the following in one of his Tralfamadorian conferences in Chicago. “If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 51) His audience seems more terrified about his death than he is, as he claims to know that his assassination is that same night after he leaves the conference. Vonnegut makes it look like Billy is more interested in his audience knowing the reasons for him acknowledging that death isn’t a bad thing, it’s just one bad event that is small compared to all the good moments a life contains. As soon as we are able to understand this and be taken again by the author back to World War II we can appreciate how complete Kurt’s game is. He has taken us on a trip about Billy Pilgrim’s life, Tralmafadorian style, making a depressing story funny and joyous for the reader who shouldn’t be looking for any special message or moral ending, but just understanding how life has to be taken in a detached, non judgmental fashion in order to truly enjoy each second of this lifelong film.
Vonnegut gives us the last amazing piece at the end of this chapter, as the American prisoners of war enter Dresden. “It was Fate, of course, which had costumed him-Fate, and a feeble will to survive.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 54) The importance of destiny in Vonnegut’s narration is vital, we need to ignore this permanent question of Why are things happening? to be able to appreciate the book at its greatest extent and understand the goals he is trying to achieve with this piece. His Tralfamadorians are especially powerful in this chapter, given that they leave their position as characters in the book, to become the whole philosophy in which the reader is now immersed. In this way, they become important not only to Billy, in order to understand the horrible events of his life but for the reader. The reader who has become a more independent, all-knowing and curious observer. This allows Vonnegut to continue his narrative without alarming anyone of the presence of a non human character in the book. Billy’s higher-self comfortably disguised as an ET, who will probably end up convincing us all.
How convinced the reader is about Billy Pilgrim’s tranquility with death, is something we are assured, as Billy states the following in one of his Tralfamadorian conferences in Chicago. “If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 51) His audience seems more terrified about his death than he is, as he claims to know that his assassination is that same night after he leaves the conference. Vonnegut makes it look like Billy is more interested in his audience knowing the reasons for him acknowledging that death isn’t a bad thing, it’s just one bad event that is small compared to all the good moments a life contains. As soon as we are able to understand this and be taken again by the author back to World War II we can appreciate how complete Kurt’s game is. He has taken us on a trip about Billy Pilgrim’s life, Tralmafadorian style, making a depressing story funny and joyous for the reader who shouldn’t be looking for any special message or moral ending, but just understanding how life has to be taken in a detached, non judgmental fashion in order to truly enjoy each second of this lifelong film.
Vonnegut gives us the last amazing piece at the end of this chapter, as the American prisoners of war enter Dresden. “It was Fate, of course, which had costumed him-Fate, and a feeble will to survive.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 54) The importance of destiny in Vonnegut’s narration is vital, we need to ignore this permanent question of Why are things happening? to be able to appreciate the book at its greatest extent and understand the goals he is trying to achieve with this piece. His Tralfamadorians are especially powerful in this chapter, given that they leave their position as characters in the book, to become the whole philosophy in which the reader is now immersed. In this way, they become important not only to Billy, in order to understand the horrible events of his life but for the reader. The reader who has become a more independent, all-knowing and curious observer. This allows Vonnegut to continue his narrative without alarming anyone of the presence of a non human character in the book. Billy’s higher-self comfortably disguised as an ET, who will probably end up convincing us all.
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