In modern society, everyone must go on a quest to find and develop the type of person they hope to be. We attempt to achieve the “self” envisioned for ourselves. Unfortunately, most people give up and are never able to achieve the “self”.There are many ways to describe the self. The self can be interchangeably used to describe the soul. The soul is our inner being and is with us, even after death. Some believe that we develop our sense of self over time. For Juhani Pallasmaa, he believes that we only need to make slight adjustments to our current environment and become further in tune with our senses to have our own identity established. In his essay, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, Pallasmaa goes into great detail about how lighting can either enhance our thinking or paralyze it .Additionally, how shadows are able to slip into our subconscious and be able to enhance our thinking abilities. On the other hand, Malcom Gladwell takes a different approach in his essay, The Power of Context. Gladwell claims that the sense is developed primarily by what we consider the inconsequential specifics of our surroundings. Gladwell strongly deems the environment to be key developing factor in molding our sense of self.
Furthermore, Jon Krakauer writer of Selections From into the Wild, believes that our environment can have an effect on ourselves but that our own free will is the absolute factor in what aim to be. All three authors have different aspects, but in the end all attempting to get the same point across. Our environment and our free will are the key factors in developing the sense of self. The dilemma occurs when one begins to gain more influence than the over. Malcolm Gladwell is able to upkeep Palllasmaa’s concept of shadows and lighting with his profound knowledge of the power of context. Jon Krakauer is able to maintain Gladwell’s ideas in the sense that the minor details are what count with his careful examination of the life of Chris McCandless. As individuals, we are constantly trying to formulate a better version of ourselves. We try by changing our environment, trying a new style, or eating a different type of food, just to be able to find what we prefer the most.
The Term Paper on The Environment 2
- The Environment The impact of people on their environment can be devastating. This is where the respective role of governments can make decisions that shape environmental policy and responsibilities. These governments can be broken up into four different levels: local, state, federal and international. Air quality and biodiversity are two current issues that can be related to the role of ...
The general public may go through slight alterations to mature, while others completely change themselves. Our sense of self is one of the few things that will perpetually grow over time if we allow it. We are not only shaped by ourselves, but also by our environment. Our day to day interactions with people and our surroundings play a key factor in shaping our sense of self. The consequences of having an undeveloped sense of self are traumatic to not only the soul but, to those in its community. The ripened soul is the part of people that makes us into individuals. The unripened soul keeps us uniformed and constricted. The soul then is forced to live without a sense of privacy. Without that peculiarity we are nothing more than marionettes. Humans are just being pulled by the settings. Then they are desired by society, which have begun to impose their ideas of the paths we should take. But the general public must begin to originate new thoughts and work efficiently with the environment, in order to further develop our souls. A good example of this is when Krakauer writes “
McCandless wasn’t some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair. To the contrary: his life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. He demanded much of himself more in the end than he could deliver”(Krakauer 220).
Assuming we never developed our sense of self like McCandless, we would just be these incompetent and empty bodies filled with no purpose. The life we try to lead is incomplete and it seems the only way to cure it is go above and beyond and over exceed ourselves in order to find “self”. In accordance to what Pallasmaa says when he means to tweak our surroundings the aftermath of when we do not is, we live a life of internal conflicts.In the essay Pallasmaa writes “A society of surveillance is necessarily a society of the voyeuristic and sadistic eye. An efficient method of mental torture is the use of a constantly high level of illumination that leaves no space for mental withdrawal or privacy; even the dark interiority of self is exposed and violated”(Pallasmaa 287)
The Essay on Sense Of Humor Life World Mood
ENGLISH II WHEN THERE IS NO WAY OUT Carlos Alberto Sobrinho Everybody desires to live in a world without problems, where people do not need to worry about nothing; and where there are no events that demand big efforts and difficult decisions. But, of course, this is an unreal world. In the real world history is so many different. Whatever we need to take decisions, easy or not, we probably have to ...
Most would assume that a society of surveillance would mean a civilization of protection where one would always feel a sense of privacy. Nevertheless it is actually oppressive and leaves us with a lack of knowledge. We must be able to live in harmony with the world and find peace within ourselves in order to have a ripened self. A man who is constantly constrained by his contemporary world is one who is never able to adapt to the world. For those whom are impervious to change, render there future over to the standstill of time. While physically being in the present the other remnants of his soul are withheld by the problems of his past. If we do not,we will be forced to take our internal problems into the real world like Bernie Goetz. In the essay Gladwell writes,“Precisely because of its deficits and discomforts, it provided him with a comprehensible target for the rage that lives inside him. By focusing it on the external world, he need not deal with his internal one.
He rails about the dirt, the noise, the drunks, the crime, the pushers, and the junkie. And all with good reason “Goetz’s bullets, Rubin concludes, were “aimed at targets that existed as much in his past as in the present” (Gladwell 199).
When we have an underdeveloped sense of self, we leave ourselves at war with our emotions. The past is no longer left behind and we begin to have it haunt us. The individual is forced to carry baggage and not be able to have an optimistic mindset. The baggage can be anything from regrets or mistakes .It is when we finally expose ourselves to a different atmosphere that we drop the metaphorical gun that Goetz shot and try to delve into ourselves into a new better version of ourselves. Goetz can point out the problems that others have but it cannot be said the same for himself. A complete life is when an individual goes outside of their comfort zone and excels. It is said that the greatest achievements take the greatest sacrifice. Sacrifices can be anything as long as the risk is equal to the product. Nevertheless, Pallasmaa believes that we can simply adjust our surroundings to excel versus having an incomplete lie.
The Essay on How the world has changed
The essay “Use Your Own Words” by Anne Trubek argues a great point that technology is changing the way we read and write and that spell must change also. Should the world let technology take over? What is the purpose of a map if you can easily find it on your phone and get directions? Think about it, what is the purpose of having a book or newspaper in modern times if you can easily go on the ...
It is much easier to site where the problem begins with others and show how they can improve. Our circumstances protrude our unfamiliarity with ourselves. We unconsciously take certain steps to achieve a greater understanding of one self in which we put ourselves into an abstract setting that we are not used to. In the text Krakaeur writes “Ten days and Nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the great white north. No longer to be poisoned by the civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild”(Krakauer 207).In the text, it is written under “Alexander Supertramp”, a separate identity created where Chris McCandless started completely anew. The poison that Chris points out is secreted from underneath his father’s voyeuristic eye. The unnerving eye has made a psychologically distressing experience that he has decided to be reborn. The effect of this experience happened and goes to the outmost extreme and recycles already known land and uses it to find him. Our concept of recycling ourselves and the environment is something that has been brought up in order to further develop our souls.
The underlying problem is that this is not always for the best.In addition Malcolm Gladwell also depicts psychologically distressing experiences in his essay. The Zimbardo experiment was under Philip Zimbardo’s watch in which he had several people who were considered to be the most pacifistic into people who ended up being the most treacherous. “”there were times when we were pretty abusive, getting right in there faces and yelling at them,” one guard remembers. “It was part of the whole atmosphere of terror.” As the experiment progressed, the guards got systematically crueler and more sadistic. “What we were unprepared for was the intensity of the change and the speed of which it happened “(Gladwell 160).
Our inability to be able to stand up to the environment has allowed our surroundings to influence our “self” into a different persona. As humans we have a control over our decisions. We have invented a system, in which we can decide the level of pain to inflict.
The Essay on Divorce A Life Changing Experience
Divorce: a personal life changing experience With this ring I thee wed... For better or worse, for richer or poorer... Traditionally, two people speak these words on their wedding day, the day that two become one, the day that two people begin a life together and share an unbreakable union. This may be so in some cases but not all. Divorce among Americans is rampant. In society today divorces are ...
Ultimately, Our sense of self is perpetually developed by our surroundings and our free will. The underlying problem occurred, when one of them takes over the other. It is our responsibility to let both factors work equally and efficiently. Our sense of self can only be developed if we create change within ourselves. The change can be varied from something minor to major. The main concern is that we must be able to accept change. If we do not then we are forced to leave ourselves paralyzed. Our soul is unable to find peace within our restless and tiresome bodies. The journey to find the sense of self is a long and difficult one. The individual must be able to respond to his environment. A person’s free will must make his final decisions. Overall, it is much better to have struggled like McCandless, then to have not struggle and had to deal with the internal.
