Still thinking about virtue ethics.

Aristotle's proposed goal in virtue ethics is to achieve eudaimonia, which is a long term contentment with the course of one's life, but also a state of human flourishing. A eudaimon life is a life with few regrets, in which one reaches the full potential that could be expected for what one is.

My Ethics prof likes to use the example of a rosebush. A rosebush that is flourishing has green leaves, many blooms, and is healthy and vibrant etc. It is the best for what you could expect of a rosebush. It isn't, as he likes to say, "bionic"-- it isn't some sort of unnaturally enabled rosebush that can walk around and do stuff rosebushes don't normally do. The rosebush needs certain conditions to get it to a flourishing state-- it needs the right amount of water, the right kind of soil, the right amount of sunlight, and so on.

A rosebush cannot flourish if it gets the same amount of sunlight that would be best for a fern. It also cannot flourish if it gets the same amount of water as a cactus. In the former scenario there is excess, and in the latter there is deficiency. It is necessary to find the golden mean between the states of excess and deficiency. This golden mean is virtue.

Aristotle felt that humans were uniquely capable of reason. To reach our full potential we need to make use of that and reason well. We’re reasoning well when we determine where the golden mean is for us-- when we figure out where virtue lies.

To become a virtuous person you need to practice virtue. Another example my prof used was someone who plays a musical instrument. There are good violin players and bad violin players. How do you become a good violin player? By practicing, yes, but not just by practicing. You have to practice playing well. You could play violin eight hours a day and still be a bad violin player if you practice badly.

I think when I first decided I wanted to be the best person I could be, I went a little overboard with some things, but I've been figuring out where a good middle ground is. Like, I realized some point along the way that trying to be 100% selfless wasn't going to work because if I didn't spend at least some time on myself, I wouldn't be healthy enough to effectively support other people. Just trying to make sure I don't slide back though...

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

It's weird, I almost feel like something was off in my mind for the past couple days (because of the random anger) and now it's been reset and I'm totally fine again.

Maybe it was PMS.

Part of me wants to think that killing dream cleared me out though. I felt extremely satisfied and kind of smug in the dream.

I don't think I consistently get PMS, if that's what it is, but it does seem like every now and then I just feel super angry and irritated a few days before my period starts. A long time ago when I first learned about PMS I thought I could just counter it by realizing it was probably just PMS and not getting angry. That awareness took awhile to cultivate though. It's easy to see it after it happens but significantly more difficult to do it in the moment. Still, it's not impossible. It's just a habit that had to be developed. Probably the hardest part is wanting the anger to go away. I find that when I'm angry it often comes with the feeling that I want to be angry. So really, the challenge is not to shift the mood, it's to shift the desire. And I guess that's where reasoning comes in.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

I slept a bit more last night than I have been the past few days, because my internship meeting got canceled today.

I don't remember all that I dreamt, but there at least three separate storylines going on. In one of them I abducted a bunch of people and had them all in a large room where I made them compete to see who I wouldn't kill. There were maybe six or seven women (including a trans woman who talked to the others about how she had been circumcised) and I was going to let two live. The first contest involved dancing and they were all terrible but to the point where it kind of amused me, so I decided I would pick the winners based on who amused me most. Then this guy showed up and apparently wanted to enter the competition by choice, because he felt confident that he could win. I saw no reason to stop him.

In another one I was talking to Sean on a crowded lawn while this grotesque girl hovered around him. Apparently they were friends from OKC and she had been interested in him before he met someone. I found her face disturbing and didn't want to look at her, but I couldn't avoid it because she was so close to him.

Today I don't feel particularly angry but I feel kind of mentally tired.

---Edit---

My therapist found my dream very interesting. He loves doing dream interpretation... I'm okay with that in a casual setting but I feel iffy about it in a counseling setting. His suggestions for what aspects of my dream might mean didn't really feel right to me.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

I was feeling very angry earlier, and my thoughts were unproductive, going in circles of negativity and reaching no true conclusions. I decided to play a game and felt much better afterwards. Calmer. More clear. Looking at pictures seemed to help too.

The quarter is ending in a couple weeks, and then I'll have Spring Break. Don't know what I'm doing for that yet...

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

We started on virtue ethics in my Ethics class today. It was kind of weird for me. I've never actually read anything about virtue ethics before that I can remember, but I feel like to some extent I've kind of been practicing it. >.> At least... from the overview we got today. So that's... strange to think about.

Or maybe I haven't actually been practicing it. My personal development wasn't motivated by the drive to be happy. I dunno. I'll probably have to think about it more as I learn more about it.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

So I played this game.

MARCH

It hit me harder than I was expecting. Especially the end. The game kind of forces you into a sad ending. You have the option to end it at a happier place, but it gives you an option that suggests that's not the real ending.

And the feeling is sort of sadness and sort of pain and sort of loss. Which makes perfect sense given the theme of the game.



"Don't Touch My Bikini" by The Halo Benders.


"Art Decade" by David Bowie.


"The Garden" by Cut Chemist.

Translation of the lyrics as posted by a Youtuber:
He who is a good man does not betray
The love who wishes him good
He who says a lot that he goes, does not go
As he doesn't go, he does not come

He who doesn't come out from himself
Will die without loving anyone
The money of he who does not give
Is the work of he who does not have
Capoeira that is good does not fall
And if someday it falls, it falls good

Capoeira told me to say it already came
It came to fight
Berimbau confirmed me there will be a love fight
Sadness, my friend

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

This guy who's been visiting my profile on OKC for years finally messaged me. He said he's had me bookmarked for a long time and thought he'd send me a message. Now I feel like there's pressure on me to be cool and interesting so it seems like it was worth it to have me bookmarked all that time. >.>

It is kind of exciting though, I guess. I've had one other repeat visitor that has never contacted me to my knowledge, and I don't know what's holding him back. Well actually no, I guess I do... His profile says he's only interested in long term dating and I've never been single when he's visited me. So I'm guessing that's it.

I was talking with my friend Alice just now about guys with skills. It started off kind of as a joke when we were discussing programming last night and how neither of us really knows how to do it. I feel like it would be really cool to have programming skills, but I wouldn't even know where to start with it, and I feel like I get confused easily by it (maybe because the people I talk to about it go over specifics and I don't know the basics).

Alice: There are people to pay to do that for me.
Me: There are people to date to do that for me. XD
Alice: Lol! I suppose I suppose.
Me: As Napoleon Dynamite once said, girls like guys with skills.
Alice: Hella skills. I only like guys with at least 3 skills.

We went on to discuss whether or not the kind of skills mattered, and I jokingly suggested basket weaving, pancake flipping, and masterful toaster oven fixing. She said she would find those acceptable. Then I asked what skills her boyfriend has to compete with the hypothetical basket-weaving, pancake-flipping, toaster oven-fixing guy we were talking about, and she listed a few things, including obedience and patience. I thought it was kind of funny that she mentioned those as skills. I guess she's right, though, in a way. They are things that you can cultivate and get better at, so in that sense they are skills. Patience is something I'm always trying to increase, myself. To some extent I feel like impatience is connected to selfishness. Like, not being able to look past your own wants, I guess. I'm not sure though, I haven't thought about it too much.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

Last night I saw VAN valami furcsa és megmagyarázhatatlan (For Some Inexplicable Reason) with my friend Alex. It's a Hungarian comedy about a 29-going-on-30 unemployed guy whose girlfriend recently-ish broke up with him. We both thought it was pretty good. The main character was pretty awkward and maybe kind of ineffectual too. He didn't seem to have any particularly defining qualities to him. Still, you got a sense that he was just having a really hard time dealing with the breakup and that was affecting him.

What I really liked about the film was that it didn't have the kind of storyline you'd expect from an American movie that had the theme "guy got broken up with recently." I feel like American movies, at least the more mainstream ones, almost always "solve" the dumped character's problems by having them find someone new. There's this implication that if you just pave over the past with a new relationship, you'll be happy and things will be fine. I don't think that's necessarily true, though, and I think if that's the only message people are presented with, it can mislead them.

In this movie, the main character does find a new girlfriend, but his feelings for her fade and he still thinks about his ex. He ends up leaving the new one, but he seems to get over his ex anyway, and he meets with his ex at a cafe or something just to chat and catch up a bit. There was no "happily ever after" type ending, and the character wasn't suddenly imbued with a passion for life. He still didn't have a great job, although he had developed a new hobby (which was briefly referenced a few times-- you don't actually see it too much). All in all though, he seemed like he was okay. It felt realistic, I guess.

While we were driving home, we talked about the movie a little. Since it was a Hungarian film we were trying to figure out if anything we saw was a specific cultural difference between Hungarian and American culture. I think the most prominent difference was how much people smiled. Expressiveness in general seemed like it was lower in this movie than the average American movie. There were also some different visual metaphors that gave the sense that the main character was rather detached from the rest of the world. He would often just walk away from people and situations, and nobody would follow him. I feel like this is sometimes used in American films I've seen, but the character often snaps back to reality and hasn't actually left, whereas it seems like the character in this film really did just leave and nobody minded or noticed. Little things like that gave the movie a slightly odd feel at times.

I forgot to set my clock back last night, which luckily didn't matter because I didn't have to get up for anything this morning, but I was kind of confused when I woke up and my tablet said 10 AM but my alarm clock said 9 AM. Guess I'll be extra sleep-deprived for a little while.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!