My Actions: Their Contribution to Me

What am I doing today that contributes to who I am/want to be?

Like everyone else taking this course, I am in college to get a higher education and figure out what I’m doing with my life. I am undeclared, however as this semester has gone on I am leaning towards becoming a math major and pursing something with that. That’s part of why I am in community college rather than a CSU or UC; I have no idea what I want to do and I don’t want to spend that sort of money to not know what I want to do.

I have always taken pride in being a nerd; being a nerd is part of who I am as a person. I have always enjoyed learning and figuring out new things, understanding how things work, things of that nature. I’ve never taken the word “nerd” as an insult.

Which leads to the other major part of my life: Band. Seen throughout multiple blog posts. comments, and my about me page, band is an incredibly large part of my life. I enjoy playing music, and I enjoy teaching others how to play and perform. For a while now I have volunteered at Sam Brannan Middle School with their band program and have had an absolute blast doing it. Seeing the kids progress and grow has been incredibly fun. No, I have no intention of being a music teacher or anything of the sort. Not because being a teacher wouldn’t pay or anything like that, but because I feel pursing it as a career would take the lighthearted fun out of what I enjoy about band.

Like most I enjoy hanging out with my friends and while I don’t think that is necessarily “advancing” me forward in my life, it definitely makes life much easier and helps me develop as a social being. The one nice thing about having friends away at college is its allowed me to join multiple friend groups and meet a lot of new and interesting people.

While I don’t believe I am at an insanely crucial point in my life, there are many things I am doing now that are helping me progress towards my future.

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Anguish, Despair, and Marriage. The Killer Trio

In existentialism, anguish is in all people. Everyone is either in a state or anguish or is hiding/trying to get away from their anguish. People always have anguish because in any moment, when a decision is made by any person anywhere, it in turn can and will have an effect on the things around them. This forces a sense of responsibility alongside a sense of anxiety. The only way to prove to yourself that not everyone feels anguish is to deceive yourself into thinking that not everyone has this sort of feeling. There is no way to fully understand your own purpose and your own reason for living. There is no way to fully understand if your purpose in life is to impose your ideas onto the world (like say being a president) or to sell mass produced burgers in a fast food chain. It is something we have no way to know, and thus feel despair in being unable to understand these complexities.

We further live in despair when trying to cope with the idea that we as humans do not have complete and total freedom in our lives. We cannot control everything around us. And for most the best way to hide this feeling is by just ignoring it. However that does not deny that the fact that that despair and anguish is still there.

Sartre presents an example of marriage. With marriage, without marriage, and with marriage and kids, you take some form of immense responsibility. Partially your own responsibility for your own actions and more for when you have a wife and possibly kids to look after.

A similar example to Sartre’s marriage example is when I was a paid instructor for the drumline at a local Middle School. Even though I had 2 coworkers to help me work through all of the tasks of running the drumline and keeping everything orderly, I still felt that the responsibilities were upon my shoulders. My coworkers failures alongside the drumlines failures were failures of my own. I felt as though there would have been some way for me to prevent those errors.

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What is a Person? Frankfurt Edition

A person, by Frankfurt’s definition, is assumed to be human and also has the ability to evaluate themselves. Frankfurt notes that it is possible for humans to not be people (as in they don’t have 2nd order desires, they live passively in every way shape and form). He explains the self evaluation as a “2nd Order Desire”.

This leads to Frankfurt’s order of desires. He begins, as you would probably guess, with a 1st order desire. 1st order desires are not limited to just humans. 1st order desires are just wants, just desires. a 1st order desire can be as simple as “I want to continue eating this chinese food”. This isn’t limited to humans as, just as easily as I can think that, a cat or dog could think “I want to continue to eat this pet food”. Frankfurt presents an effective and ineffective 1st desire, however this applies to the thought of a 2nd order desire.

A 2nd order desire, and all levels of desire past it, are limited to only persons and most humans. 2nd order desires are explained as “wants for wants” or “desires for desires”. An easy explanation for this would be “I want to want to eat the healthy vegetable options when it comes to chinese food”. This differs from a 1st order desire as it then presents further options and shifts. These are presented as the effective and ineffective 1st order desires. For my particular example, the 1st ineffective desire is eating those healthy options, as I am not currently eating those healthy options. The effective 1st order desire is sitting in front of me with that delicious orange chicken.

In the previously mentioned scenario, my thoughts and actions would appear to classify me as “Not free”. This is because my effective 1st order desire does not match the 2nd order desire. This is where the 2nd or volition comes to play. 2nd order volition, in its easiest terms, is the amount of desire for the 2nd order desire to be true. In my scenario, I would be considered a wanton, or someone who doesn’t entirely care what the outcome is. I would be and am completely indifferent to if the food in front of me is either the vegetables or the orange chicken.

However, if I did really want to eat the vegetables (for example if I was trying to be healthier), but did not because I desired the orange chicken more (because it is instantly gratifying), I would be considered not free. My 2nd order desire did not match my effective 1st order desire. Had it, by Frankfurt’s definition, I would be considered free. It would be my free will.

People, and only people, are also capable of expanding past 2nd order desires, further analyzing their analysis. Such as my previous example I had a 2nd order desire of eating healthy, and 1st order desires of different chinese foods. But a 3rd order desire would be something like “I want to be healthy”. Because from there it would branch into 2nd order desires of things like “I want to exercise” or “I want to eat healthy” or “I want to count every calorie I intake in order to mathematically calculate the exact number of steps I need to burn off the empty calories that are food”. Because all of those can be broken into 1st order desires, such as varying food options, exercise options, and calorie counting techniques.

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