Informal Assignment #1: Examined Life

            

              In Astra Taylor’s documentary, Examined Life, the viewers were allowed to take a walk with eight of the most engaging and mind stimulating free thinkers. I thought it was interesting for Taylor to have them continuously walking because simultaneously their minds were doing the same thing when they were being questioned. It was like she planned the documentary to happen that way so the viewers can see the connection between the two. While their bodies were physically taking the walk, their minds were also taking a walk within their minds, to explore what they felt philosophy is to them. What kept the viewers engaged with the documentary were the different settings for each of the eight philosophers. From the expensive and trendy Fifth Avenue in New York, to a trashy landfill, to the mission district in San Francisco, to central park, to an airport, and even in a taxi cab. The different settings reflected or were related to their ideas and questions they proposed in relation to their everyday experiences. Although many of the philosophers had compelling ideas, I was caught between Peter Singer and Avital Ronell. Despite Singer’s idea that applied ethics challenges morals, I gravitated more towards Ronell’s ideas.

                Ronell stated that in order to be an ethical person you have to be an anxious person. The more anxious the person the more ethical they are. She uses George Bush as an example, saying that he has no anxiety when he sends people to the electric chair. I think she feels that George Bush is not an ethical person because of his rash decisions, and this makes him a dangerous person. When she was explaining her idea, although her example may have seemed a bit extreme, I immediately understood what she was trying to convey. Either in a negative way or a positive way, by being an anxious person you are more prone to think about how your decisions will affect other people. Being anxious means that the person is full of mental distress and they are constantly thinking of all the situations that could play out if they were to carry out a certain act. If someone is not an anxious person, they are not thinking things all the way through before they make a final decision on something. For me, someone who is not anxious is a dangerous person to be around because if they are quick to make a decision without hesitation, or to think twice about what they have done, they could seriously hurt someone or a group of people. As a society we need to be more anxious so we can prevent unnecessary problems and conflicts from arising like violence between races or wars between countries.

               Another one of Ronell’s ideas that got the wheels in my head spinning was that as a society we always try to get instant gratification. That was easy to understand for me because I see it everyday. When someone is hungry they don’t have to go through the trouble of making everything from scratch like in the days before packaged goods. One can just go to a fast food place, where everything is all put together for the person; it’s instant. Although this is a small example, I feel it goes deeper than fast food or junk food. Instant gratification has made society very lazy and not very ambitious to try harder for what one wants. We seem to want the easy way out; we want to be patted on the back for the bare minimum, so we can have that instant gratification for something as small as just trying instead of taking a longer road to excelling at something. I think that society needs instant gratification at times because some people are not as determined as others, and some need small encouragement like instant gratification to show them that they are on the right track of achieving a goal or an assignment or just accomplishing something.

              The final idea of Ronell’s that I want to close on is that if we don’t know the other then we wont violate it, you will let it live. But if you think you know the other then you could kill it. Basically, we don’t understand that we don’t understand. For some reason we don’t realize that we don’t know everything and we don’t want to take the time to fully learn and understand something. Instead of admitting we were wrong about the other we try to cover our tracks. As a society we need to realize when we are wrong or when we haven't gotten all the information and just sit down and take the time to completly understand.

             Overall, I feel that Ronell is trying to tell us that in philosophy and in life, we need to take the time to ask questions, explore our options, and try to understand before making quick judgments or decisions.