Author Archives: joseph.dabo

These past few days the word “creativity” has been on my mind a lot. I want to creative.No doubt the digital essay will give me the chance to be creative and so i am eagerly anticipating it and looking forward to it.However, one problem I encountered was that i find it extremely hard to grasp and connect to poems. I read many selectios from Audre Lorde and Gertrude Stein but still did not like any of them.Ithought of reading a poem about something I like. Prof Kaufman provided a link to poets.org and so i decided to checked it out. I was amazed at how it immensely helped me in my quest of creativity.I searched for a poem on a subject i like “the gym”.Fortunately I found a poem entitled “At the Gym” by modern American poet, Mark Doty. At a first glance at the poem, it looks like the Doty is talking about his general bobservations at the gym. However, a careful look at it shows that he is talking about people’s quest for perfect beauty. He writes:

Power over beauty,
power over power!
Though there’s something more

tender, beneath our vanity,
our will to become objects
of desire: we sweat the mark
of our presence onto the cloth.

Thiss is my favorite work out at the gym

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From yesterday’s class, i came to the realization that it is okay not to know something.It is alright to be ambiguous. We live in a society obssesed with having the definite and right answers. We have become too critical and logical. We are crazy about memorization , test and numbers. This reminds me of why i was really nervous the hours before i had to take my calculus midterm. We leave no room for creativity, ambiguity and our right brain. Our education system assumes that all students have the same abilities, talents and the same ways of thinking. Our creativity and talents are often destroyed at an early age. We are not allowed to even develop it.

  However, it was quite heartwarming and encouraging to see that in our new age of life, from web 1.0 to 2.0, creativity is being taken into account.We are in dire need of creativity now than any moment in history. The internet has changed how humans live.Today we have become more creative.This is what we all need. Humans were made by their creator in a sense that they were to use their freewill and creativity to improve their life. But obviously that has not been the case. Our system of education will have to change in order for us to be truly creative

There are many people today who think accomplishing a single task or goal will bring them everlasting happiness. We often hear people say: “if i lose weight, then i’ll be happy.” or “if a buy that big house or that new car, i’ll be happy.” But do such people truly gain the happiness they are looking for? By no means. Sooner than later, they find out that they have myriads of problems and issues they have to deal with. They realize that in this imperfect system of things we all dwell in no one can gain never ending happiness.

  This same attitude can be clearly seen in the characters Aylmer and the American in the story Like White Elephants. Aylmer who is obsessed with perfection wrongly assumes that making Georgiana’s face perfect will lead to to everlasting happiness. He wrongly assumes that this will make her certainly perfect. In his quest for perfection, sadness and grief is what is gained. It seems he hasn’t contemplated the issue very well. Will making Georgiana’s face up to his standards really make her perfect? Perfection means flawless, without sin or error. What if Georgiana had lived and Aylmers discovers attitudes he didn’t like will he still think she’s perfect? Does Aylmer see himself as a perfect man? To err is human, only God is perfect. Aylmer by his attitude thinks he is God.

      The American on the otherhand thinks getting rid of Jigs pregnancy will make life everlastingly happy. But is that true? does he really believe that? or he is just trying to evade his reponsibilities by killing the baby? just like people drink or use drugs in order to free themselves from their responsibilities and wrongfully assume that they are happy.

I enjoyed the movie “Best In Show” not just because it was funny, but because it had a lot to do with the arguments i made in my paper. Many people today have the thinking that perhaps fame and money is what will truly bring them everlasting happiness. I have always disagreed with that. I know that no amount of money and/or fame can bring happiness because happiness is something different for different people.This point was well brought out in the movie “Best In Show.”

   The contestants for te dog show came from all walks of life; rich and poor, straight and gay, Rural and urban. However in the end, only one couple won.This brought them a lot of happiness. The others realized   that they already had happiness or pursuing other goals and activities was what truly brought them happiness. Their quest to win only brought them uneeded stress and a lot of unhappiness.

 So if you want to be happy, it might not come from being famous or even being rich. Just reach within yourself and find what makes you happy. Because happiness is just around you.

Freud presents his essay as a critique of the assumption that as humans we are drawn innately to gaining as much happiness and pleasure as we can. Freud disagrees with this assumption. He argues that we all have a mental perception of displeasure or pain. Our minds or perception is more drawn to dealing with the pains we experiences and this helps us to gain pleasure or happiness as a byproduct. Freud was writing after the time of WWI. At the time that event was the most displeasurable things humans had experienced.

 Gaining pleasure is not our dominant trait but most of the processes of our mind do end up in pleasure. He explains this concept with his investigation of “Fort Da” or “Child’s Play.” Freud experienced and analyzed the actions of a little boy who was constantly throwing away his toys in a bid to say Fort Da or gone away. The boy was not throwing away his toys and picking it back again because he found pleasure in that experience but instead, he was dealing with the painful things in his life that is his mother who was constantly away and his father who was off to war. Dealing with the pain was what brought the young kid happiness or pleasure. So the boy’s happiness had to deal with his own perception of what happiness was.

    In the same way, Plato’s Allegory of the cave is very similar to Fort Da. In the Allegory, Plato compares men in a state of ignorance to prisoners in a cave unable to turn their heads. Directly behind the prisoners, fire burns.  Between the fire and the prisoners, puppeteers who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners cannot see the real objects but all they see are shadows. In the minds of the prisoners, the shadows are real objects but when released they see that their perception of reality was different. Plato’s allegory also shows that what is considered as happiness is different for different people in different situations. Pain can be seen as pleasure or happiness by another person.

   I totally agree with the views of Freud and Plato. A person’s definition of pleasure or happiness is all perceptive. What is good for the goose is not always good for the gander so to speak. For example, a religious martyr who goes through torture and death because of his/ her beliefs will be viewed by another person as experiencing displeasure and in no way happy. However, even through that pain, the martyr might be happy inside knowing and believing that he is doing God’s will. Still a question remains, which kind of happiness is superior, gaining happiness by dealing with pain or gaining happiness through pleasurable things?