Final Blog (accidently previewd and not published last night)

     Before this unit, I didn't really think much about human existance and why we are here living. I have always really just lived by the "live life to the fullest" idea and that we should live every day like its our last because we don't have a lot of time here on earth. Unlike an existentialist, I don't believe that we are here for nothing and that life is pointless. I believe that while we are here we should try to leave the world a better place than when we came into it and we should try to have a positive impact on everyone we meet. There is a significant difference between existing and living because when you are simply existing, you are just alive and breathing. When you are truely living, you are living life to the fullest and you are taking full advantage of being alive. We often hear people say that they feel like they are truly living, meaning that they are truly enjoying life and having a great time existing. To truly live life, you can't simply be existing, you need to be living life in a way that doesn't just think about right in the present, but also occasionally looking back to the past and into the future.
    Human interaction is definately an important part of life. I belive that it is important that at the end of our lives we should have positively impacted some of the people that we leave behind and should be remembered for helping people in some way or another. People that are alone are most often the unhappiest and most people that are alone wish that they could have other people around to be with them and unlike existentialists, most people enjoy being with other people and would rather spend time with other people than by themselves.
    It hads really reaffirmed by beliefs becuase I have now seen the life that an existentialist and the dissapointment and loneliness that they go through and I realize that I dont want in my life. I would rather be with friends and people that I care about than go on through life not caring about whats going to happen next and only living in the now. If anything it has made me want to life more outbeat and courageously, opposite of the existentialist beliefs.

presentation blog

I am choosing to post about Aymans presentation about the Simpsons. Its easy to go look for something that not many people have seen or heard about and say that its existential, but Ayman found something that people have watched for a long time and have loved, but probebly never looked at existentially. Besides the fact that he went first and deserves credit for that, he did a great job pointing out things that would be tough to find if one was not looking for it. The way that Homer is stupid and lives in the moment was a great point as well as how they never even think about the past or the future. Overall, I think Ayman did a great job becuase he found something that everyone has seen, but few have actually noticed its existential qualities.

blog 5

M ( Merceau or however you spell or pronounce it) at the end of part 1 finishes it off with a killing of a seemingly innocent Arab. The initial thought as to why someone as kind as harmless as M would shoot a man 5x is due to a sence of fear. As M was walking past him, the Arab took a knife out and that may have startled M into senclessly pulling the trigger out of fear. There are also clues however from the place and environment around him as to why he may have done it. After being dull and boring for most of part 1, he finally comes out and describes something in detail when he begins to describe the immense heat. He goes into great detail talking about how the sun was brutally beating down upon him and how it was absolutely horrible, almost giving M a sence that he was getting a little loopy from the heat and wasnt really thinking straight. There is also the idea that he is just a cold and heartless man who doesn't really care about anyone and saw no problem with taking another life. Overall, there are many different reasons that M could have shot the Arab, but all we really know is that he did and how he did it, not why.

blog 4

Well my thoughts what I've read so far in the novel are very...negative? Not so much negative as I am confused and bored with it. So far I have noticed a few things about this novel that set it apart from other books I have read in the past. Numerous short sentaces like " I was sitting on the bed" make it hard to read the novel without constant pausing and wondering, why even have that sentance? So far the characters are pretty dry and theres really not much action going on. The main character did'nt really even care when his mom died and does'nt really seem to care about anything at all. He is very individualistic like a existentialist and obviousely we have already seen a case of death and how our character handled that. I know that the book will be getting more interesting as it goes on because of the murder but as of right now it is still confusing me and most of it seems pretty random.

you know its blog 3 connecting

Hey hey everyone... your following eric hogenkamp and this indeed is my 3rd blog..   Connecting in today’s world.
     In today's world, it seems that the only way that people don't talk is through the action of talking itself. People talk through email, text, fax, facebook, phone, and now when you’re getting really lazy but want to pretend like you’re talking to someone, you can facetime/chat someone. Due to the new advancements in technology, people are far too busy to actually talk to people in person, but they like to substitute there actual time that they can't spare through a simple text, or a "poke" on facebook.  But there are also a lot of positives with the way people are connecting in today's society, like when families that live far away can see and talk to their loved ones on a regular basis, and when businessman can do work from their phones... %#$!!!  I read my assignment note book wrong.. connection* ahhhh ok well we see "exist" in our society in the way that people believe that they can achieve anything they set their minds to with the individualistic mind sets that some people have. With the economy being in a bad state right now, we are seeing people thoroughly look over the decisions that they are making and are following through with those decisions like existentialists. People also are thinking more about themselves and trying to get ahead. Like woman who have given up the role of housewives and have started building their own careers and having homes of their own instead of relying on their husbands to support them.

Look ma, no hands blog 2

Hello fellow bloggers and welcome back to the blog by Eric Hogenkamp, where you'll always have a great time.. Ok here we go
     Existentialism is a very complicated belief which has many different meanings to me. Coming from the word exist, existentialists try to figure out what it means to exist and how one would know that they are existing. They don't really see the meaning to life and sometimes they can believe that they are just existing and they don’t really know what’s true and what they should believe.
    They also live very individually and care more about taking care of themselves than taking care of others. They don’t think that social approval is as important as what they think of themselves. Every decision that they make they believe that they must not only follow through with, but deal with the consequences of their actions, because they live in the present.
 Overall, existentialism is a very tough topic to discuss but I believe with the help of my general knowledge of the subject and with Mrs. Oclan chipping in here and there, all of my bloggers will come to understand the subject.

   Eric Hogenkamp

stranger introduction

  Ultimately, everything I do is my own decision and nobody else's.
I do agree with part of this quote that we are the ones who make our own decisions and that in the end, no matter what people tell us, the decisions that we make are up to us. Sometimes people think that they can make decisions for others or have had decisions made for them by others, but that just means that those people were influenced or were trying to influence others in their decision making process. People can help you in your decision making process and can try to change the way you look at a decision your facing but ultimately it is up to you to decide.
 Everyone makes important decisions everyday that are up to them, even after the imput of others. Some of them being less important like picking out a shirt or exercising, and some being very important like which college to go to and what you want to be in life. With the smaller decisions we usually see that our friends and people that we are close to can greatly sway in one way or another, because they are not as important and we care what others think about us. But with the larger decisions we see that usually, even after we have been given advice and people have tried to change our mind, it ultimately comes down to what we want and how we want it done. Because many people have different opinions and some of them may go against what we want, we often see that we are torn between choosing what we want vs. what others have influenced us to believe.