A Tale From The Emotional Abyss

 Tales From the Emotional Abyss

An Essay

A situation in my life has caused me to feel fear in my guts. Another situation has caused me to feel eager to write an essay. I can imagine myself developing the art of writing essays. From Jonathon Franzen's essay "The Essay in Dark Times," I have found this nugget, " Writing or reading an essay isn't the only way to stop and ask yourself who you really are and what your life might mean, but it is one good way" (6). And also, he says, "The discipline of fashioning a compelling story can crystallize thoughts and feelings you only dimly knew you had in you" (8).

I need to work out a problem.

I am bothering to write an essay as a means of organizing my confused thoughts and fears regarding my "Minds and Machines" philosophy class. This class is an MIT extension class, taken online. It doesn't count for anything as far as credits or grades count for a degree. It took the course because it advertised philosophy of mind. I didn't know anything about the philosophy of mind, but I am very interested in the consciousness question. Where does consciousness come from? I am also taking a beginning philosophy course at a junior college. The junior college class is starting from the beginning with topics in philosophy and I am learning.

The problem I'm working through regards the second midterm exam for the MIT philosophy class. I already know I cannot get the correct answers. So, I don't want to answer the questions wrong and see the red Xs. So maybe I should skip doing the exam at all. Getting questions wrong results in me disliking myself or thinking I am stupid. It is open book, but I simply can’t figure out what the right answers are. On the other hand, it is very unlike me to just blow an assignment off and go on with my life. But looking at the test questions, I feel a knot of fear well up in my guts. I believe I am training myself to fail philosophy. I don't want to do that.

Having been in the MIT course now for 3 months, we are only starting the actual unit on philosophy of mind. I have known since the first couple of weeks that the material was completely new to me and I had great difficulty understanding the lectures. And the lectures seemed to be covering material in which I had very little interest. And the questions seemed like riddles to me. I couldn't solve them on the front end. I could click several times and get the answer and then study the answer to understand the point, but this back end process is very unhelpful for answering exam questions that have to be figured out on the front end. Furthermore, the fear and anticipated failure feelings are carrying over to the very easy questions in the junior college philosophy class.

My question, should I ignore the MIT exam? This is turning out to be an existential question, not just much ado about nothing. Existential because the fear and the failures are becoming my ethos. Was the ethos always there and the MIT class uncovered it? Or is the MIT class developing it?

P1: I don't have the intellectual ability to puzzle out the MIT material, so I get everything wrong.

P2: If I fail at MIT, I'll start to fail at junior college because the fear of failure is becoming embedded in my guts.

P3: The MIT exam presents me with a situation where I am either a quitter or a failure.

C: Don't take the MIT exam.

The existential crisis involves premise 3. I don't want to feel like a quitter or a failure. So there must be a different way of looking at this which proves premise 3 wrong. That instead, premise 3 should say,

"P3*: The MIT exam helps me to validate my self worth and know my own brilliant inner truth."

How do I get there from here? Counter-arguments.

1. First grade versus sixth grade. Your parents would say, "Honey, you haven't taken a philosophy course before and you jump into something beyond what you know. Don't feel bad." I can think of many rational excuses for not understanding the MIT material. They may all be true, but my guts don't accept them. My guts want a new vibration.

2. Jordan Peterson's 7th rule: “Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.” The questions of the MIT material seem like silly riddles to me. And studying the material isn't giving me the answers. But I don't care about the answers anyway. So, don't pursue what is meaningless. Spend your time on what does mean something to me. The lectures of the MIT class do seem meaningful (at times) and are worth listening to. It is just the questions that seem meaningless. What does mean something to me is to follow the trail of knowledge of the MIT course, from theories of mind through brains and minds. 

3. Eagerness for essays in rhetoric. Just because I don't understand the MIT material doesn't mean that I can't be a deep thinker or write great essays. I feel eager to write essays. Being a philosopher does not mean that I need to be irrelevant in my essays. Brilliant inner truth can shine forth in the writing of an essay.

4. Well-being. Well-being is a vibration. It is a vibration that feels harmonious with consciousness. It is an ethos that is calming and joyful. Focusing on well-being, one is not a quitter for letting the MIT exam go. Brilliant inner truth can shine through in the intentional experience of well-being. 

5. The irrational. Fear is an irrational emotion most of the time. Fear of being a quitter is based on false pride and early childhood teachings. When feeling this type of fear, one should know that the experience is irrational. That making a good decision for yourself is separate from fear. 

The counter-arguments should be allowed. My existence is retained because I have an ethos of well-being and eagerness for something, namely essays. By writing this essay, I had to consider myself and my fear. I had to realize the existentiality of my fear. I had to not fall prey to basic teachings about quitting and failure. 

 I feel much better now that I wrote all these words.