SSHM ch.2 Freedom and Life

 SSHM ch.2 Freedom and Life 

Natalie Marler-Thomas 

Section #10 

 

 

Introduction 

In the chapter of Freedom and Life, Kaag talked about James’s depression and his journey with his recovery. It talks about the people and the things that saved William James’s life. Those things are his “second wind,” Renouvier, free will, and Alice Gibbens. It does talk about his brother and how nature impacted him as well. There are a lot of other things that happened to him on his journey, but these are the ones that are highlighted in chapter two. Kaag also introduces the soul being “twice born” and how that affected James. Overall, Kaag summarized a portion of James’s life and his recovery from depression. 

Suffering and Second Wind 

First, I would like to start with a quote from James, “If one looks carefully, suffering is not the exception but the rule.”  Suffering is something everyone will experience, and I do not believe it is possible to live without it. James at this time in his life believed we were fated, those sick souls are doomed to suffering and only look at despair, but the healthy-minded tend to overlook it. This was a low point of his life and he only saw the suffering in his own life and his life was fated to suffer. James then goes on to say, "To endure the horror of existence, the sick soul must be ‘twice born,’ or reborn in order to love, or at least bear, the act of living.” To be “twice born” is a radical transformation or a conversion experience. Imagine a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. 

 

This is what William James thought being “twice born” meant. You either decide to let the suffering take over or you get your second wind. I tried to think personally in my own life if I have experienced a second wind or being “twice born”. I believe I have, and it is something that changes the trajectory of your life. I never had a word to put to the experience and I believe some of us have also experienced this second chance of living. I feel like now in our society most people are not able to reach their first wind and do not have the life-changing second wind. I am not sure if I believe that everyone needs to experience a second wind to have a fulfilling life. 

         The second wind cannot happen without suffering. You experience the second wind when you decide between staying at rock bottom or choosing to go up. Kaag says it is hard to describe the second wind and it is something you will ever only truly understand when you experience it. In my own words, a second wind is when you are faced with something that seems impossible or where your fate is completely sealed, but you find the strength to overcome it. In the book, they talk about one specific example, and it is about John Muir, an American naturalist. He was climbing the side of a mountain on a hike, and he was hanging on the edge tired and close to giving up. He did not give up, suddenly, he had a second wind and it helped him get all the way to the top. However, James says that most people never reach their first wind, and they do not even know they have a second wind. William James experienced his reborn experience in the spring of 1870 after reading Renouvier’s second Essais.  

Free Will and Recovery is not Linear 

“My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will,” William James declared after reading Renouvier’s work.  

 

 

 

I wanted to share this comic because I believe this is how William James felt until he read about Renouvier talking about free will. He felt he was a domino destined to fall until he decided he had free will and moved out of the way. This was James’s second wind was believing in free will because he felt like before he was destined for suffering. Renouiver was an against the grain man and he firmly believed in free will. He did not go to school and today would be considered an uneducated man. However, I believe he was a highly intelligent man, and he did have a part in saving William James’s life. I do not want to be redundant about what he felt, but this sent James into a head spin. He could not believe it took him this long to figure this out and he began to think this newly founded happiness was a delusion. A quote from James, “That is the danger of being born twice born: there is always the prospect of having to die all over again.”  

Recovery is not linear. You do not always just become increasingly happier, sometimes we still have low points.  

 

This graph is just here to help visualize that progress with these things is not always linear and it is normal to have these very low points. These thoughts made him think that he was worse than before because he thought he was truly happy. James then talks about how a change in our thinking is not a small event, but it changes our whole being and how we view life. He did, however, after having some time with his thoughts, he decided that he does believe in free will. As James says, “the whole man within us,” changes and he did. This later helped James fall in love with his wife, Alice Gibbens.  

Conclusion 

In conclusion, Kaag helped us understand how James recovered from his depression and his journey with free will. He showed us all the steps James took to be the man he became. My thoughts from this chapter are that James is very relatable and very human. He has been through things that I feel like many people can understand and he learned and grew from it. James taught me that life is life, it is not amazing, but it is worth living. You will experience horrible things, but you will also experience sensational things. I ended this blog post with a quote from William James that I think you should take away from this chapter and a link to someone's personal experience with a second wind.  

 

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create fact.” 

-William James 

https://fashionedforjoy.com/2020/09/20/a-second-wind/

 

SSHM Chapter 5 Thoughts and Overview (Draft)

 Chance Hall Section 13

    In chapter 5 of Sick Souls Healthy Minds the author Kaag touches on a few concepts: truth, consequences, pragmatism, and zest. Pragmatism is something covered not just a lot in SSHM but also throughout our introduction to philosophy course. A key role of pragmatism that I try to implement into my life as much as I can is ameliorating life or making life better. One important way that I find to do that is to find truths about your life, whether that be good or bad. A negative example could be that whenever you find something that brings you happiness you do that so much that it becomes unhealthy (doom scrolling or overeating) or are prone to become addicted to substances that bring a positive feeling (vaping or drinking). Thus, by knowing you have that tendency then you can ameliorate your life by creating checks and balances that would only allow you to do these things with moderation. Or a positive example could be that you know that doing yoga helps not only to strengthen and make your body more flexible but also clears your mind of stressors. Thus, by knowing this you could regularly schedule yoga sessions to improve your body and mind. Though personal truths are important to understand, having at least a rudimentary comprehension of scientific truths is not only useful but important to create a well-rounded person too. For starters, having scientific comprehension gives a person tools to be able to think critically. Overall consequences are what we want from finding the truths in our lives and the universe. On the other hand, though consequences are not always what we strive for or even enjoy for that matter. Yet consequences, more or less, are how we flow through time - from one event to another. Even breathing, we inhale oxygen then our body miraculously and quickly distributes it for every part to use then we exhale our waste material of carbon dioxide, giving each of us the consequence of living another moment.

          Towards the end of the chapter Kaag points out that, zest is, having keen passion in life and what William James calls the key to human meaning. I do not think that there is a singular meaning to human existence or life itself for that matter, in the sense of a direct particular answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? Or why are we here? Other than of course 42! Although, for me, after breaking down that we are a living part of the universe that interacts and observes other parts of the universe then a part of an answer arises. So, we are alive and to stay alive we must perform actions on a continuous basis or else we will cease to be alive. Then it just makes sense to find the actions that cause the best response in you, meaning they will make you happiest. And I do not just mean the bare minimum of intaking nutrients, so your body continues to function and just performing menial actions that only allow time to pass by. Because if that is all one does then they are for all intents and purposes animals, although some animals are seen to do more than simply keep their body fed. Therefore, having a keen passion in life is A key to human meaning (I would say there are many keys). Since zest is only a single part of living, then it is important to remember to not focus all your energy on pursuing zest. It is direly important to remember to put focus on the other keys such as taking care of your mental, nutritional, and physical health. Although there is still substantial importance to develop zest in your life. Because having a passion to productively focus on really inputs reason into not just our day to day lives but also our long-term goals. And without a keen passion then depression becomes very likely, since there is no overall direction for livelihood. I believe that part of the reason why so few people in our modern world have a true keen passion for anything is because the system that we live in does not nourish that type of person. What, specifically our western system, grinds us to become is obedient workers that consume whatever is thrust in front of our faces. Because having an independent well-rounded intelligent population does not generate the most amount of wealth for those in power. An important question we need to ask ourselves and that of our representatives in places of power is: How can our society create intelligent people with a keen passion and a sense of community?

          To wrap this up I have added some links below. The first one briefly highlights how science improves our lives. Second, are self-care strategies to help prevent burnout. Lastly, 20+ scientifically proven methods to study, so these would be ways to study effectively and will not overwhelm you. The last two are there to help to start effectively approaching and navigating zest.

https://undsci.berkeley.edu/understanding-science-101/what-has-science-done-for-you-lately/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/preventing-burnout

https://coursementor.com/blog/scientifically-proven-study-methods/

Fantasyland Chapters 37 and 38

Jacob Cesario 

Intro to Philosophy Section #10 

Fantasyland by Kurt Anderson Chapters 37 and 38 

    Fantasyland by Kurt Anderson is about how opinions became the same as fact, and most Americans tend to just believe what someone says based off little to no factual evidence. This is seen all throughout the book, but during chapters 37 and 38, the main examples brought up were child abduction in the late 1900s, sexual assault in the late 1900s, cults in the late 1900s and alien sightings in the late 1900s and early 2000s. All these examples scared Americans, even though none of them were true.  

    During chapter 37, Kurt Anderson gives three examples: Child abduction, sexual assault cases, and cults. All of these he talks about occurring during the late 1900s. The first of these he mentions was child abduction, in which he claimed Americans started "imagining" that kids were being abducted. Kurt says that "Americans suddenly believed that children--by the tens or hundreds of thousands--were being abducted and tortured and kidnapped every year" (Anderson 325). Americans were just blindly believing a fake statistic with 0 factual backing. Multiple different statistics were thrown around, from as low as 30,000 child abductions per year to as much as 100,000. This means, at the low end, a dozen children were being abducted in New York alone for a week. This of course scared many parents in America, and man moved their kids to homeschool, set up stricter curfews and more. Americans were changing their lives and living in fear for no real reason. To Kurt, though, these statistics seemed improbable. He took proving this false into his own hands, so he called police stations around the country and asked how many were occurring per year. Most said they only had a few a year if not 0. This meant that, at the most, the real number was in the thousands. The FBI later concluded that the real number was around 300 a year, significantly lower than the "guesstimate" made by Adam Walsh's father that so many believed, which was 50,000.  

    His next example was physiologists/therapists were influencing people into thinking or "re-remembering" that they were sexually assaulted. This spread and became more popular, making it seem like there were more cases than there were. This was of course not true, but it still scared many regardless. Many scientists at the time claimed it just was not reasonable to say someone could just forget they were sexually assaulted and then, magically "re-remember" it. Kurt follows this by stating "But science be damned; the clinicians and patients and other people desperate to believe they had formed a movement" (Anderson 330). This was Kurt making fun of the people involved for making things up for the sake of a fake "movement". Yet another example of Americans believing and letting themselves fear something that never actually existed.  

    His 3rd example of chapter 37 was abductions again, but this time they threw in cults and feeding babies to sharks. People started to believe that cults were kidnapping, raping, murdering, and more hundreds of thousands of people. This caused nationwide panic. Many books of supposed "victims" were published. The first one was written by Michelle Proby, who was made to believe her daughter was kidnapped by a cult through means of hypnosis. Her book became a bestseller, and Kurt said this book was the template for many more books to come.  
 

    Other false claims included a physiatrist claiming that there were 60,000 ritual homicides each year, while the actual homicide number was only 20,000, with the actual ritual homicide rate being even lower. It was also said that a daycare kidnapped kids, transported by hot air balloon over the ocean, and fed them to sharks. Kurt stated that "several people were sentenced to long prison terms, and several served time before their convictions were overturned or charges were dismissed" (Anderson 338). Many were imprisoned because of these lies, and many are still imprisoned for these "crimes" to this day. 

    During chapter 38, Kurt talks about UFO and alien sightings. This example is a little less off track from murder and rape and mass panic and more on the side of Americans believing something more harmless. After movies such as E.T. came out, many more UFO sightings started to become more prevalent. Someone named John Mack tried holotropic breathwork, which helped him "re-remember" his past life as a Russian in which he was abducted by aliens. He made a book on his encounter with aliens, and uncoincidentally many more alien encounters started popping up after this. It was even said that skepticism of these "victims" was as ugly as laughing at a rape victim. By 2015, UFO sightings increased by 241%. It took one movie to start a bunch of lies.  

    I think Kurt's main idea here is that Americans are too easily manipulated or persuaded. So long as someone reputable says something or there is some sort of "proof", people will believe it, regardless of if that person is telling the truth, has any evidence, or if that proof or evidence makes sense or is backed in some way. Instead of believing what you want, Americans should research problems that arise, such as increased cult kidnappings and babies being fed to shark in the Atlantic. These problems and panics would have never come to be if Americans stopped believing everything they heard. 
 

Work Cited: 

Andersen, Kurt. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. Ebury Press, an Imprint of Ebury Publishing, 2017. 

Arlin Cuncic, MA. “Is Holotropic Breathwork Right for You?” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 8 May 2023, www.verywellmind.com/holotropic-breathwork-4175431.