On Thursday and Friday we will create double-entry class notes (with observations, quotations, details on the left, ideas, reactions, questions, comments on the right) in response to David Gessner's "The Dreamer Did Not Exist".
On Monday Mr. Telles will guest lecturer about Ernest Becker, whose book Denial of Death is referenced in Gessner's memoir essay. Understanding Becker better will help us understand what Gessner suggests in his essay.
Before class time on Tuesday you will attempt to synthesize your understanding of Gessner's essay into a personal response. Your personal response should accomplish a few things: it should show that you understand how Gessner's essay works; it should demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of what Gessner's essay suggests about the human condition; and (here's the new part) it should respond to what Gessner suggests by supporting, challenging, or modifying his view. Post your response in the comment box below.
Some Notes*
ReplyDelete“The Dream Did Not Exist”
David Gessner
OBSERVATIONS
narrative switches between present – pig roast -- & memories beginning with the narrator as a ten year old
narrative shift (of time) confusing at first
“feels right” to eat pig (and later “pig tastes wonderful”) is provocative.
dog dying a inciting action (section 2)
(In present doesn’t have a dog. Hm.)
Then, panic attacks about non-existence.
New England Private school: hippie environment (Pink Floyd, Dead), drinking, pot smoking…
Fight. (section 7)
Writing… “howl, grunt” “self-asserting grunts” (section 2)
“Nothing” p. 88, etc. & “the feeling”
Section 8. Feels freer when family leaves.
Father’s “ambition” (I don’t exist in the same way mortals like the rest of you exist) is analogous to Gessner’s “feeling” (I don’t exist right now)
e.g. Applauded by workers
(section 11) comparison between father dying and wife’s dog dying:
both “curmudgeons”
“both animals” (92)
Section 7, p 94 mentions Lord of the Flies. Father like Ralph. Pigs head up on the barn.
(p. 100 paragraph 3) narrator commends/admires his father’s acceptance of death (& believes the dog did the same)
IDEAS / REACTIONS / QUESTIONS / CONNECTIONS
Extreme version of anxiety members of the class had felt. (Other class members couldn’t imagine themselves thinking of this sort of thing at age 10.)
Contrast between NE & South: God in the South, critique of “etiquette” (irony) pig roast (though he’s eaten plenty of pig including in Germany) (But Gessner’s patterns are the same in NE & South. Gessner culturally outside but wants to belong & does so through fighting / eating.
Another pair of common primal instincts
Family is culture/civilization restraining animalistic/primal nature
Illusion that you can make yourself into someone/something beyond / transcending mortal reality (this is unlike being fixed on what is solid & real ; i.e. striking the desk.!!!)
This connection was “weird” & surprising at first. (It caught our attention. Mr. Cook: the German Marxist playwright Bertoldt Brecht calls this the “alienation effect”) But then we found Gessner’s insight was impressive.
Insight: We’re all animals.
Revised insight: We’re all animals & (unlike animals) we’re capable of being conscious/aware of being animals (& therefore of dying)
Maybe the author is suggesting it’s best not to be aware. This is a reasonable & common view but not the one the author comes to.
Emily thought of LotF before then. Jack.
Nah, it’s more likely that the author suggests that accepting the truth (we are all animals, we will die, we will be aware of it) is noble/admirable.
Gessner asserts: Not admirable having lived one way to “fudge things with the end near”.
Writing is a way of being remembered, living on///but also creating is a way of being (Need the support for this in the text.)
Is it good to be animal-like in this way, embracing eating animals (causing death) & embracing death (one’s own death)?
Theme: anxiety (which can lead to panic or ambition, see above) v. acceptance
Gessner ironically juxtaposes his own visceral anxiety about nonexistence with the visceral experience of eating (which, of course, entails the nonexistence of that which we eat):
Do you find this juxtaposition tragic (i.e. a necessary aspect of being human) or is it a moral (or imaginative) failing on Gessner’s part? Or is it something else entirely?
*Notes on notes: there are a lot of rich quotations that probe nuances of human responses to nonexistence which are not represented here. If I were to reteach the essay I'd try to get us to focus in on such passages. You should do so before writing your response.
Jacklyn L.
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In Gessner’s essay he talks about the idea of nonexistence and the problems it causes in one mind. Gessner starts to examine the idea of nonexistence beginning with the thought of where we go after we die. This thought starts to form in his mind as a ten year old after his dog died. The anxiety starts to come because as a child because fear grows as a child especially when a parent cannot understand a child’d fear. The idea of how his parents handled showed how people do not understand the idea of nonexistence. With people not understanding the idea it makes it so that a person feels even more deeply alone so that the feeling of nonexistence takes a deeper hold. however as one ages one learns to handle childhood phobias better and they dissipate until one no longer fears of worries about them. The pig in the present starts to represent the idea of existence because it is something physical he can touch and grasp whereas death which started the whole fear of nonexistence is not something that can be grasped. Gessner’s essay suggest that people fear death or in this case nonexistence. Also it suggests that some people already have a deep understanding of it like his parents. It begins to point out that once a person understands something then it is no longer a fear because it can no longer hurt them. Also a person like an animal excepts the fact that they are going to die and once they understand this they know it just part of a natural human existence and will not fight it when the time comes, such as when his father dies. It also suggests that humans and animals are not that different from each other. The idea that at times a human will follow animal instincts to get what they want. Also when an animalistic response is what a person wants to be produced instead of a verbal answer because it expresses more emotion than words could. In the end as the author continues to describe the eating of the pig he seems to be more of an animal following his desires rather than a human who follows their manners. However it also suggests how the human is unlike the animal. This is because they can control their emotions better in away that an animal could never comprehend. It shows that humans are more capable of controlling their mind than an animal because they can hide away their emotions. In the end I support his view. Though it is foreign to me because I had to deal with the fear of the unknown at a very young age. This makes it harder for me to understand the fear because I have never felt it. Though then it could be argued that any childhood fear could be represented in this light. Such as the anxiety felt be him is most likely the anxiety felt by children when they think about one of their own fears. In the end Gessner makes a pretty accurate picture of the human’s mind and anxiety.
In the essay “The Dreamer Did Not Exist”, Gessner retells a story from his past that concerns his own personal experiences with nonexistence and his ideas about it. As a young child he would constantly go insane trying to understand what he thought of as not existing. Beginning with the death of his dog Macker, Gessner then fell into an ever lasting series of panic attacks questioning his own existence. However, these panic attacks weren’t caused by his fear in death, but ultimately of his fear in being forgotten when death approached or the concept of feeling insignificant in the world. When Mr. Telles lectured in class, he said something like, “Gessner felt totally and completely insignificant when compared to the world… he was just another speck of this MUCH bigger piece of existence.” This statement totally displays Gessner’s feelings at the points in his life when “the feeling” hit. Truly though, compared to something that seems so much more important and complex, how could something as small and simple add up or measure up to it? It is natural, I would think for one to think this way to an extent.
ReplyDeleteThe “pig eatings” that Gessner talks about in various parts of the essay, and during certain times of his life, suggest that he feels control over the situation. I feel like he describes the pig eating the way he does to display his “buffering himself for survival” as Mr. Telles put it. Yet, Gessner implies that humans are animals. I like what Jacklyn wrote, “The idea that at times a human will follow animal instincts to get what they want… animalistic response is what a person wants to be produced instead of a verbal answer because it expresses more emotion than words could.” And, after putting these two concepts together, it shows how unalike humans and animals can be portrayed. Humans do have more control than animals; still the “pig eatings” were a great way to reveal the how Gessner felt about almost conquering his thoughts about nonexistence. (After reading this paragraph, I think I achieved in my attempt in trying to provide some insight, but then again it’s a bit confusing…)
Personally when I first read this essay my reaction was, Gessner is pathetic. Really, how could one become so lost in trying to understand their existence to a point of going completely insane? However, Gessner does display some interesting ideas pertaining to his whole message of: anxiety vs. acceptance. He was overall trying to display fear in a much larger context, whereas I feel the quote, “there is nothing to fear rather than fear itself”, certainly can come into play! He feared death like many if not all people do. On top of that, he feared that when he died his identity would be forgotten and his life, insignificant. But I think he is loosing sight of the fact of what truly matters; what you accomplish while you are living and how you affect the people around you. If you spend too much time trying to find your own identity or self existence then you loose track of the time you are given to change people or the world around you. Furthermore, Gessner does display an interesting take on the state of one’s mind dealing with the fact of nonexistence.
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ReplyDeleteEvan Kidder
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12/13/10
Gessner’s essay does a good job conveying the theory that all humans are afraid of death and we develop defense mechanisms as a result. We believe we need to be individuals or something special. Gessner suggests that it is instinct for human beings to fill themselves up with food for survival, But since we are able to see past just our instincts we must also fill ourselves up with meaning for survival. Meaning is almost as important as fod for you simply cannot function normally in society if you don not have it. One will become increasingly perplexed over their own self. Gessner also suggests that it is an instinct to live, But it is also an instinct to die, It just isn’t realized because we are so up tight about death in our society. The fatal bleak thought that everything will fade into nothing, and we cease to exist. However Gessner makes this provocative connection between his Dad’s death and his dog’s death, suggesting that when the time comes, we all will know how to die just as we know how to live. Making grabs at religion is just another example of how human society interferes with your basic animalistic instinct. The pig is more or less is just the connection that all cultures can fill themselves with something through a basic instinct. even if its not the same way we fill ourselves with meaning (Ex. South was more religious).
Through discussing Becker with Mr. Telles I came to understand more death in our society. We fight to be someone, to be a name that is remembered so that we can live on even when we die. So much is heaped upon images of young celebrities who are basically living to die. We not only love them for being in the spotlight but we gain more interest when we see their lifestyles, always on the brink of self destruction.
We generally buy into things as well, trying to form a unique identity apart from others. In doing this it also allows us to fit snuggling inside our magical culture bubble, conforming to a common trend or idea. Thus proving Becker’s theory that one must have a stable self awareness and a stable environment.
Personally I think Gessner makes great points pointing out that humans are afraid of death and we don't know what it's like to not exist. We try to create floodgates to bar the rushing waters of our mind from overflowing on this topic. We soathe ourselves with nostalgic beliefs, but in the end we will know death.
When one has already made a name for themself, what do they then have to live for?
ReplyDeleteDoes "The Feeling" go away?
Evan. That’s a good point you bring up about celebrities. I really enjoyed Mr. Telles’ discussion today about Becker, and I can see how heavily influenced Gessner must have been from the man. Before I get into anything, I’d like to address this celebrity thing. Mr. Telles said that, to cope with death, we both scapegoat and tune into this “uncritical hero worship” mode. So when Evan brought up that many celebrities live on the brink of destruction, something hit me. Mr. Telles said that we can worship these celebrities, gaining a sense of immortality in the process. What hit me though is that the public is largely focused on criticizing these celebrities flaws. Magazines make fortunes by exposing celebrity drug addictions and failed marriages. Now this may not be scapegoating to its literal definition, but the public runs on this gossip. Obviously hearing this makes individuals feel better about their own problems, but maybe, just slightly, we are knocking others down a notch and pushing them in front of the depressing death that we face ourselves. If true, then this is how Mr. Telles described Becker’s interpretation of “scapegoating”. So there are the celebrities that we worship, and those that we take pleasure in tearing apart. What exactly constitutes the difference between these two classes of public figures?
ReplyDeleteWow, I spent a lot longer on that then I thought that I would. Anyways, I really enjoyed reading Gessner’s essay. There were times when I could not stand his personality )particularly towards the end), but I loved his writing. Something that hit me (and i briefly brought it up in class) was in the end, how he instantly changes his behavior at the roast once his wife and daughter leave. “When my wife says it’s time to bring my daughter home I decide to stay and get a ride with one of my students. Now I can really drink and I begin to tilt the beer cans more aggressively vertical when I lift them above my mouth.”(8) He could have left these sentences out, and I would’ve gotten the picture. Without even realizing, I would speculate that he would start acting a bit more loosely behaved once his daughter left, because that’s how adults can act when they’re with friends, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The way he delivered the idea though, “now can I can really drink””aggressively”, gave an almost animalistic tone. You get the feeling that he’s been waiting for his family to leave him all evening so that he can engage in the revelry that he desires. I found this weird, and eventually concluded that family is just another restraint that we’ve created to distance ourselves from animal, to distance ourselves from freedom, risk, and possibly death. But it is natural for a human to long for this anarchy, and push away from the barriers to death that they’ve constructed. (This is starting to sound a lot like my Portrait essay). The pig parallel was great too. Becker talked about hoarding as another mechanism. That’s what Gessner is doing the entire time that he talks about death and nothingness. It also gives Gessner an animalistic image and suggests that maybe it’s best to just live things up. By eating the pig, he takes it away from existence, but he knows that he ultimately shares the same fate as his prey. The meat may give him an instantaneous sense of pride, but he only has so much time to exist.
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ReplyDeleteSean Dixon
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From the moment we are born, we are doomed to die. Death is inevitable, and many fear it. While some are brought up in a religious background and may believe that this life is some sort of test for entrance into the afterlife, others, such as Gessner, reject this and protect themselves from their fear of death using different methods. The death of his dog opened Gessner’s eyes to how easily death can come. Today in class, Mr. Telles said something along the lines of “animals do not know that they are destined to die. Only humans have this knowledge.” Gessner’s dog’s death brings him to this realization. As he undergoes his anxiety attacks (“the feeling”), his father asks him: “Do you realize there are millions of children starving and dying of disease?” His father reveals that people’s fears of death are brought on because they have so much to lose. Gessner’s desire to be one of those people emphasizes his belief that only those close to death have any true knowledge of it and are therefore immune to the curse of the nonexistence belief.
We talked about in class how people eventually have concerns about death at some point in their lives, but some couldn’t imagine having such thoughts at such a young age as in Gessner’s case. Gessner’s condition and concern over nonexistence as a child had a special effect upon him due to his young age and ignorance. In Gessner’s adolescence, he gains some sort of immunity against his former nonexistence concerns; his absorption in high school life causes this. “We wore Tye-Dye, listened to Pink Floyd and the Dead, smoke pot and drank wine.” This seems to be the beginning of Gessner’s coping with nonexistence. His indulgence in alcohol and later the pig eating allows him to live in an animalistic manner. It is his attempt to connect to the animal view of life’s meaning, which is void of any fear of death or of nonexistence.
When both his father and wife’s dog die, he admires their easy descent into the unknown. Both seem to him as though they are satisfied with what they have done in life (seen in his father’s rejection to take up religion and his coping with death). He compares the two, because his father and the dog both do not fear nonexistence; however, his father has already left a mark upon the world (Textilmachen).
Our lives pass by in the blink of an eye. What is the point of that blink? Is it better to search for a meaning to life or to blend in among the crowd, enjoying the night in the woods of insignificance?
Andrew Mizzoni
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Gessner’s essay touches a similar subject that until this point I believed only I had felt. The feeling of dieing is not what scares me the most but the fear of non-existence. If dieing meant just being put into another body with the same mind there would be significantly less fright. However, the feeling of knowing that you will never think again or ever see the light of day ever again scares me. I cannot imagine not being able to think because even when you are sleeping you are still thinking. I connect to this essay in my similar fears that both Gessner and I feel. Beginning in my childhood I began to start to fear death and the non existence. At that young age everything was coming to me in a new fashion. I felt that I was in a life where I was immortal. I thought that I would be young forever and that nothing would ever change. Death was just something that happened to old people. I believe that you were either born old or you were born young. However when I hit around eight years old I began to fear not death but non existence. I feared that one day I would not have a mind and that is what scares me the most. Not having the ability to think for yourself is a common fear. Gessner connects well with me when he brings up the problem of non-existence.
Mr. Tells explanation of death today connected well with the thoughts and questions I had. I wondered how religion influences ones opinion on death. I feel that without religion you would fear death a lot more than one who belives that life does go on. I personally feel that religion is great becaue in life values makes things better. People live to value things whether its tangible or not. Religion is a great value that keeps away some of the fear of death. Gessner does not do well explaining how religion impacts his opinions on death. I feel that he might not be religious because of the essay he wrote.
Tom M.
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Gessner’s “The Dreamer Did Not Exist” explores a story from the author’s past, contemplating the differences between his own personal experiences with the feeling of nonexistence and his ideas about nonexistence itself. I believe Gessner spent many a time wracking his brain for answers, trying to put the jigsaw pieces together that are the act of contemplating nonexistence. As the author contemplated his own “nonexistence” in dealing with death, he came to a bit of a revelation. Gessner believed that death was the act of creating insignificancy, spawned by nonexistence, which in some sense, is true. For while death can be seen as the act of “nonexistence” in most scenarios, on the other hand, Gessner thought he would become forgotten in death, insignificant. This thought of his is merely a personal fear created from his contemplations of nonexistence. Though I was unfortunate, and not able to hear Mr. Telles lecture in class on Monday, from what I have gathered from other students’ responses, Gessner, in a general sense, has been viewed as a man who did feel, in the most basic sense, insignificant in comparison to the rest of the living civilization and the rest of the great, big world. Moriah quoted Mr. Telles in stating “He was just another speck of this much bigger piece of existence.” I agree with Moriah in the fact that this does portray Gessner’s true feelings presented in his story. Of course it is natural for Gessner to feel insignificant, when compared to such a complex entity.
It’s difficult to dissect much else from Gessner’s work than what has already been presented. Gessner fears death because he believes nonexistence creates insignificancy, a fact he just can’t face. He fears being forgotten, he fears that when he dies, it will be as if he never walked the world in the first place, that he was nothing. This is truly a fear among many people. However, his attempt to display the justification of his fears, did little for me. What Gessner should have done in the first place, was to simply accept the existence, of, well, nonexistence. In diverting himself from the rest of his life, indulging himself into his fears, he lost complete sight of what’s really important in life. I strongly believe Moriah put it best for me. “He is loosing sight of what truly matters; what you accomplish while you are living and how you affect people around you. If you spend too much time trying to find your own identity or self existence, then you loose track of the time you are given to change people or the world around you.”
Because Gessner chose not to accept his anxiety as a merely human fear, he probably was not able to partake in many important and exciting experiences and memories. When we think too much of one fear, and live in that constant fear, we end up running away from all the good in our lives. We end up on concentrating on things we can’t change, things we have no control over, while we could be taking that focus and directing it on this we can create, change, and control for ourselves. If the human race started taking all of the effort it puts into complaining and worrying about the fears and wrongs of society and directed it towards doing something positive or constructive for themselves, someone else, or for the world around them, then I am almost certain, the world would be a much brighter and less frightening and negative place.
Tom M.
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(Post continued...)
There’s nothing we can do about nonexistence, because it doesn’t exist. Personally, when I start thinking about how I am me, and how no one else is me, and how this is a living world, and how I am living, and how I am a human, and how I have a name, and how I have likes and dislikes, and how I feel certain ways, and do certain things, and look a certain way, and how I have allergies, I start to really freak myself out. It’s the same situation as contemplating and living in the fear of nonexistence. It is what it is and we will not know how it affects us due to it’s mysterious existence and influence in the first place. Therefore, it is better for us to direct that energy towards a greater good and a more positive area of thought and process.
William Gessner’s “The Dreamer Did Not Exist” was a nice change of pace from the fictitious readings that we have been focusing on for the past few months. The storytelling was vivid and felt genuine, and it almost felt like I was sitting next to him at the pick picking he introduced at the beginning of the essay. Still, the text remained literary throughout; although it was simply a recollection of past events in Gessner’s life, he revisited themes and made connections from his past. It was not just another storytelling, it was a carefully planned narrative that expressed Gessner’s psychological journey through life, and how his experiences helped to shape him into the man he ultimately became.
ReplyDeleteAn obvious theme he approaches throughout is the connection between the wild and the tame; more specifically, he embraces the fact that the wild, untamed world where animals thrive is much more accepting of death than we humans sometimes are. With all of his struggles with death and its acceptance as a child, Gessner finally is able to reach some understanding when his wife’s dog dies. He compares it to the death of his father and feels that they both accepted death when the time came for him to go. I found it difficult to appreciate his father’s cynical approach toward existence, and that even in death he denounced any type of higher power, accepting a life in oblivion. I respect an individual’s dedication in respects to morals and whatnot, even if I do not agree with them; in that respect, this is a very powerful scene. To have enough gusto to accept such a fate is not fathomable to me, and reading this hit me pretty deep.
One thing that I wish to touch upon before I conclude my blog post is about his condition as a young boy. He clearly did not grow up with much faith present in his life (by faith I mean any type of religion or idea of life after death). Without that, it would be tough to convince a child that there is something to live for, or that life after death is something he can look forward to. His father is not someone who can help with this problem, for he is even more unstable in his view of existence than Gessner is. A ten-year-old with such severe identity issues is rather unique, though. It is very high level thinking that he possesses at such a young age; do we really exist? This is a question generally reserved for scholars and professors, not a fourth grader. All the same, his struggles simply delve into his main theme of the essay; we are vulnerable beings, and more animalistic than we like to admit. Death is close, and we can do whatever we want to try and hide from it, but only by accepting it for what it is, we can manage to live a life of sanity.
Gessner’s essay is a relatively simple one, with some deep concepts, and this poses an interesting conflict leaving the reader unsettled and asking “Is it really this simple. Gessner uses two main events to express his opinions about human nature in relation to mortality, his “feeling” and the pig roast. Gessner is addressing how humans view and accept (or deny) their mortality, and he does this through his own personal, unsettling experiences.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid Gessner had a “feeling” in which he realized his own, and everyone else’s mortality. This caused to come to the conclusion that “everything is nothing”, that “nothing is nothing”. While this can be attributed to a child just discovering some facts of the world, and this may be true, Gessner adapts it to teach the readers. Gessner is stating that humans, even at a young age, have this fear of death ingrained in them, and that it is possible to qualm this fear. This relates directly to some supporting evidence that Gessner used, the ideas of Ernest Becker. Becker says that humans must somehow cover up their fear of death, disguise it somehow. Gessner proved the theory of Gessner with his own actions, ignoring and changing “the feeling” and its power.
At the pig roast another key piece of human nature is looked at, and again how humans deal with death. Here humans are basically attacking a lower being, feasting upon it and in essence its soul (Mr. Telles said this when he was talking to our class and I really felt that this was a really accurate and powerful connection). These highly educated humans are brought back to this primal, basic state where suddenly they need not think of death, as they are feeding on this creature they have defeated, feeding on its mortality, increasing their own immortality.
Gessner is saying in his essay that humans are afraid of death, and it has a major affect on us as a species and as individuals. Many things can be done to try to avoid death, to ignore it, or to make ourselves feel better about it, but nothing though can really be done, humans are just fooling ourselves, but that is OK sometimes.
Arica A.
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Childhood is a time of confusion, learning and acceptance for all people. As a child’s mind develops, we all know that they are constantly asking adults the question “why” thinking that there will be a solid answer. This question can sometimes not be answered by us, however, but we do not ask the questions ourselves because our minds have gone through the acceptance phase. We have accepted the fact that we may never know these answers, where a child cannot simply accept that. Gessner explores this need for an answer as a child, and the acceptance as an adult in his essay “The Dreamer Does Not Exist.”
He explains his feeling of nonexistence as “the feeling.” He states that this feeling of nonexistence stemmed from the death of his cherished childhood pet dog. These sort of feelings are normal as a child. I can connect to Gessner personally when I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real around age seven. I felt betrayed by my parents, and I can remember wondering, “If santa doesn’t exist, then does the tooth fairy exist? How about the Easter bunny? And what about the three wise men that come and put candy in my shoes? And if the three wise men don’t exist then does Jesus really exist?” As a child, we have no sense of what the meaning of faith really is. We cannot grasp that we may not know the answers to our questions, but that the answers to them lay within our own beliefs in them. Not all children feel “the feeling” of nonexistence that Gessner felt, but all children are curious and wonder “why?”
I believe that the motive of Gessner’s essay is to compare the exploring thoughts of a child to the bland thoughts of adults, and to show us that as adults, we can think like children and do not have to conform to the acceptance of certain ideas. It is harder, yes, but we can do it. We can all ask, why? And we can all bring forth ideas that we believe in, or have come to believe in.
Gessner shows us that our childhood abstract thoughts can stay with us throughout life if we allow them to. Those thoughts that we are so set on believing in and finding an answer to do not have to disappear with age, but can actually be enhanced and processed further through the years. What we believe in is our own existence, and we have to find our existence within our own beliefs.
I cannot say exactly what Gessner was saying in his essay, but I can say what I got out of it from what was written and how I feel in comparison to what he felt. Its funny, but there was actually an episode of South Park on last night that compared perfectly to the feeling that Gessner expresses in his essay. Kyle finds out that the tooth fairy isn’t real and questions his own existence to the extreme. He becomes a sort of hypochondriac, reading books about what existence really is and what it means to be “real.” I remember watching this episode a few years back and comparing it to how I felt when I found out santa claus wasn’t real, and now I can compare it to Gessner’s own feelings. I thought I should add that in because I thought it was really ironic that I was able to compare what we were talking about in class to an episode of South Park…
Arica A.
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Childhood is a time of confusion, learning and acceptance for all people. As a child’s mind develops, we all know that they are constantly asking adults the question “why” thinking that there will be a solid answer. This question can sometimes not be answered by us, however, but we do not ask the questions ourselves because our minds have gone through the acceptance phase. We have accepted the fact that we may never know these answers, where a child cannot simply accept that. Gessner explores this need for an answer as a child, and the acceptance as an adult in his essay “The Dreamer Does Not Exist.”
He explains his feeling of nonexistence as “the feeling.” He states that this feeling of nonexistence stemmed from the death of his cherished childhood pet dog. These sort of feelings are normal as a child. I can connect to Gessner personally when I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real around age seven. I felt betrayed by my parents, and I can remember wondering, “If santa doesn’t exist, then does the tooth fairy exist? How about the Easter bunny? And what about the three wise men that come and put candy in my shoes? And if the three wise men don’t exist then does Jesus really exist?” As a child, we have no sense of what the meaning of faith really is. We cannot grasp that we may not know the answers to our questions, but that the answers to them lay within our own beliefs in them. Not all children feel “the feeling” of nonexistence that Gessner felt, but all children are curious and wonder “why?”
I believe that the motive of Gessner’s essay is to compare the exploring thoughts of a child to the bland thoughts of adults, and to show us that as adults, we can think like children and do not have to conform to the acceptance of certain ideas. It is harder, yes, but we can do it. We can all ask, why? And we can all bring forth ideas that we believe in, or have come to believe in.
Gessner shows us that our childhood abstract thoughts can stay with us throughout life if we allow them to. Those thoughts that we are so set on believing in and finding an answer to do not have to disappear with age, but can actually be enhanced and processed further through the years. What we believe in is our own existence, and we have to find our existence within our own beliefs.
ReplyDeleteI cannot say exactly what Gessner was saying in his essay, but I can say what I got out of it from what was written and how I feel in comparison to what he felt. Its funny, but there was actually an episode of South Park on last night that compared perfectly to the feeling that Gessner expresses in his essay. Kyle finds out that the tooth fairy isn’t real and questions his own existence to the extreme. He becomes a sort of hypochondriac, reading books about what existence really is and what it means to be “real.” I remember watching this episode a few years back and comparing it to how I felt when I found out santa claus wasn’t real, and now I can compare it to Gessner’s own feelings. I thought I should add that in because I thought it was really ironic that I was able to compare what we were talking about in class to an episode of South Park…
Eden brought up an interesting point about our ambivalence toward celebrities that I think gets to a crucial point in Becker’s thinking. The question Eden posed is why we worship celebrities one moment only to obsessively point out their flaws later. We see this in the “Look How Pock Marked Celebrities Are Without Makeup” articles at the grocery store. Becker argues that indeed we want to “merge” and subsume ourselves into the immortal aura of celebrities, sharing in their claims for immortality; this is the reason why many people hyperventilate and become generally hysterical in the presence of their idols. What if they reject us? We’ll be powerless against oblivion.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, he writes, we must keep ourselves occasionally grounded in our awareness of our own mortality, if only for brief periods, to ensure that we do not lose ourselves completely in our object of fantasy. This is the function of horror movies, for instance. We become transfixed with horror as we watch attractive people die in a variety of grotesque ways, and then leave the theater and return to our regular modes of death denial, only with greater conviction. One feels a kind of “survival thrill” for having experienced the chaos and left it behind. In the same light, you go back to your “real” immortality saviors after having scoffed at Lady Gaga’s make up-less face. It may seem like a stretch to connect tabloids to horror movies, but they both serve to remind us that “the skull is always grinning at the banquet,” as they say. You may have heard someone say something like: “check out Lady Gaga without makeup; she looks like a train wreck.” There is a reason that person would reach for that metaphor, Becker would argue.
It may seem like Becker can fit anything too neatly into his particular “logic” of human behavior, but I think it’s worth remember that all of Becker’s thought actually rests on an insoluble problem, one that he never pretends to solve. We are animal-like in our appetites and needs, but we are unlike animals in that we are uniquely aware of our eventual death. We cannot solve this problem, try as we might with our symbol systems and stories, so we have become deeply contradictory and ambivalent creatures. We must serve our creaturely needs and deny them simultaneously.
Kara Smith
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Gessner’s The Dreamer Does Not Exist is a very good representation of the natural human fear of dying. But he takes it to a whole new level. In many ways I agree with what Moriah said about Gessner nearing the brink of seeming all out pathetic. He spends so many years of his life worrying and fretting about this ‘nonexistence’ stuff. He literally wasted years stuck on this idea that the world was completely nonexistent and he himself was too. It is true that childhood is a time for our minds to develop and it can be a confusing part of our lives. Children are constantly asking ‘why?’ and sometimes it is hard to accept that there might not be an answer every time. But it shouldn’t be this hard. It shouldn’t drive us to the brink of insanity.
As we grow we do tend to accept that death is inevitable and we must do what we can now to make our lives worthwhile. As we discussed in class, Gessner is not suggesting that we should just block the idea of death out to make it easier to deal with, but we should do the best we can to accept it, understand it and stick to our morals when the end is near. He says that is the most admirable way to live. And in this case, I think I agree with him. The most important thing in life is to be true to yourself and make a name for yourself. So even though we will someday die, our names will live on through what we make our lives into.
Louisa B
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In The Dreamer Does Not Exist, Gessner write about his personal reactions to the realization of death. More specifically, he addresses the concept of non-existence. One of the ways that Gessner copes with this often terrifying subject is through his writing. Through his creation of art the author is trying to leave behind something through which people will remember him, thus creating a sense of immortality. Gessner is trying to “fill the nothingness with 'something'...knowing that the worst we can be is a 'nothing'” (98). In his lecture, Mr. Telles suggested that this desire to fill the “death hole” (98) and leave something memorable behind is a universal human trait. We try to defy death through a creative solution, what Mr. Telles refered to as an “immortality project”. Humans will fight to the death for these projects- if they are insulted or deemed void then our immortality is also denied. Gessner's obsession is clearly writing but we perhaps might also infer that one of his immortality projects is teaching. We see a close relationship with his students that shows he values the impact he has on their lives. In Gessner's case however we see that his obsessions are not simple immortality projects. Gessner accepts that the world may not exist and he realizes that his attempts at leaving behind significant works will probably be futile.
Despite this Gessner still produces, not to leave something behind but instead to fill up his world at the moment, to give himself something solid to think about. In this sense Gessner reminds me of Stephen Daedalus from A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man. Both works touch upon the need to create. This is part of being an artist, while the rest of the world may be preoccupied with becoming reality or internet stars artists have a desire to produce something meaningful for their own worlds. Does this mean that artists are more susceptible to non-existence anxiety than other types of people? Maybe, but maybe we can reverse this to say that people who think the most about non-existence are often ones who become arts to deal with the striking personal truths they come up with. Some people deal with death through religion but I would say that just as many people deal with it through being producers.
In the essay “The dreamer did not exist” David Gessner is keying us in on his obsession with death and the significance of a person’s life. Ever since the author was 10 years old, particularly after his dog Macker died, he has been obsessed with the fact that he is literally nothing in the world. He questions his existence and fears how he will be forgotten when he dies. His obsession with death at a young age causes him to ask himself many puzzling questions, such as was there really anything in the world and did he truly exist? These thoughts plagued his childhood and early adulthood and caused him to have many fits where he questions his parents and many others about his existence. He begs for proof of existence and is tormented when he can not get any answer that satisfies his question. Throughout the essay the author weaves in an occasion where he is eating pig in the forest with some students. This event occurs later on in his life. While eating the pig the author notes that it feels right and the “pig tastes wonderful”. By relating his childhood experiences with the eating of a pig; the author is suggesting that all humans are animals and that we can and will die. Unlike animals though; we have the difficult task of being aware that this death is coming, at any time, throughout our entire lives. For many people, especially Gessner, this causes us to be left with the sense of fear, because we are always living in death’s shadow.
ReplyDeleteMr. Telles came in to class today to have a discussion on Ernest Becker, who wrote the book The Denial of Death, which has a lot of points that relate to Gessner’s essay. Becker feels that many people have a fear of death and try their entire lives to deny the fact that someday our existence will end. There is no way around it. This relates to Gessner because he is always fearful of death and the fact that he will not leave a significant impact on the world. It is not necessarily the fact of actually dying that scares people it is they fear they will not have enough time to make something significant of their life before they do. No one wants to feel like they wasted their entire life and they literally amount to nothing. Everyone needs a sense of narcissism and accomplishment to feel like they stand out in life.
I agree with Becket and Gessner and relate to their feelings. I think everyone including, myself strive to achieve goals in life and are not usually satisfied with an average life. Everyone hopes to achieve excellence everyday day because in the back of their mind they are plagued by terrifying thoughts that each day could be their last. I believe Gessner included the scene about the pig because it was a moment in his life that he realized that things were real, and that no one could escape their fate: we all must die at some point. Gessener and Becker both express a common allusion: Nobody wants to feel like they are not significant and that their life does not matter.
Kelly Benson
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In “The Dreamer Did Not Exist”, Gessner works very hard to show the reader the importance he finds in life, and not life. Now “not life” sounds strange but maybe there is a meaning to why there is such thing as not life, maybe it’s the balance that the world needs in order to stay sane. Mr. Telles mentioned something in particular about how Gessner was a post Freudian thinker, which tells us a little more about what was going through his mind when writing this essay. The essay takes place after the death of his dog, and throughout his childhood, and he has all these wild thoughts that I’m almost one hundred percent positive that every person in the world has had these thoughts at least once. For instance, am I really alive, or am I just inside a dream inside a coma and I’ve been in this dream forever, not knowing that I’ve been in a coma. Everyone has had to have imagined themselves as non-existing and you’re just floating through a dream.
Gessner also touches on the point of becoming a “nothing”. I k now for one thing that I want to be able to be remembered after I die, not just becoming a “who is that?”. The way I plan to do something like that is be an organ donor, that way even though I’m not mentally remembered I am physically remembered everyday in the use of a person’s own body. In Gessner’s essay he makes a point to show how anxious he get when talking about this particular subject. He would hate to be compared to a pig, enjoyed while being consumed, but forgotten by the time the next meal rolls around. Of course he wasn’t thinking he was going to be eaten, but he was going to use up all his life trying to impress people, and only find out that when he dies, they wouldn’t give much thought to who died, just another day to work and live in the moment, not remembering the past. In his essay he does a great job showing that even though the world is so unique and different from one another, we still all have one common phobia, and that is of being forgotten once deceased.
Hearing another added background of Gessner from Mr. Telles also gave the essay and new outlook for me. Before I thought it was just a creepy essay written about gorging oneself on a pig and being scared of dying. Yet, now that I look over the essay again, after the lecture, I can see how each paragraph he wrote wasn’t just something that he had to fill space with, but something that actually portrayed significance in human life, and mental capability.
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ReplyDeleteGessner’s essay was a morbid, but very revealing essay. This man brought us into his life and took two separate events from two different times in his life and connected them to emphasize an important thought that has determined much of his life and as Becker writes in his essay, much of ours as well. Gessner tells us all about his problems with coming to terms with the fact that we will all be nonexistent after death and he does this by first showing us his childhood and the panic attacks he had over the thoughts while simultaneously showing us a scene from his adult life. In this scene we get to view Gessner at a pig roast where he describes fully how he devours the pig. Here, during Gessner’s adult life where he has seemed to come as close to ‘okay’ with death and nonexistence as he has his whole life, he seems to feel the most control. Here he has this roasted pig, a creature that was once alive as he himself is now and who had no idea about nonexistence. Now the pig is dead and its soul is gone, but at the same time it’s not nonexistent. It’s there as flesh and bones in Gessner’s hands and by taking and eating this flesh Gessner is becoming stronger and nourished because he’s taking this physical thing, that’s most definitely not nonexistent, and eating it to prove to himself that everything is in fact not nothing.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with the concept of Gessner’s essay and Becker’s book, I do not agree completely when it comes right down to the point. Everything is not nothing, or at least we don’t know that. Becker and Gessner alike both argue that when one dies there is nothing ahead of them and that everyone is forgotten and falls into nonexistence once they pass away. I disagree with this precisely because while I know people are faced with the constant fear of death, I don’t believe they are afraid of the nonexistence that comes afterwards but of the unknown. We don’t know what’s going to happen after death whether it truly is nonexistence or reincarnation or even a life after death. We are afraid of death because we do not have a definite answer as to what comes next and when we as people are faced with the unknown we panic. We are a society that has to know everything down to the last detail so that we are never surprised and the fact that death is the vaguest subject known to man frightens us to no end and this is where I feel Becker and Gessner fell short because they only focus on this one topic that is not necessarily true.
What I think Gessner is saying in the essay The Dreamer Did Not Exist is that it is so important for people to understand that death is what is waiting for us at the end. It is inevitable for everyone. That’s why its great that he brings up Becker because Becker focuses on how people try to make their lives into something to prevent themselves from thinking about what at the end of the tunnel. I think it is so important that people realize that death is coming eventually, but they do the things that make them feel like their life is meaningful. What’s the point of living if you are just waiting for death? Yeah we may or may not “exist”, but I don’t think that’s important because our lives are the only thing we have so we need to make the most out of what we have because we have nothing else.
ReplyDeleteMr. Telles brings up a great point when he said, “We are animal-like in our appetites and needs, but we are unlike animals in that we are uniquely aware of our eventual death.” This is something that I mentioned in class the first day we were talking about the essay. The point was brought up that Gessner is saying that we are all animals, and I brought up the point that we differ from animals just because of the fact that we can think about complex things, like death.
I also like the note about how Gessner conveys in his essay that is isn’t noble to live one way your whole life and then change your beliefs once the end is near. That is something that he admired about his father, that he kept his beliefs all the way through to the end.
In his memoir essay, The Dreamer Does Not Exist, Gessner takes the reader on a journey to honestly understand his pain and suffering. The way that Gessner breaks his essay up into distinct sections tricks the readers’ mind into thinking about one certain subject at a time. In class, we discussed how he switches back and forth from present tense to a recollection of his memories. These dramatic switches occur throughout the essay, and help to set up a contrast between the past and the present. The way that Gessner described eating the pig gave a very dense, coarse, and animalistic tone to the opening. Normally, we view writers as civilized, educated people, but Gessner opens his piece with such a different attitude. This animalistic idea could mean that he wishes to live as an animal, because they do not have to deal with the human experience. Writing is what keeps Gessner human. He feels it is necessary, and it keeps him away from being an animal. He refers to writing as an “obsession” which brings him to the main idea of his essay.
ReplyDeleteDavid’s first obsession was with a fear of nonexistence. It was painful to read about such plaguing thoughts coming from someone who should only be thinking about riding bikes and playing outside. Through our discussion, I had come to find out that it wasn’t just Gessner who felt as if he was unsure of his existence. Though our feelings may not have been to the same extreme as “the feeling”, they still crossed our minds as children. If so many of us go through the same anxieties, what does that have to say about the human experience? Does everyone go through a point in which they think, “Is this real?”, or “what is my purpose?” Our brains are wired to overanalyze a thought like this, and if we did not keep ourselves occupied with other work, we would explode! As Mr. Telles mentioned with Becker’s work, we must keep ourselves occupied in order to avoid death. Gessner had no way to occupy himself, because “the feeling” took over too often. Gessner was not pushed into a religion, so he had to proof of his, or anyone’s, existence. The questions that must have burned inside of his head could not be answered, and that is what troubled David the most.
Death is the end of all that is known. We don’t know for sure what comes after our last breath. If that moment is uncertain, how can life itself be absolutely real? From what I understand, Gessner did not believe in an afterlife of any sort. To him, when his body died, that was it. How could Gessner be blamed to think that life itself wasn’t real either? If we have nothing to work for in the end, what is the point of working at all? If he wasn’t real, then nothing else around him was real either, and that meant everything was just a lie. These thoughts were terrorizing and sickening to a ten year old boy. A sense of purpose is extremely vital to the human experience because, quite frankly, we need a reason to do the things we do. If I’m getting chased by a bear, I’m going to run. A ten year old Gessner wouldn’t even care because to him, that bear did not exist, and neither did he. It’s like we live in a big dream world all the time, and that is a way to avoid death. If life isn’t real, how can death be real?
As Gessner ties the reader back into his present day, he provides us with a bit more of his history and how it all connects to his writing. This is the way that Gessner will prove his existence. We all must do something to be remembered. That is the only way to be certain we will live on long after that dreadful doom. I think that Gessners view of death, but more importantly, life, is really depressing. His thoughts resulted from his lack of hope for something more. He could have easily relaxed if he found out sooner that he had a reason to be here. If we have a purpose, or something to occupy us, then we do not think so much about death, and the possibility of nonexistence.
In “The Dreamer Does Not Exist” by David Gessner, it is clear that Gessner comments on humans reactions to death. In the memoir, the boy looses an animal and then becomes hysterical while thinking that anything is still nothing. Through the story animal death is compared to humans, the writers all eat the “dead animal” and Gessner even points them out to be animalistic. When the writers are eating they are ripping and tearing flesh, and this “feels so right”, showing that inside humans are animals. Also when the men are roasting the pig, they are sitting around the fire drinking and acting completely uncivilized just like animals. Since the boy’s dog that died was nothing, Gessner is clearly highlighting the fact that we are animals, and in the end animals die and perhaps leave nothing. Clearly in the memoir the main character suffers, being aware of this unavoidable death, and becoming nothing. However he tries to fight this late in life by writing, and leaving something behind. I believe that Gessner does not believe this is the best way to react, but that the most painless way to avoid this harsh truth is to be like animals and be unaware or just avoid the truth itself. I believe this because the other people in the story do not suffer like the writer does; they do not understand his pain and clearly do not go through the same misery. I somewhat agree with this view, but also I feel like Gessner looks down on it, and the writer in the story sadly accepts his fate never being able to ignore the truth. This is how I feel one should react; I can’t imagine how one could understand this and ignore it. I feel people have to just accept no matter how seemingly meaningless life is after death and live to enjoy it otherwise. Although I am not religious at all, if that helps people cope with the thought of death and allows them to be a better person then religion is still useful to many people. So overall I guess I agree with Gessner’s opinion in that if being unaware or ignoring the fact that we all die, and that life may mean nothing that people can live happier and better lives that they should ignore the fact.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth M
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Gessner first shocks and provokes his reader, beginning with a primal delight in something gruesome, then relating it to what many may see as high expression; he likens the gut sensation of tearing up a pig to the desire to write. Then he engages the reader on what may be a more willingly understandable level, to propose that his “obsession with words” is related to an earlier obsession, during a time of relatable insecurity. He witnesses animal death in a way that really hits him, as something that he knew well is suddenly no longer alive. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen to him? Had it? That is, was there such thing as “him,” or “else?” Gessner seems to make the point that he was only divested of “the Feeling” not by persuasion of the reality around him (as his dad raps his knuckles on the coffee table), but by either the self-induced passivity of hypnosis, or by age. There is no moment of enlightenment, merely, “the feeling” fades.
Gessner compares, in one of the pig sections, the more religious tendencies of the South with the “naturally religious,” albeit more pagan, “sacrifice on the spit.” He mixes together the primal feasting and death with religious ritual in a disturbing way, saying “The hog has given us the greatest gift. The wordless one has died for the word-makers. I take a long pull on my beer and once again partake of the body.”
Likening the situation to one of communion, the natural connection is that the body of which Gessner partakes is one of a redeemer. This “greatest gift,” however, is no chance of redressal of wrongs, rather, it is that something of inferior make, the “wordless one,” is the means for the continual of “word-makers.” The writers have asserted themselves as gods demanding sacrifice, and liken it to a God who would sacrifice himself. What I see in this of Becker is that those who have chosen the “creative solution,” the best chance to be engaged in and cope with life, are more of vacuums, undeniable hoarders attempting to fill an ever-hungry chasm at the bottom of which is the despair of insignificance, that is, Death.
ReplyDeleteAnother disturbing thing in this story was how the survivor’s thrill was produced by way of a breaching of Gessner’s enabling fiction. As Gessner thinks he has been attacked, deemed insignificant despite his immortality project of writing, he lashes out physically, and is ringed by family friends chanting “Fight!” to gain a thrill out of some cheap violence (like the horror movies Mr. Telles mentioned.)
Gessner proceeds to suggest we abandon our passions as they are illusions. One is then left with “all that is solid, the world.” Here seems to be Gessner’s own way of dealing with imminent, arguably present, insignificance, rather than Becker’s apparent suggestion to choose a quasi-religious solution as the “noblest” enabling fiction. I hate this so much. I really do. If nothing that is not eternal is significant, than what in the heck is? World without meaning. Person without value. I do not think these are acceptance. I think that even if one doesn’t believe in a God or any other transcendent beings/powers/existences/truth, there is still the truth of present reality. I wouldn’t say that my moments of happiness have been nothing, who cares if anyone else will feel them, will triumph in my existence after I am gone. Because really, what does that come down to? I’d be dead then, anyway, so no point living for a future if it is for myself. However, if one sees a long effect of Good, that is (what does it amount to without morality, but) needs met, whatever needs they be, and one doesn’t look at each transient moment evidencing that Good, there’s a happiness of knowing that something, even if not humankind and definitely not the self, is lasting despite death and non-being. I do not believe that such a statement is based in the desire for self-propagation.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not as though I would be any source or outstanding generator of this Good. There is personal value only able to be claimed in accepting that one is not “first in the universe.” As far as representing all of life goes, it’s possible to have multiple representatives if one sees life as a more eternal thing than oneself. The model does not think itself the sculpture. I actually very much like Gessner’s quote that “my work is the something I make out of the nothingness, even if the work does not help me escape oblivion. My work is my sacrifice made at an empty altar.” It’s possible I could live like that (have to think some more on that matter), but I see no need for the altar to be empty, so to speak. I have more to say, but not more time. I move on. (In reference to this post, not to life though that be true as well. [funny expression, that, though: “move on.”])
ReplyDeleteSo, I’m just going to fire these next responses off:
ReplyDeleteFirst, Ellie. You asked a question in Monday’s class asking something like “how can narcissism and religion coexist, with fundamentally different values?” If that’s your question (or if not) I would think that Becker sees religion as a tool not only for narcissism’s ability to stock up self-value, but also a means of dodging the bullet that naturally flies back, by saying “how could I possibly be narcissistic if I believe in one greater than I?” Dunno. Thoughts.
Next, Evan. You posed a great question just as class was ending, “where does one place a counter-culture in relation to the ‘Magic Circle of Culture?’” Counter cultures are self-affirming groups, right? They then offer some kind of external meaning as I see it. Put them on the inside of the circle, or at least cooling their toes within its rim.
Jackie: “It begins to point out that once a person understands something then it is no longer a fear because it can no longer hurt them.”
Evan again: “Making grabs at religion is just another example of how human society interferes with your basic animalistic instinct.” Speaking in terms of the essay’s apparent points, I’d first say yes. If the basic animalistic instinct is to fear death and consciously act on it, religion is a way to deal with this fear by dismissing its validity, or channeling it to a fear of acting on such a fear. Then I would add that religion is very much an instinct, possibly animalistic (we are no doubt animals, and who knows in what terms other animals think), depending on how complex your qualifications are for a religion.
“When one has already made a name for themself, what do they then have to live for? Does ‘the feeling’ go away?” They have to live that name in a way that they can believe it is truly theirs, and can then tie their identity with such a name. I can picture that if I were someone renown on his/her deathbed, I may fear that who I am has peeled away from myself, and left me, a shell, to decompose alone and without identity.
I loved your question on celebrities, and Edan’s follow-up on that.
Edan: “I . . .eventually concluded that family is just another restraint that we’ve created to distance ourselves from animal, to distance ourselves from freedom, risk, and possibly death. But it is natural for a human to long for this anarchy, and push away from the barriers to death that they’ve constructed.” Thanatos? Neat.
ReplyDeleteJosiah: “It is very high level thinking that he possesses at such a young age; do we really exist? This is a question generally reserved for scholars and professors, not a fourth grader.” Is it possible that scholarly thought is in a way its own enabling fiction? Maybe it is the thought that analyzing something distances one from that thing, or takes oneself out of the equation, that makes the further thought on this topic bearable.
Kara: “Children are constantly asking ‘why?’ and sometimes it is hard to accept that there might not be an answer every time. But it shouldn’t be this hard. It shouldn’t drive us to the brink of insanity.” Why not? What is “should?” This suggests some obligation.
Louisa: “Some people deal with death through religion but I would say that just as many people deal with it through being producers.” Possibly people are producers by way of religion. All must produce/hoard simultaneously to justify/rationalize/bear existence?
Adrian D.
ReplyDeleteIt is very apparent that Gessner’s The Dreamer Does Not Exist is an expression of the very real human fear of dying and the unknowns of exactly what happens after death. Gessner however, takes this natural fear and throws it in the spotlight in a way that makes it seem like he has a phobia. Having read Moriah’s blog post I have to say that I agree with her about the initial impression that Gessner is indeed pathetic. It seems pathetic to me because he wastes a portion of his life worrying about “not existing” instead of just enjoying what he‘s already got. Referring to the childhood aspect of this essay, it‘s obvious that childhood is an important part of anybody’s life. It’s a time to learn and find out what the world is exactly and where one belongs in relation to it. Being quizzical as a child is natural and realizing that you’re not always going to know everything is something that everyone has to accept. Gessner however has an issue accepting this uncertainty and it leads him to a point of anxiety and obsession… which is not normal.
This early inability to accept the unknown seems to be the root of Gessners inherent fear of death, the ultimate unknown. Death and not existing is something that is inevitable, something that Gessner knows he will have to confront and he allows it to control his life from early on. The Dreamer Does Not Exist is an excellent essay to help shed light on what we need to do to enjoy life. This doesn’t mean block death out completely but accept it and make the most out of whatever time we do have on Earth. I think that living life to the fullest is the only way to live personally. Who knows exactly where we’ll end up once this life is over but to ponder about that constantly and allow that thought to hinder you experiences now, seems counterproductive. If you’re so worried about the next step then how can you ever complete the first one?
Mac Hutchinson talks about “nothing”
ReplyDeleteGessner brings up concepts in this essay that some might say has driven himself to insanity, but is he really? I applaud him for these concepts he has tried to interpret for I have found myself on the same ideas at certain times in my life and as I go on you might think i’m insane as well. He brings up “the feeling” and “nothing” relating them to existence and nonexistence. He says,” I reasoned that If I didn't exist then nothing did either It was about then that “the feeling” usually took over. This brought up the idea of death and that if he did not exist “the world did not exist”, so if he died nothing existed. This reminded me of this theory someone showed me that explained that after death everything stopped existing, that only the concept of existence was in our mind and once our mind stopped, that everything, the world, vanished, it stops existing. I don't think I believe this but It definitely relates to what is being said about nothing and it seems our definition of nothing is used with the contrasting idea of something http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing. Gessner goes on and says “nothing is nothing” then screams “Everything is nothing.” So this must mean he does not exist if nothing exists but he finds “I’m not nothing”, that he does in fact exist. He seems confused and maybe insane to the reader, but is it all in our minds? The reality is that we create value for things and I think we base the idea of existence off of value more than what really physically exists. If you held a rock in your hand and told someone it doesn’t exist, they'd probably call you an idiot or at least think that. But maybe their is something beyond us that as humans we don’t understand, something like the Matrix, or Inception, that question the state of mind we all live in. I think this in the major picture of what i’m trying to say is we really don't understand NONEXISTENCE (NOTHING)! That scares us, that feeling of not existing, its confusing and impossible to understand. The idea of death, not being, not existing is plainly something we don't understand in our mind. “Nothing” the idea of Nothing as Gessner says can only be described as “Nothing”. Its true, we don't know anything but things that exist. People will say nothing is just empty space, but that is not nothing, empty space is something, it exists , we can wrap our minds around empty space, the concept of space, but once space ends, such as the universe, once space ends what’s beyond the universe? Nothing! Try to picture what nothing looks like. You can’t. Blackness? Nope. Theres just a wall? Nope. Whats beyond the wall I ask you? Nothing has never been seen, never been felt and never existed to us. Nothing does not exist. I will believe that until someone shows me nothing. Try to prove me wrong, but in order to show me nothing you'll have to show me something and then it wouldn’t be nothing anymore.
Gessner tells us the worst thing is to be nothing, but we all are something it is just some people feel like nothing. Mr. Tells gave such a great presentation explaining how Gessner’s idea is meaning in the world plus personal value equals a good mental state of mind and that probably means a feeling of existence. Tells showed us all of the things leading from the idea of not existing (death, insignificance) are things that make people feel significant. People create Religion, scapegoats, Heroes, etc. To make the feeling of existence strong and give people a purpose and value. It is all to get away from being nothing, this idea of nothing we all create. I agree with this idea of Gessner’s, but nothing does not exist and It is all the ways we find how to exist that show our ideas of nothing. If we believe in God then we believe in the afterlife, going beyond death and still being something. I don’t know what happens after death. Do I become Nothing? Do I become Something? Do I keep living? Or do I become something that we in the human mind just can’t understand. As of now I don't know what nothing is, I don't know if nothing exists, and anyone living has no clue either. I don’t want to know right now what is “nothing” and I might never know “nothing”.
ReplyDeleteIn his essay, David Gessner discusses the concept of existence and humanity. One of the most interesting elements in his writing was the way he compared and contrasted humans, the word makers, and animals, the wordless. At the core of existence is the fact that humans are animals, but the major idea that sets us apart from beasts like the pig on the spit, is our knowledge of death and its inevitability. More important than our knowledge of death though, is our denial of it. To accept death is to give up on life, and to accept that our individual existence is meaningless. Perhaps this was the cause of “the feeling” Gessner experienced throughout his youth. This “feeling” was a sudden helpless feeling of nonexistence. One day he would die, everything would end, and none of it will have mattered. He did not exist. Gessner’s pursuit of writing, was part of his quest for immortality. In achieving immortality through his words he would be defeating death and creating an existence for himself. He could not just accept that death would one day take him and everything would end. It is all just a part of the human experience. With age though, Gessner came to realize the value in embracing the animal experience; to disregard death and life, not to accept the inevitable end, but simply to put it our of mind, deem it unimportant and instead turn to his animalistic instincts; to consume, take life from death, dull his mind and let his body and instinct take over. This is the ultimate significance of the pig roast. Together with his students and fellow animals, he disregarded everything abstract, like religion and meaning, and simply embraced what was “real”, like the wooden table his father rapped his knuckles on. All that mattered were the things that were substantial, like the pig and the flames. And down to his core, he was happy.
ReplyDeleteHappy as he may have been in the heat of the pig pickin’ the simple fact of being human is not something that can be denied. In the end, there is still that separation between the person and the pig. The knowledge of death still exists, no matter how hard one may try to push it back. In the end, Gessner still wrote, perhaps still with an attempt at immortality, though he tries to deny it. In the end, death still intrigues us, even excites us, in a way no animal can understand. Perhaps it is an advantage, or perhaps it is simply our burden to bear, but the fact is, the difference is there. We are human, we will die, and that will not change.