If you read the last post on nihilism and were spooked by the idea that literally nothing matters, existentialism is for you. As a little background, existentialism was a philosophy that directly stemmed as a result of nihilism. While Nietzsche said that nothing matters because we do not have an intrinsic purpose, existentialists said that we can create our own purpose. That being said, there are many different existentialist philosophers; they often directly contradicted each other, but you’ll be able to see that more once we talk about some of the more prominent personal philosophies of some 20th century writers.

Today is centered on Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and his version of existentialism. Sartre’s philosophy lies on the idea of being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Something that cannot change its essence, or purpose, is described as being-in-itself. For example, a can-opener, in essence, opens cans. No matter how you use it, it doesn’t change the fact that it was made to open cans. Something being-for-itself, on the other hand, is free to choose its own essence. In other words, a person is being-for-itself. That is how people are different from things. One thing that additionally distinguished being-in-itself from being-for-itself is that, unlike things, people don’t have a designer that created them for a specific purpose. For example, a can-opener, was created by a designer that created it for opening cans. Sartre argued that we are not designed by God (or any other higher being), so we are unlike things.

At this point, Sartre’s philosophy sounds a lot like nihilism. Instead of simply accepting that we don’t have an inherent reason to live, Sartre states that we must create our own purpose, or what he refers to as “essence.” We are different from a can-opener because a can-opener’s essence precedes its existence, whereas people exist first, and then create their essence later.

One of Sartre’s most impactful contributions to philosophy is his idea of bad faith. One is in bad faith when they believe they have no choice. Sartre argues everyone always has a choice. People often blame other elements in their lives as the reason they “don’t have a choice.” For example, you’re working your boring 9-5 job, and you hate your boss. You want to talk back, but you can’t because you’ll get fired if you do. You want to speak up, but you have no choice other than biting your tongue and staying quiet. Guess what? You do have a choice. You’re just afraid of owning up to the effects that occur when you exercise one of these options. If you really believe you don’t have a choice, you’re in bad faith. This aspect of Sartre’s philosophy is fairly controversial, and is the reason many turned away from existentialism (unfortunately, he made some very offensive arguments stating that even slaves “had a choice”). This idea of bad faith, though, is one that really distinguishes Sartre’s existentialism from others’.

Sartre definitely contributed some interesting thoughts to modern philosophy. There are many more pillars of thought that he goes through (like facticity, temporality, transcendence, and more), but the foundations to his thought lie in things like essence and bad faith. While philosophy can often be a lot of boring words strung together, Sartre’s philosophy is definitely one worth learning about.

My brother, Bart, is nine years older than me. He was always an annoyingly smart, athletic, and kind person, and that led to a lot of comparisons between us. Not only was I always comparing myself to him, but so was everyone else. Naturally, I grew to hate all these comparisons. I always saw myself having two options in the situation, though. First, I could prove everyone right and fall short of everything my brother had accomplished. I also had the option of using this dislike that I had as a fuel for creating success in my own life. Thankfully, I tried to use this annoying situation to my advantage. I believe that we can always spin a negative situation into one that is ultimately empowering to us. 

If you think about it, Bart was better than me at any given point in time. I always envied the position of his life at most moments because he was just so ahead of me. It’s hard for a 13 year old girl who’s barely hitting puberty to compete with a 22 year old man that’s about to finish college and start the rest of his life. Still, there’s this natural process you go through to see how you compare against a sibling. With us being at two very different points in our lives, it made for some interesting comparisons. For example, when I was 16, my biggest accomplishment was taking 3 AP classes at once. What was my brother up to by the time I was 16? He had not only finished college, but he got a stable job, lived in Japan for a while, and moved back to America. No one reminded me of his success more than our mom, though. For years she would make these unfair comparisons. Let’s say I wanted to extend my curfew. Naturally, she would say that it’s unfair for her to compare her two kids. But if I expressed that I didn’t want to go into a STEM major for college, she would tell me to rethink that because Bart was a computer science major, and that obviously turned out well for him. 

For a long time, I was bitter. I didn’t like hearing about how well he was doing. It caused a lot of problems, especially between my mom and me. She was proud of her first-born son, and she always shoved it in my face. I’m not sure if it was just petty jealousy, or if my feelings were just constantly hurt, but I despised being compared to him in any way. What I realized, though, was that I should use this bitterness to my advantage. In a way, I had the upper hand. All of these things he accomplished were in the past. He couldn’t change them; I could just beat them. I had a set standard, I just had to exceed it. Of course, I wasn’t just a constantly-upset person; this idea was always in the back of my mind. Why get good grades? To get a higher GPA than my brother did. Why apply to top schools? To hopefully get into a better school than my brother went to.  Why start working two jobs in high school? Because my brother only worked one. While that sounds a bit 

Eventually, I found a nice equilibrium of doing things that made me happy while also seemingly living in spite. I realized that it was ridiculous to want a good future just to somehow “beat my brother in life”; I started wanting a good future, so I could enjoy my life. I had a good run of using bitter motivation, but being away from my family has made me realize my goals, not just the goals I had based on what others would tell me. No matter how much I was compared to him, I still love my brother, and I’m happy that he has a life worth bragging about. In a way, I don’t know where I’d be if I wasn’t constantly compared to him. 

I feel as though I’ve researched drugs for a long time. I researched how they work, what they do, the policies aimed at them, and more. It’s a topic I really enjoy learning about, and it’s one that I can’t possibly research once and be done with. That being said, I’ll occasionally watch some videos on the topic. Maybe a little over a year ago I watched a video on Vancouver’s HIV/AIDS problem due to their high injection drug use. At one point, Vancouver had some of the fastest-growing AIDS statistics; they had a problem, and they needed to solve it. In response, some organizations around Vancouver began establishing clean needle distribution centers like. At these sites, addicts are able to bring in their drugs and inject them using a clean needle on the basis that they are not allowed to share the needle with anyone else. Ultimately, this practice helped decrease HIV/AIDS numbers (and other diseases that are spread by blood), overdoses, and deaths. The sites also offered AIDS tests, references for treatment, and care for abscesses.

After watching this video, I told some people about it. Most of them were pretty confused about how this is helping a problem. If an addict knows that they can go somewhere and get high with a guarantee that they are safe, isn’t that just enabling their addiction? This is often the whole argument against drug laws known as harm reduction policies. Harm reduction is exactly what it sounds like; addiction is not an issue you can simply solve, but you can help relieve some of the negative effects. In Vancouver’s case, not only did their safe injection sights decrease individual deaths, but they also decreased community HIV/AIDS rates. Harm reduction lays on this realistic foundation that recognizes that drug use does and will continue to occur. It’s naive to think that a problem as robust as addiction can simply “be solved,” so harm reduction hopes to decrease the negative effects that addiction places on communities and individuals.

These policies can come in many different forms. These include, but are not limited to, overdose management and naloxone distribution, safe injection sites, medically assisted treatment, and syringe/needle exchange programs. When implemented in various places, none of these policies have shown to cause an increase in drug use. That being said, most of these policies that have been listed are ones that are not implemented in the U.S. For example, there is only one safe injection sight in the United State that opened up just over a year ago. Like most things in the U.S., harm reduction policies have to be a complicated issue. While in Canada a citizen’s right to health outweighed the importance of narcotics law, opening the door for harm reduction policies, the U.S. is still “dealing with the moral issue of enabling drug use.”

Interestingly enough, though, multiple cities, including Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Boston, have approved plans for opening safe injection sites, but it’s almost like they did not want to be the first cities to actually open them for fear of federal consequences. Now that New York has opened one of these sights, hopefully more cities will follow. Addiction is a disease; like any disease, you wouldn’t leave someone to die. Why should this be any different?

Philosophy often aims to put a name to a way of thought. Nihilism is no exception. Nihilism, coming from the Latin root nihil meaning nothing, is the name of the belief that nothing matters. More accurately, nihilism looks at the world and says that everything is meaningless. Everything that “has meaning” only has meaning because of the value that society has placed upon it. While there were a few early philosophers who were associated with it, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is by far the man most synonymous with this movement. For Nietzsche, the philosophy of nihilism in the context of 19th century religious practices implied that the centuries-old traditions of worship, especially under the umbrella of Christianity, were meaningless. Famously, Nietzsche simply said that “God is dead.” At that time, this was a scary argument. It was not simply a rebellious declaration; it was a serious questioning of religion and all that it comes with. That being said, Nietzsche believed in the philosophy far beyond the scope of religion.

How can someone believe in nothing, though? Yes, we all hold our own beliefs, but it’s the realization that no one’s existence matters. Before humans, the world spun, and it will keep spinning after we are gone. Our world did not come with a set of instructions. Our world did not come with a set of morals that we have to follow. It did not come with rules, norms, or laws. All of these things are just ideologies created by people. Because something as integral to our identities as humans, like morality, is simply an ideology society deemed important enough to create, what is the point? There’s no grand purpose for us to follow, therefore our lives are inherently meaningless. Because our lives are meaningless, we should not become attached to our mortality. We are all going to end up dead, anyway.

Many people may read about nihilism and think it’s a pessimistic outlook on life. There’s often a debate regarding whether nihilism is a terrifying reality or a freeing mindset. Sure, you can go about your life believing that your sole existence does not matter. It’s hard to argue that when you compare your life to the greater scheme of the universe. A nihilist would argue that, yes, this planet, this galaxy, and this universe would not look different without you in it. While that thought is enough to send someone into a spiral, most nihilists don’t look at that statement and stop; this is where the “freeing mindset” part can potentially come in! If you know that nothing you do inherently matters, you are free to indulge in all of the hedonistic practices that society (and religion) frown upon.

Nihilism isn’t a particularly fun philosophy. If you don’t like it, don’t worry; Nietzsche didn’t either. Still, Nihilism continues to be one of the most influential philosophies of all time. Because of this, Nietzsche was the source of inspiration for many philosophers who, while often agreed that life itself is meaningless, disagreed in the idea that you can’t make it meaningful (existentialism coming soon!).

This semester, the Civic Issue which I will be focusing on is drugs, failed and beneficial policies, and how the problem can be helped.

Today, I will be talking about why and how the United States has utterly failed the people in our country who are victims to their addiction. While it’s a story that many people are familiar with, it is also one that is integral to understanding the different policies that are in place around the world today.

The drug problem can be split up into about four waves. The first wave was from about 1970 to 1991. In 1970, the U.S. government passed the Controlled Substances Act while President Nixon declared the War on Drugs. This legislation categorized and criminalized many drugs depending on their “severity” and potential for medicinal use. This “first wave” does not imply that the U.S. was a drug-free country before that, but it does imply that there was something wrong with the way that the government handled the problem. This was especially proven with the U. S’s anti-drug strategy when crack cocaine was first seen on the streets in the 1980s.  If there is anything you should know about crack it’s that IT IS THE SAME THING AS POWDER COCAINE; it is just some powder cocaine mixed with water and some baking soda to make it smokeable. There are some slight variations between the two in how they’re ingested, their duration, and their intensity, but there are virtually no differences in their chemical structures. One notable difference, though, is who typically uses crack and who uses powder cocaine. Poorer communities with higher concentrations of people of color typically smoked crack, while richer, white people typically used powder cocaine. What was the sentencing for each of these crimes, though? The sentencing disparity was 100 to 1. What does that mean? For every 1 gram that a person was caught with crack, they were given the same sentence as someone who was caught with 100 grams of powder cocaine. Of course, this is problematic because the drug that is typically used by people of color had a much lower sentencing trigger than that of the white man’s drug.

While that first wave looks at the racial problem with U.S. drug legislation, the next wave, which lasted from about 1991 to 2010, focuses on the problems the U.S. began to see with other drugs. This wave saw the overprescription of opioids; pharmaceutical companies (which an issue of their own) reassured doctors that their drugs were safe and non-addictive. Of course, more research was being put into opioids that revealed exactly how untrue that statement was. In response, doctors suddenly stopped prescribing such large amounts of opioids, and the people that were left with opioid addictions were abandoned.

This marks the beginning of the third wave in 2010. When someone is addicted to a substance and that substance is just taken away, more often than not they don’t “just stop.” With these people left abandoned, their addiction forced them to find other methods of getting high. What do you do when the prescription you’re addicted to gets taken away? You turn to another place. Many of these people were forced to turn to heroin.

Finally, the fourth wave of the problem started in 2013 and is still happening today. While heroin is obviously still on the streets, so is the stronger, cheaper alternative, fentanyl. While part of the problem is that people are now ingesting the even-more-lethal fentanyl, the bigger problem is the fentanyl-laced heroin (and other drugs) that kills many of the people that don’t have a substantial tolerance.

It’s hard to say where the U.S. will go from here. Many people are against harm reduction policies as they see them as an enabling component, but our current “solution” obviously is not working.

For this semester’s passion blog, I will be writing about different influential philosophies (or at least the notable components to them), both ancient and contemporary. First, we’ll be starting off with the philosophy of Stoicism.

Stoicism gets a bad rap. Today, if people say that someone or something is “stoic”, they often mean that it is emotionless. In reality, stoicism is about being unshakeable, not in a “toxically masculine” way, but a thoughtful, logical way. There are 3 main great stoics: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca. Marcus Aurelius is a personal favorite of mine, but he is also probably the most famous of the three due to his status as former Roman Emperor and because of his journal. His journal, which is kind of the “gold standard” for stoic writing, was preserved and published under the name Meditations. 

Marcus Aurelius’s journaling habits are probably my favorite thing about his stoic teachings. Each morning, Marcus Aurelius would get up and journal. He would set expectation for his day, but he also told himself to think that, “the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.” People can’t tell good from evil, so that is how they respond. In these morning entries, he would think about everything he would face that day, and he would also write down how he would respond to them. Marcus often repeats himself in Meditations, and that is because he found importance in repeating the things that mattered. Each evening, Marcus would then reflect on his day. He asked himself questions, wrote down quotes, but, most importantly, didn’t hide anything from himself.

What does Marcus Aurelius’s journal really have anything to do with Stoicism, though? In my opinion, his journal is the embodiment of the philosophy. Stoicism isn’t about bottling up your feelings so as to appear tough, mean, or dispassionate. Stoicism is about the realization that there are things you can control, and there are things you cannot control. What you can always control, though, is your reaction to any given event.

I remember my friends asked me one time if I was upset at a situation, and I jokingly said, “No. I’m stoic now, remember?” I think that gives the wrong impression of the philosophy because Stoicism is not about just appearing unshakeable, it’s about being unshakeable. It’s about acknowledging that things did not go your way; life has surprises that you will not know about. But how are you going to receive that surprising news?

Stoicism has a lot of different facets (that are too lengthy to be able to be explained in 500 words). Yes, there are different virtues, practices, and versions, but it’s a good surface level philosophy to know about.

This is the last passion post, and it made me think about a few things. Obviously, I had an idea of the movies I wanted to write about prior to starting the blog. Once we were told to find the deeper meaning behind these silly “passions,” that is when it got interesting. I never realized how much memories were associated with a simple film.

Writing about a lot of these movies, it brought me back to the day that I watched them. Whether it was watching Pretty Woman late at night with my best friend, or being at my cousin’s house in Las Vegas watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I was brought back to that moment. At the beginning, I thought I was going to simply want to write a hierarchical organization of the romantic comedies that I have watched. Somewhere along the way, though, it evolved into a hierarchy of memories. Maybe not memories that are more important to me, but just ones that really stick out and have affected me. I could end this “series” with any number of romantic comedies. I could write about how my friends and I baked cookies and watched  Mr. & Mrs. Smith, how my light Julia Roberts obsession made me watching Nottinghill, or write about how I think that When Harry Met Sally is one of the best pieces of cinematic production. There are endless memories associated with some of these movies, and that’s what I realized.

Whether you go to the movies, go to a friend’s house, or stay home watching a movie, there’s a memory associated with it. I think this perspective is a really innocent way of looking something so simple. At first glance, yes, you just watched a movie. I thought I “just watched some movies,” too. It can be really constructive to actually think about the context of what was happening around you. Why did you watch the movie? Is there a reason you chose that movie? Who was with you when you watched it? Even some of the movies that I watched alone in my room after looking for something to watch have a certain memory, feeling, or emotion attached to it.

The image that I chose was the Tank Man photo. While I think this photo was one know very well for its time, it is not one that is often remembered today. When asking my friends if they know about this iconic photo of defiance, many could not help but only point out the weird name.

There is a lot we know about the contextual history behind this photo. On June 4th, 1989, Chinese troops began violently cracking down on pro-democracy protestors, who were mostly students, in Beijing. These protestors called for political and economic reform in China, something that the Chinese Communist Party considered “bourgeois liberalism.” A day later, photographer Jeff Widener was trying to capture a line of tanks coming out of the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but a man in a white shirt, dark pants, and some shopping bags came out and blocks the shot. Honestly, that is all that we really know. The man was pulled out of the way of the tanks by nearby onlookers shortly after, and the rest is history. No one knows what happened to this man. No one knows where he went. No one even knows his name.

Why is this photo even important? In the face of violent authoritarianism, Tank Man rebelled. More importantly, the tanks exiting the square used the heavy machinery to injure, run down, and kill people. Why did they stop for Tank Man?  The video of this event shows the tanks not only coming to a stop for Tank Man, but turning off their engine when they realized that he was not going to move.  Tank Man even tried to climb onto the tank and communicate with the drivers, but the efforts did not do much.

I think this photo argues so much. At a time when people felt like they were not being heard, Tank Man showed that a single man could stop a tank. It is four tanks against one man, and this photo is shown in a way that seems like the man is winning. While he obviously did not “take down” the tanks, he became a national symbol of hope. Not only that, he became an international symbol of defiance, bravery, and ambition. It seems almost silly to look at this relatively small man in comparison to the tanks, but that makes it all the more powerful.

This next movie falls just out of the scope of the criteria because it was released in 2016. That movie is “Me Before You.” This movie follows a young girl, Louisa Clark (Emily Clarke), who needs to find a job to earn money for her family. In order to do so, she takes a job as a caregiver of William Traynor (Sam Claflin). William semi-recently got into an accident that resulted in him being quadriplegic. He becomes a bitter, depressed man because of the stark contrast he now has to his old lifestyle of activity and fun. Although not many people get through to him, Louisa is able to. Unfortunately, she find out that he wants to be euthanized in Switzerland, so she makes it her goal to get him to change his mind. I won’t spoil the end, but the movie is pretty feel-good for the most part.

I think the most that I got out of this movie was a crush on Sam Claflin. How can you not have a crush on him? All jokes aside, I think Louisa is this sort of ideal of a lot of people. She’s a direct contrast to many of the other characters; for example, Will has this girlfriend that he had before the accident. After the accident, she left him because he “shut her out.” Funny enough, she later invites Will to her wedding. Who does she marry, you ask? SHE MARRIES HIS BEST FRIEND. That is just so messed up on so many levels, and I can only imagine how crappy Will felt after that. Even after that, who is it that gets William to go to the party? Who is it that gets him to have a good time? Who is it that dances with Will? It’s Louisa.  Of course, there was nothing traditional about their way of celebrating. To dance with Will, she had to sit on his lap while he was on his wheelchair. Still, Louisa made the most out of the situation with Will.

I’ve mentioned a lot of movie on this list as sentimental ones, but that’s not what “Me Before You” was to me. To me, it was more of a reflection of what many of us should be. Louisa was positive, optimistic, and she saw the best in people. She always saw the best in every situation. I think Louisa and I are very different in many regards, but I would love to be more like her.

The next early 2000s romantic comedy that I really enjoyed was Juno (2007). Although this movie is more comedy and drama as opposed to romantic comedy, it does have an underlying romantic theme. The movie follows Juno MacGuff (Elliot Page), a pregnant teenager that is trying to navigate high school, find an adoptive family, and also deal with her romantic interest, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera).

I think that Juno deals with a lot of heavy topics in a lighthearted way. These topics include divorce, adoption, bullying, teen pregnancy, and more. Juno gets pregnant at the beginning of the movie, and she has to navigate that fact in a really challenging setting. I really enjoyed watching it, but, like many of the rom-coms on my list, it has a good memory attached to it. In 2021, my family decided to take a road trip to the East Coast. My mom booked a cute little house in Cape Cod, and we drove there. It was about a 17 hours drive, and we were going to be there for about a week. I was telling my best friend about the trip, and we both talked about how cool it would be if she came with. Then, we both decided I should talk to my parents about letting her come, and  they thankfully said yes. We both downloaded movies to watch, and one of those movies was Juno.

Since then, we’ve had a running joke regarding the movie. For a long time, I thought the main male protagonist was played by Jesse Eisenberg. I literally look at Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg and think that they are the same person. Still, it is be brought up every once in a while. Regardless, I will still remember the drive to Massachusetts, and in turn that whole trip. I honestly don’t remember any of the other movies we watches, even though we watched a lot of movies.

All in all, I do recommend Juno. It’s funny, cute, and really stings you along to like a sometimes-unlikable protagonist. Sometimes you really don’t want to like Juno, but she does make things all right in the end.