Four Days a Week

I feel like I take this class four days a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I discuss literature and themes that we pull out from the works we read. Then, on Wednesdays and Fridays, I discuss how humans interact with the world and society in my sociology class Self in Society. When signing up for these two classes, I thought they would be somewhat different-one would focus on literature (which I considered to be false) and the other on reality. However, the two have scarily laced together.

When our class discussed the episode of Supernatural and argued over free will, I was reading an essay by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre on existentialism, which is the ultimate philosophy behind free will. Sartre argues that humans are defined by their actions-what we choose to do builds our character. My biggest problem with Sartre’s argument is that he seems to disregard social circumstances that condition how humans behave and think. We briefly discussed these conditionings in class (i.e. wearing clothes and showing up on time for class).

Sure enough, a few weeks later, I read Erving Goffman’s essay “On Facework,” which further delves into social conditioning and how the most minute interactions, such as smiling when greeting someone, has been instructed to us. Reading through the essay, I kept returning to our discussion that all people are characters who are playing certain roles. Goffman writes: “Universal human nature is not a very human thing. By acquiring it, the person becomes a kind of construct, built up not from inner psychic propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him from without” (45). This idea detracts from people’s humaneness and free will and implies that we are somewhat “created” by social standards.

The quote above also reminded me of man’s search for purpose in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. In the novel, people decide that there should be a meaning to life, therefore creating what has become an “universal human nature.” So is that truly human nature? Yet again, I am confronted with another blurry line between truth and lie that I had been so certain was true. Have you lost track of which class I am referring to? Because I sure have.