On being vexed

In the last two days, my classes have all struck a distressing chord with me. In one class, we had a debate about free will. In the following class, we learned about McCarthyism and the Hollywood Ten, the guys that were put in prison for standing up for their beliefs in the constitution. Governments everywhere try to cover up controversial things. China has obvious censorship, but when history is written by the victors, we lose important information, like the bombing of Dresden in WWII. I was talking to Dr. Dezember about my final paper in her class, and I settled on the subject of how even civilians are resources used by the military. We talked about microchipping your pets, which could lead to microchipping children, and then everyone would have an RFID chip in them, and the government could track everyone all the time. In philosophy, we talked about free will (or the lack of it), and I started thinking about Descartes, and how we can't trust our senses. If we can't trust our senses, and we can't trust the media, our government, our own thoughts, the churchor even our neighbors, who can we trust? What can we do? If the only big truth is that everyone dies, it’s no wonder that people have mental breakdowns or commit suicide. I think what I said in class about control is a big driving force in our lives. In anthropology I learned about people that feel like the only thing they can control is their body, and that’s why some people get fanatical about exercise or develop anorexia. I think the search for control is a big driving force in our lives. If we quit searching for control, for ways to find sense in our lives, we lose the will to get out of bed in the morning, and civilization goes down the tubes. Even if the control is an illusion, and free will is an illusion, I think it's important that we continue to have those illusions and act upon them.