Friday, December 10, 2010

Eu sou japonês

I was astonished after reading "Report on the Jewish Culture: A Private Account (Shikaban: Yudaya-jin Bunka-ron)" by Prof. T. Uchida, especially by quotations from Emmanuel Levinas.
I cannot believe immediately that majority of people will one day become able to live respective lives following what he (they?) describes as the sense of responsibility for what we have not done yet (especially something evil). I cannot even believe that quite a few people who are recognised as Jews are in this real world practising such a sense of responsibility while I certainly have to admit that some of them are actually living such lives.
According to the text, the way of so-called Jewish people of constituting self, others, and god is idiosyncratic. I should agree with that because admitting responsibilities for what s/he has not done does not seem to reduce her/his anxiety. Rather, it seems to increase anxiety.
For various reasons most of which are originated in the facts that we cannot but live with others, we tend to behave so as to reduce anxieties, and such behaviour itself can be referred to as identity.
This is because anxieties are what makes us uncertain about what we believe we are, thus, our respective identities should be found in our ways of maintaining consistency of what we believe we are in front of various anxieties.
Normally, I think, in reducing anxieties, or in trying to maintain consistency in what we believe we are, we try to justify ourselves. In this vein, I wonder how painful it is to maintain that I am responsible for something wrong which I have not done yet.
Nonetheless, what has astonished me most is not such idiosyncracy, but, what such idiosyncratic way of constituting selves seems to be implying, that is, a kind of endless battle with the problem of relationships with others.
This can be explained by both logically and episodically.
Had it not been for such an endless battle, no body would have found it necessary to invent and take such a painful way of maintaining what we believe we are.
We live with others even if we do not like to.
We can never have any unified (or "acceptablly" varied?) qualities.
Our interactions can purposefully be conducted, but, frequently ended up with unintended results.
We don't know (at least with ordinary people's cognitive abilities) who started this relationships with others.
etc....

Referring to the above, some may conclude that we cannot manage our relationships with others in any predictable way, but others cannot be irresponsible due to the fact that unintended results have sometimes turned out to be very fatal errors.
As a result, some (obviously not all) of us have been seeking for better ways of managing relationships with others, which cannot escape from the issue of managing self.

My experiences also tell me that managing relationships with others is really tough, or, that's not something manageable,,, but, with regard to maintenance of consistent identity, if we keep on maintaining consistency in what we believe we are by justifying that we are responsible for anything for any reason, the degree of threats which continuously give us anxieties can significantly be reduced because we are very likely to succeed in "justifying ourselves" by logically explaining causes and results about events in question, thus, only have to be suffering from the understanding that anxieties cannot completely be eliminated.

If I were put in a situation where I am threatened to be killed without any reasonable explanation from the executers????
I think I will feel that I do not want to die,,,but,,,
I can imagine that I will try to explain to myself as reasonably as possible rather than complaining about someone or something else,,, maybe,,,

To conclude,,,

But, I do not still understand why the Jewish people had to be killed in genocide although I should admit that their origin or history might have some influences on the others who tried to create the object for their own projection or simply just discrimination, or whatever reasons.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

こんばんは

お祝いコメントありがとうございました!

そちらではどんなクリスマス・お正月をするんでしょうか?

Unknown said...

お忙しい中、いつもご丁寧にご返信、ありがとうございます。
つい最近終了したポルトガル語の学校の先生によりますと、まずは家族みんなで過ごすそうです。それが終わってから、若者たちはめいめい繰り出してイベントに参加するみたいです。

私は。。クリスマスは特に、、普段と変わらず、お勉強して(お勉強になっていればいいのですが、、)、ワインぐらいは飲んじゃうかもしれません。いつもどおり 笑

年が明けて6日に、ポルトガルではプレゼント交換をするそうです。

私は。。大みそかから1週間、ベルギーにいる弟の家族を訪問して、お正月気分を味わわせてもらおうと計画しております♪