David Banach's "The Ethics of Absolute Freedom"

In David Banach’s “The Ethics of Absolute Freedom,” our perception from the mind, body, and soul are questioned. Thinking about this writing assignment made me realize the importance of how we perceive things. As stated in the reading, “Our only access to the outside world being a television screen on one wall on which we (with our mind’s eye) perceive the images of other people, places, and things.” You see things that your mind uses to recognize different things, but you can not feel the impact of those people, places, and things because you are looking at the situation from the surface. We can always see emotions people may be trying to show but how we feel on the inside is very different and no one else can understand exactly how you feel.

David Banach’s lecture directed the readers towards the idea that we are all trapped within our own minds and we can not feel what other people are experiencing. However that may mean that we are too wrapped up in our lives to care about any one else and improving relationships and this is not true for most people. Meeting people is all about trying to understand emotions and breaking that barrier that seperates you from the person you are trying to get to know better. I do think we are capable of not just looking at images and never understanding them, I believe that we are able to look at images and situations to find a deeper meaning. As stated in the passage, “Thus, to be an absolute individual is to be trapped within ourselves, unable to perceive or contact anything but the images on our mental tv screen, and to be imperceptible ourselves to anyone outside of us.” I do not understand the point he is trying to make through this statement because I do not believe that the only way to be an absolute individual is to close yourself off from the rest of the world but in order to understand someone else you need to talk to them. However I can understand his point about absolute individuality but isolating yourself from everyone else does not help matters. The only way to be an absolute individual is to hang around different people and see what makes you tick and gain interests and dislikes based off of that because although people may act alike there are no two personalities that are the same. We all think differently on the inside than how other’s perceive us.