United States22883 Posts
Depression is generally apathy towards life. It can be sadness or feeling bad, or it can be not feeling at all. It sounds like you feel nothing at all about your life.
On December 04 2007 10:26 lugggy wrote:
I. The start
A. Thought it would be cool to answer a college entrance question as though it were a real question, since I h8 education etc.
B. The Q. that will be faced is "Choose an issue of importance to you - ..."
What do you mean as if it was a real question? It is a real question. Even though you may not think it's a good one, it's still possible to extract some information about a person's character from the answer they give (phony, honest, thoughtful, superficial, logical, etc.)
What does it have to do with hating eduction, and why do you hate education. You'd probably get denied right off the bat for making that statement without expanding on it in any way.
II{
Let me be candid and be clear right from the start, and testify as to my understanding of the question before giving an answer: many people use the general cloud of "meaningfulness" words (in the above prompt, for instance, "importance" and "significance" are used in this manner) to signify a sort of flavor or "tag" on certain events, ideas, theories, problems, etc. I am not arrogant enough to assume that all these people when they say this mean the same thing.}
Fair enough, but I think the question implies this already. They want you to describe what "significance" means to you.
II. The words in the question, mean many things to many people, and also not necessarily anything to me in this context. Have to completely ignore this to answer the question, as this issue is too much to tackle in books, let alone a single short essay.
Are you saying the reader has to do this or you (the writer has to), and why? It seems to me that explaining what "importance" means to you is a reasonable request and it's quite possible to do within an essay.
Have to pretend to not know this, have to pretend you are a child. So the question is asking me to put on a child mask and make child words.
Again, why? By "child mask", do you mean you have to answer the question with ignorance and innocence?
Contrast this with the supposed seriousness of the question and the process. Not a fault of the question itself. Many people give shitty answers, but it's quite possible to give an honest, in-depth answer.
Yet what can I produce for this question any other way? Anyways... I'm not sure what this means.
III{
What I know is that people do things. Significance to me, is in the doing.
Alright, we've got a thesis.
[quote]How one spends their life really signifies significance. How they talk, is something else. Maybe it is another kind of significance, but I am not prepared to argue one vs. the other or some amalgamation of the two in any way. So for instance, if someone says that population control is super important, I say, look at their life. Fourty hours a week working at Starbucks, 3.5 hours a week jacking off, $500 a year donated to whatever charity--equals what, in terms of what must be important to them?[quote]Obviously there's a problem with saying "signifies significance."
You actually do argue one versus the other. You're saying that there is a clear difference between what people say is important to them and what's actually important to them in their lives. The Starbucks worker says that a political issue is important to them, but their life would largely be the same that issue didn't exist. What is important to them is their job, the jacking off, etc. It sounds like you're hinting that "doing" is greater than "saying." No disagreement here, that is a very sound sentiment.
[quote] Obviously the calculus need go much further than that, but I hope you can figure out what I'm getting at here, so I can move on.[/quote]The sentence is just unclear. Do you mean something like, "obviously you can take it further than that, such as breathing is very important to the Starbucks worker" ?
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In summary, I'm a skeptic when it comes to "importance" or "significance." Let what people do, speak for itself. [/quote]Talk doesn't impress you. [quote]I'm sitting here typing this, pretending it is so I can impress you and get into college. Lofty "issues" are miles away from this project and it is a pretense to pretend any "issue" in the sense you must mean, "personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope" means fuckall to me.}[/quote]I disagree. Like the Starbucks worker, there's plenty of important issues right in front of you. Maybe not some bullshit like population control, but there is something. Learning, working hard, music, expression, camaraderie, OnGamenet Starleague, etc.
[quote]
III. What can the question possibly mean to me?
A. I state how little I can say about what "I know", to contextualize this pursuit of "explaining the signifiance of the issue". You may notice I have failed to even choose an issue yet. How can I choose an issue in the face of all these problems with the prompt to choose an issue and perform X Y Z with it? Therefore my issue is to go over all these problems with the task, which I cannot even begin to complete in the words allotted. Again, were I to take the voice that is taught in the public chatter, I could easily pretend and start spouting out some narrative. But the whole idea here was to really be honest.[/quote] rewritten ->
I point out how little I (or anyone) understands "significance" to show how frivolous it is to "explain the significance of the issue." So, my issue of importance is the problems within your question itself. I could easily spout off cliches and nonsense like you normally receive, but I'm being honest and I believe your question is seriously deficient.
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B. I try to give some rudimentary thoughts on why the expected (and possible) responses to this prompt will be utterly dishonest--because they ignore so much. I could only write about some "important" issue feeling utterly false and self conscious, and I think I make it clear why. Because my life does not reflect anything like that. I'm not tithing, I'm not donating, I'm not "keeping up" on "what's important", or "participating" in "important discussions." Even elections I may become somewhat informed in before I vote, I hardly think the outcome is important, let alone my vote. I have no participation to speak of, so no importance to speak of. In fact the most important thing in my week probably right now is this very post. So I am forced to lie to answer a question like this one, and this is what I am getting at here.
[/quote]This is the disturbing part about your essay. You seem uncommitted and unattached to everything.
[quote]So I don't have a definitive assumption to make the meaning of this question (in any honest form) clear at all. [/quote]Again, the writing is unclear. I think you mean "so to be honest, there is no important issue to talk about in my life."
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Pollution, child homelessness, dog rape, are stories on the news that maybe should make me shed an emo tear, or donate dimes for children without legs. IDK and I'm not going to know. Maybe I'm a bastard for not sorting through the ocean of these types of things out there. Maybe my life is entirely oriented in an immoral fashion. But again, no room to get into that here. Gonna try to figure out what morality is, where it comes from, what we should do about it? That isn't even an issue for our times. That one is long since dead. [/quote]Morality is never a dead issue, and you do need to sort those things out for yourself. It doesn't bother you when people die?
[quote]V{
Maybe it "feels" like it means more, and maybe in some of the games we play with speaking, "it does." For instance people will argue that what is important is what saves the most lives, or prolongs their life or certain people the most, or what makes people feel most compelled to act, or to cry "ought," or to cry. Maybe "it's important" to figure out which of these games yield "true results", or what that means. Whatever. But such a reality is not reflected in anything I do. I hereby take my own arbitrary stance on the meaning of "importance"--that it is the substance behind actions (and decisions, in the sense that they even exist).}[/quote]I think that's a fair assessment, but all of those things ARE the substances behind actions.
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VI{
The only issue at play for me is this very issue of "importance." Does "importance" exist, or is it just the shadow of actual being? For, we easily see what people do. Is "significance" then just like a shadow of what really happens and exists, following it along? People brush their teeth. Saying it's important for them to do it seems somehow, just tautological and meaningless. But this seems to be necessary from my conception of importance. [/quote]The first part is just weird.
People take things like brushing their teeth for granted, but they are important like you said.
[quote]Yet if we take other options for the idea, then "importance" becomes "ought yet naught", equally frivolous.[/quote]No clue...
[quote] Just think about it: whatever we're doing right, isn't seen as important, and whatever "needs attention" and "needs fixing" is important, in such a case. It's just about needs. Aren't the needs already met equally important? The concept becomes useless and we are reduced to figuring out which saves the most money, children, sperm, seconds of suffering pain at such and such a level, whatever. Or arguing over which is what we must save, increase, reduce, etc.}[/quote]So people notice deficiencies more than anything else. This is human nature, but the things are still important to us if we're honest about it. How is the concept useless?
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VII{
I believe I have explained the issue of meaning or "importance or significance", a personal "issue", to myself, which seems to be what you asked. [/quote]So importance is simply "doing" - the things that sustain our every day life - and the motivations behind our actions?
[quote]If this fails to meet your expectations you have only yourself to blame for not writing better questions.}
[/QUOTE]Hoho, there's certainly tons of blame to be tossed your way if your response doesn't appease them.
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EPT
