Mark Wiener:
People always end up the way they started out. No one ever changes. They think they do but they don't. If you're the depressed type now that's the way you'll always be. If you're the mindless happy type now, that's the way you'll be when you grow up. You might lose some weight, your face may clear up, get a body tan, breast enlargement, a sex change, it makes no difference. Essentially, from in front, from behind. Whether you're 13 or 50, you will always be the same.
'Mark' Aviva Victor:
Are you the same?
Mark Wiener:
Yeah.
'Mark' Aviva Victor:
Are you glad you're the same?
Mark Wiener:
It doesn't matter if I'm glad. There's no freewill. I mean, I have no choice but to chose what I choose, to do as I do, to live as I live. Ultimately, we're all just robots programmed abritrarily by nature's genetic code
'Mark' Aviva Victor:
Isn't there any hope?
Mark Wiener:
For what? We hope or despair because of the way we've been programmed. Genes and randomness, that's all there is and none of it matters.
'Mark' Aviva Victor:
Does that mean you're never going get married and have children?
Mark Wiener:
I have no anent desire to get married or have kids. But that's beyond my control. Really, it makes no difference. Since the planet's fast running out of natural resources and we won't make it into the next century.
'Mark' Aviva Victor:
What if you're wrong? What if there is a God?
Mark Wiener:
That makes me feel better.
Philosophy Professor:
The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us... I'm afraid were losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it were a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never felt once minute of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, its like your life is yours to create. Ive read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as being fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when sartre talks about responsibilty, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not taling about the kind of self or souls that theologians would talk about. Hes talking about you and me talking, making descisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we shouuld never write ourselves off or see eachother as a victim of various forces. It's always our descision who we are.
It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means
