Protocol #10: Twitter Thread
Twitter thread between a college student (A) and de Beauvoir (B)
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
A: I have so much work as a pre-med student, but all this suffering will lead to happiness, so it's worth it
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
B: If you are suffering now, it doesn't make sense that you will be happy later. The future is "so closely bound up with the present that it composes with it a single temporal form" (125).
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
B: You say the ends justify the means, but "it is the means which define the ends," and if the ends and means are contradicted, "the whole enterprise sinks into absurdity" (134).
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
A: Okay – you're right. Being happy later doesn't justify suffering now. But at least I'll know everything there is to know about the human body.
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
B: "Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries there developed the dream of a universal science," but the dream is hollow: a scientist who wishes to know everything about a phenomenon denies the truth that there exists a "concrete thickness of the here and now." (131)
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
B: Because science can't tell us everything, we cannot solely base moral choices on their outcomes: each action "must be lived in its finiteness and considered an absolute which no unknown time will ever succeed in saving." (133)
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
A: Even though I don't have to make a choice between absurd and rational thought, I'll just use this as an excuse not to do my homework. Time to party!
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
B: Lol no. Parties are a way to feel like you "exist absolutely" and forget about future unhappiness, but they are "pathetic and deceptive" because you can't "possess the present." Parties end because you realize that "every living movement is a sliding towards death" (137).
— Sumi Vora (@sumi_vora3) November 23, 2021
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