Do we create our own mental prisons? Or are they created for us? Can we escape them?
The Oracle of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, in Ancient Greece, bore this inscription over its entrance: Know Thyself. Of course, this implies we have a self to be known. The Ancient Greeks seem to have felt very clearly that the self could be known with clarity, that each of us embodies an objective self. Today, the search for the “real me” and the difficulty we have in achieving this, in fact the impermanence of our notion of the self, subjectively rendered, always changing, ever-evolving, strongly implies that the true self—by definition!—resists defining. Remember Heraclitus: No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
Still, we try. When the slang phrase, “I feel you” came into fashion, it rang true with modern culture, since we often equate feeling with understanding (even as earlier on the phrase “I see what you mean” similarly equated seeing with understanding). Today many of us strongly believe that if we can be “in touch” with our feelings, if we can understand why we have them, if we can even control them, then truly we will be wise, integrated, fulfilled individuals. We will know who we are.
To help us learn and understand who we are, Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky, in their book Mind Over Mood, argue that we can alter and even control our emotions and feelings by how we think about them. Let’s find out what we think about Greenberger and Padesky’s argument and let’s play it out in a specific context. In line with our course’s driving question, let’s choose a mental “prison” and see what creates this “prison.”
The best topics will be “prisons” that are arguably so. For example, is race a social construct or does it exist objectively? Who decides? How does it play out in the society around you? What about addiction? Is it a lack of willpower, i.e. a mental weakness, or is it a physical impairment that we cannot control? You can, and will, find those who argue strongly for each side. You may use your own life as an example if you wish, but only as an example, not the focus of the essay. Your goal is to make a general perhaps even universal argument, applicable to all.
Choose a topic and begin with research of current sources (last 10 or so years)
Provide a detailed description of the topic and in-depth perspectives other than your own.
Argue your personal stance on the topic, particularly as it relates to how figurative prisons are erected and how we do or do not manage to escape them.