Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT 2101-2105 (January 16-20, 2012) - A New Hope
Delator:
Wasting what exactly, Faye?
His life?
...and when did that start? When he broke it off with some chick the other day? :roll:
Is it cold in here?:
Faye deftly changed the subject before it could take root, but Marten's "I've tried before" might not necessarily have been a reference to Vicki.
pwhodges:
OK, so Faye has got Marten re-evaluating his actions, and his life, even, which is probably a good thing.
However, the logic is pretty screwed. Yes, his present life is consequent on his leaving California to follow Vicky; but that is, in scientific terms, the outcome of an uncontrolled experiment - there is no way to know how his life would have gone if he had stayed, or returned when she dumped him, or if he hadn't ogled Faye that day in the bar, or if she hadn't broken her glasses...
After all, for any of us, our present life is the result of the bad things that have happened to us, large and small, as well as the good ones - so in the end how can we even decide which were which? We are the result of the totality of our experience, not of any one or even a thousand parts of it, and Faye is correct in saying that the best thing we can do is value the result.
Blackjoker:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 16 Jan 2012, 00:06 ---Faye deftly changed the subject before it could take root, but Marten's "I've tried before" might not necessarily have been a reference to Vicki.
--- End quote ---
True. Though I do think that there is also kind of another problem here. Waaay back around the time when his mother visited post breakup I observed that Marten might be as timid as he is in part because any time that he really does try to seize his destiny it seems to blow up in his face or at least fail. Marten talks himself up to quitting a job that was depressing him, he arrives to find out that he was fired and has no real options in terms of unemployment or pension. When Dora violated Martens privacy despite him all but falling to his knees to beg that she not do it, he calls her out on it and she insults him, storms out, and then breaks up with him deciding that it's better for her to be insecure and selfish than it is to pursue a mature relationship. When Martens mother browbeat, humiliated, lied to him, etc. when he was at a low point he finally had enough and told her off, only to have her tear viciously into him in front of friends, force HIM to apologize to her and to them, with neither of them standing up for him by the way (real nice friends there). Hell, Marten risked a lot to move across the country and it ended with head games and lonliness. Oh, and when Marten mentioned the idea of pursuing goals to a barber, the barber decided to give him the most creepy example of goal and fulfillment ever. I'm not saying that Marten bears no responsibility for the rut he's in. But I am saying that there is something to be said for being almost conditioned into inactivity and conflict avoidance when every time you DO stand up for yourself everyone else turns against you, even people who claim to be friends.
Faye does make a decent point, what Marten did was petty, understandable, but petty. The idea that he's wasting his life might be simply that he isn't trying to do anything new or interesting, he sees himself in a rut but doesn't seem willing to leave it. The issue I have though is that each time something like this happens Marten tends to be the injured party, if he is the bigger man it doesn't tend to help him much and when he isn't he gets yelled at.
Carl-E:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 16 Jan 2012, 00:17 ---OK, so Faye has got Marten re-evaluating his actions, and his life, even, which is probably a good thing.
However, the logic is pretty screwed. Yes, his present life is consequent on his leaving California to follow Vicky; but that is, in scientific terms, the outcome of an uncontrolled experiment - there is no way to know how his life would have gone if he had stayed, or returned when she dumped him, or if he hadn't ogled Faye that day in the bar, or if she hadn't broken her glasses...
After all, for any of us, our present life is the result of the bad things that have happened to us, large and small, as well as the good ones - so in the end how can we even decide which were which? We are the result of the totality of our experience, not of any one or even a thousand parts of it, and Faye is correct in saying that the best thing we can do is value the result.
--- End quote ---
I agree, Faye's fallen victim to the fallacy of the popular notion of the butterfly effect, that one decision triggers a chain of events that lead into the future, rather than a whole branching tree of decisions and alternative outcomes. Who's to say that staying in CA wouldn't have led to a (completely different and) better life for him? Or that some other chain of events wouldn't have led him to where he is right now?
Dicey things, alternate realities.
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