Dear Future Philosopher (if thou shall beeth one),
Here I am, your very everyday un-average, not-so-ordinary guy writing his last blog to the future. Yes, you are the future. And the future of philosophy, whether or not you really are a true philosopher. This is so because, well, just look at where you are in this class. You are one of the few(?) who have survived Philosophy 1 and have not given up on it. So, you are the future of philosophy… or at least for the semester.
Now, I have to discuss what’s existentially important to me… whatever that means. If you don’t know what that means, do what I did, look it up in a dictionary, “that’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far” (quote from Tony Stark, if you remember who that is in your time) so go get yourself a dictionary.
So, what is existentially important to me… I don’t really have an answer for that. I don’t very much like my existence, so I don’t really find anything important to it. Ummm, food? Water? But that’s the basics, which isn’t too interesting, is it. Well, I guess what’s important to my existence, my being, are good morals, because I dislike a guilty conscience, and my powers, because… well, if you had powers, you would find them important too. Oh, and another thing, which ties them together (sort of), knowledge. Because of my vast knowledge (the word “vast” is questionable), I have good morals. And also because of my knowledge, I know about my powers and how to use them. That’s ok, I'm fine with you not believing me; I’d rather that actually.
This next question is more straightforward. How have I grown as a philosopher. Before taking this course, I always looked at the world differently that other people, and I knew that, and I used it to my advantage. But now taking this voyage, I have been able to not only learn new ways of thinking, new philosophies, etc., but I have also organized, edited, and perfected my own philosophies.
And finally, “How will I continue the ‘dialogue’ of philosophy from this point forward?” Well, that’s easy. I’ll just continue to do what I always do, except now at the end of this year, it will be more organized: I will make others think. I used to do that, I still do that, and I will continue to do that. It’s not even like I try to do so, I just do. The way I speak is enough to make people think, even if it’s a minimal as to make people understand what I'm saying, just like I did with you.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
Is It "Sophie's World", "Hilde's World", "The Majour's World"... Or Is It "Jostein's World"?
Where I shall be referring to for this blog is Sophie’s World, chapter 22: “Berkeley”, starting on page 285. (Wow, what number is after 22, 23. 285, lets take the 85 part, 8-5=3 so that’s 23. Wow, paranoia kicking in.) (I can go further, but I don’t want to fixate myself on that, or at least not yet, not now.) Anyway, I want to say a note on my choice of a page before I begin. I misread the blog assignment the first time I read it and I didn’t realize we had to right as if we were Jostein Gaarder’s author. But the page I still wanted to do this page right from the start. Now that I realize what the assignment really is, it plays even better than what I originally planned. So, the story…
“You said that for Berkeley this spirit that everything exists in is the Christian God.”
Hilde’s father paused for a moment, trying to think of how to finally admit to Sophie that she was his creation. Then he made Alberto say:
“Yes, I suppose he did. But for us…”
“Us?”
The old majour had to really consider his words wisely, for if he slipped, things might not happen in his book quite how he wanted to happen.
“For us – for you and me – this ‘will or spirit’ that is the ‘cause of everything in everything’ could be Hilde’s father”
That was the best he could do. After all, he didn’t want to entirely give himself away, he just wanted to open up a new possibility. Now let’s see if Sophie will take the bait.
Sophie’s eyes widened with incredulity. Yet at the same time a realization began to dawn on her.
“Is that what you think?”
“I cannot see any other possibility. This is perhaps the only feasible explanation for everything that has happened to us. All those postcards and signs that have turned up here and there… Hermes beginning to talk… my own involuntary slips of the tongue.”
“I…”
Even though he was trying to follow the majour’s terminology and use of words, he wanted to have his own fun too. “I don’t think the majour will mind…”
“Imagine my calling you Sophie, Hilde! I knew all the time that your name wasn’t Sophie.”
“What are you saying? Now you are definitely confused.”
And so was the majour. What compelled him to write that? As he did not have a way to fix his mistake using only a typewriter, he figured out how to fix this.
“Yes, my mind is going round and round, my child. Like a giddy planet around the sun.”
“Is that sun Hilde’s father?”
“You can say so.”
“Are you saying he’s been a kind of God for us?”
What a question to answer. He wasn’t even sure why he was writing those words. It’s as if someone else was writing it for him. But the only way possible to not let anything be definite is to let Alberto whole-heartedly believe:
“To be perfectly candid, yes. He should be ashamed of himself!”
Bad majour. How can you do such a horrible thing torturing these poor souls by making yourself seem divinely compared to them, Jostein Gaarder thought to himself as he was sitting at his computer typing all of this.
The majour did start to feel slightly bad about making only himself seem so high and mighty. He’ll let someone else take the stage at least for a brief moment; this book is for her after all.
Or so he thinks.
“What about Hilde herself?”
“She is an angel, Sophie.”
“An angel?”
“Hilde is the one this ‘spirit’ turns to.”
“Are you saying that Albert Knag tells Hilde about us?”
Well, I am saying that I am telling you about Jostein Gaarder hinting at his existence to Albert Knag telling Hilde about Sophie and Alberto.
“You said that for Berkeley this spirit that everything exists in is the Christian God.”
Hilde’s father paused for a moment, trying to think of how to finally admit to Sophie that she was his creation. Then he made Alberto say:
“Yes, I suppose he did. But for us…”
“Us?”
The old majour had to really consider his words wisely, for if he slipped, things might not happen in his book quite how he wanted to happen.
“For us – for you and me – this ‘will or spirit’ that is the ‘cause of everything in everything’ could be Hilde’s father”
That was the best he could do. After all, he didn’t want to entirely give himself away, he just wanted to open up a new possibility. Now let’s see if Sophie will take the bait.
Sophie’s eyes widened with incredulity. Yet at the same time a realization began to dawn on her.
“Is that what you think?”
“I cannot see any other possibility. This is perhaps the only feasible explanation for everything that has happened to us. All those postcards and signs that have turned up here and there… Hermes beginning to talk… my own involuntary slips of the tongue.”
“I…”
Even though he was trying to follow the majour’s terminology and use of words, he wanted to have his own fun too. “I don’t think the majour will mind…”
“Imagine my calling you Sophie, Hilde! I knew all the time that your name wasn’t Sophie.”
“What are you saying? Now you are definitely confused.”
And so was the majour. What compelled him to write that? As he did not have a way to fix his mistake using only a typewriter, he figured out how to fix this.
“Yes, my mind is going round and round, my child. Like a giddy planet around the sun.”
“Is that sun Hilde’s father?”
“You can say so.”
“Are you saying he’s been a kind of God for us?”
What a question to answer. He wasn’t even sure why he was writing those words. It’s as if someone else was writing it for him. But the only way possible to not let anything be definite is to let Alberto whole-heartedly believe:
“To be perfectly candid, yes. He should be ashamed of himself!”
Bad majour. How can you do such a horrible thing torturing these poor souls by making yourself seem divinely compared to them, Jostein Gaarder thought to himself as he was sitting at his computer typing all of this.
The majour did start to feel slightly bad about making only himself seem so high and mighty. He’ll let someone else take the stage at least for a brief moment; this book is for her after all.
Or so he thinks.
“What about Hilde herself?”
“She is an angel, Sophie.”
“An angel?”
“Hilde is the one this ‘spirit’ turns to.”
“Are you saying that Albert Knag tells Hilde about us?”
Well, I am saying that I am telling you about Jostein Gaarder hinting at his existence to Albert Knag telling Hilde about Sophie and Alberto.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Mythical Beast
As you probably already know, it is very difficult for me to make up a Mythical Beast. So I’m going to think of one…
Alright, I think I’ve got it. This beast does not have a name, yet, hopefully by the end of this entry it will. So that means we will leave the “complex idea” part until that time. The simple impressions are the following: it has long, very long brown hair all over its body. I guess it can have multiple colours based on their environment. Come to think of it, this part of the description reminds me of a Tangela, except with hair instead of vines. Oh, and my beast is much bigger, umm... maybe, let’s say like 8 feet tall, more or less. It has green tentacles coming out from beneath its fur, no wait, I think it should be called hair, not fur. Ok, so hair. So these tentacles are long but you can’t see them when this beast retracts them back beneath its hair. I don’t know how that works, maybe it raps the tentacles around its actual body or something. So it has 4 tentacles like that. The tentacles are greenish-turquoise. They are long and skinny, like maybe an inch or two or three in width, except for the tips, the ends of it of an adult form of this creature would be a foot long, more or less, which are thicker, wider and in kind of pointed at the tip, except it’s not sharp, just thinner, with maybe 8 to 10 suction cups on that part. Sounds like a squid tentacle or something. You can’t see this thing’s face, but it has one, and it can see through its hair, which isn’t hard to do, I would know. The legs took me a lot of thought, but this creature has bird legs. Talons included. These it can retract too. It’s a defensive mechanism.
I have decided on a name. This creature’s name is Polymalia. It comes from the Greek words poly, which means “many”, and malia, which means “hair”. This is the complex idea, Polymalia.
Locke’s natural rights are freedom to live, freedom of choice, and freedom to own property. These rights apply to Polymalia, and we humans have no right to take these rights away from it. We shouldn’t take away its life, the only way that'll happen is if it encounters one of its natural predators and unfortunately looses that battle. It has freedom to make its own choices, we shouldn’t take that away from it either. If it wants to run around in circles, it should run around in circles, if it wants to retract all its limbs and roll down a hill, then so be it. And freedom of property. If Polymalia wants to mark trees around its territory with its talons, then it should keep its ownership of that land, we shouldn’t take it away.
Alright, I think I’ve got it. This beast does not have a name, yet, hopefully by the end of this entry it will. So that means we will leave the “complex idea” part until that time. The simple impressions are the following: it has long, very long brown hair all over its body. I guess it can have multiple colours based on their environment. Come to think of it, this part of the description reminds me of a Tangela, except with hair instead of vines. Oh, and my beast is much bigger, umm... maybe, let’s say like 8 feet tall, more or less. It has green tentacles coming out from beneath its fur, no wait, I think it should be called hair, not fur. Ok, so hair. So these tentacles are long but you can’t see them when this beast retracts them back beneath its hair. I don’t know how that works, maybe it raps the tentacles around its actual body or something. So it has 4 tentacles like that. The tentacles are greenish-turquoise. They are long and skinny, like maybe an inch or two or three in width, except for the tips, the ends of it of an adult form of this creature would be a foot long, more or less, which are thicker, wider and in kind of pointed at the tip, except it’s not sharp, just thinner, with maybe 8 to 10 suction cups on that part. Sounds like a squid tentacle or something. You can’t see this thing’s face, but it has one, and it can see through its hair, which isn’t hard to do, I would know. The legs took me a lot of thought, but this creature has bird legs. Talons included. These it can retract too. It’s a defensive mechanism.
I have decided on a name. This creature’s name is Polymalia. It comes from the Greek words poly, which means “many”, and malia, which means “hair”. This is the complex idea, Polymalia.
Locke’s natural rights are freedom to live, freedom of choice, and freedom to own property. These rights apply to Polymalia, and we humans have no right to take these rights away from it. We shouldn’t take away its life, the only way that'll happen is if it encounters one of its natural predators and unfortunately looses that battle. It has freedom to make its own choices, we shouldn’t take that away from it either. If it wants to run around in circles, it should run around in circles, if it wants to retract all its limbs and roll down a hill, then so be it. And freedom of property. If Polymalia wants to mark trees around its territory with its talons, then it should keep its ownership of that land, we shouldn’t take it away.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Pleasure vs. Pain
According to John Locke, there is good and there is evil. Good and evil affect us in different ways. The main ways they affect us is by either increasing or decreasing pleasure or pain. Good increases pleasure and decreases pain. Evil does the opposite, increases pain and decreases pleasure. Pleasure and pain also make other emotions depending on how one perceives the situation. Some of these emotions include love, hatred, desire, joy, sorrow, hope, fear, despair, anger and envy. Love and joy fall under pleasure. Hatred and sorrow fall under pain. Desire, I believe, is in between joy and sorrow. When you desire something, it’s not really either pleasure or pain, but once you do or do not get what you desire, it turns to joy or sorrow. Hope is when you’re in a painful situation and you look towards the good. Fear is when you’re in a pleasurable situation and you see that evil may come. Despair falls between the two: you’re not really looking for hope, but you’re not exactly fearing anything. Anger and envy are special emotions that technically fall under pain, but they have to do with another person.
I believe Locke is correct in his statements. Because going against what he says would be to say evil increases pleasure and good increases pain, but that is preposterous, unless you roll like that, but for me, Locke is right.
Even though I almost whole-heartedly agree with Locke, I disagree with him on one topic. He says that with anger, there’s a “present purpose of revenge”. You don't need to be vengeful in order to be angry.
I believe Locke is correct in his statements. Because going against what he says would be to say evil increases pleasure and good increases pain, but that is preposterous, unless you roll like that, but for me, Locke is right.
Even though I almost whole-heartedly agree with Locke, I disagree with him on one topic. He says that with anger, there’s a “present purpose of revenge”. You don't need to be vengeful in order to be angry.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
I ...(blank)... Therefore I Am
I Live, Therefore I Am.
This statement, I believe, is very self-explanatory. I am because I live; I live therefore I am. This means that because I have been given the gift of life, I exist. This is only so because I am made of matter. I take up space and, the last time I checked, I did have some volume on me. I am here, I am tangible, and I am visible… well, visibility is an option, you can still exist if you’re under an Invisibility Cloak or cloaking devise of some sort.
I say I Live, so I exist. I do not, repeat, do not mean if something is not alive it doesn’t exist. Most of the matter in the universe is not alive, that’s a fact. There can’t be more living than nonliving things in the universe, there just wouldn’t be enough room to hold the living things. Even, say, if we humans make space stations or something like that to live in, that’s adding more to the nonliving side. If there’s going to be any argument against me that planets and stars and other stuff is alive that are considered “life-less”, then you go right on and think that. I'm just speaking of things most humans consider to not be alive. Anyway, back to what I was saying. Nonliving things can exist, and they do, unless they aren’t made of matter, not tangible, and not even there (unless there invisible). But in this blog, I speak for myself when I say “I Live, Therefore I Am.” For me, living gives me my existence in this present day. If I die, again, and actually stay dead, like dead-not-coming-back-to-life dead, then my saying would have to change, but I don’t know what that’ll be since I haven’t reached that stage of my existence.
This statement, I believe, is very self-explanatory. I am because I live; I live therefore I am. This means that because I have been given the gift of life, I exist. This is only so because I am made of matter. I take up space and, the last time I checked, I did have some volume on me. I am here, I am tangible, and I am visible… well, visibility is an option, you can still exist if you’re under an Invisibility Cloak or cloaking devise of some sort.
I say I Live, so I exist. I do not, repeat, do not mean if something is not alive it doesn’t exist. Most of the matter in the universe is not alive, that’s a fact. There can’t be more living than nonliving things in the universe, there just wouldn’t be enough room to hold the living things. Even, say, if we humans make space stations or something like that to live in, that’s adding more to the nonliving side. If there’s going to be any argument against me that planets and stars and other stuff is alive that are considered “life-less”, then you go right on and think that. I'm just speaking of things most humans consider to not be alive. Anyway, back to what I was saying. Nonliving things can exist, and they do, unless they aren’t made of matter, not tangible, and not even there (unless there invisible). But in this blog, I speak for myself when I say “I Live, Therefore I Am.” For me, living gives me my existence in this present day. If I die, again, and actually stay dead, like dead-not-coming-back-to-life dead, then my saying would have to change, but I don’t know what that’ll be since I haven’t reached that stage of my existence.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Do I Happen To Be a Humanist?
Am I a humanist? The first question to ask is, “What is a humanist?” Humanism is defined as a system of thought based on the interests and ideals of humankind. But what does that mean? It means that the center of this thought is the individual… right?
Is this question asking, “Am I all for the human?” If that’s the case, then I would say no. No, because I am not for humans, they have demoted themselves so badly, I don’t think they can bring themselves up again. We humans have done so much harm to the world we live in. I do believe that the negative effects can be fixed, but we will not do so. Even with all of the environmental groups we have, we still will not change anything about the things we do to this planet. And if we find a way to live on another planet, like Mars, we will do the same thing to it too. Humans are unworthy of being the center of anything. That’s precisely why I find the geocentric view of the world very entertaining. Humans think they are so great, and in a way we are, but that can never be even with the bad we do. People are losers. I'm not specifying anyone in particular, but the whole human race is losers. And don’t give me that whole, “isn’t the human race made of individuals?” As true as that may be, I'm not talking about the individual, I'm talking about the society. I guess my refusing to talk about the individual shows I'm not a humanist, correct?
Is this question asking, “Am I all for the human?” If that’s the case, then I would say no. No, because I am not for humans, they have demoted themselves so badly, I don’t think they can bring themselves up again. We humans have done so much harm to the world we live in. I do believe that the negative effects can be fixed, but we will not do so. Even with all of the environmental groups we have, we still will not change anything about the things we do to this planet. And if we find a way to live on another planet, like Mars, we will do the same thing to it too. Humans are unworthy of being the center of anything. That’s precisely why I find the geocentric view of the world very entertaining. Humans think they are so great, and in a way we are, but that can never be even with the bad we do. People are losers. I'm not specifying anyone in particular, but the whole human race is losers. And don’t give me that whole, “isn’t the human race made of individuals?” As true as that may be, I'm not talking about the individual, I'm talking about the society. I guess my refusing to talk about the individual shows I'm not a humanist, correct?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Officially Unofficial Guide to Live a Happy Life
How do you live a happy life? What is a happy life? A happy life is a life without regret. A happy life is one that has been lived to the fullest and best it could. By that I mean that the person living it has experienced a satisfying life.
In order to have a happy life, one must live purely. One has to be morally good. You have to always do the right thing. You do that so you don’t have to have any regrets. Because how can possibly live happily if you are weighed down with regret?
But these are all my personal view of how to live a happy life. Not everyone’s views are like mine. Not many people think like me…
Come to think of it, no one thinks like me… Aaaaaaaaanyway, moving along.
Now, as I was starting to say, other people have different views on how to live a happy life. Other people have different views on being happy, obviously leading to how to live happy. Other people may say to be happy, you have to get things that make you happy. Some people are happy being with people they are close to. Some feel fulfilled when they read, etc.
So, if the above question asks how do people in society live a happy life, then I cannot answer it because everyone’s answer is different. (Yay, individuality) But asking me, personally, in a nutshell: do good, be good, and have a good life.
In order to have a happy life, one must live purely. One has to be morally good. You have to always do the right thing. You do that so you don’t have to have any regrets. Because how can possibly live happily if you are weighed down with regret?
But these are all my personal view of how to live a happy life. Not everyone’s views are like mine. Not many people think like me…
Come to think of it, no one thinks like me… Aaaaaaaaanyway, moving along.
Now, as I was starting to say, other people have different views on how to live a happy life. Other people have different views on being happy, obviously leading to how to live happy. Other people may say to be happy, you have to get things that make you happy. Some people are happy being with people they are close to. Some feel fulfilled when they read, etc.
So, if the above question asks how do people in society live a happy life, then I cannot answer it because everyone’s answer is different. (Yay, individuality) But asking me, personally, in a nutshell: do good, be good, and have a good life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
