Thursday, October 28, 2010

Hey Mama

My mother has always been there as my teacher. While I have learned many fun things from her, like how to talk my way out of a ticket (extremely true story!), most of the lessons she taught me were serious and required her to work very hard to make them stick in my head.

For instance, my mom taught me not to shoplift. I was around 8 years old and my mother had taken me to Claire’s. If you’ve ever been in a Claire’s store, you know that the workers must get paid minimum wage and therefore have no desire in tidying up. The floors were always filthy, covered with various colored and glittery objects. I, in my youthful innocence, got it into my head that it was a universal rule that everything on the ground was free (actually). I loaded up my pockets with anything I could find and walked out, proud of my day’s accomplishments. (Note: Not one person said anything to me and no sirens went off…Claire’s Corporation, if a child can steal from you that easily, there’s a problem). When I buckled myself into the backseat, I laid out all my goodies next to me. My mother, being the responsible woman she is, looked back and asked me where I had gotten all my trinkets from.

“Don’t worry Mom,” I said. “They were on the floor.”

She immediately turned the car around and made me return all of the stolen goods. It was not a happy day.

Other than that, my mother has taught me about honesty, responsibility, and death. It was not easy for her to teach me these lessons, but she did without flinching. I think that’s because it’s her job. As my mother, she needed to step outside of her comfort zone to expose me to things I needed to know. And I really appreciate that. I know that you read this blog, Mom, so anyway. Thanks.

Friday, October 22, 2010

What You Know about That?

After reading the ideas of many classical philosophers for this class, I’ve realized that it is necessary to question what we know to be true. There are many ideas spread by people that are influenced by their view of the world, making them not necessarily true for me. And let’s not forget conspiracies and flat out lies. Our society is not always an honest one. So we know not to trust everything we hear. But this realization leads us to the real question: How do we know what we know?

I have no definite answer for how we can be certain about anything. In fact, I think it really depends on the person. We all see the world differently, so naturally, we all find our truth in different ways. Personally, I verify what I know using a combination of methods. I can find knowledge through my senses. For instance, I know that boiling water is painfully hot, or hot to me, because I have been burned by it before and know how it made me feel. I also think that we were all born with a certain amount of knowledge. Some great examples of this are universal morals. We are not taught from a young age that killing someone is wrong, but there is something in all of us that tells us so.

There are, however, some ideas that I have had no direct contact with that I believe to be true. For instance, I have never experimented with electricity enough to make my own conclusions, but I believe what scientists tell me about it. There are just some things (usually ones that require logical, not sensory, thought) that I just believe because of what others say. Of course I wish that I could prove everything I know, but as of now that’s not possible. For now, it is easier to get through life using my own knowledge along with the help of discoveries others have made.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Too Many Choices

Since the beginning of Philosophy, people have wondered why we are here. Considering the fact that very wise people have been debating this for ages, I have no problems admitting that I can’t answer this question. I can, however, explore some possibilities for what exactly “our meaning” in this world is. And since we just finished it, why not start off with a quote from Candide?

I read this book last year and throughout both of my readings, this has stayed one of my favorite quotes. It comes from one of the many philosophical discussions Candide and Martin have.

“ ‘But what was this world created for?’ said Candide.

‘To drive us mad’, replied Martin.” (p. 95).

Martin has a very pessimistic view on the world, making his idea that the world was not made for any good reason expected. However, I don’t think that his view has to be taken negatively. Put a positive spin on Martin’s statement. Perhaps this world was created to make us question and investigate it, a task that would drive many people “mad”. However, to enlightened philosophers (which we are all striving to be) this is actually a rather interesting task. It would be as if everything that we know and experience was created just for us to ponder about. An intellectual jungle gym for philosophers, if you will.

And now that we have identified a possible reason that the world exists, we can tackle why we do, what our meaning in life is. So for the purposes of this blog, the world was created to be questioned. Therefore, our duty as people living in the world is to explore all the questions that are offered, from “Why is grass green?” to “What is the purpose of genocide?”. A very wide range of topics, for sure. If you think about it, the infinite options of what we can question could be quite maddening. But maybe that’s the point. If you will.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Modern Day God What?

There are so many different interpretations of “God” these days. Sometimes it seems like no two people can agree upon what “God” means. So how are we to cover all these varying opinions? We can’t. But let’s try, with a little help from some modern songwriters.

Some people believe that God sent Jesus to Earth to help common people and relieve them of their sins. They have faith in God and his plans for them. They are also very grateful that Jesus suffered for them. Sufjan Stevens writes in his song “To Be Alone with You” that he would “swim across Lake Michigan…[and] sell [his] shoes” to be reunited with Jesus. He regrets that he will “never know the man who loved [him]”. Even in this current age of doubt, people like Sufjan stay true to their ideas and maintain their faith in God.

Another more recent interpretation of God is presented by Joan Osborne. She introduces a idea that maybe God isn’t such an infinite being that cannot be known to us, that he could actually be quite common and familiar, in her one-hit wonder “What If God Was One of Us”. She references how some people have such a loose idea of what “God” is and yet do not find a problem with this. She begs the listener to think about concrete facts. For instance, she asks “if God had a name, what would it be?” and “if God had a face, what would it look like?”. While Joan maintains that “yeah, yeah, God is good”, she pounds the idea into our heads that God could in fact be “one of us”. Some people think of God as this all powerful being, but Joan reminds us that we can’t be sure of this, that he may be just like us, “just trying to make his way home”.

As we can see, even in the year of 2010 people have come no closer to finding a definite meaning for what “God” is. I have heard many different opinions on the subject and am nowhere close to making sense of it all. For me, I’m not sure if that will ever be possible.