Response to "Human Competition."

Skyla's question was, "What would life be like if there was absolutely NO competition?"

Having zero competition in life sounds like a great idea, but I'm not sure that it could ever work. It is in our nature to be competitive. Even if most of us could put aside our selfishness and learn not to be competitive I don't think that everyone could. It would only take a few people to bring the whole system crashing down. That said I think that we've reached a degree of competition that concentrates power in the hands of fewer and fewer people (capitalism). I'm hopeful that someday we'll find a way to reach a balance of competition that will be beneficial for everyone, but for now that doesn't seem realistic. I don't think that we will ever be able to eliminate competition from our nature entirely, but there has to be a way to guide that competition in a more productive, less destructive direction.

Rousseau

In an interesting twist of thought, Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that the development of civilization has in a way "enslaved" people. To Rousseau, our natural happiness has been taken away by civilization and unnatural inequalities have developed as a result. Most people would argue that the more civilized we become the more inequalities fall away. Of course, we have to keep in mind the time frame that Rousseau was writing (pre-revolution France). I wonder, then, if Rousseau would have held those same beliefs if he lived and wrote today. I think that he probably would, considering all of the inequalities that are still evident around the world and even in America. It is also interesting to consider whether or not Rousseau would be in favor of communism. Here I am talking about TRUE communism, not the socialism that we have seen develop in parts of the world and call itself communism. It seems that Rousseau would love the idea of having no government at all, of having no need for one. Rousseau may argue with Marx that such a state would be idea for the elimination of inequalities and the increase of "natural" happiness and freedom. However, Rousseau also says, "It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can." Rousseau makes it difficult (if not impossible) to say what his ideal form of society would look like by contradicting himself.


My question is, do you think Rousseau would have leaned more toward the idea of a Philosopher King society or a Marxist society?

Response to "All Sinners to go Heaven."

Skyla asked the extremely personal question: What constitutes as your religion and what beliefs do you have that are unique to other religions of the world?

Like Skyla, I like to think of myself as someone that does not share a religion with any particular group. I call myself a Christian simply for my belief in Jesus as the Son of God and I call myself a Protestant because I despise church and you can't really be too Catholic without it. Other than that I can't say that I have had too much in common with any Christians that I've talked with. I don't buy the creation story, but I do believe in intelligent design of some sort. I absolutely believe in evolution and scientific fact holds more weight in my mind than religious text of any sort. I don't take every word of the Bible as fact, I actually take very little of it as fact. Most of the time when I talk with other Christians about their beliefs I wonder if we have read the same Bible or not. I think that God loves you even if you're a gay black Buddhist. Hatred is in no way part of my personal Christianity and I think my Jesus would be ashamed of most Christians today. As my best friend loves to say, "Jesus loves the people you hate." My belief in "hell" is something that I'm still cultivating. I can't seem to bring myself to say that people like Hitler (to bring him up yet again) are sipping tea with Jesus, so there must be a hell. At the same time, I refuse to believe that good people like Gandhi were cast into the lake of fire simply because they weren't Christian. My mother, an agnostic of sorts, believes that everyone goes to heaven, but that they're not the same people as they were on earth. She thinks heaven in like earth in the sense that there is a structured society that's something like reincarnation to the Hindu's. The people who lived the best lives that they could are rewarded and those that weren't so good are their "servants" of sorts. I like to imagine Hitler serving my mom (the agnostic) and Jesus (the Jew) milk and cookies. Perhaps my mom has it right, or maybe Skyla does. I suppose that I find comfort that crappy people will be getting theirs however Jesus sees fit (again, the Hitler image). I believe that we must all have some purpose for living, be it big or small. I believe in both destiny and free will. To me, God sounds like "Fix You" and tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream. God is the Costa Del Sol in June. It's getting caught in the hail after you've gotten a B on the paper you worked your ass off on and being able to laugh about it all. My God isn't about rules and regulations, but figuring it all out as you go along. Life isn't some multiple choice test and eternity isn't pass or fail. God's a beautiful gray area. There has to be more to it than "right" and "wrong" or "sinner" and "saint." I think there's "human" and "God" and that we're more connected than we can ever hope to understand.


My question is: For those of you who don't believe in God or heaven, what do you think happens when we die? Do you believe we have souls?

Question Everything

In class last week we talked about the "philosophy" of the Bible, if there is such a thing. Up until this point in the class religious views of the philosophers we have studied were minimal if there were any at all. Their polytheistic beliefs did not make it too far into their philosophy. This leads me to wonder why monotheism promps such devotion among human beings. I think perhaps that we want to feel like we're not alone in the world and most people find comfort in knowing, or at least believing, that there is something else out there, perhaps anything else. Our ability to wonder about things like no other animal in a way makes us very lonely. We are in a constant fight to figure out what is wrong and what is right, what we should do and shouldn't. I think that each one of us feels like there are things about us that nobody else will ever understand. What a lonely life of misunderstanding we live. I think, then, that it is only natural to look to something beyond human beings in the hope that there is some reason for this misunderstanding among us. There must be someone, or something, that understands the smallest things that make us who we are. If there is not, what's the point? Why even bother wondering about huge questions unless someone out there has the answer? No matter how far we advance as a race we will always have questions that remain unanswered. In class we called this the "God of the gaps." People fill in God where they cannot find answers. We look back on the Greek Gods and laugh at how they seriously thought that those Gods could have existed. Are we doing the same thing? Are we just filling in God for all of the answers. The more we know, the less of God(s) we need, thus monotheism. Will God ever cease to be important and the human race become completely secular? I don't think so. I think that even with all of the answers we have to look beyond ourselves for something more, something bigger, something that we cannot ever understand and perhaps are not meant to. Ignorance is bliss, after all.


Do you think what religion people grow up around ultimately influences what God they believe in. For example, do you think if the Christians that grew up in America had grown up in Iran would be Muslims today?

Response to Mary Marcil's question.

Mary asks, "When there is a friendship that just flows smoothly and is enjoyed without struggle, can it ever truly flourish?"

I don't think that friendship in any way requires struggle to flourish, particularly not loose friendships. I have some people that I consider "good friends" and they are just that because there has been no struggle (or very little) between us. My definition of a flourishing friendship with a "good friend" is one in which (as someone said in class today) months can pass in between conversations but when you do reconnect it feels like no time has passed at all. I think these kinds of friendships are particularly special simply because, for whatever reason, we have found someone that we feel undeniably and permanently connected to. This kind of friendship may not flourish extravagantly, but it does indeed leave a lasting impression on the people who are in the friendship. That simple fact in itself is enough, to me, to constitute a flourishing friendship.
When it comes to best friends, though, I think that flourishing is a little different. Anyone that we care that deeply for we are bound to piss off at some point. Perhaps we feel that we owe our best friends our deepest honesty and sometimes they just don't want to hear it. Or maybe we love that person so much that we give them tough love for their own sake. In that sense, I think that struggle is inevitable in that type of friendship, but is it necessary? No. I think it just comes with the territory of caring deeply about a person's well being and not always about hurting their feelings. On that note, best friends also have to know when to lessen the grip on the friendship. It has to be somewhat flexible or it will break under all of the pressure.
In short, I think that some friendships learn a lot and are strengthened through struggle, but other friendships flourish precisely because there is no struggle. It all depends on the type of friendship and the type of person that you are friends with.

Beautiful Messes

In class we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of compartmentalizing. Aristotle was known as the great compartmentalizer of all time. Some look at this quality and see a really smart guy. I do agree that Aristotle was far ahead of his time, but I don't want to automatically label him a genius here. If Aristotle were such a genius, then I think he would have realized all of the things that he was missing when he placed everything into it's own little compartment, never to be heard from again. When it comes to pure science, it is nice to have everything in its proper place. It would be nearly impossible to learn Biology without compartmentalization. When it comes to humanity, however, I think that we have to be very careful how we go about filing information.
Humans are a vast and complicated species. There are too many kinds of people in the world for us all to fit into neat little slots. It is easy to say that humans break down into groups such as gender, national identity, ethnic identity, and even cultural subgroups built into ethnic identity. Even the most sub-sub-sub group of classification, however, is bound to leave somebody out. There are always things about us that are not shared with individuals of our own "group" that may be shared with someone from a different group. So, then, I think that it's important to realize how much we lose when we just throw people into compartments to be sorted. We miss the subtle nuances of one another through classification.
Also, compartmentalizing places or periods of our lives can be dangerous. We're in college. It's time to grow up, cut the cord, learn to stand on our own two feet. But does that have to happen just because we are in college. What does furthering our education have to do with distancing yourself from the relationship that you had with the family? I think it is more a natural inclination to say that when we each, on a personal level, feel the need to leave home and start our own lives then we should do just that. The act of doing so shouldn't be compartmentalized by simply saying that you're in college. Also, just because one leaves the home does not (and should not) have to mean that one leaves behind one's family. There is a way to have one foot in both worlds.


My question is: Can you think of a time when people gain more than we lose through compartmentalization?

Response to "Collectivism V. Individualism"

Joshua posted this question in his blog: "What does the world need for it to better itself a philosopher-king or a sage?"

My answer is neither. This whole "ideal" person as a ruler thing probably wouldn't work in our world. I think that sages are too moral to function well in politics and philosopher-kings would probably just look down on everyone. Some would say that if we made reforms in politics so that it was less manipulative then we could have a sage as a leader. I say that while this seems like a great idea, it's probably a bit too Utopian to actually work. I think the only way to better ourselves is to realize that we're all human, and that by definition we are all imperfect beings. We don't need someone who has already transcended their own humanity to lead us. I think that we need a leader very much aware of their own flaws that it willing to work toward being better with the people of society. Working together is the only way that we're ever going to make any progress. If you take the head of society out of that equation it makes it more difficult to foster national or global connectivity, thus eventually pitting us against one another and undermining the process entirely. Perhaps once we reach moral perfection or supreme intelligence as a whole we can have a sage or a philosopher king as a ruler, but then being a sage or a philosopher-king would be pointless because everyone would be. Essentially, I believe that the best way to be governed is by someone who is at least somewhat our equal.