A Direction the Class Needs

North.

Just kidding.

Follow your dreams.

Just kidding.

I think that in general, the class needs to be more focused. Which sounds a little ridiculous, but you know. It's a philosophy class, and voicing our opinions is fun and awesome because we're teenagers or whatever, but since the class is kind of enormous, it feels like we all just shout out what we think and don't really think about what everyone else is saying and don't really get a chance to change our minds about anything. I feel like we should be getting more out of discussions. Which I guess isn't a really good instruction, I guess, because it's a difficult think to do. The very most I think I can say about this is that I think everyone needs to walk into the room with a very strong opinion about whatever we read the night before and be totally convinced that it's truth and it's fact and present the opinion as such, while being completely prepared for walking out of the room with an entirely different opinion gained through the discussion. As new wavey and lame as this sounds I think that the class needs to be focused on learning about human nature through human nature(i.e. through eachother).

Father & Son, Mother & Daughter, Mother & Son, Father & Daughter

Father & Son, Mother & Daughter, Mother & Son, Father & Daughter

Every family has this weird, intricate relationships within itself. Alliances, grudges, dynamics, all this odd stuff. It changes constantly, too. No mother is always happy with her daughter and no son is always mad at his father. With parents, there is a need to be strict and a need to lax. With children, there is a need to be obedient, and a need to rebel.

Parents

In my experience, most parents do really love their children. Even when they ground them, or take away their allowance or whatever else parents do to punish their kids. Parent put punishments in motion with their kids because they feel they need to, in order to help their kids. In life, many things really do come full circle. If you don't do your work at a job, you get fired. In order to teach them that, parents take away privileges like TV time and such so that they understand that when they don't do what their supposed to, bad things happen.

Yet, as I mentioned previously, parents do love their children. Sometimes they have to give in and let the kid do something that maybe they shouldn't or normally wouldn't because they really want to.

Children

As a very young child, you are faced with a huge dilemma: you love your parents, you want to make your parents happy, you want to make them proud by obeying their rules. But at the same time, you also really want to paint the dog. As you grow older, you learn this sort of give and take when obeying and disobeying. You tend to find ways to at the very least give the illusion that you're obeying them at all times, keeping on good terms with your parents while still being able to explore yourself as a person as much as you possibly can.

However, parents were (surprisingly) children once, too. They had the same method of obeying/disobeying as their children do and they know it. It's like a series of unspoken rules. A mother understands that her son might sneak into rated R movies, or a father might understand that his daughter copies her math homework from time to time. But as long they don't see the disobeying to be truly harmful to their children, they can look the other way.

How Do I Know What I Know?

Popsicle sticks and trivia on the back of breakfast cereal boxes.

...no, but seriously, that's how I know what I know. I also know what I know from school, from television, from books, and so on. I know what I know from what I've seen, and what people have told me. I know things because I learned them. I don't subscribe to the idea or notion that we might just know things, that knowledge can just be, and is internal. With the exception of biological survival instincts, of course. I know I need to sleep and I know I need to eat because there's a little switch in my brain that says, "HEY. DO THIS. DOOOOO THIS." But everything else is a product of my environment. I'm not under any sort of illusion that I was born to be this, or born to be that. I know that I am the way I am and know what I know because I saw it somewhere or someone told me about it or I was exposed to it in one way or another. Anything that stuck with me longer or better than the others is just a matter of opinion. An opinion which differs from personality to personality. Personalities which we learn to keep through interactions at young ages.

So, yeah. I know what I know because I learned it.

Our Meaning.

"Our Meaning".

I'm going to go ahead and take the liberty of interpreting "our meaning" as "why are we here"/"what is our purpose". I assume that's what you meant, anyway.

Having had established the question, here's the answer: I don't know. I seriously do not have the answer to that question. If I did, I probably wouldn't be wasting my time writing some blog right now. I'd be out somewhere, completely happy, or completely fulfilled, or whatever one does after having discovered the meaning of life.

I've heard a lot of different theories on the meaning of life, or the purpose of human existence. For some it's God, for some it's to be an actor, for some it might be to eat the biggest stake in all of Northern Michigan. Simply due to the fact that none of those things have sounded appealing to me, I can conclude that each individual has their own meaning or purpose or road to take in order to feel fulfilled in their life.

As to why we're here on Earth existing in the first place, I don't know. And to be completely honest, I don't much care, either. I'd rather be here than not, and I'm sure that's the case for most other people. So who's to care about why and how and by whose doing?

PEOPLE EAT 8 SPIDERS IN THEIR SLEEP ANUALLY. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW.

"God will not accept that. Mine won't. Will yours?"

-Bono

"God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan", and I did. And then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq", and I did."

-George W. Bush

God in the year 2010.

As I believe is evident through the Bono and Dubya quotes above, the Christian God in 2010 is not exactly what it used to be. People take liberties to make “their” God think and say what benefits them. Bono’s God does not allow injustices against impoverished folk. But hell, maybe someone else’s God does, amirite? It takes all kinds, I guess. And apparently, there’s a God for every kind. Gods that allow you to have premarital sex, Gods that smite you for smoking pot, Gods that require you to give Churches money, Gods that are okay with Gay marriage, and Gods that are okay with just about anything, or maybe even nothing at all. It seems to me that the more people are convinced that they know what God really is, the more obvious it becomes that nobody knows. If the “real” God is the Christian God, then why do so many Christians have such conflicting views on God after all reading the same book?

-Because it’s inconvenient. The Bible oftentimes preaches against things that we don’t want it to. We want to have premarital sex and get tattoos and get drunk and be selfish and indulgent. And from a psychology/sociology perspective, it makes perfect sense…but wouldn’t it be nice if there was a God? Someone always looking over you, telling you what to do and rewarding you for complying? Wouldn’t it be nice if after you die, you go to heaven, and be in paradise with everyone you’ve ever loved?

The answer is yes. It would be extraordinarily nice. But if people were to follow the Christian Bible exactly, they wouldn’t really enjoy their earthly lives. So they need to create for themselves Gods that allow them to do mostly everything they want to (and in some cases tell them to COUGH IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN COUGH).

In 2010, God is a crutch for people who want to live their lives undisciplined and unstructured by religion, but are too afraid to face a life without someone watching over them, and too afraid to face a death without a heaven.

Modern Day Socrates.

Who is the modern day Socrates? Well, folks, let's take a look at who Socrates is, and what Socrates does. Socrates had the gusto to make people question everything they believe in, even if they believed their faith in said belief was unshakable. Socrates was also extremely intelligent, giving him the ability to ask the right questions at the right times. One of Socrates' most unique traits was that in his "dialogues", he used a strategy that some refer to as "mental judo". When using said "mental judo", Socrates would "dodge with the punches", so to speak; taking whatever someone threw at him and using it to his advantage. Apart from tactics, Socrates was also pretty popular. He drew crowds, accumulated followers, and gained attention from even the Greek government.

So, I was looking for someone shrewd, socially aware and popular, which isn't really that hard. That could be one of hundreds, thousands, even. It has to be more difficult than that. And then it dawned on me. I was looking at it all wrong. Although referred to as "mental judo", it's secretly not judo at all...it's karate. Karate is much more aggressive, which although on a surface level, Socrates is not, he is one of the most successful debaters of all time. Debating is a very aggressive activity. Although his methods seemed passive and judo-esque, they are actually aggressive in nature because of the end result he had hoped to achieve(winning the argument).

Then another thing occured to me. Is "mental" really the correct wording for what was really going on? No. The answer is no. Socrates was a philosopher and a debater for such a long time that it became easy for him. A habit. Second nature, almost. When you stop thinking about doing something and just instinctively do it, it's more cognitive than anything. So, what Socrates' real method was should have been called "Cognitive Karate". So then I was looking for a dialogist as shrewd as Socrates. As socially aware as Socrates. As well known as Socrates. A Dialogist who Included Cognitive Karate. Or a D.i.c.k, for short.

Then it hit me like an obese filmaker in a baseball cap and wire frame glasses. I knew it all along. If there is one man in the modern age who is not only intelligent, socially aware and popular like Socrates, but is also a total D.i.c.k., it's Michael Moore. (click the link).

An Unexamined Life.

A life unexamined.

Original Thesis:

An unexamined life is an unfulfilled life. It is ignorant and stagnant and perpetuates unhappiness.

What does it mean to "examine a life?"

Imagine a life as a puzzle. The pieces consisting of memories, personality traits, aspirations, experiences, interests, priorities, appearance, etc. Anything that can contribute to the image, or the image of the life as a whole, is a piece of the puzzle. Puzzle pieces, as we know, are different shapes and sizes. They create a picture once made to fit. Puzzles are made to be solved. Puzzles, we know, do not solve themselves.

When a person's puzzle is solved, their life has been examined. They have taken every piece of their life and made them fit together. They then see their life in its entirety. They understand more about themselves, others, life in general.

What then, is to do with an examined life?

After piecing together a life, either a person like the picture they see, or they don't. It is up to them to change who they are, or what they're doing in order to make their life look the way they want it to.

The continuation of an examined life.

Very much unlike puzzle pieces, pieces of a persons life can change drastically or disappear completely. It is up to any given person to pay attention to their life and examine what's going on in order to rearrange or change things in order to keep the puzzle solved the way they want it to be.