What do you see what you look at a blank sheet of paper?

When I look at a blank sheet of paper I see nothing. Nothing has been written or drawn on that piece of paper. All there is a blank canvas. This blank canvas, though, means that there is room for anything and essentially everything. That one piece of blank paper is not so much nothing but an opportunity for everything.

To me, this question is similar to the age-old question, "Do you seen the glass half-empty of half-full?" It's easy to see the blank sheet of paper as a whole lot of nothing. But to me, this blank sheet is blank because it has a purpose to supply someone with the chance to create something amazing.

Imagine a stage. If no one or nothing is on it, someone can look at it and say that all it is is a empty platform. But someone else can look at it and see a future, an opportunity to perform on it and dazzle an audience with his or her chosen art.

The idea of a blank sheet of paper is similar. Whether it's with art or words, the blank paper is not nothing, it's potentially everything.

Antigone Nietzsche

Antigone, to me, is more of a Nietzschean character because she creates her own moral horizon despite what she is advised to do, which is to forget about her brother's burial and to marry the king's son. She, in a way, is a superman. She breaks away from what other people are doing and what they think is okay. Since she defies other's horizons and goes towards her own, she is a Nietzschean Superman.

Egoism vs. Altruism

Unfortunately, I do agree that the idea that friendship is based on egoism. There's this awesome episode of Friends where Joey challenges Phoebe to find some way of helping other people that is purely for them and doesn't give any sort of self-satisfaction. Obviously the reason the story line is so funny is because she can't. Everything she does makes her at least feel good about herself. This article reminds me of that episode because there's always going to be part of the relationship that is for you. You can care a lot about someone but you always want the reciprocation of those feelings. No matter how much we try to be altruistic, there will always be egoism in the equation.

"Thus Spake Bart" Nietzsche Quiz

1. Schopenhauer thought that life was "perpetual suffering." He thought that we are always unsatisfied and that our desires were never fulfilled, and Nietzsche agreed to a certain extent. In The Birth of Tragedy, he takes the same pessimistic view but thinks there's hope in art. The main difference in the philosophies of these two men is that he has art is the way that we face the absurdities of life.

2. The quote "Conscious of the truth he has once seen, man now sees everywhere only the horror or the absurdity of existence" is referring to the way humans are never satisfied. This is a Schopenhauerian view of humanity because he is saying that since we only see the absurdities in the world, we always feel the need to try to make them right, which means we are never satisfied.

3. Lisa is the "Socrates" in The Simpsons because she is the "theoretical optimist." She has a faith in reason and so did Socrates. Both of them are reasonable and think that reason will help protect them from the absurdities in the world and maybe even correct them.

4. I think Nietzsche identifies with Plato. Nietzsche believed in the split between appearance and reality which is similar to the dichotomy of forms and the particulars, both are like the idea of metaphysical dualism discussed in The Republic.

5. Similar to why we speculate there isn't a lot of dialogue in the beginning of Wall-E, words take away from the action. To me, the quote "I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar" is basically saying "talk is cheap." There is a difference between reality and appearance in the same sense there is a difference between action and talking. The difference is one is an illusion and one is concrete. Words are just words, whereas actions are the reality. Nietzsche was an atheist and says that man created God. If we still talk about God, he is still a factor in our lives and the way the world works.

Nietzsche Notes

Life

·         Born in 1844; died in 1900

·         Life goal: to teach how to live life to the fullest

Horizons

·         All societies have moral horizons

·         Say how we should live and diff. b/w right and wrong

·         Created by man

·         Horizons have a survival of the fittest method

·         Only perspectives so they are illusions

Master vs. Slave Morality

·         Created by Christianity

·         Slave: be caring and place others before yourself

·         Those who don’t follow, go to hell

·         Master: break away from false thinking

·         Allows some to rise above the weak

·         He hated Christianity, democracy, socialism, and communism b/c they all are based on equality

Christianity’s Moral Inversion

·         Before chirstianity: master morality was good

·         After: slave morality was evil

·         Good is passive, sacrificial, and nurturing (now)

·         Bad is strong, assertive, powerful, individualistic

·         Human drive à evil desire

Death of God

·         Nietzsche was an atheist

·         Believed God would die when man realized they created him

·         How God dies: Christianity makes us strive for perfection à we use science to order/perfection

The Last Man

·         Crisis follows God’s death: no horizons, many will be lost

·         Last man is a coward

·         Doesn’t have the power and is afraid to think for himself

Superman

·         Death of God liberates man

             Will to power is man’s internal drive for greatness and creativity

·         Will is suppressed by Christianity

·         Superman is part poet, part philosopher, part saint

·         Sees possibility in horizons

·         Is true to himself and breaks away from society

·       

HILT Meet and Greet and Mutual Recogntion

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel spoke of something called mutual recognition and last month. in philosophy and in anthropology, I started to really feel what this concept was all about. In my three and half years as a Washington-Lee student, I don't remember ever having a full-on conversation with a HILT student. In the same hallway is a classroom full of students. They're all first-generation immigrants, speak English as their second language, and have only been in the United States for two years or less. They all came over to our classroom and we had the opportunity to mingle and help them out, something that never really happens. The talking and the listening gave us a way to get to know them and start a relationship. Some of them were not as engaged as others, but the ones that were into it were very nice and sharing laughs and stories makes me hopeful that, with this mutual recognition, the social barriers will dissolve. 

Post Imperfect Societies Debate

What a debate!

It was enlightening, entertaining, and baffling at times. Mikes were dropped, Hitler stashes were painted, bribes were offered and humans flourished.

So Tyranny ended up winning. Yes, I'm still a little salty. One point. One point?! One point!! ONE POINT!!!!! Okay, maybe "a little salty" is an understatement. I think my team did really well (Go Republic!), but well done Tyranny.

Now, I am super pumped for the next debate! (As long as there's no lightening round)

The Republic in the U.S.

One of the topics that the Republic discussed the most in our debate was the Tripartite Soul. It consists of two horses and a charioteer. The horses are appetite and spirit. The charioteer is reason. The Obesity Epidemic is something that America is criticized for. The reason for this is because appetite gets a little out of hand. Things go awry when the charioteer loses control of the horses. Balance is the key. Once there's an imbalance, we see these epidemics and issues in society.