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.

Blog Binge #5: Help with the Simile of the Divided Line

Last year in my AP English class we reviewed a book of essays and one of the pieces was The Allegory of the Cave. This was the essay that my group was given to present on, so as I was reading, I was able to remember what my group found and the parallels we found throughout the extended metaphor that the essay employs.

What wasn't part of our piece was the divided line part. So to clarify things, I found this awesome video of YouTube. I'm a visual person so I got the gist of what the line was when I was reading but seeing it and hearing it explained a bit was a huge help. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi3ubdALbo8

Blog Binge #4: How does Plato View the Human Condition?

In Plato's eyes, if you are not a philosopher (aka a Guardian), you suck. You are not able to see truth and are heavily corrupted if you are not part of the prestigious group. ERGO, Plato sees the human race as ignorant. 

The allegory of the cave is a perfect example of why I'm saying this Plato believes we're all ignorant. Think about it. You have all of these people chained and facing a wall. This wall is the only thing they can look at and on that wall they are able to see shadows. These shadows are projections, which means they are not the real thing, which they can never go see. At the end of the allegory, the one guy who escapes and sees the outside and experiences the real world, chooses to return to the cave!

Whoa! Clearly Plato thinks the human race is easily influenced, for the worse. What he's saying is we are prisoners of the media, the government, and whatever else alters our minds. We see and believe what these things want us to see and believe and we play into it because we are oblivious to what they are doing or because we don't have in it in us to do something about it. Then to top it off, he believes we're dumb enough to return to the power of these influences even after we've unveiled the truth and seen the light.

This is a really depressing depiction of the human race, but I think it holds a lot of truth.

Here's a visual of the allegory:

Blog Binge #3: American Foundation Myth

"All man are created equal." This is such a sacred phrase in the United States. When we declared independence from Great Britain, this idea was such a focal point, and since then, this country prides itself on this claim. However, at the time these words were written, they were completely false.

The only men that were allowed to vote and had a voice in how things were operated were the white, male landowners. The other people in the society had no say. That is anything but equality. We are so lucky to live in a country that employs democratic values but it's a misconception that it was this inclusive all along.

Below is my picture. I chose it because even though George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, is poking fun at communism in the novel, the famous paradoxical quote of "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others" can definitely relate to the "democracy" the United States implemented when it was first founded. (Plus the little pig is funny lookin')

Blog Binge #2: Propaganda

Blog Binge #3: Propaganda

Buy these amazing shoes! They really work! You know how I know? Kim Kardashian endorses them and it just sounds really promising! Don't know about you, but I'm sold. Just look at the list of wonderful things you can get by just throwing on a pair of Shape-Ups!



Okay, so this is isn't the actual advertisement that we all saw on our televisions, but this one is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1G4hSpyWKc

Wow. Okay this is what I got from that: Put on these shoes and you'll lose weight faster and get a perfect butt and flat stomach like me! Sorry Brooke. Loved you on Dancing with the Stars but this is pathetic.

To make it even worse, Sketchers was sued for $40 million, because of the amount of knee injuries that were reported. That just sucks. So you spent the money on these terrible shoes, and instead of getting the perfect a** you were promised, you got some f*cked up knees. Damn. Was is super smart to trust an ad like this? No. But should Sketchers have B.S.ed the public with this immensely misleading advertisement? No.

In the Republic, Plato Socrates, calls propaganda "witchcraft." The reason this is an appropriate translate is because it "casts a spell" or alters what you believe and misleads you. I would have to agree with Senor Socrates on this one. It's amazing what some mass media can get the general public to believe. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a new pair of shoes to buy.

Blog Binge #1: What is Justice?

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Blog Binge! I know you're all very excited, but I need you to contain your excitement because I really need to focus and get this done. Today (and maybe tomorrow after school if I run out of time), I will post five blog assignments and finally catch up to the rest of my peers. I am super pumped!!

Okay, first up: What is justice? And apply what it to a recent event in the news.

One example of justice recently being (hopefully) served is the search for whoever burned 19-year-old Jessica Chambers alive. The car in which the former cheerleader and softball player was found was covered in a flammable liquid and set on fire by an unknown subject. The obvious way to connect this to justice is to hope that it is served to whoever did this heinous crime. What would the justice look like in that instance? Punishment!

However, I'm going to write about the motive of whoever did this. Did he or she think that burning this girl alive was just? Maybe I watch too much Criminal Minds and Law and Order but I can't help think about why someone would do something this horrible to a seemingly innocent girl. I am in no way condoning this person's actions but for the purpose of this assignment, I would like to relate them to the unclear definition of justice painted in The Republic.

Say the victim was once mean to whoever committed her murder, they might have felt the need to get revenge on her and confused this with justice. On page 9 of the reading, Socrates is talking about what Simonides' definition of justice really meant and says, "For it appears that he meant that it is right to give everyone what is appropriate to him, but he called this his 'due.'" Maybe the murderer was basing his or her actions off of this conception of what justice is.

Personally, I kinda sorta agree with what is said about justice in this book. I do think that justice is closely linked with karma which is evident when Socrates says the quote I cited in the previous paragraph and when Polemarchus says "what is appropriate between enemies, an injury of some sort." To me, you don't have to necessarily inflict the injury upon the enemy yourself; you can let the universe handle the dirty work.

One thing they don't discuss in the book, is the caliber of the "injury" (not necessarily a physical injury. Bringing it back to crime being discussed, if the victim did do something to the killer, was this the right level of revenge to bring justice? Just by writing this blog post, I'm starting to see why Socrates never spits out his own definition. The idea of justice is complicated!

Also, here's a link to one of the articles on the crime committed:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/11/us/mississippi-girl-burns-to-death/

Class 9/9/14

Hi again

Tuesday's class began with an experiment in the courtyard. We were all told to go lie down somewhere and close our eyes. Little by little, we were supposed to let go of all of our senses. This was really hard to do with all of the crickets chirping, but I actually experienced a few seconds here and there when I was somewhere else. I don't know where that "somewhere else" was but I got there. I got there when I wasn't focusing or trying to get to that place. When I did think about it, I couldn't get there. It reminded me of when you can't sleep and you know you're trying to fall asleep. You can never actually fall asleep! That was how I felt during this activity.

When we returned to the classroom, it was back to debating. The main topic was innate ideas. The Descartes side argued that everyone is born with innate ideas such as God, logic, and time. We, the Humean side, debated that you can't possibly be born with those ideas in your head. One of our arguments was that not everyone believes in God. If your family is religious, they might put you in a class to study your family's faith, whatever that may be, but you're not born knowing what the idea of a "higher being" is. Another innate idea that the Descartes side touched upon was time. Time is definitely something people aren't aware of from birth. When you tell a child you are babysitting that they have 10 minutes until bed and two minutes later you say it's time to go to bed, they don't know any better. Innate ideas are not a valid argument because without being taught about these things and without having experienced them first hand, people won't know about their existence.

Next post: part two to meditation activity.

Song Experiment (First Post!)

Hello, hello!

This is my first blog post for IB Philosophy! Exciting!

The latest homework assignment was to listen to a song, any song, five times in a row. To follow it up, we had to write a reflection on how our mind and body changed from the beginning of the first time to the last note of the fifth time. Here it goes:

I chose a song that I liked but hadn't ever sat down and really listened to carefully. In the trailer for Zero Dark Thirty, there is a version of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" sang by a choir called 

Scala & Kolacny Brothers. When I saw the trailer is was so eerie and took me a minute to realize

what song it was. So for some reason I chose this song to listen to five times straight in my room for this assignment.

To be completely honest, the first time through I almost fell asleep about four times (picking a really slow song when I almost fell asleep in Spanish class a few hours earlier probably wasn't the greatest idea), so I decided to sit up for the last four times. At first, I tried to get all philosophical and attempted to find a deep meaning in the song's lyrics. However, I couldn't stop my mind from wandering to topics like "I have IB Anthro to do" to "I hope it doesn't pour during soccer practice later" to "what should I eat after this?" to "Wow, I didn't realize how long this song was." For the first ten minutes, I was really into the assignment. I really tried to take in and appreciate the music and it was a song that I admired which was good. But after that ten minutes or so I was getting a little impatient. Actually, a lot impatient. Not listening to it a fifth time definitely crossed my mind a few times (I didn't cut it short though so no worries Mr. Summers). I am someone who needs music when I do things- run, homework, go online- but doing nothing except listen to the same long, slow song over and over and over and over and wait for it.... over again almost drove me insane.

The main lesson learned from this assignment, your mind will wander if the only thing you're doing is sitting in your bed listening to the same song five times in a row.