I'm gonna be all phylisophical again today because other than my thoughts my life is beginning to bore even me. My life is consisting of work, school, and sean if i can get him in. SO here it goes.
What is the reason behind the social hysteria resulting in the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials? If you don't know what the Red Scare is let me update you. The short version: Picture the Salem Witch Trials during the 50s when Communism is on the rise and Joseph McCarthy comes out with a list of 57 congress and house members that are currently in office that are 'supposedly
communists in order to get votes for the upcoming elections. To keep his face he goes into it. The inquisitions begin, and if you are not on the side of the american government and capitalism guess what you are gonna be suspected of? Fun yeah?
Anyway. My hypothesis to this problem is that the average person is smart, but people are stupid and are easily convinced of something that when given decent thought is obviously hysteria ESPECIALLY when faced with a danger they have no knowledge of and must trust on something (religion, capitalism) or someone (Courts, God, McCarthy) to convict and judge. (Man i keep going back to that stinkin Men in Black analogy!!!)
For Example. Right now I'm reading The Crucible, actually I just finished it today, and I sided with the most tragic character as my favorite, of course! John Proctor, and I was dumbfounded in the end when they actually hanged him for witchcraft. Now of course the author meant to parallel the red scare with something completely insane like the Salem Witch Trials to show the reader how absurd the whole time period was, but I thought of the injustice these people had to suffer through and it just made me sick. Injustice is something I loathe and abhorr and connects a bit with the inward struggle I've had with what is really truth (See Last Post), and to see someone stand up for something they KNOW to be true (and by truth I do mean the truth and not just the perception of truth as I talked about last time) and to be judged so harshly because of it. Its a 'if you don't follow us your against us' kind of mentality that drives the main force behind the pious Puritan authority.
Interesting huh? Alone the seperate person such as Proctor and Giles are smart, they know the motivations behind the trials, but Salem as a City and a Theocracy is stupid, first for putting their faith into a theocracy for their societies, and second for being so easily mannipulated by putting their faith into a girl who they know to be an antagonist because of previous events. So maybe its just putting your faith in the wrong people that makes them stupid, but how scared can you have to be to choose that over Proctor, someone who levels with you and has a clear mind free of the supernatural? Because even from the outset when I knew he was a lecher I still would have trusted him over Abigail.
I'm sure I'll continue this tomorrow but as I am tired I will go to sleep now.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
If knowledge is power what is truth?
Today I'm going to be debating with myself. I've been thinking about Knowing the Truth a lot lately. How can one know what is really true? Is it a feeling, a fact? Because here are the facts, if one person KNOWS something is TRUE, but another person KNOWS that TRUTH to be FALSE then what in fact is TRUE?
Some would say every person has his own truth, but wait, yes i have an argument for that too, if one person KNOWS that if he runs off the cliff he will fall and die and that is TRUTH to him, but another person KNOWS that if he runs of that cliff he will in fact fly over to the other side without a scratch though he has never done it before and to him that is TRUTH, wouldn't that be considered false? Maybe that was a silly example but you get the idea. Therefore not everyone can have their own truth because they can contradict each other as well as the facts. But then you can get into what is really fact and yes i do have an argument against myself for that one too so I do not believe I will get into that today. For right now fact is fact. Gravity wins.
So if I have in fact disproved the idea that every man has his own truth, then what are my options left? That there is one truth only and that everyone who does not believe in that truth is wrong, a semi-christian belief, or that there is not truth at all just varying perspectives and the one that is agreed upon the most or the loudest is considered fact? The latter seems unlikely because a couple hundred years ago everybody KNEW that the world was flat, everybody KNEW that the earth was the center of the universe, and now look at what we know today. Sorry if I'm going a little Men in Black on yah, but its a good point. If we KNEW all that stuff was TRUE and it was in fact not, imagine what we will KNOW tomorrow. Yet I believe that this is the most socially excepted and expected form of truth. Evolution is one example.
If you don't believe it you're stupid, but polls show that the majority of people don't even know what all evolution covers, or even the real meaning. They just take the spoon feeding of so called experts that have a loud voice. Often times it is easier for us to understand a story than a truth, a perspective than a reality. Does it mean there can't be some grain of truth in evolution or perhaps even a whole truth? No, it could be true, but the fact that people trust in the loudest truth makes this argument interesting. Its the TRUTH that people hear the most so it becomes what they KNOW, but if what they KNOW turns out to not be the TRUTH then what? You're stuck at square one again.
So if the agreeing on one perspective that may or may not be true is not truth than what is? The christian belief of one truth, one way makes sense in a way, but it also requires a sense of faith and trust in a book that has a rather bloody and unpopular reputation. It also requires you to believe that EVERYONE else is wrong. If you think of it in terms of religion you can understand the significance of that statement. If everyone else is wrong, all religions, that means that those who have diligently memorized the whole frickin Qu'ran are just kidding themselves, their faith is useless and they will be sent to hell for KNOWING a different TRUTH than the one TRUTH. The atheists will for KNOWING something different, and a Bhuddist for his faith in the wrong TRUTH. Does that seem messed up to anybody besides me? This is actually the reason I began to think about truth.
We were at church a couple weekends ago and the pastor was preaching on Predestination, what I have previously believed to be an extremeist Calvinistic belief. Yeah...I was wrong...I had a very strong emotional reaction to what he was saying, upon further examination I realized why. If you do not understand the concept of predestination or have never heard of it before this may be a bit difficult to understand, but it basically means there are a certain group of people called 'the elect' that will go to heaven and the rest will roast in eternal damnation. The pastor was trying to convey that we should feel secure because of this, that our faith cannot be taken away from us. I wasn't relieved at all. Sure there is quite a large population of Christians on the planet, but there are also larger numbers of people who are not, people who KNOW something else to be TRUE and may be punished eternally for it.
It just does not seem right to me that knowing is such a terrible thing really...once you are committed you can't go back really or else it wasn't KNOWING in the first place. So the question I pose to you is what is TRUTH? A feeling, a knowing, a perception, a predestination? If none of those than what?
Some would say every person has his own truth, but wait, yes i have an argument for that too, if one person KNOWS that if he runs off the cliff he will fall and die and that is TRUTH to him, but another person KNOWS that if he runs of that cliff he will in fact fly over to the other side without a scratch though he has never done it before and to him that is TRUTH, wouldn't that be considered false? Maybe that was a silly example but you get the idea. Therefore not everyone can have their own truth because they can contradict each other as well as the facts. But then you can get into what is really fact and yes i do have an argument against myself for that one too so I do not believe I will get into that today. For right now fact is fact. Gravity wins.
So if I have in fact disproved the idea that every man has his own truth, then what are my options left? That there is one truth only and that everyone who does not believe in that truth is wrong, a semi-christian belief, or that there is not truth at all just varying perspectives and the one that is agreed upon the most or the loudest is considered fact? The latter seems unlikely because a couple hundred years ago everybody KNEW that the world was flat, everybody KNEW that the earth was the center of the universe, and now look at what we know today. Sorry if I'm going a little Men in Black on yah, but its a good point. If we KNEW all that stuff was TRUE and it was in fact not, imagine what we will KNOW tomorrow. Yet I believe that this is the most socially excepted and expected form of truth. Evolution is one example.
If you don't believe it you're stupid, but polls show that the majority of people don't even know what all evolution covers, or even the real meaning. They just take the spoon feeding of so called experts that have a loud voice. Often times it is easier for us to understand a story than a truth, a perspective than a reality. Does it mean there can't be some grain of truth in evolution or perhaps even a whole truth? No, it could be true, but the fact that people trust in the loudest truth makes this argument interesting. Its the TRUTH that people hear the most so it becomes what they KNOW, but if what they KNOW turns out to not be the TRUTH then what? You're stuck at square one again.
So if the agreeing on one perspective that may or may not be true is not truth than what is? The christian belief of one truth, one way makes sense in a way, but it also requires a sense of faith and trust in a book that has a rather bloody and unpopular reputation. It also requires you to believe that EVERYONE else is wrong. If you think of it in terms of religion you can understand the significance of that statement. If everyone else is wrong, all religions, that means that those who have diligently memorized the whole frickin Qu'ran are just kidding themselves, their faith is useless and they will be sent to hell for KNOWING a different TRUTH than the one TRUTH. The atheists will for KNOWING something different, and a Bhuddist for his faith in the wrong TRUTH. Does that seem messed up to anybody besides me? This is actually the reason I began to think about truth.
We were at church a couple weekends ago and the pastor was preaching on Predestination, what I have previously believed to be an extremeist Calvinistic belief. Yeah...I was wrong...I had a very strong emotional reaction to what he was saying, upon further examination I realized why. If you do not understand the concept of predestination or have never heard of it before this may be a bit difficult to understand, but it basically means there are a certain group of people called 'the elect' that will go to heaven and the rest will roast in eternal damnation. The pastor was trying to convey that we should feel secure because of this, that our faith cannot be taken away from us. I wasn't relieved at all. Sure there is quite a large population of Christians on the planet, but there are also larger numbers of people who are not, people who KNOW something else to be TRUE and may be punished eternally for it.
It just does not seem right to me that knowing is such a terrible thing really...once you are committed you can't go back really or else it wasn't KNOWING in the first place. So the question I pose to you is what is TRUTH? A feeling, a knowing, a perception, a predestination? If none of those than what?
Monday, August 10, 2009
new update
Its the day before school. Shoot me. I honestly can't stand it. Maybe I'm just overreacting, but i'm just freaking out. All this ap crap and working two jobs is going to be the death of me. On the other hand maybe i'll be better for it. If everything works out the way I want I'll have three jobs by the end of the week...maybe I shouldn't do that to myself quite yet....
Karlie says she doesn't feel bad for me cause a. I'm making a crapload of money and b. cause its my own fault i'm so busy. I agree, but for some reason I can't help being busy. For some reason I'm UNHAPPY when i'm not busy. Weird huh?
In other news, well there honestly isn't much. I got my ears peirced, crazy i know, but for me it is. Since the time four nurses had to pull me out from under a table to give me a shot needles have not been my friends. I guess this was just overcoming a fear because I don't believe I'm afraid of them anymore. I'm actually considering getting a double peirce as soon as i can take the first ones out.
I just got back from a trip in Michigan. If you have never been there, don't worry about it. You're not missing much. The one thing I do like about it is being constantly close to water. I love fishing and boating so I had a fun week as far as that goes. Oh and for some reason the air up there smells so clean, I like that too!
Karlie says she doesn't feel bad for me cause a. I'm making a crapload of money and b. cause its my own fault i'm so busy. I agree, but for some reason I can't help being busy. For some reason I'm UNHAPPY when i'm not busy. Weird huh?
In other news, well there honestly isn't much. I got my ears peirced, crazy i know, but for me it is. Since the time four nurses had to pull me out from under a table to give me a shot needles have not been my friends. I guess this was just overcoming a fear because I don't believe I'm afraid of them anymore. I'm actually considering getting a double peirce as soon as i can take the first ones out.
I just got back from a trip in Michigan. If you have never been there, don't worry about it. You're not missing much. The one thing I do like about it is being constantly close to water. I love fishing and boating so I had a fun week as far as that goes. Oh and for some reason the air up there smells so clean, I like that too!
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