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I have moved to newlyancient.com and will be writing regularly there! Content on this domain is no longer updated, but will be maintained as an archive in its original form.

Tag Archive for 'philosophy'

Nothing’s Important

1 year, 3 months ago 1 Comment

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This entry has been cross-posted from Students 2.0, which is where you should leave your comments.

Everything

My favorite thing of all is to do nothing at all. I do nothing all the time: I walk nowhere, I think about nothing, I work on nothing. No, I have not turned into a nihilist. I simply chose to live my life for the unexpected, not the expected.

In set theory and other branches of math, nothing is often very similar or equal to everything. That’s the sort of nothing I like to do. Doing nothing is the same as doing anything that strikes your fancy, or not. Doing nothing is getting a crazy idea, then forgetting it. Ne rien faire est en train de parler en français pour aucune raison. Doing nothing is writing letters to yourself in the future. Doing nothing is pulling a random book off the shelf and reading 3½ paragraphs on page 27. Most of all, doing nothing is listening to all things you can’t hear:

“I like that too,” said Christopher Robin, “but what I like doing best is Nothing.”
“How do you do Nothing?” asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.
“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it ‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?’ and you say ‘Oh, nothing,’ and then you go and do it.”
“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.
“This is a nothing sort of thing that we’re doing now.”
“Oh, I see,” said Pooh again.
“It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”
“Oh!” said Pooh.
Everything

White is all colors and no color. Nothing is complicated and simple. “I’m doing nothing” is what you say when you really don’t want to say what you’re doing. Or, it’s what you say when you don’t know what you’re doing. Nothing is the easiest thing to do and the hardest thing to teach.

The web is great for doing nothing. Rainy days and dirt roads likewise. The greatest things happen when we’re doing nothing. I started my blog when I was doing nothing.

In our fast-paced society, we do a bit too much of everything. As the long days of summer approach, now is the best time to do nothing. Forget about exams (speaking of which, my favorite way to study is to do nothing) and college and graduation and do nothing. Maybe lazy people are just really, really smart.

We should all do a little more of nothing.

  1. Photo #1, or lack thereof, by author
  2. Photo #2, or lack thereof, by author

The Lesson of Virginia Tech

2 years, 4 months ago 1 Comment

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I waited to write this until emotions had calmed down a little and people could look at the event more analytically. However, we should never forget that rush of feeling we get after a horrible event like this.

When you think of a school shooting, you must inevitably think of how it might have been prevented. Many people have tried to solve these problems through increased security, student psychology, and strict observation and prevention strategies. The fact is, none of these strategies will work because of the unpredictability of these events. For instance, many people have pointed out that Cho (of the Viriginia Tech massacre) wrote very violent writing prior to the incident. Unfortunately, If we put every student who writes of killing themself or others we would have more work for psychologists than math teachers. I’ll admit it myself, I have written of suicide in poetry. Does that mean that I need to be put in counseling and observed constantly? No, for there is a huge step between writing/thinking of violence and actually doing it. Instead of trying to prevent violence, we should be trying to prevent the thought of suicide.

First off, we should look at the statistics. Interestingly, females attempt suicide 3 times more often than males. However, males are 4 times more likely to succeed. What cause these statistics? Obviously, more females feel depressed enough to commit suicide. However, males depression feelings are apparently much stronger in the respect that they succeed when they try. If we look at the sources of depression, we can see that most of them can be treated through therapy and support.

I feel that, especially in youths, the leading cause of suicide is low self esteem. Low self esteem arises from a fact that you feel you cannot reach some standard for yourself - the love of another, a certain body image, a level of intelligence. For the most part, these feelings are simply superficial and exaggerated. However, society makes the see real. Let’s look back to the cave men, I doubt that anyone killed themselves for being too stupid. That is because there was no expectation of intelligence. I still feel we do not need an expectation for people in general. Instead, expectations should be based upon a person’s prior achievement. As for body image, we have the magazines and movies to thank for unfair expectations. Seriously, why should a girl be depressed because she doesn’t have a perfect body and why should a boy be depressed because they don’t have perfectly muscled arms. In the end, we need to judge people by personality alone.

Breaking Social Norms

2 years, 7 months ago 1 Comment

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Social norms are constantly created and thrown aside. Through a process of Darwinism, the social law which works is kept in place while the old, inefficient systems are gradually cast away. This complex system of ethics and social contract came into place as evolution decided our fate as an intellectually species. Once the process of evolution established our exterior it set upon crafting the mind. After many improvements, we had reached the intellectual proficiency to take the tools from “Mother Nature? and craft our race’s social contract. Still, we use a Darwian process of survival of the strongest ideas to advance our race’s ideas. Over many generations, “society? left behind the ideas of divine right and barbaric process. Even as our moral ideas grow, our technology evolves. The technology serves as scaffolding so that the workers of social law can expand and eventually build upon the technology. Now, through the speed of the internet, billions of people all over the world are able to communicate instantly. This has dramatically increased the speed at which social norms change. Instead of ideas becoming established over generations, they can now be established within hours. At this speed, any goal is attainable as the future turns into yesterday. Social norms evolve through a Darwian process upon the supports of technology.

It is those who go against social norms who eventually change them. Although the ideas may at first be cast out as insane, society realizes that they are truly efficient and eventually adopts them. To illustrate this, let us go back in time…

Brog Nye

Although originally thrown out as dangerous, the fire of innovation eventually heats everyone. Society and social norms change because of the few who swim against the tide. From cavemen to famous artists to technology executives, the greatest leaders let the fire of change burn them. Social norms are drafted by individuals then ruled out through Darwinism.