Connection and Reflection (5)

          My connection this week comes from a series of books that I haven't read in a while but still love. They are called Pendragon and the story line is pretty complicated so let me just get to the philosophy. In the fourth book, Bobby Pendragon goes to a "parallel universe" type thing called Veelox. Veelox is a broken territory (meaning parallel universe in book terms) and is under many problems. In Veelox everyone is hooked to a machine that makes all of their fantasies and whatever they can imagine become true. The ultimate happiness. There are only a few people who actually work and feed the people in the machines. They are on a food shortage, and basically no one is taking responsibility. Familiar? I hereby connect this to what we have learned. That one guy who said if there was a machine that was just for pleasure, we would face that instead of reality. In the end of the book, Bobby shuts the thing down and people wake up and see the mess going on. The bad guy transforms into a woman secretary of something or other and tells everyone that there was a technical difficulty and that the machines are back and running again. No one stayed to even ponder what the right thing to do was, they just hooked up to their machines again and began to let the world rot around them. I have to sadly agree with this statement. Only extremely strong people would be get out of it and face reality. It sounds pessimistic about the human race, but we've seen stuff to not as much extent still have an impact. Our attention spans are shrinking because of the speed of the internet. Would you rather be on Facebook or doing APUSH? Or I could use the example that kids are pending very little time outside by their own choice because watching t.v and playing video games is much more appealing than reality.

          I've sort of given up on trying to figure out what the heck is going on, so I'll discuss Kant. He isn't exactly easy to understand either, but I just Kant deal with the plot line right now (be prepared from more Kant puns, its the reason I'm writing about him). After looking at a simplified version of Kant's ideas, he miraculously makes sense. I actually really like this guy. I Kant say that I agree with everything that comes out of his intellectual mouth, but the jist of it makes sense. He has the idea that rational idea come from a process in order. First you have senses. You can sense anything and everything that's around you, but add more focus to a specific sense and it become perception. Example: I don't usually notice gravity pushing down on me, that would make it a sense, but when I pretend that I'm Super Man and jump off something, expecting to soar through the skies, gravity suddenly becomes my perception as I realize that the power of flight is not in my reach...yet. See what I did there? From my perception of gravity, I was able to make a conception or an idea. This is only one aspect of Kant's many complex theories that take quite a bit of perception to figure out. Kant also really liked mathematics and thought that science and math were things that were set in place and couldn't change no matter what experiences happen. 3+3=6 no matter what. Yet, as Socrates said, "The only thing I really know is that I know nothing." Kant has a the same sort of theory for religion, but I'll always wonder about everything else. Our senses can deceive us and do we truly ever know if what we're in is the reality we think we are? Probably not, but that's why we've got philosophy.

Connection and Reflection (4)

       My connection to the universe this fine Tuesday evening comes from my favorite animated series ever to exist. Avatar the Last Airbender is FYI: the best thing ever!!! My love for its amazingness is, alas, not quite so philosophical (well now that I think about it, I suppose I could write a blog on it, but I need to go deeper) but the content is. There are many philosophical references in the show, many from Uncle Iroh, but one specific episode caught my attention. It's called "The Swamp" and its in the second book. The basic plot goes that the crew is flying over a swamp when they get sucked in by a random tornado. This could actually be seen as another fate v.s free will thing, but hold up. So basically the crew gets separated and they are left of explore the swamp with their own wits, all of them have visions. Katara and Sokka saw people who they lost while Aang saw someone he never met before. They all chase their visions and end up in the center in the swamp where they get attacked by a giant seaweed monster who happens to be a hippie type philosopher.Once they clear up the whole attacking bit, the kids meet Huu (the guy inside the seaweed who was bending the water in the plants) who tells them some interesting things. Here's a quote: 

       ":Huu: See, this whole swamp is actually just one tree spread out over miles. Branches spread, then sink and take root, and then spread some more. One big living organism; just like the entire world.                             Aang: I get how the tree is one big thing, but the whole world?                                                                     Huu: Sure. You think you're any different from me or your friends or this tree? If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together. You can feel everything growing. We're all living together, even if most folks don't act like it. We all have the same roots and we are all branches of the same tree."                                                      So this is quite an interesting philosophy. Everything is one and together. From a social science standpoint, we were all raised diffently, and therefore, are quite different people because our environment and culture has effected us differently. But thinking about how we evolved, the tree is a perfect metaphor because even though we are different from a cultural perspective, we do have the same roots. The episode also explained the reason for their visions was that "time is an illusion, and so is death." This is a very hard one to wrap your mind around. In an era that looks at things chronologically, this is strange to think about. Huu cuts things down to its absolute basic substance. Spending an hour in APUSH sure takes longer than only a mere hour at Ceder Point or something. Humans all come from the same roots, and maybe so does time.

       

       In Sophie's World, everything is getting trippy.I'm going to get straight to what I want to write about, the fact that Alberto said that Alberto was writing a story about them for his daughter's amusement. There are a few reason why this can't be true, first off: cop-out! Secondly, why would Alberto call Sophie Hilde, and also,  what a ridiculous story to read to your daughter! But after thinking about it, its like a never-ending extension. So Hilde is reading a story on Alberto and Sopie, and we are then reading a story about a girl named Hilde who is reading a story about Alberto and Sophie, but maybe we're just a marble like in Men in Black and someone's reading a book about us reading a book about Hilde reading a book about Sophie and Alberto who are reading about philosophy. Oh goodness. What a mind boggling theory, the idea that everything is infinity bigger. I wonder if it has any actual limits. Like being small has an eventual limit, but I don't think the same restraint applies to being bigger, sense there's always that +1 you can add to a number. Going back to Descartes, there will always be doubt, and I guess we can never know for sure, but goodness, I really hope the ending changes from his theory because it seems like such a cop-out and they never predict the right theory in books, well besides Harry Potter 7. That concludes my fourth bloggy type thing.

Connection and Reflection (3)

         My philosophical connection for today comes from my favorite comic books, Calvin and Hobbes. Throughout the series, the author puts in thoughtful insights, but I'm going to have to make my main focus the overview because the book is all the way across the room and I am not getting out of bed. When his parents are around, Hobbes is just a regular stuffed tiger, but when he's with Calvin, he becomes an actual tiger who can walk, talk, and eat tuna fish sandwiches. The logical and realistic way to look at this would be to say that Calvin has a lot of imagination. Someone could argue that Calvin just carries Hobbes around all day, and makes up a personality for him. Another option is that Calvin's parents have outgrown their childhood, and can't see Hobbes because they refuse to. Since their adult minds are so boring, they can't see Hobbes because they are so used to the normalicy (I'm so making that a word) of their lives.The other option is a combination of both. This one is a little tricky, but last year during APUSH there was always some weird philosophical stuff on the board, and one time it asked if there could be more than 1 Truth. I don't know the exact meaning of Truth, but I can guesstimate. Maybe the two options both exist, they may be paradoxes, but there could be more than one Truth in this situation (I really don't know if I'm using it in the right way at all. My refusal to look it up probably isn't helping this blog's accuracy). Since its in a comic book, I agree with the third choice, I don't believe it can all be apart of his imagination, and, even though I favor this explanation more than simply imagination, I don't think you necessarily have to become dull when you become an adult. More so, I think Calvin and Hobbes doesn't focus on the existence of Hobbes. I think whatever the reader chooses to think while reading, is the right answer to them.   

        At the time I had hypothesized this theory, I hadn't actually read the chapters I was supposed to, but now I have and I want to explain what I think about Sophie and Hilde. Sophie's World has become extremely janky and not gonna lie, I'm a little confused. Anyways, my best guess at the moment is that Sophie is Hilde when she is being philosophical and enlightened. I want to say sort of  Jesus thing, that Sophie represents Jesus before he knew he was the Christian's savior, while Hilde is the awakened and fully aware that he is supposed to do...Jesus stuff? FYI: I am completely and utterly clueless about Christianity and Jesus in general, so please excuse me if I give the wrong information but I'll try not to go too in depth with the facts. Also, Sophie sees Hilde sort of looking back at her when she look at her reflection on her I.D card and in the mirror. That just seems so obvious, she can only see Hilde when she's looking at herself. Too obvious maybe? I feel like this is one of those books that is going to have an unpredictable and random ending that you couldn't have guessed in a million years, so I don't think I'm right, but its my best guess so far. The way Sophie is finding some objects Hilde is losing, could be that Sophie is becoming more and more Hilde, that is to say that she is climbing higher and higher on that little rabbit hair. So then who is Hilde's father? Well, according to my Jesus guess, Hilde's father must be God, but Alberto said he wasn't. Why is Alberto so mad and continuously ripping up the postcards anyways? My best guess right now would be that Alberto had a Hilde of his own, and something bad happened, but he needs to teach Sophie philosophy, but at the same time he doesn't want her becoming Hilde like he did. Maybe it led to some bad stuff, I don't know I feel like this argument has nothing even close to validity at the moment. Anyways, that's my recent reflection and connection for 6:23 in the morning :)