Journal #6- Philosophy in the real world

With all the news in the world, I want to focus in on Minnesota. Currently, their are very intense riots and the city seems to have no control. These riots are over a case of police brutality, where a few policemen restrained a black man, chocked him live on camera, and killed him in cold blood. The police officers have not been arrested, and they have not even been moved to a safe house. The police decided to station the entire police crew outside the policeman's house. This can be seen as a very big publicity stunt to show that the police have power. And while I believe it is right for police to have power, and keep order within a city or country, showing power to scare people will never lead to show to be a good idea. A few hours ago, the CNN team filming in the streets was arrested, with the cameras rolling. It was an disgusting show of how some policemen truly do not care, and want to use their power whenever they can. The CNN crew first was surrounded, then the black reporter was arrested first. No one resisted arrest, and they were provided no information as to why they were arrested. This is a big issue in America, and many people who have a philosophy were they are driven to have power, want to become a policeman. While many cops do want to help the nation become a safer environment, people who want to abuse power are flooding the system. This is a major philosophical issue many police officers, as well as people need to understand. I hope that these issues will soon be fixed, and people will not be attacked, killed or arrested for the color of their skin. Racism happens everyday around the world, and I hope that soon people will understand that we are all the same, while we still are allowed to have different ideas and philosophies in life.

Journal #4- Philosophy in the real world

With all that is going on in the world right now, I want to discuss needs and wants. What I mean by this, is how people react to certain situations. A good example of this cam be found in most colleges and universities, and still seems very weird to me. I am talking about the "no changing altering the schedule for any reason" professors. I have had three siblings go through college, and they have had a few professors who say, "This is how things are done, and I do not care if the world is ending, you will finish this assignment by this date." While I understand professors do not want to get taken advantage i, they need to understand what people are going through. If you have something very stressful going on in your life, it will affect all of your work, and probably be very noticeable. These professors may need to change their inner philosophical ideas. Having issues at home, or even in general life, can be a major factor towards mental and even physical health. The philosophical part is asking, how should these professors go about their students needs? I hope that in the near future, professors learn to understand that students may not be able to show their best work given the circumstances at the moment. and again, while this seems like an average issue, inner philosophies play a big role in these decisions that may need to be made daily. another quick example is a student being late for class. Maybe he slept in, but was there a reason as to why he may have slept in. Maybe his girlfriend left, or maybe his car even broke down. While those may be unlikely, it is important to fully understand he situation before making a claim for the action.

Inception

Inception

If someone, an extractor, implanted ideas in your head, you are not responsible for the actions because of that, but all actions and ideas are derived the personal emotions and relationships are from the person being extracted. The idea of the movie is still fairly baffling to me, bur I understand the concept of being tricked into tricking yourself to reveal a "truth" that you cannot uncover.

As for how Adriana acts with Cobb inside the dreams, I do not believe that she is doing her own form of inception. For me, it seemed as if Adriana truly wanted Cobb to fix his relationships and be able to live normally. As for why she wanted to do this, I do not know if it was for the her and the teams personal safety, as well as success of the mission, or that she genuinely wanted to help Cobb out of his crisis. When the movie ends, and the plane reaches Los Angeles, and we see Cobb and how his family lives, but we only see the other characters for a few seconds, so I cannot make an assumption on Adriana and her drive. There is also an issue i have, where I don't know if in the end, Cobb was dreaming. I believe it was the real world, but I cannot be certain.

As stated above, I am still confused with the ending scene, but I believe it is real. The ending scene obviously seemed very real, until the spinning top was shown. The top does tilt a tiny bit about a second before the film ends, and I believe that is meaningful. As stated in the prompts, every aspect of the movie was done to perfection. Every aspect of every dream was made to feel completely real, while also throwing off the audience the slightest bit. If the directors wanted to make the audience decide whether it was a dream or reality, the top would spin without issue. They could have easily made the top spin continuously without any probability of it falling over. Because the top drops a tiny bit, I believe that Cobb was in reality. I don't have a definite answer, but that is what I believe.

Philosophy in the World #2

Philosophy can be sen many times in the real world, and many times people don't know that they are asking themselves hundreds of decisions a day, many of which bring out their philosophical character. I found online a quote from a philosophy professor who said "What is true? What is right?". This is a very interesting question when you begin to seek out everyday tasks and questions you ask yourself. This mostly pertains to if you want to execute an idea, and how you want to go about certain actions, not facts. An example of this has to do with your ethics. I would never punch someone in the face because it is the wrong thing to do, and it is true that of i punched someone, it would hurt them. But if someone punched my friend, I wouldn't see a problem with me defending them, even if the initial attacker was hurt. This also brings in the idea of the tipping point. I mean this by asking, at what point do your ethics step in the way of what you consider wrong. There are hundreds of questions that you ask yourself everyday that you answer in under a second. This is because you know yourself the best, and with everyday tasks your ethics and ideas of living help you make these decisions. These decisions are mostly things you would forget even happened throughout the day, but some times they can be brought out in very difficult situations. Another example of one of these small questions is if you should still eat breakfast if you're late for work. Many people could argue that breakfast is the most important factor to starting a healthy day, and being 10 minutes late to work wont affect anything. If you ask the same question but change it so that your an hour late to work, would you still eat breakfast? This then brings in the argument decided if its right for your work to allow you to miss breakfast. Its true that your workplace expects you to be the on time, but if you sleep in one day out of every one hundred, is it right for them to expect you to skip breakfast for the sake of an hour of extra work? I do not have a set answer to this question, but I find the idea very interesting and hope to explore it more in the future, as well as see how my answer to these specific questions differ over time.

The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau is a film about an congressmen who discovers that events in his life are actually being controlled by a powerful group of people. The movie brought forth many questions that had the audience either confused or questioning certain scenes. An example of this is who is the chairman, and why exactly do we never meet him/her. As for the question asking if the chairman was in the film, I think not. The main reason i think this is because its not important in the entirety of the film. It would give an aspect of lore to the film and the "angels". but having the chairman who makes decisions is a way to make the angels have different levels of command, while having someone on top that allows the audience to think about him/her and what he/she does. As for the question who was the chairman, I think they are never shown in the film and they are not a character. Switching to the question about when Thompson says "free will is an illusion", I think that needs to be taken with the concept of the film. I think in the movie, free will is an illusion because the "angels" do what they must to help society in the ways they see fit. As for how the quote pertains to the real world, because we are not living in the movie universe, that questions stems to what your personal beliefs are. The last question I would like to address is the why the filmmaker decides to add the scene when Thompson discusses times when humans had free will, and what he is trying to tell the audience. I think that Thompson said these lines to convince David that the "angels" are doing the right thing by invading in these trimesters. While David thinks they are trying to split him from the love of his life, the angels have always seen it as creating the best outcome possible. Another reason i believe the filmmaker added this scene because the angels who do the normal day to day work, don't know why they do everything, and the audience knows this from a previous scene. I believe he added this scene to make it seem as if the Angels understand why they do this work, they just don't know every step in the process

Sophie's World - Socrates

In the chapter Socrates, Sophie learns about Socrates life and his well as their teachings. The chapter begins with Sophie finding a letter in her "secret place", that explains to her that Alberto Knox is the philosopher she has been communicating with. She is also told that she will encounter a scarf very soon, and that she should protect and take care of it. Sophie is very confused by all this and also is confused by how the philosopher knows Hilde. Sophie then gets a package delivered by the messenger, which is a Labrador. The package tells Sophie that the dog is named Hermes, and she begins her lesson on skepticism. Skepticism is the belief that we cannot have true knowledge about the world. Sophie learns that this idea was practiced by the Stoics in Athens, which leads into Socrates. Plato, who was Socrates students, wrote about Socrates and his ideas. Socrates went around Athens conversing with people, and would ask questions that would require people to come to a philosophical conclusion. He was sent to death, and rather than attempt to save his life, or even flee the city, Socrates accepted death. This was because Socrates was a true believer of what he believed in, and based his actions on those ideas. One of his main ideas was that people will only be happy when they act according to reason. This is can be seen in many situations in real life, and I believe that Socrates was right. If someone does an action that doesn't fit with their reason, their action may have not ended poorly, but that person will not be completely satisfied. Sophie then goes to talk to her mother, who then seems unresponsive to those ideas.

The Concept of Evil - Joey Adelman

The Concept of Evil

The idea of "good vs evil" has been debated for many years, and the truth is that there is no simple answer. The main issue I see with many arguments is that people view "good" and "evil" in different ways. An example of this is pushing your friend off their bike. While some might say its funny, it may seem evil if he landed on gravel rather than sand. So at what point does a morally good or acceptable action turn evil. This may also bring in the Ship of Theseus, and decided when an action changes "form". As for the question, "Is it better to promote good or prevent evil when making rules?", i believe it is better to promote evil. My reasoning for this roots towards how many society functions. Obviously laws will still have to be put in place, but promoting good seems to give off a better "Vibe" for that society. Personally, when i think of a war torn country or country under a dictatorship, i seem to sway towards very strict laws and curfews to help prevent the spread of evil doings. Most of the time, the citizens have a very low quality of life. I think that promoting good in the world will not only help the standard of living, but it would influence people to do what they see. The second question was about the problem of evil, and whether a higher power wouldn't allow evil. This obviously raises many questions about existence, but my theory is that if a higher power were to create us, maybe they don't care anymore. This possibility would assume that a higher power created our universe or our "space" and then let it be. I am not completely living by this theory, but its an idea to maybe understand why evil occurs. The last question that sparked my interest is if humans are evil by nature. I personally think that all animals have some sort of evil intent within them, but it may take a very rare or certain scenario to discover it. I think the only true way to test this in humans is to create a society that promotes good, and never even mentions evil. People will still live and die, but ideas like murder, stealing, and arson would have to be created by the people themselves. That test to me wold determine how evil people can be when living without knowing what evil already is.