#amateurphilosopher

[wiredbohemian]

A residual if my latest journey inward? An ever-growing collection of #postit notes with random observations. This is my latest: "Talent is nothing, knowing how to express your passion is EVERYTHING." I know what I meant. What do YOU think I meant? #deepthoughts #artistlife #amateurphilosopher

[diabulusaug4]

Settle, settle, settle...

What if you're not as great as you think you are? And you spend your whole life looking for someone or something to parallel your false sense of grandeur while taking for granted the one that is perfect for you. Then, you're gonna turn forty, realize what a piece of shit you are, and wish you had taken the offer from that "second-rate" company, school, or significant other because you are just as mediocre. How can you tell what you deserve and what would be settling for less?

Assigning self-worth has got to be one of the most precarious cognitive processes possible. It's like when you see a painting every. single. day. You know it's a painting of a tree, but you have grown so accustomed to its presence that you've never examined it closely. You've never noticed the intricacy of the brush strokes revealing each pine needle, never noticed the tiny robin's nest on the highest branch, never noticed that the whole thing is just a cheap photocopy that came with the frame in which it is housed. And that's what you get when you look in the mirror every morning: a split-second judgement on a painting which reveals an impossible number of intricacies with each magnification.

What is self-worth anyway? Sort of an unimportant concept. The only things dependent upon your interpretation of your personal value are the goals which you will set out to achieve. Whatever goals you achieve, all you'll get is what the world gives you - and that's gonna be less that what you strive for. So... Don't settle. Ever. Don't be with a person because you think you're ugly and you know they're ugly. Be with a person that makes you happy. Don't take a job because you doubt a better one will come along. Take a job that will make you fulfilled. Don't go to a school just because they accepted you. Go to a school that will provide you with the tools you need in order to better yourself. Make your decisions based upon the idea that you ARE good enough.

And... If you end up alone because you ARE ugly, broke because a better job DIDN'T come along, and uneducated because only ONE school accepted you, then maybe I'm wrong... maybe you should have settled. But that's life, isn't it? I'd rather be a failure because I tried to be happy than a nobody because I took the first offer that came along.

[amateur-philosopher]

Social media experiment (before)

Social media impacts upon my life on a daily basis, communicating with friends and finding out key information is an option I hold in my pocket every minute of everyday. In an increasingly globalised world, this has detrimental effects on the way society functions and communicates.

I often question the use of social media, granted it has had its uses such as organising protest and uniting groups of similar beliefs that would otherwise remain isolated, why, I’m even proving that point now by writing to you now. My point being is that social media is often misused and abused to the worser effect of victims of cyber bullying for example. This is a term that would not have existed a decade ago, but it is because if the freedom of speech we find ourselves to behold over the medium of the internet it is relevant to our lives today.

Therefore to show the impact it has on me personally, I’m going to ban myself as it were from all forms of social for a week starting today. If I am to use social media, it is only for emergency or to post my progress on Tumblr. I have accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Vine and Whatsapp. This means that I shall not open these pages besides interact on them for a whole week. This also applies to texts and phone calls unless for the uses shown above. This will give me an insight into how important the internet is for everyday interaction and also whether I am better off without it. Everyday I shall fill out a self produced questionnaire that will measure my levels of happiness and dependence, therefore giving me a numerical value to make further evaluation of. The following week I will carry out the same procedure but instead use social media as I normally would do.

I am of the position before the experiment that we would all be better off without social media and advanced communication services. This is because in my opinion it causes a breakdown of face to face social interaction and hinders the social skills we develop. I am in the generation of young people who have grown as the internet has grown. This means I maybe acting out of nostalgia but I however will be as honest and open as I can with my data.

I hope this serves of some significance and if there are any improvements/suggestions to be made about my experiment, be sure to ask me about it in the ‘ask me anything’ section or reply to this post. I’d love to hear from you and I’ll post my findings in due course

AmateurPhilosopher

[amateur-philosopher]

What's the need for a time limit in exams?

As a student looking to go to university next year I find myself often looking at exams in the future. Then it struck me that I disagree with the way this common assessment is carried out.

It isn’t the actual content and complexity of the paper set, but more the conditions in which it is set. Time limits are set on exams so we can prove to deal with strenuous issues efficiently and respond to a task under pressure within a short period of time. It is this skill that is meant to be translated into everyday life and provide us with the confidence that we can do this in the workplace.

I disagree. A time limit applied to an exam only in my opinion creates unnecessary stress, confusion and hinders the development of an answer filled with quality, depth of analysis and understanding. To me, in an atmosphere where personally I never remember what happens anyway, exams provide no other skills to the table other than the grades they churn out.

In my opinion the exam system in the UK completely underpins the quality of education given to students. Instead of discussing key issues that apply to life, instead we are forced to stick to a precise syllabus that achieves exam success but prohibits the development of useful and applicable knowledge. To me, a distinct separation has to be made here between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is the understanding of facts, figures and snippets of information. Wisdom is the reflection, application and understanding of a broad scope of knowledge that can be used in highly relevant, real-life situations. The exams system that dictates our educational system produces aimless knowledge and not wisdom.

It could however be argued that in the modern day recruitment environment, education is not for the use of knowledge but instead the signs shown that you can acquire this knowledge in a way that shows that you can learn specialist skills later on. However the obtainment of wisdom can be used in the same way. Showing that one can demonstrate critical analysis, evaluation, discussion and quality of literacy to me shows far more promise.

The younger generation being educated in my opinion have lost appetite for education. Even testament to my own experience, being part of a grammar school, all I see on a daily basis is in the majority a lack of enthusiasm, passion and motivation. The culprit of this situation is in my opinion an expanse of dry and relentless topic areas that only give the impression that education is a chore rather than an essential part of life and a privilege. We have to get students excited for lessons, teach them not from a textbook but from the mind and heart.

The abolition of exam time limits and ideally a change in the assessment of education would not only change the way academic ability is judged, but the way it is taught. This mindset installs intrinsic values into the minds of our young; that honourable virtues such as the drive to work hard and the attitude that learning is rewarding will in my opinion even drastically change the way we behave in society.

With education comes a development of previously mentioned honourable values, a strong level of common sense and a feeling of purpose and ambition. This can be applied to society because in the ways it can reduce crime, unemployment, the wealth gap, productivity and increase household income, efficiency in all industries and a mentality that promotes community cohesion. What we are all forgetting is the importance of education in life, it moulds who we and the places we want to be.

The way to combat this problem is to change the way education is assessed because in turn this changes the way education prior to the assessment is organised. I suggest assignments and tasks given that provide value in the workplace but also install important educational values that change the mindset of our young generation that not only provides them with knowledge but the wisdom and common sense that allows them to develop as level headed people

Thank you for reading, any response and feedback would be genuinely appreciated and welcomed- Joe Grant

[clandestine-verse]

What Philosophy of Culture has taught me

1)     You know what it means to understand someone, and that is why you are afraid that you might misunderstand them.

2)     You impose what you are familiar with onto things you discover, instead of exploring it from the bottom-up.

3)     Certain things may be true only within certain paradigms but not across them; the relativist acknowledges this.

4)     Belief is the central worry of philosophers of mind.

5)     Thoughts and beliefs, if justified as truth, are reality.

6)     Language is the lens through which you perceive reality; it is also the soul of (certain) culture(s).

7)     If you want to relive your infancy, travel to a remote island where no one understands you. 

[amateur-philosopher]

Moderation- “If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.” - Epictetus

I've observed what seems obvious to me in recent days  and using examples around me I have come to the following conclusion; in the case of everything in life that we face on a day to day basis or that we may observe in the life of someone else, happiness can be extremely closely linked to moderation. Weather it be to do with wealth, power, fame, making decisions, academia, politics and choice of lifestyle, all of these can be beneficial if moderation is applied. Being a school student I've noticed this by observing the balance/relationship between 'work and play'. If I spent my life indoors my a book in each hand, I would never experience what life holds for me other than the scriptures that man has produced before my time. If I was to however, spend all of my time in the wider world , drinking myself into the drain with no regard for the establishment or the education that contributes to my well being in the future then I would be a fool who has no opportunities in life. This therefore means that with a combination of structure and creative expression and personal freedom, I feel every man can recognise the balance he possesses and not only would he not be restrained, but he would hold qualities that would give him futurity.

Although the intellectual and indeed myself may argue that education and the well grounded structure of society limits a man's philosophical and moral freedom, this is the way our world operates. We get up in the morning and go to work, we have a lunch break, we come home, we pay our taxes, we pay off our mortgage and we vote in the words of one of my favorite songs "we are the battery human"; this is how society operates in order to maintain civil order and organisation.

This argument I also feel has an ethical approach. When confronted with a situation that some argue is good and others argue is bad, we have to compromise, agree to disagree, obtain the best of both arguments accept them and move forward, otherwise we have no conclusion and we have no agreement. The example that this can be applied to in my opinion is that of the cosmological argument. Here we see that there are two sides to this argument. Either you do or don't believe that is the creator of the universe. However although my own opinion is that of the latter, I regard it highly important that compromises are made, that the views of the opposition are respected.

This is what I find so respectable yet disappointing about the famous radio debate between Fredrick Copleston and Bertrand Russell in 1948. Here we see a well mannered argument that has strong opinions, appreciation for them and control over emotions that could potentially dominate intelligent debate. Even though Russell is an undoubted agnostic and Copleston is a supporter for the cosmological argument; we can see that there is a debate, their opinions are stated they are discussed, no attempt is made to persuade one side or the other and the viewer is left to make their own independent decision. Although Russell I feel can be seen to be dismissive and unkind to Copleston on the basis that his argument creates a dead-end in accepting infinite regress, the way the debate is presented represents how we don't always have to find a conclusion, we don't always have to be right. Although the words of Aristotle quite correctly state that "all men by nature desire knowledge." I feel that this desire drives us into making it seems common mistakes in the modern world such as the incitement of hatred.

Although I base many of my own moral beliefs upon the teachings of Buddhism, I believe that it rests on the assumption that all men are capable of loving their neighbour, which I feel is impossible unless we experience incredible and radical moral reform; in our modern day society we are not capable of doing this. This is why moderation shows immediate compassion in allowing alternative viewpoints to be expressed, but however and acknowledgement that there is disorder in the universe.

My beliefs are varied and what many call undecided. I may in some aspects and arguments agree with one side and on the other occasion another; but why should we rush to conclusions? Sometimes I feel we rush to make the key decisions based on knowledge and the hope for answers we cannot obtain. This to me put into an analogy seems like trying to say who wins a horse race before it has even begun because we feel that one horse has the biggest chance of winning. I believe that in order to solve our questions it is almost pointless (not that isn't interesting) to debate. Time is the key and time alone tells us the answer.