I am an individual and as long we don't go into the problem of existence or not, I consider this to be an indisputable fact (which means it's not indisputable, but never mind). But is this individual a pure 'me'? How much is formed by society?
I would like (or I don't really like to say it, I just feel as I must because it is what I believe) to say that I'm entirely a product of my environment, that is, my society, in the broad definition.
My genes comes from my parents and while the biggest part of my genome is a mix of theirs, except for a few unique changes from chromosomal crossovers.
Does this apply to my mind as well? Am I simply a social construction? I fear to say it but yes, I think this might be the case. It scares me, but where else would I have gotten my ideas from if not my context? Thin air? A soul? All my ideas are either someone else's or a response to it.
I am a phenotype and a genotype.
I often notice in myself how I seem to be programmed to feel certain things. If I help someone self-lessly, I get happy. Is it because I have been formed this way or because conscience is a quality all humans are born with? Would a person raised entirely without any encouragement to help anyone but themselves get any happiness in helping someone else?
So, what is there in me that is individual? My thumb print, my iris, my genes.
I want more than anything else believe that I am more than biological and since I believe in God, that is possible. No, I could believe in a soul without believing in God, but it makes more sense to me to be able to base it in a belief in a higher being with another type of control over the world than I have. Because then when I am asked where I started I say God. And they ask me, where did God start but I can say that it is a mystery beyond me, since I can't think eternity and dismiss the question easily.
And suddenly I find myself here, on the subject of the existence of God and souls, from having started of in Mill and individuality. I am way off, I don't actually have any other thoughts than the one's I've come up with myself in defense of my beliefs.
What I've realised more and more as we go along in philosophy classes is that I will need to read another text very soon. Mill is crawling into my head and I've never read another philosophical text before, certainly none that is that well-argued. The only points in his arguments that I can oppose is the ones that I've been raised to believe in. All other things are the first time I am presented with them, and until I can compare to some else's point of view on the subjects I will naturally take Mill's side and arguments as true. I am the opposite to Mill's open man, only having heard one side of every argument.
I wonder what I will believe in a year or two from now, how much I will have changed, it seems quite exiting to me. Will I still believe in God or actually have found a way in which I think I I can reason myself beyond belief? Will I have become a cynical being, having no faith in humanity? Will I feel like I've tasted a truth that makes me unable to connect to other humans? As you probably understand, I am talking about things that I fear. Will I believe in love? In living?
I can sometimes feel seeds of these thoughts and it scares me.
And at the same time, I feel that is there is a God, he would never want for me to live in ignorance, to shut out anything that I found frightening. And I don't personally believe in becoming stagnant either.
God, how is it that I always end up asking the way too big questions? And only asking them, seldom answering them. The more I think, the more I feel like there are no answers.
Oh, I just realized there still believe to be true: Everything is complex.
If there is something I have slowly started to really spite, it is over-simplification. Saying that I can live a happy life if I accept three simple truths, that there is one joy to a good life, that there are two sides to a coin (there are many, many more if you think about it).
I can see how humans must simplify to make sense of the world around them.
That is exactly what I want to do sometimes when my brain goes into overload. I want to go home, bury my mind under a stone somewhere and live mindlessly. But I know that is completely impossible. I've tasted progress and I can't ever stop questioning now. I am a lost case, my thoughts floating in my head very similar to how I am floating on Earth in universe (is it never-ending? Expanding? Limited?).
A recurring feeling I get, triggered by philosophy, is that of uprooting. My ideals changes, my beliefs in how the world works, the existence of God, myself and progress to name a few.
This comes from questioning and I question because I'm faced with 'truths' that deviate from my own.
I can not put the blame entirely on philosophy though, just changing the setting from a close-knit, Christian, open minded family on the countryside to MUWCI with Fridays in Paud has it's own share of uprooting my ideals.
So, anyway, what I've pondering is if this change is good thing. Which I think it is, and Mill seems to back me up on that. But I sometimes feel like it's too much, like I will crumble under all the things have to do, learn, understand and get used to. I long home, to live a simpleton life.
I have friend at home who kind of represents this life. She has no ambitions of good grades, as long as they are decent enough to get her in somewhere. Her biggest interest in rabbit breeding and exhibitions.
She gossips, she lives where she's been all her life, she has a boyfriend and they broke up. It's still a simple life. It's not easy (or, I really can't know, can I?), but simple.
I wish for my life to be like that sometimes. But then, when I get this feeling of 'Aha!', when I have a revelation that keys out many things that used to confuse I feel like that is the whole point of my life and it always makes my day a good one. I'm wondering, if there weren't any expectation on me to progress and develop, if I was expected to follow in my dads footsteps for example, would I still be interested in developing?
If no one pressured me into progress, would I want to? And having asked that question: If the answer is no, why am I doing someones others will by progressing, towards a goal that isn't mine?
But no. I do believe in progress, even if I just want to quit and go home sometimes when it gets too much. I want to progress, I want to develop. What is the point of a stagnant life?
(The fancy template is gone. It was not because this looks more sophisticated, even though it does, but because the other one's coding messed up. Sorry 'bout that.)
I went to Orissa on my Project Week. We kept going in the jeep for three hours into nothingness. And then we stepped out into a cluster small of trees. The silence was a strong contrast to Pune, MUWCI, train chaiwallahs...
We visited tribal communities and I found myself immediatly romanticising their way of life.
Close-knit community (always having to deal with your least favourite mother-in-law), living from the earth (hands worn down from hard labour), 80-year-old women still working without joint pain (no good counter for that), everyone both healthy and fit (but how many children born survives their first years?). They are also under the threat of their land being taken away, having their rights abused, crop failures and lack of eduction for their children.
But I couldn't help feeling there was something more.. humane about their life style. It's a description too vague and I spent a lot of time trying to pinpoint what it was and how I could bring this into my life.
What I found about my own world is that it is filled with elements of reality escape and at the same time we are bombarded with information every day. We have to make choices about everything, every day. What we eat, how we dress, what we buy, what school we apply to, what news we read, who we get into relationships with: the list goes on. We escape through TV, movies, computer games, fiction books and drinking (not said that this can't be done in the villages as well). We are bombarded through again TV, radio, our cell phone always on and news papers.
Would it make my life better if I avpided these things then? As it is now: No. I would only become misfit in my society.
But if I switched society? What if I would stay there with them and never go back? Would I be "happy"? I donät think it could have been done. Sure, the language barrier can be overcome by time. But my white skin can't. I don't agree with their thoughts on the roles of men and women.I would probably have to marry. A man. And I want the opportunity for both me and my children to come back to our own society.
So in my head I started building up the ideal community. I found it hard to join together self-sustainability with the things we need from the outside (like education) and the alienaion of the community from "modern society". I wanted it to be an option for those who find our life too maximised and too much. But how would I give my children that choice? And I believe in educating yourself, in forming opinions and being able to express them, to learn about others to learn about yourself. How would we teach ourselves and our children? Our own school would have a risk of being biased. If they went to a local school they might be bullied for having home-made clothes, not the latest cell phone ot whatever. There are many other problems of course: healthcare, university, food... but I won't go into details.
Todd had a presentation about Amish in US. This made me think a bit, beacuse they must have the same problems, being isolated communities choosing older ways of living in a post-industrialised society. They also deal with teenagers with a thirst for "the other world". They live in their communities, of the land, self-sustainable, but still have education.
I still didn't want to live with them. Again, I don't agree with their ideologies. But I would like to pay a visit, to get a taste of their life.
That is - if I actuallty ever do it or if I get to enamoured with the society of information and convenience.
Well, I'll just see what I feel like when I'm taking my gap year(s).
(I know the quality of this post isn't the best. I can't be bothered give it more structure.)
A few thoughts on God that I finally managed to get down in virtual ink:
Into what extent should we follow God?
To qoute Mr. Mill himself: "Whenever conduct is concerned, they loook round for Mr A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ"
It's very easy to say that we need to balance things in our lives, as soon as the path Christ showed becomes to uneven or takes too much of our time.
But it is true. There is a need for balance in our lives.
When I do or think something that according to my morals are 'good', for example doing something completly self-lessly or feel devotion to God buuble up inside me, I feel good.
But is this because it is right to do what I did or because I am programmed through my upbringing to reward myself internally?
The latter seems to me to be the most likely option and this created a sense of void in me. How much of me is actually just 'programmed'?
WHY would God exist? Or does it go beyond reason? What came first, the hen or the egg, our beief in a higher being or a higher being?
In the end our tools of reasoning doesn't work anymore and it's a question of faith. And i choose to believe.
This doesn't mean that everything ends right there! There is till so much we can quetion ad try to work out, but nothing we can actually know.
Jag believe in God but I do not believe I can know anything of his nature or character. So maybe I could call myself, a bit inaccurately: a christian agnostic.
But why am I Christian? If I don't know anything about God, why would I choose a religion to attach myself to?
Well, wjile I don't believe myself to KNOW for sure who God is, I believe he he is certain things. And being raised in a Christian enviroment has of course made me believe in the Christian values.
So me being Christian is essentially just a way of saying that I believe in the same values - which also says a bit about what we believe about God.
But I do not hold it to be truth, or the only truth.
I was thinking as I sat down with my math book on saturday, hearing people mess around in the common room: How do they have time? Don't they have schoolwork to do?
I was impressed, they have to either be incredibly good at studying being able to do it all so fast or have learned some other magical way to manage their workload. On sunday morning I learned the trick - you just don't do your homwork.
Funny enough, this thought had never before entered my mind. To completely skip homework (as in not writing the assignment at all, not doing the sums) was just beyond what I've ever done. And I realised that if I could put this into practice I would be able to free time and energy to do other things like getting involved with someone or the community or save the world... which is the reason I am here by the way.
So I thought I would try - and found that I couldn't. I can forget homework, I can be too sick or tired to do it, but I cant skip it by sheer will. So I started to think about inhibitions.
There are many inhibitions in place in my life. My family expect me to not get drunk and not sleep around and take my school work seriously, and it's the way I've been brought up so I do it. So it was a bit of an eye opener the other philosophy caf lesson. How come you of all people where selected to be taught the truth by your parents?
This got me thinking, a thing philosophy lessons tend to do, about my values and things I held to be true. Here, in India I am so far from everything that resembles my life in Sweden and I don't have any parents to supervise, I can practically develop as much and in any directon I want.
Free to do whatever I want (kinda). So why don't I?
It is so profoundly ingrained in me, these things I shouldn't do. It is hard to decide that I actually don't have time to do a part of my homework if I want to get out of my corner at all today.
What if I let go of all my inhibitions? It doesn't necessarily mean that I lose my common sense, so what would happen? Would I feel freer? Would I be freer?