Friday, March 24, 2017

Connection 1 Reflection 1

1) Response to Sophie's World

As of now, the novel has greatly peaked my interest. The plot of of Sophie and her life is not that entertaining, but the letters that she receives from her teacher Alberto are rather interesting. In one of the earlier chapters Alberto mentions how adults lose the ability to explore the possibilities of the unknown like children can. It seems as we (humans) age the capacity to explore the realms of our minds with philosophical ideas diminishes. Adults have become too accepting of what society has taught them and this may be why it is so hard to convince others that their epistemology of the world may be flawed. Alberto goes on to describe a natural philosopher named Heraclitus. He is the philosopher that I most closely align my own idea with, thus far, because of his motto of all things flow. His belief of opposites makes the most sense to me and my understanding of the world as well. "Without this constant interplay of opposites the world would cease to exist" (36). Although the world ceasing to exist seems a little extreme, the idea that good cannot exist without bad or peace can't exist without conflict is realistic. What would be the basis for one or the other. Like almost everything in my life I related this concept back to science. Good is the constant in the experiment and bad is the independent variable. One can't exist without the other because the basis of comparison would be lost, making the experiment (or life) pointless.


2) Real World Application

The difficulty of proving one's own ignorance is a topic of high interest for me. After learning about Plato through Sophie's World and watching the video about the allegory of the cave, I began to think of all of the stagnant thinkers and how badly they affect the quality of life for many. In the allegory of the cave, a group of people were unable to change their mindset about just how real the shadows are because that was all they had ever experienced. The anger and reluctance to be enlightened about a possibility that there was something else that created those shadows was not a tangible idea for them because of their inability to alter their psyche. This made me think of those who have trouble changing their mindset about concepts such as oppressed bodies. Specifically I related this to the essay "Can the Subaltern Speak" by Gayatri Spivak. The idea that a group of entitled White men can come together and "give knowledge" to a group that they know nothing about, such as Black women is problematic. Historically the west has been known the invade other cultures and force their own knowledge and ideas onto them. For example, how Africans were stripped from their homeland and brought to the west to be taught that they were less of a person because of their skin tone. That they were stupid because their already established society was nothing like the west's and therefore it was wrong. This is still seen today, when our president makes assertions that he knows what is best for the female body when it comes to birth control. If people could come to the same realization that Socrates had ("One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing") then the world would be a much different place. The awareness that one is ignorant to so many things around them opens up the possibility for a culture of learning and understanding. To me that is what is necessary for a better world. A little understanding and compassion can go a long way.

1 comment:

  1. This is awesome! Love to see your thoughts on these topics.

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