This blog

me

This blog is written by me, a 15 year old girl from the Netherlands who loves to think about life and philosophy and is addicted to   9GAG (that's were all the memes come from, no credits to me), so my philography (philosophy and photography) perfectly helps me to illustrate my complicated thoughts. Enjoy reading!

No life without explanations?

People have always wanted to know more and more, that is why we have been able to develop to how far we are now. We can be speaking here about technology and knowledge, but religion has also always played a major role. Ages before the Romans peoples already came up with different explanations for disasters and natural appearances, they created Gods. The Romans continued doing this and though up a God for every thinkable event or element. They had Venus, Jupiter, Uranus and many many more. The Jews, Muslims and Christians were the first to have only one God. What is remarkable is that there is nowadays a growing amount of people who do not believe in the existence of such a god. How does this come and where did it start?

I think it already began in the time of the Romans. Why? Because they started doing scientific researches and were looking for other explanations for happenings than Gods. During the renaissance and especially the period of the Enlightenment this question only grew bigger and people wanted to know why it is night and day and what the universe is like. The idea of one or more Gods which created everything was for them not the answer and they looked further. Physics, chemistry and philosophy were originated. Nowadays we know much more about nature and physics than we did back then, so an even larger amount of people did no longer feel the necessity to have a certain religion.

I came to this topic because I was watching a detective whereby someone had disappeared and the family did not know whether she was still alive. They could not mourn or pray for her and were always reminded of the fact that she could be either dead or just walking around somewhere, like Schrodinger's cat. This made it very difficult for them to close this painful chapter, because it simply did not have an ending yet. Again here, people seem to need explanations and answers to live a peaceful life.

 

I'm... living?

How I feel sometimes when realizing I'm living

A while ago I was learning for my history test about the french revolution and Louis XIV when I suddenly realized how strange it actually was I was just sitting there, seeing black images we call letters and that these form words, sentences, stories in my head which I can even remember. It all of a sudden seemed so unrealistic, how I can lift my arm and move my fingers when I want to do so, how the world has developed enormously in such a relative short time, how something was created out of a few cells which now is able to think and talk.

When I was young, I once told my father that I believed I was the only one who could actually think and feel pain and emotions, everyone else just seemed like a sort of robots in my eyes. I just could not believe that all these other people also had there own life and might have the same thoughts as I had. It was so unimaginable for me back then. Now of course, I discovered that the people around me are actual real-life people, not robots, but sometimes I have these moments again that I just realize, I'm... living. You have these, too?

Another one about our school system :)

Just saw this one passing by. I am not going to tell an entire story around it, but I just believe this cartoon exactly school what our school system is missing and that it claims to be for the individual, while we all have to do the same tests and own ways of learning are not always accepted. Boys and girls, creative or not, everyone has their own specialties and they should get a fair opportunity to develop each of them in the way that suits a person best.

True or false?

We learn in school that two and two makes four and that a circle is round, but what if someone would tell you that a circle is just a name given to a figure and that two and two makes five (1984)? We just learn things at school and copy them to our mind without getting the chance to think about it ourselves first. We are taught what is right and who is wrong and apply that in our daily lives. Putin is portrait as the bad guy in our society while the US is our friend. We are the good, they are the bad. In Russia, the people don't see themselves as the bad of course because they are taught in a different way. Another example is the Hitlerjugend from the 1930's and 40's who were taught from the moment they were born that Hitler was their hero who saved them from the bad Jews. Because there was no one who had ever told them differently they believed in the entire story.

A nice example to illustrate this issue is the myth of the four blind men, who all discover an elephant in their own way. One of them is sitting on its back and believes it is a table, while another one is touching its tale and is sure it is a snake. The third is leaning against its foot and says it is a wall and the last one is crawling underneath the animal and claims there is nothing but air (in religious view the last one could also be seen as the atheist). The four men all see a part of the truth and create a different image of what they believe to feel and together they form the truth. I really love this myth, because it just explains the struggle there always has been between human beings. They all believe only their theory or religion is the right one, but it is just because they have a different outlook on life. They all touch different parts of the elephant and so create their own image of the truth.

Counting Stars

So, tonight I was letting my dog out together with my dad and it was a beautiful clear (and cold, brrrr) night. Thousands of stars were clearly visible and we started talking about the fact that most of the stars we could see had 'died' millions of years ago, though for us they were still there, a kind of creepy idea when thinking more about it. Actually we were looking at the past, we saw things that ceased to exist ages ago and it brought us to the famous question (one that I have been wondering about since I was just a mini-Louise): will we ever be able to time travel and if so, how? We found one theory that sounds pretty reliable. here it comes:

So in the first place, astronauts will have to travel to a place millions of kilometers away from here. One must: they should travel with an even higher speed than the speed of light, only then  They land and look at the earth. At this point they are in the same situation as dad and me, but then reversed: they look at the sky and see a minuscule little dot (the earth) and the great thing is: they are looking at the earth's past! It is because the light has not traveled fast enough to bring the present on earth to this place, so there is a bit of delay. In order to also actually see something they should bring a giant telescope with them, one strong and powerful enough to see what's going on at planet earth (some day scientists will succeed to make one like these, I hope). Who knows what they might see! They might see dinosaurs passing by or witness the famous battles between the Romans and the Germans. It would be absolutely amazing! The idea is so simple, it might be a little difficult to put it into practice, though. Even if humanity ever succeeds to make something (other than protons) travel with the speed of light, it will be a real challenge to make it go even faster than that. And even if it in someway would be possible, than I don't quite think the astronauts would survive the trip due to its high speed. Maybe super-high-tech robots would, but I'm afraid it will provisionally stay a little-girl's-dream,.

School

As a child I always loved to learn: I read a thousand books and was curious to know everything about history, our universe and nature. No surprise maybe that I skipped the fourth grade at the primary school and I could not wait to go to the seventh and eight to learn even more about my favorite topics. Just imagine how happy I must have been when I went to secondary school (where the real work begins). It was all I could think of during my summer holidays and I had been looking forward to all the homework I would get. It just seemed like one big feast. However, this feeling melted abruptly away as soon as the first sign of pressure appeared. At my primary school, we use to have a geography test twice a year, one presentation plus a project, and in very rare cases also a bit of homework. I was absolutely not used to the feeling of stress and due to my lacking planning skills, it did not get any better. The first few weeks of the year were terrible: I was what you can call a bit of depressed and my motivation was at its lowest, it just all seemed so hard and I could not imagine I had to keep my head up for another six years.

So this was my first experience with secondary school, not what you can call a fresh start, but thankfully this changed when met new people and made friends. I am not telling this mini-biography just for fun, I want to make a point. Always have I enjoyed learning, until there was someone who told me I had to, school. School takes the joy of learning away and I believe it is because of our curriculum. Students learn because they have to, not because they want to. This realization came when I saw a friend copying someone else's homework (can't deny I haven't done it myself) and then I found the problem of our school system: grades. We copy our homework because the teacher might punish us if we don't, but we forget the goal of homework is actually to practice and not meant to be something that has to be done, just to keep you busy. We start the day before a test with learning and cheat on a test because we want to have a high mark, not because we want to learn more about the subject. When you subsequently get your test beck and it is insufficient, what happens? Well, nothing. In most cases you won't get a second chance and this means you won't have the required knowledge. With the consequence that you might fail again on your exams at the specific subject. I believe everyone should have the right to re-examine their test so they can see what their weaknesses are and do some extra work for that or ask their teacher for more explanation. This should be possible until they get a sufficient on their test, because then, only then, you can say they've really learned something. Then the marks play a less major role, because in this case it only is an indicator to see whether you understand the theory well enough or should try and do it again. This will hopefully also reduce the stress for a test ad it might even make school fun again!