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.