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| What are people for? �Oh dear, you are useless! I�d better raise a dog than to raise you!� That�s what my mother says to me whenever I did something wrong. I always did wrong things when I was small. When my mother scolded me, I always think: �Am I really useless?� Years after my childhood, my mother hadn�t scolded me this way anymore. It doesn�t mean that I didn�t make mistakes anymore. I was just too old to be scolded. We all make mistakes, no matter at what age. Some mistakes are unacceptable; some we just didn�t realize we have done it. Are we brave enough to point out others� mistakes? In a classroom situation, it is very normal, teachers correct students� mistakes; but outside the classroom, it seems impolite to identify others� mistakes. Therefore, as we grow older, we think that we are making fewer mistakes, we think that we were doing a great job; contributing to the world. However, we are actually doing the opposite. As we grow older, we make more serious mistakes�creating wars, terrorist attack, pollutions and all kinds of discriminations. We are killing our world. These are not our jobs in the world. To save the world, we have to strive to make fewer mistakes through generations�this is our job. Our job, at a biological level, is just like other organism. We live on the earth; we consume earth�s energy and resources. We are just a part of the complicated food chain. Our job at this level is to survive. Trying our best to survive and continue our main purpose as other organisms�to reproduce offspring and maintain the food chain. In order to survive, we are granted the rights to perform anything: hunt, steal, kill� We will not make mistakes in this level. Yet, our job, as a human, is not only to survive; we have more important jobs to accomplish. We have to strive ourselves to the next level. At a cultural level, our job is to cooperate with others. This way, we could provide ourselves a more stable surroundings and a better home to live. To achieve this, we set up laws so that our society can operate better. Ideally, this will work; provided that all of us have the same personality. However, each human being is different. Certain laws and orders may not be suitable for some people. They begin to �rebel� the rules they are living under. This is when we start to make mistakes. These people are not really wrong. They are just unable to cope with certain sets of traditions and rules. Unfortunately, they are criticized for not doing their jobs properly, they are making mistakes. However, they are not making mistakes; we are making mistakes by not accepting dissimilar beings. At a morals level, our job is to contribute back to the world. We started researches intended to improve the quality of the world in the way we want. This is when we started to make more and more mistakes. What we think is good for the world may not be suitable to it. We build dams to prevent flooding and to provide a stable water source to us; however, we are destroying thousands of animals� habitats. We kill tigers because we thought they cause a threat to other animals, but we didn�t realize we are breaking the food chain which affects many other animals. We develop machines to increase the efficiency of our work; yet, we didn�t realized making this unnecessary improvement is harmful to other live forms in the world. Years after years of doing our �job� in these three levels, we have accumulated mammoth amount of mistakes. Have you ever wondered could our world brace our mistakes? May be it could, may be it couldn�t; but the fact is, our world is collapsing. Nuclear destructions, global warming, green house effects and various amounts of pollutions, is deteriorating the earth�and its people. We don�t know how long the earth could stand with our mistakes; therefore, we must stop or at least reduce the amount of our mistakes. To solve this problem, we must first identify our mistakes so that we could work on them. We can do it by studying the history of human being, looking at the mistakes they did and try to prevent from doing it again. We must constantly remind each other the mistakes we have done. We must also learn from other creatures in the world. The habit some creatures have might be the solution to our mistakes. For instance, the way some animals deal with problems form the nature can be very motivating. Instead of challenging with the nature, they compromise with nature. Bees get honey from flowers, not eating them. Lastly, we should predict what mistakes we would make in the future so that we could prevent from practicing them. To do this, we must reveal the history and compare them to the current situation. We should identify what practices are positive and what are negative to us. Although we make humongous amount of mistake, we are not useless. We have to learn from our mistakes to make ourselves useful in the world. We have to prove ourselves to the world (or your mother) that we are not only useful, but we are better than other creatures�like a dog. |
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Summary of Chapter 1 of Socrates Caf� �The unexamined life is not worth living!� In Chapter 1 of Socrates Caf�, the writer, Christopher Phillips, suggests that everyone should have a conscious life. In order to achieve this, we can follow the Socratic way of thinking�asking questions in a different perspective in order to reveal more of ourselves and the world. Phillips also suggests that we should be willing to accept different people�s opinions and allow our thoughts and views towards different aspects of life to be modified. Therefore, he starts Socrates Caf� to encourage this kind of philosophy. Socrates Caf�, as he defines, is �groups of people who are inquiring philosophically.� It is �groups of people who have an enduring curiosity that cannot be quenched or satisfied by the facile response of teachers or of psychologists.� It is �groups of people who are more concerned with formulating fruitful and reflective questions than with formulating absolute answers�. Socrates Caf� can be held anywhere, but it is usually held at a coffee house. Phillips wants to benefit from the perspectives of many others; therefore, he wrote this book to record his experiences in seeking Socrates with different people. Phillips reports many people�s comments after they had experienced Socrates Caf�. Many of them think that it gives their lives added depth, meaning and dimension. In a Socrates Caf� discussion, participants ask questions such as �What is insanity?� �Why question?� and �What is the meaning of life?� Although they cannot come up with a definite answer, they can at least have a better understanding to the topic. This is the reason why Phillips started Socrates Caf�to promote the Socratic way of philosophy. On the other hand, Phillips wants to seek Socrates, who, as he wrote, was a Greek thinker and teacher who was interested in philosophy and spent his entire life thinking about philosophy and discussing it with everyone. Phillips also mentions the history of Socrates� philosophy. He thinks that it is a type of �philosophical inquiry, vibrant, relevant and anti-guru that everyone could embrace and take for their own.� However, some centuries ago this philosophy disappeared because Socrates asked questions that made people juggled around with their beliefs. This action made some people thought that he was trying to destroy old ideas about religion and morality without putting anything in their place; therefore, he was sentenced to death by the government of Athens. Phillips also illustrates the Socratic Method. It is, as he explains, �to seek truth by one�s own light.� It �examines what common sense is,� it �reveals different outlooks,� and it is �a sustained attempt to explore the ramifications objections and alternatives.� It is, even, Phillips thinks, �a vital part of existence.� It forces people to deal with their own rigidity, array of hypotheses, convictions, conjectures and theories, and it opens participants up to the varieties of experiences of others through dialogue, drama, books, art, or dance. It compels participants to explore alternative perspectives, asking what might be said for or against each. It is even, he thinks, a cure for the irrational. One of the main reasons Phillips practices Socrates Caf� is, as he explains, to revive Socrates philosophy to the public sphere. He wants to introduce this kind of philosophical thinking to people who get �lost� in their lives, people who take things for granted, people who are interested in this kind of thinking. He doesn�t want to limit this philosophy to certain kinds of people (the political, the religious, and the elite). He thinks that Socrates Caf� can help people to be more aware of their lives. Therefore, he agrees with Socrates� opinion that: �The unexamined life is not worth living.� Phillips, Christopher. �What is the Question?� Socrates Caf�. New York: W.W Norton & Company, Inc, 2001 |
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| Untitle: not written by me. Reclining in front of the TV on Sunday afternoon to watch the game, I startled myself by recognizing a parallel between my present activity and religious worship. Both The religious aspirant and myself are drawn to a particular place at a specific time on the same day of the week. We both prostrate ourselves before an object that occupies the dominant position in our respective rooms. We focus our attention on it to the exclusion of the outside world-even to the exclusion of a awareness of our won physical bodies. We are submissive, receptive, and respectfully silent except when it is appropriate to shout praise, mutter oaths of cry out in supplication. We tend to gather into exclusive groups. Our experience remains intensely personal and is subject to frequent dispute and misunderstanding from outsiders. Of course, viewing Sunday afternoon football is hardly a spiritual experience. Most of us will ridicule this comparison, but I think it deserves further consideration. We may substitute sports with news or drama, or we may substitute watching TV with operating a PC, but the comparison remains essentially the same. We have attached an almost religious significance to a fundamentally materialistic phenomenon. I am troubled by the idea that we may have a natural tendency toward spirituality that has been diverted from its intended course and channeled instead in a parallel but opposite direction. In other words, that we have found in technologies such as television and personal computers a surrogate for spirituality, and rather than evolving toward a spiritual destiny we are instead engineering a perilous descent into materialism. In his essay �Humanity�s Humanity in the digital Twenty-first,� Ralph Lombreglia concludes that �technology is poetry; it is one of the manifestation of spirit, of god.� I do not identify technology with spirituality (or poetry), but I do recognize an intersection parallel between the two. The relationship between technology and spirituality is similar to that of parallel lanes of traffic separated by two solid yellow lines-lanes that approximate each other but flow in opposite directions. Traffic appears sparse and slow on the side of spirituality, but on the Information Superhighway traffic is thick and fast. There appear to be no yield signs and no speed limits posted for technology. When I refer to technology, I am referring to the science of industry: its philosophy (the scientific method) and its fruits ( the automobile, television, computers, etc.). Webster�s definition of technology is illuminating: �the system by which a society provides its members with those things needed or desired. When I refer to spirituality, I do not refer to all forms of spirituality and religion. I am referring to general claims that are popularly associated with occidental spirituality. I find the parallels between technology and spirituality rather startling. Both technology and spirituality regard Nature as wild, deceptive and subject to improvement. Both perceive Nature as something to control, something to master something to either exploit or dispose of. Both technology and spirituality regard the individual self as insufficient, incomplete and in need of reinforcement to supplementation. Spirituality advocates a reduction of possessions, while technology seeks to reduce the size of one�s possessions, to make things more concise and portable. Both technology and spirituality encourage withdrawal from the external world. In other words, they both tend to discourage one from experiencing reality directly through one�s physical senses. For instance, the religious aspirant will sit in solitude and turn his attention inward, while the couch potato will sit in front of the TV and �stay tuned.� We can see how technology bears a superficial resemblance to spirituality. But the closer we look at the means and ends of technology, the more superficial its resemblance to spirituality becomes, until eventually it appears obvious how diametrically opposed spirituality and technology really are. Where spirituality promises to transcend Nature, technology merely replaces the natural world with an artificial one. Where spirituality promises liberation through a union of the individual with the universal, technology enslaves the individual by making him depend upon the artificial system. Where spirituality promises immortality and the wiping away every tear, technology only offers longevity, hart transplants and aspirin. Where spirituality promises perfect bliss, technology provides entertainment --- a thousand instruments of pleasure for a thousand-and-one lonely night. Notice how spirituality promises while technology provides. Perhaps here is the reason our natural impulse toward the Diving has been diverted to the path of technological advancement. Technology delivers, whereas spirituality seems distant and inscrutable. But look at what technology delivers. Look what it fails to deliver. Is it our best solution? Is technology our only solution? I struggle with these questions. I stand in the middle of the two roads (a dangerous place) with my thumb reluctantly sticking out for technology, but I cannot dispel the feeling that I am traveling farther from home. Topic sentence: We have attached an almost religious significance to a fundamentally materialistic phenomenon. I am troubled by the idea that we my have a natural tendency toward spirituality that has been diverted from its intended course and channeled instead in a parallel but opposite direction. Paragraph 2: Good metaphor: Tech and Spirituality VS Parallel lanes of traffic Paragraph 3: Define terms makes the discussion more convincing. Paragraph 4: Comparison % Tech and spirituality Paragraph 5: Contrast % Tech and spirituality Paragraph 6: Conclusion: Notice how spirituality promises while technology provides. But look at what technology delivers. Look what it fails to deliver. Is it our best solution? Is technology our only solution? I struggle with these questions. Overall: The topic sentence is already interesting, Insightful, great compare and contrast. Excellent transition. (you know what the writer wanted to say even without a topic sentence) |