Hallo ihr alle da draussen...1 down and 4 to go in my A Levels....today was 9182/05: Hoerverstaendnis. Listening Compre, as you all out there would call it. well. listening's the easiest of all the papers....i trust i won't screw this one up. And so we come to the end of German, but with the end of every chapter another begins...a time of risk, high adventure (hahaha), disappointment, worry and intense brain-bursting cramming. Ugh. I just HATE that word. cramming. It seems as though someone is trying to place you into a small bartop refridgerator. Perhaps that's how your brain feels afer a long hardcore session...too much stuff stuck inside. Why can this lead to insanity?
It's a simple analogy. Most of us are non-telepaths. But what if telepathy were proven to be a fully possible phenomena, not the figment of one's imagination? If someone has psionic abilities, he or she would be able to read minds. Now, what happens when this psionic person enters a room full of people, and the thoughts of people start flooding into his or her mind? With so many voices, so many differing thoughts, so much cluttered information, it really isn't that difficult to imagine why people who cram too much may go insane eventually. Do you see? Yes, you do. =)
(And you thought schizophrenia was bad. Perhaps that's why we haven't evolved the ability to read minds. haha. )
Yes. and now we come to ethics. What do you understand by the term 'ethics'? in the past, ethics was the code to living a good life, but today, it has become more of a code to avoid causing disturbances to others. All through history, from antiquity to the Dark Ages to the Renaissance to today, philosophers have sought to decode ethics and find the ultimate moral code, by which humans must swear to in the name of morals. What have they used as comparisons? God. Nature. Human reason. These are the three greatest references philosophers have used for ethics. Why? the very image of God portrays himself as a perfect entity. And since we were created by him, perhaps you could say that we are all the children of God. It follows, thus, that he too lives by ethics. These ethics must be perfect; since when has imperfection been attributed to God? (Although there ARE some paradoxes which attribute some imperfection; for example, how can God create a rock so heavy that he himself cannot lift it? Yet surely the omnipotence of God can do it.)
Second, Nature. What is nature? Just as Darwin disproved the theory that we are all children of God by formulating the theory of evolution, it follows from this very scientific postulation that we are part of Nature. Surely Nature has given us the capacity of intelligent thought for a reason? Since the capability to think is within us, certainly it is within our nature to determine what is right and what is wrong, for that ability is inherent in the ability to think intelligently. Yet, we are a race which has seen 6 million Jews die in the German concentration camps. We are a race which has witnessed the use of atomic weapons on Japanese soil. We are a race which perpetrated the near-madness of Mutually Assured Destruction, better known as the euphemism nuclear deterrence. Has anyone given thought to what's right and what's wrong there? Both the Allies and the USSR insinuated that the other side was evil and thus the need to place warheads along both sides of the Iron Curtain. Is it in our nature too to do these unethical things? We could have very simply reached an agreement and go into nuclear disarmament. It is very clear to the eyes of the world what the nuclear fallout did to the millions of citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Lastly, human reason. Human reason has been used to explain ethics; of which, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, as well as many European philosophers have held major ground on. Kant stated that ethics and morals are within our nature; only when we act in the knowledge that everyone would do the same in the same situation would be ethically correct behaviour. it should also be noted that the so-called ideal form of government was born out of ethics based upon human reason, that of benevolent despotism. The Age of Enlightenment decreed that the masses be enlightened before they could actually behave according to this set of ethics. the European monarchs thus began to take it upon themselves to set an example (or so it seems to me...) All over Europe, be it France, Germany or wherever else, monarchs began to rule for the welfare of their subjects and not to curry favour. It must be said, however, that benevolent dictatorship is, today, an extinct system of government. Waste, isn't it?
Well. that's that. I am officially on hiatus until next Friday. til then...
posted by quatscherei @ 18:33
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