Posts Tagged ‘xanga featured question’
What are a few of your favourite things?
Xanga Featured Question: What are a few of your favourite things?
When I come across something ‘nice’, or when someone in real life or in a book or something says something truly inspiring, I like to sit back and smile at it, as I’m sure everyone does. I suppose these are all favourite things.
My very favourite thing is a good adversarial debate. Even if I lose I’ll learn something new.
I love a really fresh morning, I like to go ringing on said fresh mornings.
I love powerful quotes that word things so much better than I ever could. When I read them or hear someone say them.
I like it when teamwork pays off.
I like writing or reading a well constructed essay that just fits together beautifully.
I love an elegant mathematical truth.
I love to learn something new.
I love a good book.
I love it when it doesn’t, for once, bother me that I’m inferior and as unoriginal as everyone else.
That’ll do for now.
Xanga Featured Question: What is the greatest life lesson you’ve learned so far?
Xanga Featured Question: What is the greatest life lesson you’ve learned so far?
Many accuse me of lacking practical wisdom in the sense that I’m not fantastic at getting practical things done in this apparently existent world. I don’t always see the most efficient route to solving problems and on top of this am often accused of being too frank and honest and should sometimes temper my words. To the former I accept a regular display of ineptitude, but to the latter I think I cut through the emotional nonsense that often prevails and in those cases I do get things done more efficiently than others. I say what I mean and what I am thinking when it’s helpful. One thing I am trusting my family to have informed me correctly on is that I apparently over-exaggerate somewhat – I honestly don’t see myself doing it so I’ve taken to actually warning people this is thought of me after telling them something where I might have unintentionally done so. Otherwise the life’ lessons’ than I am accused of needing to learn I don’t think I have because I don’t see any particular need to. However of late I have realised a few things about myself which are useful in avoiding embarrassing mistakes.
First of all I’ve realised that I’m gullible. I take what people say on face value because I pride myself on the fact that people can take what I say as being true since I don’t lie. I need to question more than I do: I need to check things that sound potentially exaggerated with others, I need to read other opinions rather than the limited scope I do. So many times I have been caught out by people’s tales, examples of which I’m not going to go into here, and this is really not constructive. So I am trying to stop myself from accepting viewpoints without double-checking them against other reliable sources. I need to do this for politics, philosophy and simply people’s experiences.
Secondly, it’s been pointed out to me by my Mother that I’m far more changeable with regard to interests and opinions than it may at first seem (and I accepted the latter view that I’m pretty firm). I’m not talking about open-mindedness here which I do believe I have these days. I’m told that I always appear self-assured and supremely confident when, for example, speaking at debating but actually I’m constantly moving around. It’s a bit difficult to quite get across what I mean here, so let me give an example. I seem to swing back and forth between my respect for academic disciplines. For example, I’ve been looking up great Macbeth quotes this week and have lamented my poor GCSE English teaching for putting me off words. Recently I’ve denounced Physics as clutching at empirical straws and my deputy head recently commented to my father outside of school that I’m far more of a philosopher than a mathematician. I’m inclined to agree with this: I seem to be sliding over to the humanities a lot more. But then I look back a year ago and it was the complete opposite; I had very little interest in subjects outside maths and science. So the lesson learnt here is that I need to be very careful making such broad attacks upon areas of school as I may well change my opinion later. My mother’s example was a swing of obsessions between computing, ringing, reading etc.
Thirdly, I’ve realised that I seem to have something of an inferiority complex. I hate the fact that I constantly try to find ways in my head to put myself above other people. I’m not the best! I recognise and accept that. But I still find myself trying to justify some kind of superiority on all sorts of grounds. What I’ve tried to tell myself is that I am open-minded and think things through and thus any other abilities are unimportant: as Dumbledore said, one’s choices and not one’s abilities define a person. But I really do struggle to get over this psychological situation and I need to avoid this. Even now for example I am considering the fact that the blog of a friend has so much better posts than mine. It comes down to jealousy at the end of the day and all I can do is force myself not to think in these ways. It just wastes time. I need to accept that actually most of the people around me at school are more intelligent and do have better arguments. Why can’t I? I don’t know. Silly biology.
Fourthly, recently I have been actually noticing the vast numbers of people actually on this planet. It is incredible to think how small and insignificant any one of us is. There are so many other people, so many other thoughts cycling around. So in tandem with the above I need to keep this in my head, I need to realise more readily that our petty debates are so small and minor. Our ideas are tiny in the grand scheme of this world, and miniscule on the scale of the scientific universe. I have a friend who is of the opinion that a feeling of insignificance and coldness, of being a human tossed and turned upon the waves of fate, which is the best way to describe it here, is in fact her sole goal in terms of finding any kind of meaning in life (sorry L, I’ve probably misrepretented you here). I don’t think I agree with this, but it makes a point about how small we all are. The Internet again shows the vast numbers involved: thousands of blogs created every day, thousands of more intelligent comments posted.
So the above is things that I have realised recently about myself and I would argue that these are the most important life lessons I have learnt so far. I think I’ll need to reanswer this question in a few years, but right now what is the greatest? The fact that I have learnt to be open-minded, I do believe, and that I *should* be at peace with myself for making what I believe to be the right choices.
Xanga Featured Question: What makes someone a ‘good person’?
Xanga Featured Question: What makes someone a ‘good person’?
Doing ethics in philosophy at school equips me well to take a stab at this one. It seems to me that I could go ahead and list a set of characteristics that I would say make a good person. I could list selflessness, a desire to learn and understand, rationality and open-mindedness. But what am I doing here? I’m merely answering the question ‘what makes you think to yourself “that’s a good person”?’ and I’m not tackling the question posed. Can any of us answer it? Can we even attempt to make such a huge judgement? I don’t think so – we’re simply not qualified enough. Only an immortal who had lived forever (e.g. god, if there is one) would even begin to be in a position to answer this question. Even then, maybe they also need to have had the experience of not living forever in order to be unbiased and as close to objective as possible. It seems impossible. Of course, my global scepticism supports this view.
So why then would so many people jump to answer this one with ‘kindness, caring for others, passion for a good cause’ etc.? I’m not sure. But the view that I’m in tune with at the moment is Matt’s idea (philosophy friend) that in fact morality is merely an innate conservatism. Moral laws keep things the same, and humans are creatures of habit who don’t like change. We’re brought up with rules and regulations that ensure that people are comfortable and can predict what each other do. Heck, what sparks most discontent in our society – difference and chance. I’m not average. I’m bullied at school. Is this because I’ve done something wrong? No, it’s because I choose to do what I want to do for various reasons and this is out of the ordinary. The obvious response here is murder – surely this is not about conservatism? Yes it is – conserving life. That’s a bit weak but I hope you can see where my argument is coming from.
So when we express emotions all we’re doing is in some way expressing what we feel most comfortable with, and also what strikes up ‘pleasant emotions’ within us, most of the time. We’re expressing our approval of the behaviour of others because it seems right to us and deep down, whatever this actually is, it seems to me to be based on a desire to keep things predictable and to avoid a fear of the unknown. To return to the question then, I can offer a raft of arguments why I think that the properties I listed at the beginning make a good person. But all I’m actually doing really is expressing feelings I receive when I consider their behaviour, and I want others to do the same thing. Some form of emotivism, I think. But as I say, I’m far from any conclusions on this one and will continue to consider and discuss it.
This was written whilst full of cold and tired so forgive any ambiguities.
Xanga Featured Question: What are your plans for the summer?
A friend who uses Xanga to run their blog occasionally answers so-called Featured Questions, an idea that site has that supplies interesting questions to, theoretically, stimulate good writing. I thought I’d answer a few myself as this blog is getting a bit monotonous to update at times as it feels like writing a ship’s logbook.
Xanga Featured Question: What are your plans for the summer?
Goodness me I have a huge amount of these this year. There are so many things I want to catch up on, so many things I want to read, so many people I want to talk to. I’ve made myself a list, in fact, of things for the summer and am adding to it when I think of others. The problem is that it is only six weeks, which is somewhat limiting. So in terms of catching up, I want to get back into Wikimedia and freenode. I want to get back into answering press enquiries for the former, and just being around and being helpful for the latter. At present I am so inactive it is annoying as I can’t help these things I have been trusted with jobs in.
I have a lot of books and the like that I want to read. There are various bits of philosophy I want to understand, and I’ve ordered Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. I can just read away, and post things that I don’t understand to the fantastic Debate List community for help from others – I want to keep this list going as in the summer people do have more time to answer it. I’ve also got a pile of fiction to read, such as some of Tolkien’s non-LOTR books on Middle Earth. Then I’d like to do some background study in preperation for my application to Oxbridge; this likely means some sort of maths plus the above philosophy. So I have lots of learning that I would like to do that I simply don’t have time for at the moment. My parents think I should get a job this summer but I really don’t need any extra money as I hardly spend it and would much rather spend the time expanding my mind. Additionally, I have lots of games to buy and play on my recently-constructed computer. Various exciting worlds await.
My only concern here is of course to ensure that I use my time effectively. I am going to try and plan my time around Wikimedia/freenode, learning, and gaming as described above. Through all this I intend to try and tweet regularly, and try not to entirely lose touch with others via handy Internet tools, and of course there are various special events planned, like the Debating Matters final, and university open days. Let’s see how well I manage to do it all – after exams, and a few weeks of starting next year’s work.