Blog #1

Reaction to Sophie's World
      Sophie was receiving all of these letters asking her questions, but I had a couple questions of my own. Who is the mystery person writing Sophie? Why Sophie, of all the young girls in the world, heck of all the people in the world, why was Sophie chosen to receive these letters? I put these questions in the back of my head and continued to read. I'm impressed by this author’s ability to write informative material while keeping it interesting, I prefer learning from a novel like this rather than reading straight out of a textbook. I found chapter 2, "The Top Hat" interesting. One part in particular stood out to me, it was the idea that people, even when all of their basic needs are met, will still “need” more. I challenge this idea, I agree that people have a lot of needs but I think that when those needs are met things stop being "needs" and turn into "wants". I have taken a couple psych classes so chapter 4 was a nice refresher, but it also contained a lot of new information as well. Heraclitus was a philosopher that I had never heard about, I found his idea of constant change interesting and I really liked the quote he used to support his idea, "we cannot step twice into the same river." That quote made so much sense to me, once you do something once you will never be able to replicate it again, you can never go back to that exact state. I also thought his idea of the world being characterized by opposites intriguing. He mentioned that we could never be well if we were never ill, or never see light if we never had darkness and so on. I have actually thought about this idea multiple times before and I enjoyed reading and learning about the man who was the first to talk about it, it was cool to see that even all the way back in 540 B.C. people still had the same ideas and thoughts as people do today.

Applying Philosophy to Real Life
         I found our discussion on fate versus freewill in class very thought-provoking and it is actually a discussion I've had with myself multiple times. It was cool to learn and talk about something that actually relates to my life. I find myself in the constant argument of, "well if it's meant to be, it will be" and "if I want something I need to get it myself". There's comfort in believing everything happens for a reason but it's also thrilling to think that you have control over your life and that you have the power to create the kind of life you want. I find myself leaning to fate when something in my life goes bad, for example if I got into a car accident maybe I would tell myself that there was a reason it happened, maybe I needed to be in a small accident to wake me up and make me more cautious to prevent a bigger, more serious accident from happening. Then when good things happen, such as getting an A in a class I tell myself it was freewill, I earned that grade all on my own, I had to study, I had to read, I had to participate, so on. I think it’s natural for people to flip-flop when it comes to fate and freewill; it’s hard to believe in just one.