We are programmed to find comfort. It’s natural. We seek pleasure and avoid pain because that’s what our brain is trained to do, through years and years of evolution. Putting ourselves through exhaustive or exertive circumstances is a fight against ourselves. Everything our brain has been programmed to search for savagely is at hand-food, water and (potentially) sex. It’s easy to sink into a state of doing nothing, since all our needs, says our brain, are fulfilled, and so we don’t need to do anything else. Our brains are right, but they’re also wrong. All our survival needs are met, but that does not mean we, as people, are satisfied. The things which we want to achieve are usually hard work to attain, and this involves a battle between your will and what your brain wants. Your brain wants comfort and pleasure, but you want to push yourself, to experience hardship now for the sake of gain later. This is what you must do then-fight yourself. Battle against your brain’s instincts and if your will is strong enough, you will win.
Tag: thoughts
Stop caring what others think
The opinion of others is something that is usually heralded as crucially important to any sane person, and what others think about us has become the reason for acting in certain ways-for getting that job, for posting that photo on Instagram, for buying that car, or for keeping quiet when we should speak up. We value others’ opinions highly, and what other people will think about us influences our decisions heavily. It’s not that other people’s opinions do not matter (they do), but it may be the case that we value what other people think too highly. It is a problem when we do not act in the way we should or the way we truly want because we fear what other people will think. It is a problem when we act solely so that people will think good of us, regardless of what we genuinely want to do. We make the mistake that if people have a good opinion of us, our power will increase, as will our satisfaction. This kind of deluded thinking has the opposite effect, since relying on the external for power and satisfaction usually means the opposite occurs, since most people do not care what you think or do. With this kind of thinking, whether we are satisfied is up to other people-we are completely powerless. Acting how you think you should, and realising true power comes only from within will result in more control, and, most likely, more satisfaction. We need to stop caring about what other people think. It makes us powerless and weak, stopping us from speaking when we should, doing what we truly want, and being the person we want to be. Ceasing to care what others think will result in liberation-liberation from anxiety, as well as liberation from the mask that we all wear around each other, a mask that prevents us from being ourselves. Take off the mask, and be free.
What’s the point?
A question most of us, if not all, ask ourselves at some point. We seem to lose track of why we’re doing something: why we are working this job, why we are reading this book, why we are alive. We are human-we cannot help but question the reason for doing what we do. When we begin to lose sight of what the purpose of what we’re doing is, we must stop and revise the reasons for our actions. Why? Because meaning is perhaps the greatest motivator, and if we have meaning to do something, then we will find a way to do it. If there is no purpose or good reason to do something, then one must re-evaluate the path one is living. Meaning is crucial, and without our own meaning we will have little, if any, reason to do anything.
The Ancient Greek Philosophers: Aristotle
Aristotle was a pupil of Plato, the teacher of Alexander the Great, and he wrote extensively on many various subjects, including logic, biology, music and rhetoric. Aristotle’s work on logic was a great foundation for human logic, and the work he recorded was the work used by philosophers who lived thousands of years on, such as Immanuel Kant. Aristotle’s logic is based on the syllogism, which is, at its simplest, one conclusion from two premises:
P1 All men are mortal.
P2 Socrates is a man.
C Socrates is mortal.
This is deductive logic, and if one accepts both the premises, then one must accept the conclusion that follows. To therefore attack the conclusion, one must attack the premises. There is so much that one could potentially say about Aristotle, so I will mention only a couple of his key ideas.
Aristotle believed that everything has a nature and a ‘telos‘ (end or goal) to fulfil. His idea was that ‘essence precedes existence’-something’s nature is defined before it exists. He argued that, like all other beings, humans also have a nature and a telos. For Aristotle this was eudaimonia, or flourishing, and this is attained by using all one’s talents and becoming balanced through the golden mean, avoiding excess and deficiency. To attain this, we should enhance our practical reasoning as well as our intellect. ‘What is the meaning of life?’ Aristotle asked himself, to which he answered, ‘To do good and serve others.’
Aristotle had a certain idea of excellence, and it was that it is attained through training and habituation. Like all virtues, Aristotle believed that to become excellent took time, and required consistency and balance-we cannot hope to be something if we only act in that way rarely. Rather, we should act that way as much as we can, and through this repetition we will train ourselves to become what that virtue is.
The influence of Aristotle is magnanimous. He influenced many, including Thomas Aquinas, Martin Heidegger and Immanuel Kant. To the foundations of logic and to the influential ethical and political theory we owe Aristotle a great deal.
The will to power
The concept of the will to power is more apparent today perhaps more than ever before. This is clear from the prevalence of social media. The majority of social networks are founded upon this principle of will to power, and social media taps into our will for power-it is what draws us in. Power is the reason photos are posted on Instagram and why videos are posted on Snapchat. The question is not whether social media appeals to people because of the supposed power it claims it brings (that is obvious), but whether we should partake in it or not. Another question is whether it is possible to avoid our will to power-is, for example, the denial to use social media just another form of the will to power because one believes that abstaining from social networks brings power with it? We must ask ourselves whether we want to fight for power, to (perhaps pointlessly) strive for attention and recognition. No, it cannot be. It is not that we should try to abstain from the will to power, for this may not even be possible, but to come to realise the best way to attain power-from within. Social media fools us by baiting us to look for power from people other than our own selves. By posting photos and videos with the hope that people will see them and think better of you or be jealous of you, that is not a sign of power, it is a sign of weakness. Social media relies on you relentlessly caring about the opinions and thoughts of others. Power can be attained, but not through the external. Real power comes from within, realising that we don’t need the recognition of others to remain in a serene state.
Are you taking things too seriously?
Let’s face it. Most of the things we do every day, if not all, are arbitrary. Most of the apparent tragedies that happen to us-we’re late for work, we’ve lost our car keys, the internet isn’t working properly-are also arbitrary, things which we become anxious about for no good reason at all. Most people believe that things like these are not worth getting stressed over, but what if it didn’t just apply to the tiny things, but to almost everything, or perhaps even everything? What if what we take seriously is absurd, and not serious at all? Deciding what is serious and what is not is up to you, yet it may be necessary, now and then, to distance oneself from the world to once again remind oneself of the absurdity and comic nature of our situation. All I can say is this: taking things less seriously makes life less of a burden, less stressful, and a whole lot more fun.
The Ancient Greek Philosophers: Plato
Plato was a student of Socrates, and is notorious for his work, which features Socrates discussing ideas with friends, politicians and various other people in the form of Socratic dialogue. Although many of Plato’s dialogues contain the ideas of Socrates, it is believed that the later works of Plato, such as the Republic, express Plato’s own ideas.
Perhaps the most unique idea of Plato’s is that of the theory of Ideas, explained best by the allegory of the cave. This is the idea that the world which we experience through the senses is not the ‘real’ world, and it is in fact the body which restricts us from this greater world which is immaterial. This material world is only a ‘copy’, and the world of concepts is ‘genuine’; the former is changing, the latter is permanent. Moreover, the allegory of the cave is used to describe Plato’s idea that only ‘philosopher-kings’ are fit to rule, since there are only few people who have come out of the cave and have seen the world as it really is-only the people who have exited the cave are fit to rule. There is no doubt that Plato has had a huge impact on western philosophy, and was the first person to set up a school of philosophy-the Academy. We owe Plato, and a long line of philosophers from him, a great deal.
The Ancient Greek Philosophers: Socrates
What we know of Socrates comes not from himself, since he never (or at least we do not think) wrote his ideas down. Socrates’ main ideas, person and life is brought to us by two of his students: Plato and Xenophon. Other certain aspects are told from the perspective of Aristotle and Aristophanes.
Socrates is notorious for many things, but perhaps his most distinguishing feature is how he walked around towns and began to talk to people in different positions of life about what they thought they knew, and Socrates would always show the person he was speaking to that what the person thought he knew wasn’t actually correct or right. For this Socrates became hated, and it was this showing up of people in supposed positions of authority that eventually caused him to be on trial and then executed. Socrates is most probably the father of philosophy, and his ideas, as well as his tool of Socratic dialogue, are still hugely influential today.
There are so many different ideas which Socrates put forward and discussed, brought to us mainly in the numerous dialogues of Plato, but only a couple will be talked about here. Firstly, Socrates did not believe in democracy, and used the analogy of a ship which was about to sail off with a crew. Who would we want to run the sailing of the ship? Would we want somebody trained in sailing the ship, or would we want everybody on the ship to have a say in running it, regardless of whether they had any knowledge of sailing or not? Socrates argued that we would want the former, and likewise we should want this for the running of our country-somebody who knows what they’re doing, a ‘philosopher-king.’ Secondly, Socrates’ idea of wisdom is a very different one to the general understanding of wisdom. Rather than being full of knowledge and experience, wisdom for Socrates was the recognition: ‘I know that I know nothing.’ It was, for Socrates, acknowledgement of his own ignorance which made him wise.
Socrates was hugely influential on his pupils and on the city of Athens, and without his ideas, philosophy today might be quite different.
Be afraid no longer
This isn’t about specific phobias which specific people have. This is the universal fear which we all experience at some point. It’s the phobia of life. Like any other seemingly threatening situation, it’s a matter of fight or flight. It’s about whether you run from life or fight it. It might be thought that most people fear death, but it just isn’t true. Most people are more scared of living than of dying, and even if they are breathing, eating and working, this does not mean they are alive. It’s a choice between living life or living death. Living death is easier, but living life will, in the long run, be worthwhile. It is up to you to decide whether you fight or you run, and be wary, asking yourself ‘am I really alive, or am I dead?’ While we breath, it is still possible for us to resurrect, to cease from being dead, and to come alive. What being alive means, only you can discover that.
The Ancient Greek Philosophers: The Sophists
The Sophists were a group of ‘wise’ men, teachers and intellectuals, who taught people for money in the second half of the fifth century B.C. The Sophists are widely known for their ability to make ‘the weaker speech the stronger’, and their philosophy was ‘speculative rather than practical.’ Moreover, the Sophists supported scepticism, and as time passed, the Greeks began to dislike the Sophists and the label of a Sophist was a degrading one. The Sophists were associated with the wealthy and powerful, since they demanded money for their services, and their focus was to teach people skills which would enable them to gain success in matters of the state, focusing their teaching on rhetoric, literature and grammar.
Protagoras, perhaps the most notorious Sophist, said that ‘man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not’. This is a matter of subjectivity. For one man something may be true, while for another it is false-to me something may look blue, to you it may look yellow. Protagoras is stating that whatever I experience is right, and so is what everybody else experiences-everyone is right and nobody is wrong. This also reveals his idea of scepticism-the only reality we can be sure of is our own, and objective reality seems to be, according to the Sophists, something which, if it exists, cannot be proven or found. The question of morality then arises from this idea of subjectivity-is nothing absolutely right or wrong? The Sophists taught that morality is indeed subjective and that what is viewed as right or wrong is culturally influenced and decided, as well as being based on one’s own opinions and feelings. According to Thucydides, this cynicism, and perhaps moral nihilism, meant that Greek civilization began to fall into disarray. Despite this, the Sophists had a huge influence on Roman rhetoric, especially on the likes of the great orator Cicero.
