Do not preoccupy!!

Besides of thanking God these posts are finally over, I want to make clear that I think identically to Pascal. In a letter to Mlle de Roannez, he says that "the past should not preocupy us... the future has nothing to do with us and perhaps we might never reach it... and the present is the only time that is truly ours... we are always intent on living in the future and never on living on now" I agree with all of these statements, they show the manner people makes use of time and what we commonly decide to do with what we could say are the stages of time. In the first part Pascal talks about how the past should not preocupy us, as the word signify the past should not guide the situations that haven't happened yet and we should not occupy on things that haven't take place, past is history and nothing we can do about it, what is done is done end of the point. Next he says that future has nothing to do with us and I believe this is right because we'll never know when we are going to die, and this opens the panorama to casualties and outcomes that are not manageable. Then Pascal says that the only time that is truly ours is present; this is the time we can act, we can express what we want and we can concrete our ideas, this is the time of action, not the past or the future. At last he says that we are always intent to live on the future, and I believe this relates to some deep wishes of humanity like the one of living forever, like a God.

Define what is time!

In this last chapter of the book “The Questions of Life” Fernando Savater talks about what is time. We all know what time is and what it defines, but if you want to put the definition of time into words it is very hard. Also it is very hard to say when did time start how did humans started to measure it and how it was define. This are very hard questions that many important philosophers and scientists have tried to answer, but could not give a clear answer. I think that it is not important to answer these questions like Pascal (French moralist) said; the only important period that matters is present because it is the only one that can make an immediate change.

My opinion is that we shouldn’t be worrying about what time is, how was it defined, or when did it started, we should neither be concerned about the past because let’s face it we can’t change it, we should only worry about the future because it’s the only tense that could affect us or our future. We should concentrate in the present and try to enjoy it the most, without worrying about anything else, time will give us everything.

Past is gone

What is time? Maybe if you have a physics class in your schedule, you would recognize that time is a measuring system to sequence events to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects. But this is not the kind of time I am talking about. The time that I am trying to create a discussion about is what time represents to us human beings.

People always say that you should live each moment like it is your last because time is not running backwards, and it actually is not. Some people also say time will heal all injuries. This is actually a bad sustained argument, because I think time will not heal injuries, but the moments and event that you experience throughout the time that has elapsed since the beginning. Time is always going forwards, so if you have done something bad, you should regret it, but you will not change it, so you need to start looking for a solution, which will solve this problem. Time is a huge issue in human lives, basically our entire life is affected by time, there is day and there is night and there is nothing we can do about this, so all I would say is do not let anything slip away and try to do all the things you can while you are alive, because you can’t make time go backwards.

Enjoy your life today, yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come

Savater in this chapter mentions three zones in which time is divided; past, present and future. The French moralist Pascal argues that the only zone which we should preoccupy is the present because the only things that can have a direct effect on us are the things that take place in the present. I disagree with Pascal. The past and the future are also really important for us.

Maybe we can’t change what has happened. We can’t recover that time because it has already passed, but we could learn from what we have experienced so we don’t make the same mistakes again. So, maybe the past hasn’t a direct influence on us, but definitely has an indirect one. We could learn many things from our past that could help us know what to do in our present.

The future could also affect our present in an indirect form. For example knowing that tomorrow will be our final philosophy exam. That would affect the decisions we make in our present because we will study hard to prepare for the exam. If there wasn’t an exam in our future, we wouldn’t prepare or study for any exam at all, we would use our time in something completely different.

We can’t change the past, we can’t predict our future, but definitely both of them have an influence on our present.

As time passes by...

Chapter 10. When I first saw the title of the chapter I said to myself, this chapter is going to be interesting because it will talk about time. After reading it, I considered that it was without a doubt one of the most interesting chapters that I read.
Without a doubt, without measurements of time this world would be a chaos, that’s because measurements like hours, months, moon phases are all part of our lives and how we achieve our daily chores. We need time to have an order and also to have a standard way all the world communicate.
I was also very amazed of the dilemma about “this”. As Hagel said “...it is surprising that those things about which it seems we should be most certain...what we are tempted to call the - concrete, now, here, this – completely lose their content as soon as we try to think about them”. After thinking about this statement I was amazed because it’s very interesting of how when we try to be more concrete we end being more abstract. For example last time I received a call from my mom and she was trying to say me where a watch was located. She first said me, the watch is there in your room, the problem was that my room is big, so I then said like where in my room, she then told me like there in your desk and I had the same problem because my desk has many drawers. Therefore I started to tell her like is it in this drawer or on that drawer. We had a little discussion until I found it, which took me around 5 minutes.
So in resume, time is very important for humanity because it is the way we measure almost everything. Even though some times when we want to be concrete in time it’s very hard to be completely concrete.

Does it deserve to be Beautiful?

Is it really beautiful or do you like it? This is a question people don't ask each other very often. I remember hearing from countless people that tastes are independent, they can be different from person to person and they obey the person's likes and not what the majority of the people would agree on. I have seen how things that are extremely ugly to me are the prettiest things for some other person. If this happens and we get lost in the world of tastes, we barely distinguish why we chose something to be liked by us. There are no standards, there are no laws, but tastes are so bonded to the beauty. When we say we think that something is beautiful we are mostly looking towards our tastes and not to everybody's opinions about the object. What value but only individual can exist if we affirmed that the notion of beauty depends on the tastes of each person? For me it is not okay to denote something as beautiful if no one except me can value its beauty, as an alternative I openly prefer the thought that what is beautiful for me has to be beautiful for someone with similar traits like mine, maybe not for all the world, but yes for other people who share common interests with me. What would be the meaning of something beautiful if it can't be valued by somebody? That is why I conceive that what I find beautiful should rather be equally or more beautiful for somebody else.

B-E-A-utiful

What is beauty to us? Beauty is represented by what gives us pleasure. For example a friend and you are walking on the street. You walk by a statue and your friend tells you, Oh man that is beautiful, we usually answer, Oh yes it is, but after a while we start to think if the object he was talking about was actually beautiful to you. You need to start to consider things like if this statue really made you feel pleasure, or you were just answering to what your friend told you.

Everyone has a different point of view in this world, and for someone it could look that something was beautiful that for others was not. Some people have to consider all the outer events to even consider if something is beautiful or not. On the other hand I personally think that you need to look at something and at the instant you know if that is beautiful or not. You do not need to analyze a thing to say that is beautiful or not. It is supposed to be like if you look at something and at that instant you get a shiver, that is when you know something is really beautiful.

The Beauty of Life

When we think in something that for us is beautiful we take for granted that it actually is beautiful for everyone. This isn’t true, the last chapter that I have read Of the book “The Questions of life” called The Shiver of Beauty tells us that maybe all of us have very a different concept of beauty. What I am trying to say is that maybe something that you find extremely beautiful like a painting or a sculpture someone else can find not beautiful at all.

In this chapter there are many definitions that try to define beauty, the best of all I think is the following “beauty is that something that produce pleasure on you (not just physically). This, I think, is very accurate because people may find pleasure in many different things, like art, spectacular views, sports, music, good company, etc. This definition accepts that beauty is something personal not universal, something that not everyone would agree on.

My conclusion and personal opinion is that beauty is that something that creates pleasure on your senses, it might be to the view, or in sound, in smell, the taste or even in the feeling. Beauty is something that makes our lives much more happy and that make us live with more joy.

Is it beautiful?

Once you start thinking about it, it’s really hard to define the word “beautiful”. People may take a different meaning for the same word which isn’t a physical object which we could easily define, but can be granted as some sort of feeling, something subjective depending on what you like or dislike and then decide whether you think something is beautiful or not.

Chapter 9 talks about Cheops’ Great Pyramid dilemma, whether we can call it beautiful or not. Arguing that the pyramid is beautiful, we could tell that the fact that it produces visual pleasure to us or that the pyramid is unique, which makes it beautiful. Arguing against it, the pyramid was built by thousands of slaves who carried large stones and were treated very badly. In the moral perspective, the creation of the pyramids are wrong, which makes them not beautiful at all.

I personally think that the result should be the only think accounted as beautiful. The ways or actions that make possible the pyramid to exist doesn’t really matter. The fact that the pyramid is unique and gigantic or that the pyramid is a real masterpiece is what really makes it beautiful in spite of the morally wrong ways in which it was constructed. What you personally admire as beautiful is always the result, not the process of elaboration.

The Beauty of Artists

Chapter 9: The Shiver of Beauty. This chapater talks about beauty, it’s definition and different aspects of it. In one part, Savater talks us about beauty in the artists and in their creations.
Savater says that artists are referred as creators which he then defines as somebody who has made something that would not have existed without him or her, somebody who brings something to the world. He then give us an example that artists paintings would have never existed if they didn’t existed, while in the other hand discoveries of things or medicines from scientists or people, could had been discovered or invented even though they hadn’t existed.
What he wants to say us is that artists paintings or sculptures are very important and are beautiful depending on the perspective in each of us. I agree with him stating this because he says that their works cannot be explained without them, without their vocation or personality. He also said that if they had not existed their works would have not existed either.
I therefore agree 100% with Savater because, that piece of art would have not existed if the artist didn’t existed. While the findings or creations of scientists can be found even though the scientists themselves hadn’t existed, someone else could have found them.
Savater also talked about how Plato disagreed with some artists and I somehow agree with how Plato taught. Why? Because I agree that some artists have very crazy ways of thinking and how they show they art, in this way they could change the way people think or the way people see things which can be sometimes dangerous or bad. For example in music, some artists could sing bad things in songs and make people act bad toward somethings. Today there are many songs that are considered bad and talk about death and killing of people, that’s were I want to get, stating that artists creations aren’t always good.

The level of Freedom

People say that some animals are free, like birds, or fish, depending on the situation you are enrolled in. In the book THE QUESTIONS OF LIFE from Fernando Savater, the author Fernando exposes three different terms to distinguish freedom:
1.- "Freedom as the capacity to act according to one's own desires or projects." This term is heavily influenced to physical ways of expressing freedom, non-abstract situations. If we think or desire something anxiously we act to transform it from a thought to a tangible thing, trying to introduce that thought of ours to the reality we all live in whatever the purpose is.
2.- "The freedom to want what we want and not just to do, or attempt to do, what we want." Attention to this term, it is only possible inside the mind of every person and it is not a plural freedom, like the number one slightly attempts to be. This freedom is more psychological and it is undeniable, every one has thoughts about what happens, what hasn't happened and what will happen.
3.- "The freedom to want that which we do not want, and of not wanting what in fact we want."
This freedom refers to when someone wants to be someone but he "wishes" to be different. For example a man who wants to have kill all the people in the world, but at the same time he wishes not do be that man, because it goes against what he values, then he is wanting not to be what he wants to be. This term is confusing and appears to have no ending.

Every single term has freedom used in a different way, but it is only the middle term the one I trust more, because is more simple and invulnerable, not even a God can forbid me to think what I want to, and in this sense I think we are the most free of all.

Our "freedom".

Freedom is in theory a very easy concept to understand. Freedom is to do whatever you want and to think whatever you want, but something I have learned this last week at my philosophy class is that freedom is not that simple, for example sometimes when you think you’ve made a choice or action freely you don’t notice that many external factors are controlling you and affect your decision in a big part. And also even today at the twenty first century there are many places where slavery exists.

Another example of violation of liberty, I think, is when someone introduces a subliminal message of any kind on other people, this is a violation to freedom because you should be able to make choices freely, when someone induces you, unconsciously, an idea he or she is violating your freedom to choose.

I am also aware that many people misuse the concept of liberty and transforms it into libertinism, I think that the main reason that sometimes there are lots of limits or boundaries in “liberty” is because many people transforms liberty into libertinism by doing whatever they want and even brake some laws arguing that they are “free” to do what they want, or says “I live in a free country”. So in order to get our true freedom we should start to respect others freedom.

Freedom isn't free

Almost every person thinks that the concept of being free is doing what you want, when you want it and how you want it. But actually there is much more than that to be free. I mean of course you need to be free to do what you want but you also have to be aware of certain factors. For example, you are free to choose if you want vanilla or chocolate ice cream, but you are responsible of knowing what is going to happen after, for example if you are lactose intolerant. In other scenario, if you are in a life-death situation like the one of the captain and his crew travelling with a cargo and they are hit by a storm, and the only way of surviving was by throwing away the cargo. In this case the captain has the freedom to choose if he wants to throw the cargo and survive, but loose the thing the trip was about, or keep the cargo and die. This is a little extreme situation, but it is an easier way to make a decision.

So everyone has the freedom to do what they want in one way or another, but we have to take all the factors that surround it.

Freedom and responsibility

Many people have different concepts about freedom. Some people say it is about thinking what we want to think. Others say it is wanting what we want and others argue it is about wanting that which we don’t want not wanting what we want. You may think the same as I, this looks like a big word puzzle.

In simpler words, for me personally, freedom involves much more than only thinking and wanting what we want, but we need to be responsible for our own free actions. If you are totally free, you may do whatever you want to do, for example getting drunk everyday of the week. I mean you could do that if you want to, but you need to be responsible for that action. You may not want to assume the responsibility of the effects or the action in order to get drunk.

Freedom is doing what we want to do, without anyone telling us what to do. But in order to be completely free, first of all, you need to be able to do it. If there is no possible way of achieving our goal, then we can argue that we are not totally free. Secondly, you need to take the responsibility of you action. Freedom is a very complicated word to define and people define it in very different ways. For me, freedom and responsibility are linked; you can’t be free if you are not responsible.

Liberty

In this Chapter, number 6, Savater talks mainly on Liberty. I think liberty is a very important and interesting thing to talk about. Liberty for me is to do whatever I want at the time I wish, which means I have freedom of choice and thinking.
Sadly in today’s world there are thousands of people with limited liberty or sometimes null liberty. People who are kidnapped are taken out from their liberty and need to follow orders.

Liberty is always in hand with responsibility. As Savter says, if we have liberty, we also have responsibility. For example I have the liberty to get in my car and drive to school and it’s also my responsibility to attend school. If I’m bored or I don’t want to go to school, I can do that and not go to school because I have the liberty to choose what I want, but the problem here is that we are not having responsibility of our acts.

Same goes with drinking and driving. I have the liberty to drink, go to parties and if it’s necessary drive there. My responsibility then is that I must know if I am able to drive or not, and if I am in a very bad mood or not good to drive I can tell a friend or take a taxi.

As we can see every liberty and every action we make with that liberty also has a responsibility, therefore with the education we have gathered throughout the years, we should know what’s good and what’s not. This way we can make good decisions that wouldn’t affect ourselves. So in resume we have liberty, but we should make choices or acts with a lot of responsibility.

Cause and Effect

By giving a look to the book The Questions of Life I found a curious explanation of the existence itself. It says: "We assume that everything must have a "suficient reason" for xisting, to follow Leibniz's terminology. Well if everything has a cause, should there not also be a Cause of Everything?". I started to think about this explanation and reflected a long time about it. Since old times, people have always said that there must be a cause for everything. I also believe that there is a cause for every effect. I mean, inside of our society we call it a law, and a law is something that is proven, something you can experiment on and it will give you the same results. All this reasoning gave us tools to think that the Universe had to have a cause, and I agree with this reasoning, unless the universe is the cause an the effect hasn't ocurred. My rationality pushes me toward the first reasoning, but I can't forget or maintain apart the other reasonings, because if the Universe had a cause and we are part of the effect that means we share things in common and all our reasoning and basically everything that exists produce the totality of the effect. Causes have a purpose, that forces me to think that if there was a purpose we are part of, then there is somebody who is seeing all this, or was before all this. I believe we are not alone in the world and that there was other bodies who might have caused what was caused or see it. I believe our existence and the Universe existence is linked to somebody else's or somewhere else's existence.

The universe: an enigma.

Some of the most common questions that us as humans ask without getting any kind of reasonable answers has to do with the universe; when was it created? How was it created? Does it have a limit? Is there any kind of life in it beside humans? How is it arranged? These are some of the most common questions that we ask in regards to the universe. The interesting thing is that we can’t know the answer to these questions, and we are not even near to know it. Maybe in the far future scientific discoveries will make us get the answer for these questions but at this time we can’t.

While we can’t get these answers some of the greatest philosophers have started to analyze these enigmas and have profoundly thought on this subject. Some of them have come to the conclusion that the arrangement of the universe is “cosmic” or “chaotic”, others have said that the size of the universe is infinite so it has no end, also some philosophers disagree is the universe is a total thing (seeing it as a whole) while others thing that the word universe is a placeholder for all the parts that the universe is composed of. My conclusion is that all of this ideas are useless, because it will come the time that scientific discoveries will explain all of this, making our old ideas wrong and useless.