Romantics

To be honest with you, I haven't exactly been rereading sophie's world recently, I read it all at the beginning of the year and as a result it's becoming more and more difficult to remember what happens when and why certain things are happening, it actually makes me feel a bit like Merlin*. So I just decided to grab a random chapter and write about that, so we're gonna go with the Romantics. Sophie starts by deciding to push the boundaries a little, having a garden party about philosophy and inviting Alberto. The Romantics believed that emotions and individuality was the best way to find the definition of life**. Art is also a way of conveying facts that canno be gained through pure reason, pure aesthetics as Kant said. Some romantics went as far as to state that an artist is God, creating and destroying their own worlds with their works. The thing about them that particularly fascinates me is their near endless search for arcane bits of knowledge, those few facts that are so different, so far off the well-beaten path of rationality. I particularly love how the author compares them to the hippies of the sixties and seventies***. The idol of the romantic era was the Byronic hero, alien, moody, and rebellious, was what many people aspired to be. Romanticism is easily one of the philosophical movements that has had the greatest effects on the arts in recent years.

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*Who, according to some more recent accounts, lived his life forwards to backwards, losing memories as he goes and travels crosswise to the Great King through time.

**This opinion spawned my favourite musical movement, as well as my favourite composer, Chopin

***The event I'd want to view throughout history most is the wonderfully misguided hippie movement, especially the display that was woodstock

Real World and Philosophy

For a little experiment, I decided to let the random button on wikipedia decide my topic for this blog so...

Unfortunately I got a lotta pages about science, so I decided to instead focus my essay on what man should know. This will not be a rant fueled by religion, or a lack of, and rather will be my own musings on horror host voice things man was never meant to know.... But lets steer clear of the Twilight Zone, that omnipotent Billy Mumy child creeps me out far too much. What I am really talking about is how much man wants to know about the true nature of his environment (no pun intended) until the little buggering rational voice in the back of his head begins to arbitrarily decide what is true and whats false, like, well an arbiter, and begins to just reject the possibility, no matter how large. Sometime I think I would be better off being left in the dark, just not when there's vampires around, and not the useless twighlight kind, I mean the unforgiving predators that they were in Bram Stoker's time, about certain question, if for nothing else to continue to allow me to guess at something, to find something to strive for and to find something to find. Part of what prompted this is my recollections of the mass hysteria and wild mass guessing that occurred as a result of a single particle accelerator, some people even willing to believe a botanist over the actual scientists who know what they're doing, perhaps in some foolish, suicidal hope.

Sophie's world: or Plato's cave

In the most recent reading of Sophie's World, her entire world began to unravel as both her and Alberto learn more about Mr. Knag and his role is there world, as the storyteller, the prime mover. Amazingly enough, Sophie appears to be able to interact with this other world, taking Hilde's cross back with her. Alberto however, seeks solace from this unfortunate reality in philosophy, playing along with “God's Plan”, as if seeking some proof of his own existence. This really calls into mind how one should interact with “God” or “gods” were they to suddenly appear in todays world. Should one just play along with their plans and just give in to fate or should one attempt to force their own will upon the world no matter what gods may do, as Norris does in the Adjustment bureau. Living in fear of what may happen is Alberto's entire life while Sophie refuses to accept Albert's plans. How would the average man react in case of a sudden and undeniable proof of God's existence? Not only that but that he's merely a delegate to a UN meeting, writing a story to keep his daughter happy while he's gone.

However, now that Sophie is aware of his existence, she appears to be able to do whatever she may desire, rather than having to conform to his plans. Like with Plato's cave, now that she is aware that the shadows are merely shadows and nothing more, they no longer have a hold on her. She seems to be on the edge of being capable of reaching the exit of the cave, able to move out of Albert's fantasy world and into his.

Connection numero tre: 0cCuPy W411 5tR33+

The occupy wall street movement, or as they would call it #OccupyWallStreet, suffers from strongly contrasting philosophies behind it, from communistic ideals to the quite epicurean hippies to the sociopathic and anarchistic Anonymous movement. The mainstream media seems to have a large problem with the array of ideals on display, albeit all with the goal of reforming corruption. The media can't seem to decide if its a communism movement(FOX "news" coughcough) or if its a cluster****. You have the marxists who are merely out there to try and save the proletariat from the capitalists while the hippies are running around talking on and on about how "the man is keeping them down", as well as just being there and preaching free love, drugs, and other epicurean crap.

Finally, Anonymous. The plague of the internet, a collective, a hive mind keeping itself ready to defend the rights of the people from any injustice, or just for the lulz, whichever anonymous we may see, we are guaranteed an interesting spectacle. Starting their reign as lord and master of the internet by taking down the likes of scientology, they quickly expanded in their strange ways. They seem to resemble a cthulian entity, driving insane those who view their true form as well as being a little insane themselves. Anonymous seems to function with not one head, but rather with many nodes of intelligence which each think differently. Its chaotic nature, its collective ways seem to be the ultimate expression of anarchy with the best idea immediately catapulting into the forefront of the hivemind.

Where #OWS will lead is only up to the protesters, until then, I wish you good night, and good luck.