Dear diary, today I woke up to the question I had been pondering the night before “how do communication barriers affect our life?”. It was when I was taking a shower and recapping all the conversations from the day, when I noticed that many of the sentences had been misunderstood. Sure, spoken language is the best/most common way to communicate to others. But when it comes to words, they’re limited, thus art, another way of expression. Everyday we are faced with the challenge, and giving a logical answer to feelings that may feel diffuse that we may not even understand can become a hard topic to discuss. In the larger picture, when talking about philosophy or science, the comprehension of these may be limited to a few words for a subject trying to explain it, but to the person it may be a whole world of perspectives. It’s why we may recur to visual language like pictograms, corporal expression, or even just splashes of paint in a wall.
A few hours after, in school, I was thinking about my crush. The question I thought to myself was “what is happiness and what makes us happy?”. Happiness has a chemical reaction in our body, but really, how is it triggered, when have we decided something is good or bad? The contrast of happiness and sadness could partially explain what we consider happiness, represented as a peak of emotions after a plain or sad mood. I like to think we live in a graph, this graph goes up and down with our emotions, where we put our baseline mood is also up to us, but that will change how you experience things. If the baseline is lower what we call happiness or a good mood will spike more than if the baseline was higher. But really what I ask is: “why do we as humans agree on how so many things are nice?” “Have we created a baseline socially acceptable and other people take it and move it a bit around to their liking, or is it innate to humans?”.
A similar question; what we consider as being a good or bad action and how we classify it. We have evolved as a social species, and created morals. Where the moral justice comes from is a question answered as easily as imagination, but really it is a conjoined push by humans to create a habitable, civilized society where anarchy doesn’t rule. Morals had to be set early on because of human greediness, as people started taking people as slaves and killing for territory for their own good. Ethics (moral philosophy) is the key factor to take into considering something good or bad.
Today I dropped a plastic water bottle on accident and couldn’t pick it up, as I was running towards the bus that’d take me back to my town, normally I’m not the kind of person to let that go but I was on a rush, and as a person who is an advocate for cleaning the environment, I was very quick to think on the implication that that had as soon as I entered the bus. My point is “are we supposed to take care of the environment and the planet or should we let it go as with the bottle?”. Ethics would probably say we should take responsibility for our actions and make the best of our world. But really, where is that stipulated, it’s almost as if it is an unseeable rule we must abide by, maybe self preservation? But current global warming won’t kill us now but maybe the next generations. But then again, why do we care? Should we just look forward to our own good? We as humans have an ongoing debate on “Should immigrate to other planets?”, to which I always say yes, but really don’t know why I would want the human race to keep advancing. If we cease to exist at any moment in time, why does it matter if we found the reason for life? Because no-one will remember that. Certainly it’s a very nihilistic point of view, but after we all die we will diffuse into the cosmos back as carbon atoms. From my POV I will always say we should take care of the world, I want the next generation to know much more about the universe than mine ever will and I’d want earth to remain an almost mystical corner of universe that it is now, but there will always be that nihilistic voice in the back of my mind saying: “F- it, live your life however you want, there won’t be anyone to care about it after we all end up in the same ditch”.
I haven’t written in quite a while, but last week I pondered the question “what is consciousness?” right after staring blankly into my room’s door knob. We could condense consciousness to the biological understanding of it as I had mentioned a few weeks back. But philosophically, consciousness is being capable of being aware of our presence and being responsive to the external stimuli. And consciousness is composed of many things, including the senses, perception of senses, feelings and surroundings. Being fully aware of your existence is key to thinking critically, as someone who is despaired and out of touch with reality may not even be able to grasp the idea of their impact in the world.
Me, being a person who was a very frequent videogame player from a young age, and recently being interested in philosophical questions has made me wonder, will we create a game in the future with AI’s so advanced they will gain consciousness and emotional capabilities? Will we be able to present before our eyes a question we had been asking for a long time as if we are real or not? And what is real?
Movies such as “Free Guy” propose that question as a possible answer. A possibility of our machines gaining interests and creating their own universe, and most importantly, a capability to look back at their creator and what they think of their simulation. I think in that moment it will become more evident and we’ll be much quicker to think of the possibility of us being that simulation.
The answer to what is reality, to me it’s subjective to the spectator, if you gave a person who doesn’t know what gold is a visibly fake gold bar and tell them that’s what it is, to that person, their reality will become that, when they get asked to guess what a real gold bar is they will say that one is fake instead. That’s why we must teach kids to not conform with what is presented to them always and that they must corroborate what is told to them. Many christian kids become christians because the reality from their birth was that god is looking upon them since their family told them that, specially amish kids, who live outside of critical thinking and common knowledge and are not given the resources to research by themselves.
In conclusion, reality is dependent on perspective and is not an innate thing in the fabric of spacetime, that’s why it’s so hard coming to a clear answer as to what is the universe and what we are.
A few hours ago, I was in school, and looking at people my age at my school made me think to myself if it’s possible to break out from societal norms/expectations, mainly because we all look and act in similar ways. Certainly there’s many expectations on people, even when a baby’s in the womb, parents already plan out how their life will be and how they expect the kid to act. And creating a totally free of expectation environment would require a blank room and an experienced person. Even as little as presenting them to the common city pedestrian will create subconscient norms like clothing, which are full of context and would make them directly assume that because they’re human and the other’s too, you should fit in and dress up like the person in front. I will always relate my philosophical ranting to how social the human species is and how we require familiarity. We are copycats, we like to fit in so we either go unnoticed or stand out enough to talk to others. And if etiquette is what it will require to be able to form part of the functional society we will in some way conform to it. Getting rid of norms and requirements would be utopic from my POV and completely unnecessary, as we as humans need familiarity to not feel an uncanny valley when looking at others. Tho’ getting out of unnecessary expectations and distinguishing yourself over your peers is key to not only be able to have a personality you own yourself but also not be a slave to popular thought and thinking critically.
Kayla Oliveira Nunes
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