A few weeks ago, I replied to a friend's Facebook post to dispel the presented notion that humans are inherently evil. Yesterday, somebody picketing in front of Willard spoke these words: "Jesus Christ didn't come here to change the world; He came to bring another world."
Why am I retorting this fundamentalism? I feel that recently, more and more people have been taking an apocalyptic stance on human existence. This is beyond fundamentalism: this is madness. I'm not attacking religion, but the very idea that humans are evil and self-centeredness is inherently wrong, and they can never fix either entity.
I think that at its core, this is a problem of personal philosophy. I blame the education system for not introducing children to critical thought and analysis, and religious fanaticism for taking advantage of that lack of adequate self-definition. (Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" offers some good fodder for this argument)
My fear is that people will revert to, at best, a sleepy, uneventful existence and at worst, a malevolent existence that treats life as ultimately worthless from a materialistic standpoint. What if this is the only world? And if it isn't, why can't it be an enjoyable existence? Doesn't the mere fact of utter existence dictate some sort of significance?
Either way, I move to lobby for mandatory Philosophy courses in middle school and high school. Ayn Rand has made a great statement about how important philosophy is for human existence in general in "Philosophy: Who Needs It." There is a wealth of knowledge yet to be tapped into by the majority of the American public. And I don't just mean philosopher's like Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger; thinkers like Carl Sagan and C.S. Lewis should be taken into account, too.
I'm just worried that too many people are under the false impressions that humans are bad because of their "primordial animalistic motives" and "mortal existence." The world around us shows that much more exists, and whether one is religious or not, he or she should learn to judge and adapt to the world around them for themselves. And Philosophy will make that happen.
Why am I retorting this fundamentalism? I feel that recently, more and more people have been taking an apocalyptic stance on human existence. This is beyond fundamentalism: this is madness. I'm not attacking religion, but the very idea that humans are evil and self-centeredness is inherently wrong, and they can never fix either entity.
I think that at its core, this is a problem of personal philosophy. I blame the education system for not introducing children to critical thought and analysis, and religious fanaticism for taking advantage of that lack of adequate self-definition. (Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" offers some good fodder for this argument)
My fear is that people will revert to, at best, a sleepy, uneventful existence and at worst, a malevolent existence that treats life as ultimately worthless from a materialistic standpoint. What if this is the only world? And if it isn't, why can't it be an enjoyable existence? Doesn't the mere fact of utter existence dictate some sort of significance?
Either way, I move to lobby for mandatory Philosophy courses in middle school and high school. Ayn Rand has made a great statement about how important philosophy is for human existence in general in "Philosophy: Who Needs It." There is a wealth of knowledge yet to be tapped into by the majority of the American public. And I don't just mean philosopher's like Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger; thinkers like Carl Sagan and C.S. Lewis should be taken into account, too.
I'm just worried that too many people are under the false impressions that humans are bad because of their "primordial animalistic motives" and "mortal existence." The world around us shows that much more exists, and whether one is religious or not, he or she should learn to judge and adapt to the world around them for themselves. And Philosophy will make that happen.
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