Mother-Daughter, Father-son

I really don't know too much about the psychological and physical differences between men and women or their relationships with one another. I can only base my answer off of what I know from experience. In my house, all of my brothers and I have a very good relationship with our parents. We can pretty much talk to both of them about anything, and we love both of them equally. There may be some very subtle differences. In Kennise and my "mother-daughter" relationship, for the most part, we get along. We have similar traits, but like any other mother and their daughters we argue about a lot of stuff too and have a lot of disagreements. My father and my brothers don't really argue as much, but they got disciplined a lot more than I did when we were growing up. My brothers and my father discuss my father a lot, and me and my mother discuss other people a lot. My father and my brothers like to watch movies and speculate alternate endings, while me and my mother would prefer to go shopping, or get our nails done or something of that nature. While these are distinct differences, I don't know if it's because of the fact that there are true differences between mother-daughter and father-son relationships, or because of the differences in my parents and our personalities.

How do you know what you know?

This question, I think, is one of the most frequently asked questions of philosophers. Asking this question is a never ending discussion; you can ask how you know what u know, and then how do u know that u know what you know, and so on and so forth. I don't think it is that deep. I agree with the philosopher (whose name escapes me at the moment) who said "I think therefore I am." I agree with this literally, and in a more abstract sense. I think at a simple level, if you know you are something, and other people know you as something, then there is no sense in question whether you are that thing. It's all a question of perspective. Whose perspective are you looking from when you ask the question how do you know what you know? I think it is inefficient to ask questions that that don’t really have an answer. Unless you can find a tangible problem that can happen if you don’t know the true answer to this question then trying to search for it is a waste of time. I also think that if the majority agrees on something then it is true. For example, the majority of the world believes that the earth is round. Since we think it is, and we think we have proved that it is then it is. You know what you know if enough people agree with you.

My meaning

So I'm a little confused at the prompt for this blog, "my meaning." My meaning of what? My meaning of life? Yeah, we'll go with that...

To me, life means making the best out of every situation. Unlike Candide, I don't feel that everything is always at the best it can possibly be. On the contrary, things are very rarely the best they can possibly be, but I feel one should go through life always trying to be at their best. If you are in a negative position, and it is something you absolutely cannot control, I feel like it is a disservice to yourself to not try and be as positive about the situation as possible. I don't see why people go around being angry all the time, or consistently doing things in life that don't satisfy them. I truly feel bad for people who are depressed, and are too sick to be happy. I don't know what it feels like to not be able to look on the bright side, or feel good about something. They are unable to grasp the concept of "things are not always as bad as they seem." In my opinion, the unhappy life is not worth living, not so much the unexamined life. The meaning of life varies with everyone, but this is one thing on which I feel we can all come to a universal agreement. It is hard to find meaning in life when you are not happy, so just smile :-)

God

Does God Exist in Our Society Today?

My immediate, almost involuntary answer to this question is a resounding yes. I cannot speak for everybody, but in the way that I view society God does exist. We do not all have one unanimous opinion about God as perhaps we would have back in the early 1700’s, but God is still heavily regarded and in many cases relied on in our society. This is kind of a touchy subject for me, because it is hard to draw the line between science and religion. Now-a-days everybody wants to prove things scientifically which is understandable, but I think at some point we have to accept that there are some “how” and “why” questions that we will never tangibly know the answer to. I know I frequently find myself thinking why do bad things happen to good people, or why didn’t we win state, or why did the 15 year old student-athlete have to be the victim and not the 30 year old criminal? As many times as I may ask, I will never know these answers, and neither will the rest of the world. I continue to tell myself that everything happens for a reason, and God has a plan for all of us. I know that has been a saying that people have fallen back on many times in 2010. I don’t know how people are able to get through the type of terrible things that happen in this world without having that thought at least once in a while. God is viewed differently these days than he was say in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The one view that I feel is timeless with God is his existence, and his purpose, and that is something I think that should not be questioned.