(no subject)
In the last 30 minutes of checking email, journals, blogs and the like, I've seen at least 1/2 a dozen ads for diets. It's starting to bug me that Facebook thinks the only thing I'm interested in is being skinny.
Moving on.
"There is no such thing as good and evil. Thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare
A kid in my lecture said "Satan is president now." I'm trying to figure out what Obama has done to earn him the label usually reserved for the pure incarnate of evil. But then I know people on the winning side that would say the same thing about Bush and friends.
Good vs. Evil. Your side vs. My side. Where my side is always good, and you are always evil.
In recent years I have found the dialogue surrounding the binary nature of heaven and hell fascinating. When did our notions of good and bad arise? At what point in human history did society develop a soul? It must have been a subtle transition. Things that help us survive are good. Things that hurt us are bad. Enter in a recognition of one's existence and eventual death, and the soul develops. Now bad things are working against your soul as well as your physical being. Then religion begins with the purpose of explaining how to ensure the survival of the soul as well as the body. Think of all the religious rules dictating how to live one's life. They all come back to the fact that some things will help humans (as a group) survive, some things will not. The first will be good, the latter will be evil. I would love to study early failed human societies to see if how they defined good and evil affected their downfall. In short, I despise the characterizations of good and evil. There is no good or evil - there is only survival.
Alright, enough metaphysics. Time to do some normal physics. Nice, indifferent, not good nor evil, physics.
Moving on.
"There is no such thing as good and evil. Thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare
A kid in my lecture said "Satan is president now." I'm trying to figure out what Obama has done to earn him the label usually reserved for the pure incarnate of evil. But then I know people on the winning side that would say the same thing about Bush and friends.
Good vs. Evil. Your side vs. My side. Where my side is always good, and you are always evil.
In recent years I have found the dialogue surrounding the binary nature of heaven and hell fascinating. When did our notions of good and bad arise? At what point in human history did society develop a soul? It must have been a subtle transition. Things that help us survive are good. Things that hurt us are bad. Enter in a recognition of one's existence and eventual death, and the soul develops. Now bad things are working against your soul as well as your physical being. Then religion begins with the purpose of explaining how to ensure the survival of the soul as well as the body. Think of all the religious rules dictating how to live one's life. They all come back to the fact that some things will help humans (as a group) survive, some things will not. The first will be good, the latter will be evil. I would love to study early failed human societies to see if how they defined good and evil affected their downfall. In short, I despise the characterizations of good and evil. There is no good or evil - there is only survival.
Alright, enough metaphysics. Time to do some normal physics. Nice, indifferent, not good nor evil, physics.