What Do You Believe?

What do you believe? It is a question I kept on coming back to over and over again in my humanities class, Who am I?. We studied the ideas of many philosophers and read the book Sophie's World of through which we were able to dive deeper into the ancient philosophies. Philosophers of which we looked into  include Aristotle, Plato, Zeno, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, Democritus and a few others. Most of the philosophers being from ancient Greece. We dove into their ideas such as The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, Zeno Paradox, Aristotle and his empiricism, and many others. Often when analyzing these ideas we brought into question our own beliefs and truths, we saw its flaws and its logic of which then it was up to us to decide if we would still hold on to them or adopt new ideas. Analyzing these different philosophies allowed us to look at the world through different lens, some were blurry and confusing others we understood but doubted, and others we both understood and agreed with. But as I learned we can never fully trust the lenses we look at the world with as there are different ones and none can ever be  proven to be the full truth. After looking at philosophers we also looked at psychology. More specifically Carl Jung and his conscious pyramid of which goes through our conscious levels from the ones we are most aware of to the ones all humans share but we often are not aware of. Then it was finally time to bring our own beliefs into full light. We would do this through a podcast stating our beliefs. So I decided to bring one of the beliefs I’ve had since as long as I can remember, that belief being Love must always have a reason behind it...
Sound cloud recording : Love and Reason

    Podcast Script:

  Introduction: “And yet to say truth love and reason keep very little company nowadays” William Shakespeare, in a Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. A very popular quote and quite beautiful from a romantic perspective but alas it is not something I believe. I believe reason always has something to do with love.Hello to all I am A.A.G and this is what I believe.

I’ve been curious since birth and I believe all humans are curious by nature but some don’t often act on it. So at a young age I asked questions about almost anything and almost always I wouldn’t give up until I found a satisfactory answer. So it was not long before I started questioning love. Not any specific type of love but just all love. I wondered what exactly it was, I wondered if it was really so great how could people simply leave it with a 4 letter word, and I wondered why. I wondered why people loved and often times I found that there was always a reason behind any kind of love. There is not one specific moment or experience of which led to this belief. It’s more of a collection of memories and experiences. One of the first ones I remember was a few years back when I was recalling the time I cut my head open because my older sister pushed me off my bed. When I told her about it she told me that when we were little she freaked out because of it and felt extremely guilty that she had taken part in my injury. When I asked her why she seemed to be taken a bit off guard but told me that she felt extremely guilty not only because she had hurt me but because she loved me and felt the pain of hurting me. For some reason 8 year old me was not satisfied with this answer and asked why she loved me. My sister quickly replied “well because you’re my sister duh” and the conversation seemed to end there. Back then I didn’t think much of it but recently thought about it more and more. The more I thought about it the more I realized that one of the major reasons that my sister loved me was because she is my sister and we have shared our childhoods and grew up with each other. If I had been a stranger or even just a neighbor the love she had for me could not be the same or could even be non existent. 

Philosophers:

Looking at the philosophy aspect of this I believe Parmenides would have agreed with my view to some point as he believed nothing can come from nothing. There must always be a reason for something and therefore in order for love to exist there must be a reason which is something that Parmenides would not argue against if he were alive today. Then viewing the psychology aspect of this with Carl Jung and using his conscious levels I believe the simple idea of love can fall anywhere from the conscious mind to the unconscious mind if you think about it. As sometimes love can be something we are fully aware of and some of us even try to control it even though deep down we know love is not meant to be controlled.  Whereas in relating to the unconscious mind humans experience some type of love throughout their lifetime it is a shared experience by everyone yet differs from person to person. It is one of the most consistent yet most inconsistent unseen forces in the world. It is deep down in us, in our subconscious whether we like it or not. And I believe that there is a reason for this love.Whether it be as big as form of glue to keep humans from being torn apart by our own natural selfishness or as small as simply loving a person for the roles they’ve played in your story. Love must always have a reason behind it.

Conclusion: Love is still love in the end. It can be many things from healing to heartbreaking, from crazy to calm. All I am saying is that sometimes it’s okay to take a step back and simply think about the reason behind your love for someone. Thank You.

Sources:
Gaarder, Jostein, and Paulette Møller. Sophies World: a Novel about the History of Philosophy. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2012