A Philosophical Ramble

A quote by Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do.”

This rings true in so many ways. One problem I can see is that we generally perceive only actions that differ to our normal activities as ones which may have more negative consequences; that is, these are our experimental actions. Those rituals that are deeply embedded in what each of us does everyday seem to be overlooked; a blind spot in humanity’s eyes since they have no obvious further consequence than our neutral existence.

Plato once said, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

‘Light’, in this case, is obviously symbolic. Might it represent truth? Perhaps an alternate version of something that challenges the individual’s prior belief/s?
Herein lies the difficulty: in my opinion, the biggest irony that we know today is that ‘fact’ in itself is false. If nought is fact, then lessons are largely based on opinion and perspective; in education systems, majority rules, or government dictates.

This brings me to an important question put forward by Socrates: “What is good and what is evil?” If societies do, in fact, participate in war for the sake of protecting what is ‘good’, and defeating what is ‘evil’, is this not merely a difference in perspective, each person fighting the image of themself in a distorted mirror?

I was fascinated to learn about part of Socrates method for building the perfect utopia; a complete and harmonious world – that children are only allowed to hear heroic and uplifting tales. To me, this leads to greater challenges. As suggested by the idea that happiness cannot be fully known without sadness, perhaps real ‘good’ can only be known by the experience of ‘evil’. Given the two are fundamentally linked – one can’t know ‘happiness’ without knowing ‘good’, it seems logical to conclude that, in a perfect utopia, neutrality would persist.