In response to Alex's question

To me there is more to life than representing what we can prove to be better at than one another; for life is about becoming one with what you are meant to be, wouldn't you agree?


I agree that people shouldn't base their lives on being better than everyone, but I also think that humans are competitive by nature. I think we as humans should compete for what we want, but take jealousy out of the factor. We should always just do our best and live to our full potential which isn't the same as anyone else's potential. We tend to try to be someone we are not because we are envious of others, distorting the vision of what we are meant to be. We should take time to get to know ourselves and make decisions based on what we want, and always fight to be who we should be.

Living in a fast paced society denies us the time we need to take a step back and discover who we are. Do you think that the people who struggle to keep up are the ones who have the time to get to know themselves better?

masters of manipulation.

For a Sophist, the point of life is to win. Rhetorical language is used to their full advantage to cover up some self serving pursuit. In other words you could even say a Sophist is very manipulative and can easily morph the truth of something to please someone's needs. To be a Sophist, I think, would take a very intellectual person. A person who can speak clearly and sweet talk their target. I also think they would need to be very intelligent, having some mastery of human actions and nature. They spread the word of their belief that the gods were functioning as an invisible police force. and shared their other cynical views of religion.
Do you agree that cult leaders share some of the same qualities as Sophists? Or do they fall under completely different categories?

In response to Misty's questioin

Question: Do you think there are people that exist that do things just to test societal norms? If so , why do you think they do this?

Society today puts endless amounts of pressure of people to "fit in" and has caused people to go about their days practically on auto-pilot, following the same routines and looking to the media for guidance. But there are some people who like to test out new things, and go against the norms. Some might do it just to get reactions from others, yet some might do it just to rebel and go against society.
In my opinion, breaking the norms keeps life interesting. It makes people question how much they are really getting out of life and how they can live to their full potential.
My question is- Do you think social norms keep us from being spontaneous and cause us to care too much about what others think?

In Response to Nicole's blog

When God created good and evil, he wanted to create a world with free will and diversity. If everyone was good, life would lack lessons and would be so bland. He loves all of us whether we are good and evil because either way we have the opportunity to look to him for guidance. He never wanted us to be perfect but actually wanted us to have flaws and learn from our mistakes. But to tie back into what Nicole was saying about just accepting what God says because he is seen as a higher figure and like government officials and the president, we see them as more knowledgeable figures so we blindly follow what they say. Have religion and the government become our safety blankets, leading us to forget how to express our free will?

oh, good old America.

Out of the eight questions we had to categorize, for me "How shall we live?" stuck out the most. I believe life should be simple and everyone should do things that they enjoy doing. Society has everyone thinking life is a competition- who has a bigger house, who has more money, who has more materialistic objects, who can be the best. We talked about the American Dream in class, and how it truly is a dream that very few people can make a reality. After visiting Costa Rica, I was disgusted how we live. Most of the people there live so simply and appreciate every little thing they have. Most Americans on the other hand never stop to appreciate anything and take full advantage of it. We are slowly destroying the planet just to get ahead, and to make money to spend on unnecessary things that we use for a week and just throw it away after it breaks or the exact same thing comes out, but is "better than the last" Now we can't even support ourselves financially without a college degree, and we are practically forced to spend more money on an education that may not even help us in the long run. So my question is, are we really able to live how we want, or do we all just suck it up and go with the flow of society?