Course Card Day

Ok, I admit. . . I was irritated with someone who sent me a text message regarding the sponsorship for the official publication of the college of Liberal Arts. She keeps on bugging me to check my email. What can I do? I am staying with my grandmother and there is no internet connection in her house. What will I do? I have to call 20 companies for that sponsorship. Long distance is so expensive.
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I finally got to know my grades. I am frustrated for what grade I recieved in one particular subject. . . I got a 1.5. I am supposed to be a dean's lister if not for that grade I got in LITERA1. There is a rule in the universty that DLs should not get a grade lower tham 2.0 for the term to be a DL. How frustrating. . . So even if I have a GPA of 3.022, it's no use. If only my professor was kind enough to reconsider. . . But I don't think that if I had asked, he would do something about it. . . Anyway, here's our grading system:

4.0 -> Excellent
3.5 -> Superior
3.0 -> Very Good
2.5 -> Good
2.0 -> Satisfactory
1.5 -> Fair
1.0 -> Passed
0.0 -> Failed
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I was asked by my INTPHYS professor to help him to check the papers of some of his students. How frustrating it would have been for him. . . Poor Mr. Guiao. . . most of what I have checked got a grade lower than the passing score. . . Then his students are asking if I can "help" them. . . Imagine just in front of the professor. Did they ever hear integrity? Integrity means doing the right thing even if no one is watching. . . At least I have learned something from my high school days. . . hehe. . . Thank you sir Overio!

Back to sir Guiao's class. . . I overheared one tell his classmates that he has 2 failures already. Excuse me. . . They are just first year students and it is only their first term. Some plead to sir to give them the grades that they needed. I never plead to a professor for a higher grade. I think I can never do that.

The Unconscious

Our mind has many layers; the two main layers are the conscious and unconscious. The conscious part, according to Raj Mansukhani, is the thoughts, whishes, desires and intentions we are actually aware of. The unconscious is its opposite. Sigmund Freud made the unconscious popular. According to Freud, the unconscious is a repository of thoughts, feelings, wishes, and desires which we are not willing to admit to ourselves.

Not only is unconscious a repository of our “hidden selves” but it also processes hundreds of thousand information. Our unconscious has what is called our adaptive unconscious, this helps us most especially in times of danger. Like what is described by Mansukhani, it guides us to stay away from a dark ally. Suppressing our unconscious can lead to mental disorders and personality quirks. This explains the phenomenon of the dual personality and those who are brought to the mental hospital.

Socrates said Know thyself, but knowing our true thoughts, wishes, desires and intentions would take a long time. I think that we must not control what our unconscious dictates us. We should follow what the unconscious says, after all, the unconscious contains all our thoughts, wishes, desires and intentions that we are not willing to admit to ourselves. We must therefore, reflect on the things that we really want, no matter how embarrassing those things might be for us. If we suppress our real thoughts, feelings, whishes and intentions, we might loose our minds. I think his is what happens to people who have dual personality; they have repressed their unconscious to much that their real selves wanted to get out of its shell so badly.

Knowing our own unconscious would enable us to discover our own selves. It would take a long time to know what we are hiding from ourselves, but it would take to a realization of who we really are.

picture: iceberg (http://processcoaching.com/images/Iceberg1.jpg)
the iceberg methapore, in which the tip of the iceberg (those that can bee seen on see level) is the conscious part of our mind

Ethics in the Kingdom of Heaven

What is ethics? It is defined by Florentino T. Timbreza as a practical and normative science, based on reason, which studies human acts and provides norms for their goodness and badness. In the move, Kingdom of Heaven, many ethical issues were seen due to the different beliefs of the characters. Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom), showed the attitude of a deontologist—a person who looks at duty as a norm for his or her moral actions. He was so bound to his duty as a knight that he refused to kill Guy de Lusignan (Morton Csokas), in order to save Jerusalem and the lives of many. In a utilitarian point of view, shown by Sybilla (Eva Green), it is better for Balian to kill her husband and save the lives of the citizens of Jerusalem than to follow his duty as a knight. This is evident when Sybilla said to Balian, “There will come a time when you will wished that you did the lesser evil to do the greater good”. [I apologize if my memory of the line is not exactly what is said in the film]

The character of Guy de Lusignan, shows a mightiest. He believes, as Timbreza phrases, might is right. He was so obsessed with power that even before the previous king of Jerusalem died he asked Balian to kill Guy de Lusignan. Guy­ de Lusignan was the rightful heir o the throne because he is the husband of Sybilla, the sister of the king of Jerusalem.

From the point of view of the characters, we can see that power can corrupt and desire can lead us away from duty. For Balian was given the chance to be the king and marry is lover, Sybilla, but he choose to follow his duties. Once he did what was asked of him, which is to kill Guy de Lusignan, he would not be fully satisfied. He would have been immune to his conscience and would become power hungry like Guy de Lusignan. Power corrupts as evident in the stories in the Bible. After all, we are only humans and susceptible to desire.

Many would ask, how come God allowed evil in this world, but if we make a careful view of how God created things; we would not understand what is good if there is no evil.

picture:

Balian (http://www.weekinrewind.com/images/KingdomHeaven2.jpg)

Understanding the knight of faith

Sǿren Kierkegaard in his critique of Christianity identified three stages of life’s way. These are: 1.) aesthetic stage, 2.) ethical stage, and 3.) religious stage. The first stage, aesthetic stage is characterized by sensual pleasure. Ethical stage, the second bstage, is characterized by genuine faith. Abraham was the example given, he is said to be a knight of faith—a person who is in the third stage of life’s way, the religious stage. His genuine faith led him to willingly sacrifice his son Isaac to a voice who claims that he is God. A knight of faith is usually not understood by many. Take for example, Abraham when he was called by God to travel from country to country to a place promised to him by God. He followed God without knowing what place God wanted them to go to. To the eyes of many, Abraham’s decision is absurd. Kierkegaard said “faith is the objective uncertainty due to the repulsion of the absurd held fast by the passion of inwardness….”

A knight of faith is not recognized by religion. No matter what religion or belief a person can be called the knight of faith, as long as that person truly believes. I can look back to the discussion in INTHIL where Ms. Leslie concluded the discussion on comparing the “Christian” and the “Pagan”, it goes:

“If one who lives in a Christian culture goes up to God’s house, the house of the true God, with a true conception of God, with knowledge of God and prays—but prays in a false spirit; and one who lives in an idolatrous land prays with the total passion of the infinite, although his eyes rest on the image of an idol; where is there more truth? The one prays in truth to God, although he worships an idol. The other prays in untruth to the true God and therefore really worships an idol.”

According to Kierkegaard’s definition of faith, the “pagan” is the knight of faith. Why? The pagan, meaning those who do not believe in God, has a genuine faith. Unlike the Christian who goes to the house of God but prays in a false spirit, the pagan believes and put his faith in the infinite.

In our society, we see so many Christian who does what the Christian example does. We see many Christians whose house upon entering you would see a bagua, the Chinese mirror that they keeps bad spirit away from the house—to site an example. A priest in my hometown once said it his sermon that once you believe in those things that they say brings you luck, you are already breaking the commandment on false gods.

A second look at my faith: A reflection on Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian

URL of the article: http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html


Bertrand Russell defined a Christian as a person who believes in:
1.) God and immortality,
2.) Christ, if not divine, at least the best and the wisest of men.

Bertrand Russell critiqued the existence of God, the arguments of God’s existence, the character of Christ and His teachings, the moral problem, emotional factor, how the Church regarded progress, fear as the foundation of religion and finally, cited what we must do.

Reading the article, we would start to question our own belief. What Bertrand Russell is asking is: why do we believe in the things that we believe. I ask have believe for so many years of the Christian teachings. Is it because I was taught from childhood what I should believe. Is because I was taught from the moment I entered school that there is a being greater than anyone else, which is God. [My school from pre-school to high school is also a Catholic school]

This article only strengthened what I feel about my religion. I am not an atheist but I question the way people believe in God. I have been asking if all the ceremonies are necessary, if all the teachings are true, the existence of God and so on. I was also asking how religion came to be. According to Bertrand Russell, it was because of fear that people started believing in God. People wanted to feel safe, to know that there is someone who is there to watch over them in a chaos filled world.

The Catholic Church teaches that it is alright to suffer in this world because those who suffer will be rewarded in the afterlife. But do we really if the teaching we were made to believe are all true? In Bertrand Russell’s conclusion, he said that what we need to do is face the world without terror. The fear we have of eternal damnation would not be of help to us. Bertrand Russell also said that we have to make the world the best we can, if we could not make it as good as we wish it to be.

picture:

-http://www.nucu.org/images/sign_christianity.jpg

Out of the Cave: A reflection on Plato’s Myth of the Cave

Plato described a cave where men are chained so that they would not move and what they would see are only shadows. The shadows are cast by puppeteers from a wall; the prisoners seeing only the shadows all their lives believe that the shadows againts the wall are what they supposed to believe. The shadows are casts against a fire from the wall. At one point, one of the prisoners escapes and discovers what is real and what is not. Upon returning to the cave, the prisoner share what he has seen; but the other prisoners did not believe him.

Being a prisoner who has been trapped in the cave for as long as he can remember, would not believe a person who comes and shatters what he has believed for so long. The prisoner however has the right to search for the truth of what lies outside the cave. This allegory of Plato represents Socrates and the people of Athens. The people of Athens did not believe what Socrates’ beliefs and worst he angered many important people, most of them are Sophists.

Sometimes we are trapped in caves, and are being prevented from reaching what lies outside the cave. There are times when we wanted so much to struggle free from the grasps of the puppeteers, but their grip is just too tight. Take for example our parents; they have expectations that we would follow what they want. Some children are so unfortunate that their parents wanted them to fulfill their parents dream. Some children become rebel because of this. They were not allowed to express themselves and fulfill their own dreams.

Trying to break free from the expectations of others is a hard, even for me. I know my family expects me to become. I know they never approved of the course I took but they have no choice. I think that they are thinking that its better to let me take the course I like than see me rebel. Still they are hinting that I take maybe another course than what I am taking up.

picture:

Plato from http://vh.shu.edu.tw/~abc/todo/classics/photo_plato_detail.jpg