Freedom in Action

For this week's post, I would like to talk about how responsibility comes next to freedom, as Savater expresses, "but responsibility is the necessary counterweight of freedom...". I agree with Savater in this quote since responsibility is the thing that makes us think before we act freely (well in some cases). I truly believe responsibility is basic and must come next to freedom so we can learn to manage our freedom correctly. However as Savater also says, "then we must carry the burden of having freedom..." I like this quote since it is true that freedom is a burden, I mean freedom is a great thing but it is also seen as a burden in the matter than YOU and only YOU are responsible of your actions, since you are FREE to choose them, goodbye to blaming your mother, teacher, etc, there comes a time in which every human being must accept the freedom they are granted.

I decided to talk about responsibility because it's something that unfortunately many people don't accept in some occasions, including me. Everyone knows they're free, and constantly they keep reminding the world of it by doing not such great things, but who ever brags about responsibility? Of course we all like to accept freedom but no one really accepts responsibility fully or at least brags about is as when they talk about freedom. It's like the book said, when something good happens to one, one takes all the merit, but if something wrong dare to occur to one then all the blame goes to others instead of ourselves. So I believe than every human that accepts freedom must accept responsibility, it is in fact the "ugly truth" about freedom, accepting the burden that we are going to be responsible, but it is also what will make us more mature and grow as human beings. So let's embrace responsibility, for better or worse...

Freedom in action

“To accept that we are free implies accepting responsibility for what we do, and even for what we try to do, or for the unwanted consequences of some of our actions.”
In my opinion this is, if not the most, one of the most important ideas of this chapter, because I think our whole society is based in this principle; we are free to act, but we must take responsibility of whatever comes from those actions, this is how human societies function, or how they should function, because, and I think this is the cause of all our actual problems, not everyone takes responsibility of their actions.
It is so easy to accept credit of good actions, but as soon as something comes out wrong it seems that it is no one’s fault, no one did it, we just blame each other without accepting our mistakes and its consequences. We are used to complain about the world we live in, putting the blame on everyone but us, and doing nothing about it; we might say it is not our fault if the poles are melting down or whatever because we recycle and all that stuff good for the environment, but in a way it is our fault because we are not doing anything else to help the situation even though we can, we are free to act and do something else. We are responsible of what we do, but also of that we decide not to do.

During this chapter I thought that my childhood questions might be solved. Who didn’t as himself when was little of how big was the universe? Or when does it started? All this kind of questions made me put extra attention to this chapter. When I read I realized that Saavatar states more questions than dots, so I asked myself, if we can see it why we can’t understand it? During this chapter saavatar focuses on three mayor questions, that we will see it one by one next.
The first question Saavatar addresses is how big is the universe? There are two options. One that is a finite universe or infinite. The main problem with the first is that if it’s a finite world it should come to a stop. Imagine for example a wall but then we will ask, what is on the other side of the wall? And so one, because as long as there’s something there is also a space. The other option is that is infinite. The main problem of this is very simple. Can we imagine an infinite universe? What I thing that might be a possibility is that we are like a sphere or a circle, so it never ends.
The second question saavatar addresses is. Is there an order in the universe? This question is kind of tricky because we perceive the universe around us in an order, but like saavatar says “my mess was order to me” so the next question we have is: what is order? Then we ask ourselves again: does the universe have an order? The most important thing we need to ask ourselves is in reference to what? If the person changes, the reference changes and the order changes too. So in reference to me for example the universe is order but perhaps to an astronomer it is a total chaos.
The third and last question is how did the universe started? This is a kind of question that is very probable we will never know, but there are two ways to analyze this one is religious and the other is scientific. According to science, the universe was created by the big ban theory. The big problem is where does the thing called the big ban come from? Where did it start? The other form of analyzing this question is by religion. The people with a religion say that god created the universe. The problem with this is that we don’t know where god came from, and how did he created it?
My conclusion to this problem is that knowing the answer to these questions practically would get us to know the universe itself. No one has ever arrived to satisfactory theory about the universe, about its origin, size, or order and this is why it frustrates us sometimes. Can there be an answer to these questions? Are we someday able to answer them?

The world and its outskirts

The world and its outskirts, this fifth chapter was kind of complicated because it questioned a lot of things that don’t really have an answer like the creator of the universe, we use the religious believe that God made it but we can’t be sure of that so we use it to explain what we don’t understand.
In this chapter there are three points that I found really interesting they are these ,What is the world? We don’t really know I mean “it is a framework were all the things relate” but for me and my world is my family, my friends, my school and all the things that surround me.
But when we come to the question about the universe I see this kind of complicated because even though specialist and scientist explain the origin of the universe we are not sure of that, that’s a hard question to ask, that’s we say “God the creator” as I said before to explan what we are not sure of, some poeple just stop quetsioning and find God as the first cause of teh creation of teh world.
The last thing was the point that Savater said about the order, before I thought that everything had an order that everyone have to follow, but know I realize that I was wrong because the order can be viewed differently from every person you see the order the way you arrange things as you like and as you see as ordered, everyone has its own order.

The world and it's outskits

Thinking about the outskirts… made me ask myself too many questions about the universe and some of the things that surround me, so while I was sitting and wondering what to write about the “outskirts” meaning something remote… I came up with this question... “How can I question something I don’t understand or not even know?” Ignorance can be a gift or a curse because I can’t even imagine something unbelievable, because everything I see or think is something real or at least possible because I know it! Everything else that may be or may exist is something I ignore that’s why it’s called an outskirt.

When we saw the picture of the levels of the world, the teacher told us that we should think of beyond our world, society, etc. Because when we get to think that big, we’ll be like amazing for just considering it, but… well I think that we should take a series of steps because now there’s people that do not even think of themselves, neither their society and so on, and.. How can we get to consider the outskirts if we don’t have a solid base? In my opinion, when I am conscious of myself, who I am and what I’m actually living, then I can go further, until actually wondering about the outskirts can be easier and even more logical.
This book tries to “slap me in the face” when Savater says that I’ve been living in my small world and that we should think beyond, of course I know I’m a little bit wrong for being so egocentric most of the time and I liked that he mentioned this because he made me thought of what a mess of world I’ve been living…I see the news, I’ve read history and many other discoveries and he made me realize that what do we actually know of ourselves?? Why do we try to explain so much and at the end get to know really nothing? Why do we attack our intellect this way?

Wondering about the outskirts made me feel very dumb for realizing that I can’t come up with something “that great” for actually consider it an outskirt… Now I know how Socrates felt when he said “I only know I know nothing”.