Many people throughout time have wondered about the origins of not just life but of reality itself. What exactly is that? Well, reality is sort of the "law" that says anything can exist. That is partly how I define it anyway. See if there was no reality then there is no thing. No space, no time, no movement, no matter; nothing. Not even the blackness of a universe without stars. Reality the way I use it means without it nothing can exist. The other half of the definition of reality more pertains to what you are probably used to. That is of course that reality is that thing that is real. What is; that is reality. A better way to put it is to think of the difference between fantasy and reality. Reality is all those things that you sometimes wish weren't real and fantasy is what you wish were real.

Well, now that I have explained how I think of reality and you understand it, hopefully, we can now discuss the more important parts. How did it all begin? Some people have said that god doth created the heavens and the earth in 7 days. Scientists and other believers of scientific creation theory say that there was a pea sized thing that was so dense that it held all that is out there today inside its minute depths. It exploded and made a really big bang. They call this the big bang theory.

Now, lets turn on our internal turbines and think for a moment. Both have some credibility, and incredibility. Thinking on this may be hard, especially when you are trying to understand about something that could have been done by a god that may no longer be here or happened trillions of years ago. The bible, no matter that it is basically our only source reference, has been around for a long time. It depicts what a god has done. Stating the origin of earth and life in a passage called Genesis. The Big Bang people have a little less to go on, really. They do have their science, but having science itself does not a proven theory make with which the word not the meaning do. I mean, the word science itself does not guarantee that a theory is correct even if all the meaning and tested procedure is behind it. Now what the scientists really have for their side of the "Creation Quest" is a thing called background radiation. I'm not all that knowledgeable of physics so I can explain it a little bit in terms with which people might be able to understand. Radiation is something that is emitted from say an object or a reaction. A splitting of atoms creates radiation. Some material like neutronium creates radiation. Something you might be familiar with is the atomic bomb. This creates radiation. Scientists think that because a form of radiation exists basically throughout the entire universe, though not enough to kill us on our planet, that some sort of reaction or explosion occurred in the past. This may not be a bad theory but we still have to root around a bit more.

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Philosophy is a way to ask why. Why this and why that. Why does it have to be this way? Why not? Not just why, though. To philosophize is to ask a question and then to seek the answer. To me that is seeking the truth. Seeking truth can be a grueling and time consuming task. One could spend his entire life or many lifetimes just trying to answer a few questions. If one looks at the past, however, one can maybe see what truths others have found in their lifetime. One such a person to look back on is Simone de Beauvior.

Simone de Beauvior was born January 9, 1908, in Paris and died on April 14, 1986. She was the first child of George Bertrand and Francoise de Beauvior. Their second child came two and a half years later when Helene was born. Both of the children where girls, and as a result, Simone was given much of the attention that a son would have been given. She liked this attention and the feeling of superiority.

Simone was a very intelligent person and for this reason she excelled in studying and had her own ideas of philosophy. Even though she was very intelligent, she loved her sister Helene, nicknamed Poupette, very much and loved playing with her. As she grew up, she read many books, but her mother was an extremely religious woman and believed that she must hide some things from her daughter. So she would read the book before Simone got to it and take out the parts she thought she needed to. Simone could not understand why she would do such a thing. She found that it was illogical and she did not like the illogical, so, when her parents where out for the night, she would go to the library and read all the books that her mother had deemed inappropriate for her.

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A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths were made as a way for people to explain what was at the time deemed unexplainable. This is important because what man does not know, he seems to fear or hate. This would not make for a good way to live in a world where you cannot explain everything with your present knowledge. Man made myth to explain certain things he did not understand.

Myth has been around so long that it has become very important to us. It holds our history, it holds our ethical foundation. One such a myth or belief was about what people thought deformed babies were. They thought these babies were changelings, and performed tests to prove to themselves that this was true. These creatures from the supernatural were called faeries. Not those bite-sized little flying people like Tinker Bell in the movie Peter Pan; those are fairies. The faeries that are being referred to are those that are in fairy tales. A gnome would be considered a faery. The evolution of the faery beliefs have coursed through time for many centuries. It has gone from the ideas and beliefs of the Celts to explain natural events they could not explain with their intellect to a full religion with ceremonies, practices, and rites with which one could deal with the supernatural world the fairy beliefs created. As it slowed down, and other religions began to take hold in society, these beliefs turned into superstitions and held to the background of everyday life. These kinds of beliefs did not stop there; they traversed into the world of science. Superstition made its way into that realm, and dealt out such things as stress causing ulcers, or that bees came from heaven (so people traditionally used candles made from wax). Also, from these faery beliefs come children's stories like Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, which were often used to amuse or teach. Today, we have satires and literary allusions. To understand better how the Celt's faery beliefs have made their transition from one point to the other, one must look closer at their meanings.

To begin with, most belief systems are based on what people perceive as true. The Celts came from the Northern British Isles or what is known as Scotland. Their supernatural beliefs dealt with what was thought of by the Celts as only explainable as unnatural. Then again, the unnatural was probably natural to them. These beliefs were called faery beliefs because of what they mostly dealt with, and that was supernatural creatures, often referred to as a faery. The best explanation of a faery is that a faery is a creature that dwells in a realm apart from man's reality and only on certain times do they come out.

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Look around you. Note where you are and the things around you. Take a piece of paper and a pencil and write these things down. Note the Bedroom, bathroom, outside, mall, etc. Then write down the things around you-- things like a telephone pole, chair, computer, bed, TV, car, tree, man with a knife running after you. These things are important, they are what you perceive of reality. What is meant by that is: there is a reality. Reality in its pure form is unlabeled and undistorted by the senses. It is the senses that see, hear, smell, feel, and taste reality. There were some people, a long time ago, one of which was named Immanuel Kant, who said that one cannot know reality. That one cannot know a tree is a tree, or that ground is the ground. Most of all, he said that reality is determined by each individual's mind, therefore creating different realities for each person, and not independent on man's mind. This is wrong many times over. Objects of reality have labels, they are what we call them because we labeled them so. Reality is not different for each person, but each person perceives reality differently. The laws of reality make the things that Immanuel Kant talked about impossible. Some may be confused or do not fully understand. Sure enough, some may not know the laws or reality. So let me explain further.

First of all, there are the three laws of reality: the Law of Existence, the Law of Identity, and the Law of Consciousness. The first law, the Law of Existence, asserts that existence exists and that one must accept the existence or reality. When one makes the claim "Reality does not exist", they are one; making a specific claim about the nature of reality, thus admitting that reality exists to have a property, and two; claiming that they or nothing at all exists, for reality is the sum of all that exists. If reality does not exist, then nothing can exist. The second law, the Law of Identity, states that every existent entity (which is the only kind of entity there is) is what it is; something specific. It has the properties it has and no others; it has an identity; it exists. The third law, the Law of Consciousness, asserts that all things with a brain have a consciousness. This asserts that man is conscious. Man also has the ability to reason and think. To say this is not true you must assert that you do not think it is true, but if it is true you could not think.

Given that man can reason and think it can also be said that man can use his senses correctly. Using the five senses, man can sense reality. Man can hear a car horn, see a tree, taste a donut, etc. Now, for the sake of a point, let us use the word "object" in the sense that, for instance, a car is an object with certain properties. These properties include four wheels, a hood, an engine, a steering wheel, etc. These are also objects themselves. Man can see the properties of an object and figure out what it is. Using all the laws of reality we can strengthen this idea. By the first law we can say that existence exists and that objects exists. Objects are a major part of reality. Much of reality consists of masses, or objects. A rock is a solid form of mass; it is an object in reality; it exists. By the second law we can say that these objects are something specific. These objects have specific properties that make them what they are. They have these properties and no others besides. These properties give the object its identity in reality. Making it not just an object but an object with properties different from another object. The third law was discussed in the beginning of the paragraph. This as a whole could dispute Kant's and other's theories, but there is more to reality.

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"Northerners were impatient to hear the South say 'Uncle' and admit their defeat. The Southerners needed to be told what to do."

- Daniel J. Borstin

This quotation clearly demonstrates that the North wanted revenge for the South's secession. They wanted to make the South sorry for causing the Civil War; and the North would do so with a vengeance. The Civil War was fought because of the North and South's opposing ideas over whether the Union was one nation or a group of states that could leave whenever they wanted. The mere implication of "North" and "South", instead of "Union", shows there was friction. It was this friction that caused the Civil War, not slavery as is sometimes believed. Slavery was only a way for politicians to harness the emotions of the people.

Because the North refused to relent and the South went its own way, a four year long war ensued with over 600,000 casualties in 1861. Americans fought each other over some of the very freedoms that precipitated their earlier war for independence from England. After the North won the war, it left a conquered South to be readmitted into the Union. Deciding the best way to readmit the South was a problem because people had different ideas.

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"I believe the power to make money is a gift of God . . . to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow men according to the dictate of my conscience."

- John D. Rockefeller

As this statement clearly demonstrates, the people called the captains of industry felt that their success in the acquiring of money was due to the hand of God being on their shoulders and that their own morals would dictate to what good use that money would go to their fellow man. This was the beginning of a philosophy first coined by Charles Darwin, in a purely biological form, called The Theory of Natural Selection or Darwinism, later to be used by Herbert Spencer in a more social form for human applications in society, hence the name Social Darwinism. Industrialists who had gone from being captains of industry to Robber Barons wanted a philosophy to justify their means of acquiring wealth. Social Darwinism was one such philosophy. These Robber Barons used Social Darwinism as a justification and, even worse, as a moral to sanction their own actions, not considering that their own actions could be wrong. As time progressed, a change had come to the industrialists and their philosophy. Just as Social Darwinism changed, so did industrialists. They changed in reflection, from acquiring the means to support their fellow man, to acquiring the means to support themselves at the expense of their fellow man. Such was the influence of Social Darwinism on the Robber Barons and their methods in the late nineteenth century America. To see what influences Social Darwinism had and how its fundamentals could only lead to such influences, one must take a look at Social Darwinism's basic outlining premises (Angeles 63).

To begin with, Social Darwinism's infancy, in its biological form, was The Theory of Natural Selection, and its father was Charles Robert Darwin. Born in Shrewsbury, England, in 1809, educated at Cambridge and Edinburgh, and died in 1882, Charles Darwin developed the biological theory of natural selection (Angeles 63). This theory explains that natural selection is the process that brings about the survival of the strong and adaptable, and apparently, the destruction or devitalization of the weak and less adaptable. The theory of natural selection depends greatly on the variability of life over a long period, which will gradually result in structural changes called adaptions. Charles Darwin held that all living organisms adapt in different degrees and have a different number of random variations. There are variations that increase and there are variations that decrease the chances of survival for any living organism. The variations that increase the chances of survival or the rate of reproduction persist in existence. The variations that increase the chances of survival are preserved in the parent generation of a variant population of organisms, and are then transmitted to future generations. The variations that decrease the chances of survival in any given organism decrease or die out with the organism that they affect. Evolution had been in the realm of science before Darwin. The Theory of Natural Selection was Darwin's concept of evolution by natural selection. Charles Darwin said natural selection was natures way of choosing the ablest biological organisms to survive (Angeles 199-200). Charles Darwin's definition for natural selection was that the strong (those with variations that increase survival probability) survive and that the weak (those with variations that decrease survival probability) die or devitalize. Never in his life did he say "survival of the fittest", and never did he mean for his theory to be used in a social form. Herbert Spencer, with a few others, however, decided that was what Darwin meant and that it should be applied in social terms.

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I think that Mark Twain had it right when he said that we are all liars. He may have said it in jest, but perhaps he was alluding to our growing use of the lie and what constitutes a lie. As Chris Rock observes, women provide the "visual lie," especially when dating. For example, women put on high heels when they aren't tall, they put on makeup to disguise how their faces really appear, and they wear the Wonder Bra to make their breasts look larger. With men, it's the "actual lie." They act differently than they really are when they are dating such as appearing to be interested in their date's hobbies when they really aren't. Then there are more profound lies such as lying to your mate about your fidelity. Which lies are "really lies," are lies wrong, and are some worse than others?

According to Charles Fried, even "[a] little lie is a little wrong but still something you must not do" (205). Immanuel Kant describes the issue as a "duty of veracity, which is quite unconditional" (198). Henry Sidgwick, however, has the view that "lies [are] sometimes justifiable under certain circumstances" (216). While Immanuel Kant and Charles Fried appealed to the deontological view that lying is wrong and regardless of the consequences one has a duty to not lie, others such as Henry Sidgwick have appealed to the utilitarian view that lying in and of itself is not inherently wrong and that a person needs to only consider what actions create the best consequences for everyone.

As rational beings and as part of the human contract of interaction, we have a duty to protect and to not impede an individual's rights and autonomy. There is an intrinsic value in a person's autonomy. A person does not have autonomy unless he or she has the psychological capability for rational decision making that is based on the truth. Any action that limits or deprives another person of their autonomy is bad and an intentional action to do this is morally wrong. Perhaps it is not a universal law that lying is wrong, but being lied to causes a person to have a view of the world that is different from reality, thus depriving them of their autonomy. Lying is also inherently exploitive and manipulative. Each person has a right to make informed decisions that affect his or her life without being manipulated by another person's lie.

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Before we start I believe we should talk about the distinction between business and poverty inside and outside of this country. I believe there should be no distinction. As Peter Singer argues that "we cannot discriminate against someone merely because he is far away from us (or we are far away from him)..." (579). Businesses have the same obligations internationally that they have here. Likewise when it comes to poverty we should be fighting against it both here and abroad.

Wealth in itself is not intrinsically good or bad. John Hospers states that "[a] million dollars made on the free market means that that a great deal of money has filtered down to a very large number of people in the economy" (235). However, oftentimes top managers of a company make exorbitant salaries and share in most of the profit, leaving little for the workers who make the company the money. In a purely capitalist system there is little regard for the individual worker; there is only regard for that which creates the most wealth. I believe it matters how one accumulates wealth and that ethics is an integral part of our lives and should not be left out of the workplace. Robert C. Solomon explains that "[t]he bottom line of the Aristotelean approach to business ethics is that we have to get away from the 'bottom line' thinking and conceive of business as an essential part of the good life . . . " (262).

Karl Marx argued that our very nature is to work and that in a capitalist system we are alienated from the product of our labor ultimately depriving us of our being and connection to our community. Solomon agrees with Karl Marx and believes that working should be a "worthwhile" activity that provides "meaningful substance" and is a "source of our sense of self-worth..." (263). There is room in a capitalistic society for an individual to be successful and become wealthy, for a company to make a profit, and for both the individual and the company to have a sense of community.

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In looking at racism and sexism we can outline several things in which to think about. First, what does it mean to be a racist or a sexist? Second, what are the reasons or background for being racist or sexist? Third what are possible similarities, differences, and issues between sexism and racism? Further we can look at the current issues of sexism and racism as we deal with them today. Such as minority groups and feminist groups and their practices of exclusion or correction programs like affirmative action. Finally we can ask the questions of why it is so important to rid ourselves of racism and sexism and what possible ways we can do so.

Racism is the view that ones race, particularly your own, makes one superior than another while sexism is the view that ones gender, particularly your own, makes one superior to the other. For example men are seen to be more independent, capable, and powerful than woman. Whites are also seen this way against those of color. The further removed one is from what is considered the normal the more inferior you are.

Jean-Paul Sartre in his description of the anti-Semite asserted that "[if] the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." Further explaining that the anti-Semite chooses to hate because this passion fills him when otherwise we would be empty (338-339). Others such as Marilyn Frye might describe racism less insidiously as she does sexism, "cultural and economic structures which create and enforce elaborate and rigid patterns..." (413). Perhaps it depends on different people and circumstances, it can be one or the other or even a little of both.

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Manifesto of philosophy and intent.

All people are created equal. No one is worth more than any other. Not through wealth, not through birth, not through stature, not through politic, and not through belief.

No belief likely has it right. Only through science and methodology can one gain knowledge about reality. No book alone can give knowledge, it must be backed by science and logic. Myth and tradition is not in itself intrinsically good or valid as truth no matter how many people believe it or how old it is.

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It's been a while since I updated my full list of books so I decided to remove the list and just keep what you see below which is a small subset of that list.

Most Recently Bought ﾦ Most Recently Read

Currently Reading
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Life is interesting. I will always be amazed with life no matter how old I get. Life holds so many questions one hardly even figures out all the questions let alone all the answers. The more answers you get the more questions you have. Of course this has never stopped us from trying to get the answers. In fact many peoples lives revolve around getting answers one way or another.

Even worse are the questions of the universe and existence itself. It's hard enough trying to figure out the questions of our life and our planet but add in the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything it starts to get a little too big. Still that doesn't seem to stop people from trying either, even myself.

Being that there are so many questions one may ask why not just forget about it. No one could possibly hope to answer all the questions. Why not blissfully turn the cold shoulder and just live life without asking questions? You might as well try not to breath. Asking questions is part of what makes us sentient. People need to ask questions, if not to figure out the whole picture, then to maybe figure out their little part of the great big vast universe. To better understand their immediate surroundings.

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A long time ago I used to write for a multi topic online magazine called Curiosity's Escape. My column was Inside Kane's Head from back in the day I used kane for handle. Time came when the magazine's editor pretty much disappeared so I no longer had a place to write for. Since then I have written various other things sometimes for classes I've taken and sometimes for my website. Now in deep thought has pretty much turned into the place I post my daily thoughts and post my ramblings. This space is generally just another container for organization.

• The Quality of Isms
• How Much Is Too Much
• Right to Autonomy
• Social Darwinism
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WORKING DRAFT

The Whole of Things

(The Preface)

"I don't believe, but I've got a good idea."

- Bethany Sloane in Dogma

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An intro to the topic of Philosophy.

What It Is

Philosophy is most often concidered a field of study in areas of reality, cause and effect, and principles underlying being and thinking. The study of philosophy usualy deals with the collective works of historic and current philosophers. In simpler definitions philosophy has been termed the study or 'love of wisdom.' A philosophy usualy means a certain philosophers approach to life or existence. An answer to some of the questions and/or a methedology for answering others. The field of Philosophy, though some might say has a methodology itself, is about asking the questions. To be curious about life is to be in the realm of philosophy. In the past much of what we concider the modern sciences has its root in philosophy leaving philosophy to mostly deal with the sort of questions which are foundational and abrstract in nature, questions not necessarily amenable to experimental process.

Modern philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. Thus where philosophy deals with all aspects of the Universe that exist, the special Sciences - biology, physics, ect. - deal only with particular aspects of the Universe that exist in which their field focuses. So it can be thought of as such that the special sciences are the children from which grew out of philosophy. Philosophy strives to answer questions of existence such that we can understand its nature. Philosophy also tries to answers those questions of the nature of man or more importantly man's consciousness and character, thus giving rise to the study of man's mind, again more specifically knowledge and how we gain it. Further philosophy takes this understanding of reality - existence - and man and applies them to the studying of man's relationship with existence. To tie them together there are three main questions that respectively each would try to answer: What is existence?, How do I know it?, What do I do?. To a certain extent a Religion is a philosophy because religion tries to answer some of those questions. But where every religion is a philosophy not every philosophy is a religion. Religion's main aspect is not in asking questions but the laws to answers of Metaphysics and Ethics. Philosophy deals in a broader scope with Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Esthetics....