TOK Day Evaluation

For our TOK presentation, I was in group 2 and we talked about ethics and emotion.

I think I did a good job in my group, I put a lot of work in my part of the presentation. However, I think I could have addressed the public more frequently during my part of the presentation (parents and teachers as authority figures), this way it would have been a lot less monotonous.

I also feel that, in general, we worked very well as a group, we were able to come up with several activities and interesting ideas on our topic, and we were also able to work out a way to go through our presentation despite technical problems as not having internet or the fact that one of our team mates was sick and could not present. I think we were able to explain our views on ethics from the three different perspectives we were planning to approach the topic, but I think we did not explain emotion as well as we could. We showed emotion in our views of ethics, but it could have been more explicit. I also felt that our presentation was missing some cohesion between its three main parts and maybe we could have organized our time better.

I learnt several thing from the other presentations as well as from ours. I noticed that being able to work well as a group is essential to make a group presentation and that activities and specific funny commentaries make presentations a lot less monotonous and make people pay a lot more attention. I also learnt about different views on different topics that I had never considered in such detail. For example the line between what is art and what is not art or the fact that it is so easy to trick your brain into being affected by things that are not real.

Ethics?

“Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.” 

― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

Ethics: 

"the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles" 

"moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity"

(Oxford Dictionary of English)

"The basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human conduct." (BusinessDictionary.com)

"a social, religious, or civil code of behaviour considered correct" (Collins English Dictionary)

These are some definitions of ethics, but I think they can be summarized as the study of what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes I wonder how can this be possibly studied, everyone thinks in a different way, we all have different cultural contexts, we all have been brought up differently and so, it would be natural to think we all have different ideas of right and wrong. I understand there are things that are definitely wrong as murdering a child for no reason. There are exceptions, there are people whose minds work in a radically different, even twisted, way and have no objection in killing a child. But is there really something that is definitely right, something that is always right no matter what? I guess what ethics studies are patterns in this right and wrong 'conflict', I guess it is the same with most areas of study as science and history, where there are many perspectives, but it still strikes me as strange to try to study such a subjective and unstable subject. 

We could talk about eating meat. Is it ethically correct to it meat? Is it correct to rise animals, feed them and take care of them only to kill them later and eat them? There are people who argue it is not wrong, they say we need to eat and that being superior in intelligence to them, we have the right to feed our selves. But then there is the fact that as superior in intelligence to them we have the capacity to survive by feeding on other things. In T.O.K. class, we watched a documentary in which people with different positions towards the idea of eating meat went to a place where cows are 'processed' to be transformed in edible meat. This group of people included vegans, vegetarians, obsessive meat lovers and people who eat meat. In the documentary we saw two cows being slaughtered. I was really shocked, because I do not like eating meat very much, I try not to think too much when I eat meat, because then I remember I am eating a corpse and I feel awful. The only reason I am not a vegetarian is, basically, because I would starve. My parents eat meat and they insist I need it too. What really shocked me after finishing the documentary, was that no one felt bad of eating meat after seeing it, the people I talked to insisted that there is nothing wrong in eating it. In my case, the documentary did shock me and I stopped eating meat for four days, it was not longer because of the reason I gave previously. After this experience I kept wondering if it is ethically correct to kill animals in order to eat them and I wondered about the diverse perspectives people have on the topic. It is really hard to talk about ethics, who are you to decide what is right and what is wrong?

And if you think with more detail, it is even harder t give an answer to this, as before deciding which actions are right or wrong you need to define what does 'right' mean and what does 'wrong' mean. Then there is the fact that ethics and moral ideas tend to contradict their selves. Talking again about the conflict between eating meat or not there is a quote by  Isaac Bashevis Singer that says: “People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.” The more you think about it the more complex and subjective you find it. 

History

"It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain"

-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

History has been defined as "the study of past events, particularly in human affairs" or "a continuous, typically chronological, record of important or public events or of a particular trend or institution" (Oxford Dictionary of English).

I believe history is really important, as it helps us learn about both mistakes and successes in our past and it helps us understand why we are now as we are. However, there is one really interesting and frustrating thing about history and it is that we can never really know the truth about what happened. In some cases we can hear or read testimonies of people who were present when the event we are studying happened, this makes it possible to reconstruct the events. The thing is we do not always have testimonies and so we have to speculate about what really happened. Also it would be absurd to think people would recall or remember things as they happened: humans are always biased. Our emotions and beliefs tend to get in the way even when we try to put them away; it is impossible for a human being to put their emotions and cultural context apart entirely.  Testimonies are never exact, in fact they can be completely different from the actual events.

What I am trying to say with this, it is that we cannot just believe everything written in a history book, because it could all be wrong or it could be telling the story only from only side. I am not saying there is absolutely no truth in what we know about our history, but we have to remember all of it has gone through a political and cultural filter, and not everything gets past it without being modified. Take this for example: When I was younger, I used to believe everything our teachers told us in school were absolute truths, that teachers really knew what they were talking about and were always right. But a couple of years ago, I had a history teacher who taught us about the Spanish Inquisition and told us how horrible and unfair it was. She talked to us about the massacres, about how people were judged just because they thought differently, how emotion and political affairs got in the way. She was an atheist. That same year, we learned about the same topic from our religion teacher, who was extremely Catholic, and his view of this historic event was completely different. He justified the Inquisition, minimized the amount of deaths it caused and never considered it was unfair to judge people in that way. 

Another example, can be seen in the Palestine-Israel conflict. I watched a documentary in which kids from various parts of the Israel territory and the Palestine one had had the opportunity of spending a day together. All these kids were interviewed about what they thought of the conflict. They had grown in such different environments, some of them having lost their fathers in hands of Israelites, some others extremely religious, that they had completely different perspectives of the conflict. The idea of putting them all together for a day, was to see if they kept their views after spending a day together. The funny thing was that those who met  each other began to understand better the other side of the story and understood there was a lot behind their 'enemies' actions, that maybe both parts were right in a way. They had never seen the other side of the story and their society and the things they had experienced had made them shape the truth of the war in different ways. However, the same children who had reached those conclusions were interviewed again some years later and their mind had changed completely. These children had gone back to their lives and societies, which, once again had influenced their views. The most understanding kids, claimed they had to protect their country, and all the progress made during the filming of the documentary was lost.

These examples show how information never gets to us without having been biased by the cultural contexts, beliefs, etc. of the person who is recounting the facts. We cannot possibly know the truth of what happened, there are so many perspectives and so much subjectivity. That is the reason we have to listen or read from different sources and perspectives in order to make our own judgements  and create our own theories of what really occurred.

Politics and Identity

Recently, our philosophy teacher gave us a TOK lecture about politics. He said they are important, because they cause discussions between the perspective you have of the world and the other's perspective, making it possible for us, humans, to coexist in relative peace. Without all the debates and disputes caused by politics, our systems and laws would never be improved, all these debates are needed to try to make life fair for everyone.

He also mentioned that politics aren't just the ideas, but all the feelings behind these, as people's identities are in them. Politics are something that touch people in the very core of their beings, it stirs emotions in the same way religions do, because we discuss our principles, our ways of seeing the world. When something so inherent to us is discussed and even attacked, emotions take an important part in what we say.

All of these was really interesting to hear, but what really left me thinking was what he said about our position as individuals in society and the way politics affects our lives. Because though we may have not given much thought to it, politics are a crucial part of our everyday life. In fact, I believe they have such a great influence in us, that they can reach the point of controlling them absolutely. 

Our teacher talked about how much we were controlled by the system devised by our governments. How we went to school, where they implement ideas we tend to accept without much questioning and try to make us all the same, just another person in a mass of thousands. How our society has certain expectations on us without even knowing us, only because of our social status or the type of education we receive. How what we want clashes with what the society demands from us, and how they tend to win. 

Maybe it can be a little extremist, but it's all true. We aren't as free as we think we are, we are just another piece in the big machine our society is. Our views of the world are affected by the culture we've grown in, by the trends in our society, by all that propaganda around us, so discrete, we can hardly notice it, and by what people around us think about what's happening around the world, history, religion... 

I had a discussion with one of my classmates about the invasion of the U.S. in Afghanistan. My classmate, being American and the son of military, believed it was the right thing to do and that it was completely justifiable. My point of view was the complete opposite, my family is also one of military people, but I've never been too close to them and none of them are American. Our TOK teacher made us think about how much propaganda we had received and how much it had affected our opposite points of view. This is a clear example of how politic interests, propaganda, culture... influences our opinions and acts. It's surprising to think that if I had grown in a different environment I would probably think differently, I would probably be an entirely different being. I wonder to what point have the views of those around me affected my visions, if I really am what I want to be. It's really hard to get out of the mass and become a real individual in a society interested in us being all the same, but  I believe it's important to try. To stop for a moment and think if our actions are what we really want them to be or just what they expect from us, what the society has made them be. And also, to try and actually see the world through the perspective of another person and try to understand their views better in order to be able to determined how biased we are due to our proceeding.

And, after thinking about this, is it really possible to find truths when there are so many cultures and societies, all different from each other? Or are 'truths' just ideas implanted to the mass?

Truth and Relativsm

"Truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution." Albus Dumbledore

- J.K. Rowling 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'-

Though many may think differently, truth is a really complex and problematic term. It is a word used in daily basis in diverse contexts: it can be used to name the coherence between what it is said and what it is thought, as an adjective, as an undeniable preposition... During the last classes, we have been learning about this concept. 

There are three main types of truth: 

• Necessary Truths: they cannot be argued with.
• Analytic Prepositions: they predicate about and object contained in the subject.
• Synthetic Prepositions: predicate about concepts not included in the subject.

It is hard to know whether a truth is 'real' or not, and that is why it is a difficult topic to discuss. Before this class I used to think, just as ancient Greek philosophers, that there existed one universal truth, but we still had to find it. During the past classes, I have been thinking about it and I've realized that it is not possible. There is always the possibility of having more than one truth, as all humans think differently and have grown up in different environments and cultures. What I see as something true, could be a complete falsity for another person. There are many kinds of people living in this planet, and everyone of them has their own way of being and thinking. And because of this diversity of thought, there are many different truths; like in the case of the Bible and the Koran  does anyone of them contain the truth in its pages? Does only one of them include the truth? Are they both correct? We do not know. Every person can have his/her own ideas of life, and those will be their truths. Who are we to say which truths are correct? 

The idea of each person having his/her own truth is called relativism. It may be a really convenient idea, as it promotes the believe of everyone being different and about diversity. However, this idea is dangerous. If everyone had their own truth, then laws wouldn't apply to everyone, and people cold violate other person's not negotiable rights (the right to life, freedom in speech...). It is not a viable way of applying truth to our now a days society, it would destroy the order created by the law. Nevertheless, relativism does exist in terms of a country's law, depending on the culture they practice, they have different laws that fit with their own ideas about truth.

Truth is dangerous, in some cases, terrible, it can cause lots of harm if it is not treated with caution. By believing in relative truth, we can cause much harm to others. In order to avoid this, we should always have in mind the not negotiable rights of humans. No matter how relativist a person is or in what culture they grew up, truths that cause real harm to others cannot be accepted.

Humans As Machines

I tend to think of humans as machines, it is strange as machines are actually designed after humans. A photographic camera, for example, is an imitation of the human eye. Nevertheless, I think it is a really successful way of understanding how humans "work". When I think about inductive reasoning this image comes to my mind:

Classification

Classification is defined as the arrangement of a group of things in classes that share some specific characteristics. We, humans, tend to instinctively classify everything around us, but why do we do it? I think the main reason for this to happen is that we are naturally curious, we have a need of knowing everything around us, and classification is an useful element we have been provided with to understand the world. So when we come across something new, we are able to have some sort of instinctive knowledge of it. For example, if we come across an unknown animal, we could have some sort of knowledge about it just by classifying it as an animal. However, there is a problem with classification, and it is that we assume it provides reliable previous knowledge that led us to prejudices and making stereotypes in the same way inductive knowledge does. An example could be when being introduced to a person we have never seen before. Even if it is in a subconscious way, we will classify this person and probably be induced to make some judgements that are not necessarily true before we even get to know the person.

During our Friday seminary on this topic, we were divided into groups consisting of either girls or boys. Each group was given some post-its and we were asked to write down adjectives describing men and women separately. Then we all pasted our descriptions on the board and we discussed them. I personally, thought that we were definitely not going to be able to successfully describe men and women. When my group was working, I really did not know what to write down, it is not that easy to classify such big groups as men and women are, there are too many of them and each is different from another, there is always an exception to the rule. At the end I think we all just wrote down what stereotypes had defined for each gender: women being nice, teary, caring, 'soft', hypocrite; and men being strong, brusque, athletic, funny. I did not feel identified with many of the characteristics my group wrote down nor with the ones written by my classmates, and I think, several of them thought the same I did. 

At the end of the lesson, we all concluded that the classification we had made was nothing else but pure stereotyping. So here is the problem with classification, it can led us to judge incorrectly someone or something without enough evidence and it can facilitate the creation of stereotypes.