Major Assignment 1: Personal Philosophy Essay
Compose a 400-500 word personal philosophy essay in which you lead your audience to recognize and understand why a specific belief is important to you. Before you begin, review the modules and slides from week two. Imagine that you are writing to another person enrolled in this course, someone who doesn’t realize that you hold this particular belief or that you hold it so strongly.
This essay is not fiction; instead, it is a way to share your belief about one aspect of your life. For example, you might write about one of the roles you play in your life, an important value you hold, a significant relationship you’ve had, a position you take on an issue, a personal goal, and so on.
Taking the red pill: Living in the Matrix of conspiracy theorists
Human evolution has made our species stronger, brighter and more flexible; it has not, however, managed to save us from each other. Ever since the beginning of time, man rages war on fellow-man, inflicting pain and suffering in his wake. It is hard to blame human nature for being at fault; it sounds much easier to construct a scape goat, instead.
I marvel at conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. They feed my need on attempting to explain the barbaric inner nature of the human race. It’s the ominous New World order regime or the faceless market conglomerates that prey on our innocent society. Them, I say, and not our endless lust and greed for more that causes the disproportional distribution of food and welfare. The blood sucking leeches,a.k.a. the banks, are responsible for our demise as a consumerist society; the fact that we were buying useless on credit, we couldn’t actually afford is entirely irrelevant. The wretched media are disseminating information as they please, withholding the truth from us! Can we handle the truth? Moreover, if we don’t like what we are watching, then how come we are still on the couch in front of the telly? We are being brainwashed by Hollywood, the conspiracy refutes. Of course, we are. Teenagers are starving themselves to look like Cosmo girls, because blondies emit strange, magnetic, radio waves keeping them away from the chocolate. At the same time, these girls lack proper attention from fellow humans, friends, family, themselves really. Even God has abandoned us in our hour of need. We seem to have left him first, I recall.
Take a good long hard look at ourselves – accept what we are capable of, mercy or utter evil, since we can practically do both, at the same time even! Our ego preceeds our social instincts. Ourselves are vastly more significant than others – perhaps we were “built” this way. I doubt if we are ever going to be able to survive within a globalised society, should we refuse to relinquish the “I” . Believing that corrupt politicians and satanic forces are paving the way to our destruction gives humans the benefit of the doubt as society’s true culprits. Still, it’s our nature that is bribable and dishonest, politicians just manage to get away with it, that’s all.
When Neo had the choice between the blissful blue pill and the all knowing red one, he wanted to believe that there is something more out there, just like Mulder in the X-files, just like anyone in our modern pop culture. We want to believe – it’s just the popular thing to do. But there isn’t any Architect waiting to take responsibility for OUR own actions, I ‘m afraid.
Or is there?
Mysteries of the (spider) web queen 