THE REASON OF THINGS
Grayling, A.C.2002. The Reason of Things. Living with Philosophy. GB: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Moral Education
If we want to understand people and for people to understand us then we must learn to find ways to communicate:
By a liberal education is meant one that includes the arts and humanities as well as science and practical subjects. Education in literature, history, and appreciation of the arts opens the possibility for us to live more reflectively and knowledgeably, especially about the nature and variety of human experience. That, in turn, increases our capacity for understanding others better, so that we can treat them with respect and sympathy, however different their outlook on life...(Grayling 2002 pp 9).
I believe that religion comes in many different forms according to the personality of the person. Everyone needs something to believe in, but not everyone believes in a God or lives life for the after-life.
Religion - They Pray and Follow
Faith is important
Politics - They debate and Make Change
Order is important
Art - They Create and Inhale
Feeling is important
Sport - They Play and Support
Community is Important.
Religion as a belief system where people are trying to connect with something more – finding ‘lack’.
“There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it” (Grayling 2002 pp 20).
Evil
For everything there is an opposite and religion’s opposing force is The Devil and hell. Good Vs Evil. However it is never as simple as this. Neither side is all good or all evil and deciding often depends on an individual and their own beliefs.
Satan is a representation and personification of things the church wishes people to stop liking and doing. Evil is whatever a religion dislikes. Lucifer was a beautiful and majestic angel “Milton likes Lucifer’s desire for autonomy and self expression” which is why God dislikes him. “Satan represents forces of nature and aspects of the world which the church wishes to suppress, chief among the appetites for sex and pleasure”. Sex and Pleasure make us feel things and therefore it is strange to me that they should be suppressed: “There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity. Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated so religion will always exist, at least among the uneducated” (Grayling 2002, pp33-35).
If we did everything the church said then we would all be people with no free will, no choices, and no power. Surely a person like this is a person without a soul, in which case does he not then become Satan himself?
Monsters
I love fairy stories because they explore real things in a heightened world, and despite sugar coating everything in metaphors, the metaphors themselves are more raw and frighteningly clear than the real thing itself, for example the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is the perfect example of what a man can be to a young girl. “Bruno Bettlehem hypothesised that fairy stories are ways of teaching children the hard facts of life in an acceptable form” (Grayling 2002, p185). Grayling goes on to explain that monster stories are therefore for the older generation – horror stories are for adults what fairy stories are for children.
Loss
Although we may be sure of many things in life there is only one for real that is truly certain – loss and death. With pleasure always comes pain and that is the cost of happiness, even if it is short lived. We could of course stop trying to get pleasure to avoid the pain but to do so would be to deny any feeling at all - pain gauges happiness.
“It is hard to accept that to live is to lose, that to love is to lose, that trying to achieve anything of value is to lose and that the only way to gain what matters is to accept these facts with courage” (Grayling 2002, p 167).
Stoic thinkers avoid this loss by choosing to possess only what they would not mind losing“but although this technique was designed to help people bear vicissitudes bravely...it misses a very important point. This is that if one is frugal with ones emotions...one lives a stunted muffled bland life only” (Grayling 2002, p187).
Ben - "People tell stories to cope with their fears. All art and myths are just creations to give us a sense of control over things we're scared of. Afraid of dying? Create reincarnation. Afraid of evil? Create a benevolent god who sends evil doers to hell". (American Horror Story)
