Philosophy Essay, Research Paper
“The Struggle between the Relationships”
This essay is about the struggle or conflict between the thinking of the two relationships that are occurring in the United States of America. These two relationships are relationship one and relationship two thinking. The reason why there is a conflict is that both of these relationships thinking and ideas cannot work together. But in this time and place they are coinciding together and this is causing a struggle to occur.
The basic concept of relationship one thinking is that a person is an individual. He or she is the most important thing to worry about. That there cannot be betweeness between individuals there is only a property. This relationship is based on selfishness. The basic concept of relationship two thinking is that individuals are not a person but that they become a person through the process of forming a community. That a community forms an individual and that person takes on its ideas and makes it its own. That the community is the most important thing there is. This relationship is considered to be unselfishness the person does not only think about him or herself but how it will affect the community.
The reasons why this is a conflict in America is because America’s basic constitution is based on individual rights and his or her own freedom. That an individual can do what ever they want as long as it does not hurt others. The struggle occurs because the laws tell the citizens that they are individuals but the religions that are practiced promote togetherness. This is also true in laws in which they tell people that they should consider others right. All the laws tell the citizens what to do but tell them that they can make their own decisions. These two different relationships cannot work together it can only be one or another. Right now both of them exist in the society and this is the problem that is occurring right now.
These relationships were discussed in the text Parmenides where Zeno, Antiphon and Socrates concluded that things couldn’t exit as many this leads to only absurdity. Those things only exist as one. This is related to the subject of this essay because an individual cannot exist as many individuals this will also lead to absurdity. That a person cannot only think about him or herself an individual but as part of a society. They stated that things exist as one. That an individual is a part of a society and not as a single person with other single people but as a whole.
The reason why this is a problem nowadays peoples think that they live as a community they try to help others and not think about themselves. My belief is that this is not true even though they think from a relationship two’s standing. They practice the relationship one’s thinking. The reason for this is that whatever an individual does he or she does it for themselves not for how it will better the society. Lets take for example pharmaceutical companies they make medicine that they say it is for the community and that it will cure all of societies medical problems. They do not make these medicines for this reason that is what they think but the real reason they make it for how much profit they can make out of it. If they were really thinking for the needs of society they will make medicines for all people not just the rich. Almost all the medicines are made for the rich the reason for this is because they can afford to buy it and not for the poor. The companies will solve the problems of the rich people but they are not thinking of the poor people or the homeless and how will their problems be solved. Some of the medicines are too costly for them so they try to go on without them. The people that run these companies are selfish they only want to make a profit and not for the good of all societies people.
This leads to the question that is their such a thing as being unselfish. I believe that some people are not capable of this and this is the struggle that is occurring. Almost everyone’s religion tells him or her to be a good person to consider the needs of others before their own. This interferes with the thinking of society, which is based on this idea but is run on as being selfish. Relationship one thinking is unstable and the only way to control it is greed. Greed is the only thing that controls greed. Because of this greed there is competition so not one person controls everything people share the wealth.
By being selfish ones reality is an illusion we believe what we want and thing it will better others. We live in an illusion, which is completely different from the reality. But our actions do not support our thinking we might think one thing but do something else. As stated in the class we are only conscience of our conscienceness. We believe what we want to believe. Like when we see and hear hands clapping we think it happened all at once and we saw it occurring. But that is not true we don’t see and hear at the same time it takes some minutes to establish this. But it is an illusion that we think it is happening in the same time period. This ties into relationship twos thinking we think we are thinking for the better of others. But like the illusion we are only worried about ourselves.
In my opinion I think most people think they are living in relationship twos thinking but we are really in relationship ones state of mind. So these two thinking continuously clash with one another. There are some people who do live in relationship two world and they do try to help others and not think of themselves first. These people live in reality were they know life is not perfect for all people. These people try to help others like helping the homeless or feeding the starving these people do not benefit from helping others. But they do it to help mankind and help the needy. These people can see outside of the illusion because they know the truth that in reality material things are not only important things but also the gratitude of helping others is much better.
All religions are based on relationship twos thinking. This is the most important part of this thinking that keeps the people as one. Philosophers are people that know the truth that the reality leads to absurdity that there are not such things as laws, religion or everything else. Everything is superficial that is made to control mankind it makes them think of the community instead of always just thinking about themselves. Like religion is the presupposition for everyone that controls their behavior thinking that they will be rewarded for their good deeds and punished for the bad ones. A presupposition is a belief or knowledge, which everyone has it, is the starting point for everything. It is something that you know that does not have to be stated it is the underling statement that is known to the person. Even though all religions teach relationship twos thinking but the followers practice ones ideas. They think that it will lead them to salvation they practice it for selfish reasons. Only thinking about the good it will do for them.
In the Parmenides text they’re only two other people besides Parmenides, Zeno and Socrates that understood the meaning and they were Antiphon and Cephalus’s group. After understanding the meaning Antiphon went to raise horses he realized that it all leads to nothing. All of these people could be considered selfish also because they knew the meaning and did not want everyone to know. But this was done for the better good of mankind the people that they were associated with at that time were not capable of understanding what it really meant. This text is written for the future so a person would be able to tell the difference between the truth and deception.
All of the text that we have studied so far teaches the reader to not trust what they read. That they will not be able to obtain any truth from it the only people that will benefit from the text are people that have experienced it. For the people who do not understand the text will tell them the same things over and over again. But the people that understand it every time they will get a new meaning and the meaning will be clearer. The author does this on purpose. These texts tell the reader to think for their ownselves and to be able to think for their own selves. In the same time I think these texts are teaching people the thinking of relationship one by telling them to see the reality. To think on their own and understand the meaning and not be fooled by the communities meaning.
In conclusion this essay was about the struggle or conflict between the two relationships that are coinciding together. I think these is not possible they cannot work together it is either on or the other. Right now we are practicing both of the thinking and there is a struggle between the two. We should try to pick one or the other. But for a society to work it should be established as a community not as individuality, which only leads to problems
“The Struggle between the Relationships”
Philosophy: Moral and Professional Issues