Philosophy: Why Do People Suffer?

Imagine for one second that we lived in a world where suffering and personal defeats were non-existent. We would never struggle to get to where we want to be and we would always obtain what we desire. Would we be happier? Would we appreciate life as much as we do today? In my opinion, sufferance is an intrinsic part of our lives and without it, we would not have the same quality of life that we have today. I believe that suffering is caused by the desires that human beings have and their refusal to accept the misfortunes of life.

In my opinion, Buddhism explains the reason for suffering perfectly. According to this religion, there are four noble truths in the world, but there are two that really caught my eye. These two truths are ‘life is full of suffering’ and ‘suffering is caused by desire’. I believe that defeat brings suffering, and these defeats are caused by desire. Human beings assume that their desires will most likely come true and they refuse to look at what can happen negatively, which makes their hopes for something elevate enormously. When life carries different plans for them and gives them a negative outcome, reality kicks in and so does the suffering.

Suffering is also caused by the unwillingness that people have to accept the misfortunes that life brings upon them (read more on the point of view of Steven Hayes, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Nevada on the importance of acceptance). I believe that if something happens to us, it is because there is a reason hidden behind it and fighting our fate will not result in being fructuous. If people were to accept their defeats and move on with their lives, they would spend little time dwelling on what could have been and they would find happiness in another aspect of their lives. I believe that the quest for an answer to a problem is the source of why people suffer. How many times will someone wonder why it happened to them, what they did wrong to deserve it, why it happened period? People will search for unrealistic answers that will probably never come to them, but still they wonder about and fight the adversities in their lives.

The value of suffering is a fundamental value in our lives and it is the root of our appreciation. People suffer because of their desires and because of their rejection to accepting the misfortunes that life comes with.

Sociology: Youth Offenders

The Youth Criminal Justice Act in Canada towards our young offenders concentrates an enormous amount of effort on the ruling of the young person’s crime. They decide if the person will undergo extrajudicial measures such as formal letters to parents written by the officer or the prosecutors, or if they will be referred to a youth organisation for delinquents. If the crime is more severe, they will undergo a trial in the youth division and we will then decide of their consequence(s): community service, probation, jail time, and many more. However, the justice system does not often pay a whole lot of attention towards the reason that the young offender committed the crime as well as his or her environment and social class. We live in a society where the social hierarchy determines the criminals. Have you ever noticed that the majority of criminals sitting in our jails were part of the lowest hierarchy class and were mostly poor?

I believe that the powerless minority refuses to conform to the values of the society they are living in. There is a strong domination by the higher classes and this ruling class sees the behaviour of the minority group as delinquency, which is in fact why crime is concentrated at the bottom of the hierarchy. Have you ever wondered why socialist societies have less crime? It is because they don’t have hierarchy conflicts! In Canada, I believe that there are crimes that are committed in all classes, but the lowest one is the target because the highest class has the more power. The people in the lowest category know that they are seen as non conformists, which is when they start to believe in this assumption. Not only that, but the economic situation is often at the source of the youth crimes. How can ineffective and unheard voices get out of a vicious, accusing circle of misdemeanour?

I believe that we should pay more attention to the youth offender’s situation, both economic and social, as well as the reason they committed this crime before we assume they are culpable without reason and put them away. I am not saying that we should give every young offender a blank slate, but instead of sending an approximate 25 000 young offenders to jail every year in Canada (Statistics Canada), we should evaluate their situation as well as their psychological background to understand them. We have such high prejudice of young Blacks, Hispanics, Latinos, Aboriginals, and many more that it is almost certain for 142 over 1000 blacks to get arrested and searched, compared to 19 over 1000 whites (1997-1998). (This article written by CBC News goes in depth about racial profiling). Why is it always the minority that suffers from the law?

In conclusion, the hierarchy, the economic status of every class and the social norms are responsible for youth offenders. We should help our young offenders to escape this vicious, accusative and prejudicial circle of crime instead of digging their hole deeper and finding the easy way out. Evaluations made by psychologists should be done, as well as a search of the offender’s background, including the economic and social aspects. The understanding of our young offenders as well as therapy would help shape their futures into industrious and productive ones.

Philosophy: How Do You Make Moral Decisions?

Immanuel Kant argued that true morality was not a question of taste, personal abilities or opportunities for one. He carried the thought that humans had a duty, which was to be as honest as possible at all times. He emphasized a lot on the following theory: if the rule governing our action is not capable of being universalized, then it is unacceptable. Kant believed that the consequences of our actions could never justify the reasons we committed this action. But what do we define morality as? According to Dictionnary.com, morality is when one conforms to the rules of right conduct; honest and righteous conduct.


I strongly agree with Immanuel Kant and his journey to truth. I believe that honesty is the best policy, as cliché as that may sound. We cause much more damage when we lie than when we tell the truth. No matter how much pain you can cause someone by telling the truth, it will never amount to the hurt someone may feel when they find out about the lie on their own terms. Put yourself in this situation: you have been part of a relationship for a long time now and things have gone well up until now. You find that your partner’s behaviour has been weird for a while, so you ask one of his friends what’s going on and he accidently spills that your partner cheated on you. If your partner would have admitted to his mistake, it would have been proof that he wants to fix things. However, the fact that he kept such consequential information from you proves that the guilt he was feeling was not enough to tell you. Which one hurts more? You decide.

I trust that all human beings have rights and are all worthy as well as valuable. Every human being has the right to the truth, without exception. If the situation concerns them, who are we to take the right to hide precious information from them? We are cheating them into believing that everything is alright while there is an entire world of misdoings behind the curtain. We have the duty to take responsibility for our actions, therefore being sincere no matter what the consequences are. Humans also have values. No matter who the person is, they are worth more than being cheated into believing something that is false. We need to universalize truth and understand that as human beings, we have rights to the truth, no matter the damage it may cause. It is not about us, our looks or our opportunities. It is about morality.

To me, a good person is defined by values such as honesty and kindness. I believe that no matter what decisions or choices you are faced with in life, the biggest mistake you can make is to not tell the truth. Over my short years in this world, I have found that moments tend to pass by quickly and we are not often offered the chance to live those moments again. If we are not honest with who we are and what we want, regret can catch up to us in the blink of an eye. I would rather regret something I did than something that I didn’t do, but to go along with this theory, I have to be honest with myself and trust who I am as a person.


Moral decisions are hard things to deal with. We never seem to know which path to take in order to make the best decisions. I have found that honesty has guided me through my biggest downfalls and I would never change what I’ve done, even if the consequences weren’t positive. I believe that being honest with yourself and with what you truly want and need will never lead to regret.

Philosophy Blog: What is your view of humanity?

Humanity is a very controversial subject and contains two completely opposite sides with numerous arguments. In my opinion, humans are not qualified to deal with their mistakes properly, they take absolutely everything for granted and they will do anything in their power to get to the destination that they want to be at.

In my opinion, humans are not able to deal with mistakes and tend to reinvent themselves as well as their past every time they are faced with these moral errors. We are brought to believe that we can always strive for what we call perfection and change ourselves to fit those criteria, but in reality, humans are terribly flawed. Our flaws often catch up to us, which is when we make these mistakes. Then, we try to extrapolate the good we think we did in a situation where we truly messed up, which is when we try to encircle a deplorable situation with a bright red bow and reinvent our past. Humans tend to convince themselves that they can change for the better, without truly putting effort into a ‘better’ person. We lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better about our human nature. In my opinion, I do not believe that someone can truly change. Human nature is meant to be flawed. No human being has ever been categorized as perfect because there is simply no such thing, so what explains our want to get to that state of perfection even if we know we cannot attain it? Could it be guilt or the simple fact that we try to comfort ourselves into believing we are not as flawed as we are?

I believe that humans have an innate flaw to take everything they have for granted. We tend to spend so much time trying to obtain what we want, but when we have it, we take it for granted and forget about how much we wanted it in the past. I believe that humans are after a constant chase all throughout their lives. We spend our entire being trying to get to perfection with our jobs, our relationships, and our everyday lives. Once we have attained what we seem to think is good enough for ourselves, we search for another problem and forget about the journey we took to get to where we wanted to be. We begin taking that situation for granted and we move on to another chase. My view on this subject is that humans will never truly be content with the things that they have and they will always try striving for better.

Humans will always be liars and addicts. I believe that humans are highly egocentric and will go through any lengths to obtain their needs and wants. We lie to get to where we desire to be because we are addicted to our own happiness and we are in constant search for perfection, even though we know we cannot attain it. Humans are prideful and lustful and will satisfy their personal needs in any way possible. Geveryl Robinson makes the perfect point in her article called 'Are We Greedy By Nature?' She speaks of economic greed, enumerating the amounts of money that people make in huge buisnesses and the amount of money that governments have, but then again, none will give their money to the ones in need because of their greed. Also, have you ever wondered why humans lie? I consider lying as an excuse to try to make ourselves be looked at in a different and more flattering light. We want what we want, which is the making of human nature, and we often lie ourselves through situations to get to our destination point.

In my eyes, humanity is very hypocritical, ungrateful and egocentric. We reinvent ourselves as well as our past to make ourselves feel better about the person that we are, we take absolutely everything we have for granted until we lose it, and we will go through any lengths to get what we want. Human nature is simply set out to be flawed and imperfect.

Sociology: In a 2.0 World, What Should Education Be Like?

Over approximately five thousand days, the internet has become the largest social network in the world, as said by Ward Cunningham, the creator of Wikipedia. Everyone has developed a substantial dependence towards this cyber culture because of the embodiment of the internet such as phones and screens which connect us to the greatest social and intellectual network. Internet has had a rather large impact on education and will have a major impact in the later days when internet is even more known to everyone around the world. I believe that education should be internet-based with a minority of teachers.

As Nicolas Negroponte expressed in the ‘Ted’ video, children are the most comfortable in the internet world because they were born in this cyber culture, unlike most adults who are natives to this social network. Education should be internet-based because of the amount of matter there is on the internet. This would give the students the necessary tools to acquire as much knowledge as possible. There are numerous video tutorials on anything and everything there is to learn, which would make any child comprehend any subject. This link is very good because it proves that the Internet is important for education and it enriches the learning process for students. I believe that students should be given lessons to be learnt by themselves with the help of the internet. Now of course, you may think that not every child can be an independent learner and they need some additional lessons. I think that children should be given individual lessons through a school that they are signed up in while following the curriculum on their own. However, there would always be teachers from different subjects available to them for extra tutoring sessions. This would mean that the teacher positions would only be part time, making the Internet the principal teacher. This would help tremendously for our generation’s exploitation of independence and determination for the future.

One can argue that not all children have the discipline to learn on their own, but here is the beauty of it. Jobs descriptions, depending on the position, always look for the ultimate curriculum vitae to satisfy that position. The online learning process would filter the hard-working students from the non-determined. There would be much more knowledgeable students that could fulfill superior positions. It would also force students to desire the best grade and develop their independence as well as make them take responsibility because no one can do it for them.

Ward Cunningham was explaining that there will soon be a co-dependency in the world and that everything and everyone will depend on this tremendous machine for everything. He explains that at the beginning, when someone spoke about gathering all the knowledge of the world in one machine, people would’ve called them insane because they didn’t believe in the impossible. I believe that in double the time the internet took to get to where it is now, every business will be founded and based on the internet, every conference will be done through Skype, and every item will be sold off the internet. We are a generation of comfort, which is what the internet does for us. We can access it from anywhere; we do not need to be in an office to work expeditiously anymore. This is why I think that we need to modernize our children and make them learn in this manner. They would be able to use the internet as efficiently as possible, making this cyberspace the primary teacher.

Every day, there are one billion clicks, 1 million IM messages sent per second, eight terabytes per second traffic, 2 million emails per second, one million voice queries per hour, as studied by Cunningham. All this and much more take five percent of the world’s energy. Every human has encountered the use of computers and every human will become effective users. If all of this amazing cyber culture has been created in five thousand days, what will we have in double this time? Why shouldn’t education prepare our students for this dependence with an internet-based teaching program?

Philosophy: Does Knowledge Come From Experience or Reason?

Imagine that you are listening to a friend that is presently going through a heart break and she’s asking you for some advice. You have been through the whole heartbreak situation before, thus making you a better person to ask because of your experience towards this subject. I believe in the empiricist theory, therefore making me believe that knowledge originates from experience. I believe that knowledge derives from experience because without an eventful and marking past, we make naive decisions where we are most likely to make a mistake without the wisdom of this error.

C.S Lewis said “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn; my G-D do you learn.” In school, we are taught to deal with mathematic equations, we learn guidelines to literary texts, and we memorize what kind of chemical substances react well with others. I believe that that is fact and scientific proof. But when will we have a moral situation that would demand of us to solve these kinds of problems? Experience can be defined by the mistakes that we have to go through to be wiser for the next situation. Without an eventful past, we make naive decisions that lead us to mistakes. I believe that experience is what we name our mistakes, and wisdom is what comes from it. For example, imagine that you are in a position where you have a huge test coming up. You procrastinate, study the night before the exam and receive a horrible grade. The next time, you will remember this mistake, take it in account and study days before your next exam. I also believe that experience is not necessarily important in mathematical or scientific fields, but in our self knowledge. I think that we understand ourselves better when we have gone through things, when we have gotten to know ourselves as well as when we have completed ourselves. I believe that our experience is a part of who we are, it is something that influences our development as human beings.

Ironically, I think that the more trouble and pain someone has been through, the more beauty and knowledge comes out of it. Have you ever noticed that while you are engaged in a conversation with someone, the conversation is much more entertaining and interesting if the person has been through difficult positions? I believe that experience makes a person more complete.

I appreciate experience and believe that it is an essential part of knowledge and wisdom. It opens our minds to make a better decision for a situation where we once made mistakes, it is closely related to wisdom and it opens doors to better advice as well as more interesting conversations. Experience is an essential part of knowledge. This knowledge does not necessarily have to do with mathematical or scientific knowledge, but more with self knowledge and completion.

Sociology: The Web - Helping or Hurting?

The internet has become one of the largest destinations for teenagers. The teen culture has become a culture where the internet is the center of social communications and entertainment. “Fifty percent of teenagers have a social-networking-site presence.” says young sociologist C.J Pascoe. While some people believe that the internet is beneficial for teenagers, I think that it is not because of the danger it contributes to teenagers and because of the harmful influences it can have towards their self-appreciation, their desired identity and their sexual behaviours.

First of all, I do not think that the web is benefitting our youth because of the amount of danger there is towards this teen cyber culture. Privacy has alternated greatly in this generation. According to Ezine Articles, seventy-five percent of kids are willing to share information with strangers, making them more open-minded towards the people they are talking to and the things they are posting. There are also websites such as Chat Roulette which pairs people up randomly for webcam-based conversations. This site is impartial to anyone, and it is a great danger for children and teenagers considering that they can be enamored by any predator that engages in conversations with them. Children as well as teens do not realize the danger that the internet brings upon them; they do not recognize the kind of situations they can get caught up in. Predators can easily have access to children on the internet, making it an easy playground for them.

Here is an example of a confession of two young boys that explain their expiriences with internet predators:


Secondly, the internet has an outstanding influence on the way adolescents would like to appear and the way they want to be perceived. How many times have you seen ads on a web page saying “How to Lose Weight” or “Diet Tips”? They see web sites on surgery and how to look “the best you can be”, which influences them to think that they are not sufficiently pretty or good-looking. Then, there is the aspect of self identity and what defines this person. In my sociology class, we saw a video about the impact that the internet had on teens. Autumn, one of the young girls that was interviewed, was using the internet to post somewhat graphic but artistic photographs of herself to feel like she fits into this cyber culture. Often, younger girls even send out naked pictures of themselves or engage in sexually-based conversations to feel like they are performing something that is "in". They feel complimented by being asked for an inappropriate picture, which sends a message of interest towards them, and their self-worth instantly goes up. Numerous teenagers also post photos containing alcohol, drugs, or inappropriate outfits while not realizing that tracing information back to someone, even if it has been deleted, is not very painstaking.

Here is a video of a CBS report of teen sexual interactions of the internet and cellphones:


The internet has been proven to be adverse towards teenagers. There are many dangers that it harbours, as well as numerous damaging influences that it carries. Teenagers must recognize these hazardous aspects to assure their safety as well as their well-being. How can we expect our youth to be safe and rational in an environment that is treacherous and unreasonable?