Sunday, October 7, 2012

The Way of our World is Our Perception


I've been milling about weather to write about movies today or other things that are on my mind and I have chosen other. I have thought about things and have discovered that there are many ways to see the world and that there are three basic views of humanity.

1. This is one that I admit I keep to which is shown by Saint Thomas Aquinas. This view is that people are all born evil seeking only to meet their needs. By working hard with strict governance and rules people can learn to be good and come to enlightenment. This is really the origin of the "Social Contract" between the people and the ones who govern them. To many who believe in this, government is needed as without it the world would fall into chaos and destruction. 

2. The Second type follow Saint Augustine in his belief that we are all born good and are corrupted only by society. For those we only need to look into ourselves to find the goodness within our hearts. These people believe in Altruism as the above do not. Many people here believe that government and society are frequently the cause of the world's ills and that with the least amount of governance or none at all we would have a perfect world. 

3. The last type believes in freedom of thought society doesn't really play much of a role as the individual decides in the end how they will act in the world. To many in this way of thinking a person needs to be responsible for their choices as there is no governing force of influence that will take them beyond their choice. Altruism is indeed possible and is even more commendable for this is a personal choice but is hard to distinguish from selfishness. 

No Matter who you are it is likely that your view of the world is shaped by one of these three which will lead to my future political theory later. 

2 comments:

  1. If the choices are as black and white as proposed, I would have to choose to believe #3. But then, I have never been one to think in black and white - only in shades of gray.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well a number 3 is one that believes in the shades of gray. If you look at the world you can usually place any person's basic beliefs to stem from one of the 3 categories.

    ReplyDelete