Blog Post #8: Duties for a good life

Duty is defined as a moral or legal obligation; a responsibility. Duties vary from one person to another but they are all based on the things we value and deeply care about in life. To a 6 years old boy who is obsessed with the video game Pokemon, he would feel an immense sense of duty to "catch 'em all". For me, my duties revolve around a good relationship between family and friends, fitness/well-being, future career. 
Family and friends are a vital part of my life. The daily interaction with mom and dad, hanging out with friends, or a simple talk with grandma seems to be ordinary little things but these simple moments are what makes life so beautiful. As the old cliché goes, "enjoy the little things". Fitness is also something I value because working out, eating healthy leaves me feeling energized, and happy; and this improves my overall quality of life. Lastly, it is having my future career of choice. Having a job is a part of most of everyone's life because a person should be able to self-provide but the right job should improve everyday's life's quality instead of turning it into boredom. A job I believe would improve my future life would be Mechanical Engineering because it presents the type of problems I enjoy solving.
My duties or responsibilities are to pursue or maintain these things I care for. The reason I know they are my duties is simply based on my reasonings and emotion feedback. Not being able to go workout makes me feel sluggish, grumpy, and unsatisfied. Not being able to talk to my friends or family makes me feel lonely, and deprived. Similarly, not working towards my goal of future career makes me feel unproductive, and kind of useless. All these negative feelings are a type of pain. Pain is an emotion feedback that we are luckily born with so that we know when something is wrong with our lives and needed to be fixed. Avoiding fixing these crucial problems or these responsibilities would only lead us to a miserable life. 

Blog Post #7: What makes a good life

                   I find the way I live resembles the most to Plato's philosophy of a good life. According to Plato, to achieve "Eudaimonia" or fulfillment, a person should do the following: exploring oneself, having the right partner, understanding art.

                   By exploring oneself, Plato means using rational thoughts and introspection to discover one's qualities and values. I believe that finding the right values is crucial to a happy life because these values would dictate a person how to live their life. From a personal perspective, I believe three traits for a good value are that it is controllable, reality-based (non-superstitious), and socially constructive. For instance, a good value would be honesty, it is a value that improves society, non-superstitious, and one within one control. Living life based on these good values would result in happiness. On the other hand, valuing the wrong thing could lead to a destructive life. One example would be valuing popularity or caring too much about being liked by everyone, it is not within one's control and such values are factors to a terrible life. Bad values are common in "doxas" such as "fame is great", "money is key to happiness", etc. 

                   I also strongly agree with Plato's point of view on relationships. Plato believes the key to a strong relationship is finding the right partner that has good qualities and values which you lack. Being with this partner would in turn help to develop those missing values and thus, both partners would better each other. 

                   One point I would disagree with Plato is his censorship for his idea of a "reformed society". Plato believes exposure to his ideas of imperfections whether in art or poetry would cause corruption of a person, and therefore support censorship of such contents. For instance, Plato support that tales of gods and heroes should be censored because poets such as Homer and Hesiod would portray the characters to be immoral, or banning pieces of poetry and tales because a man should not be portrayed to cry, and grieve over the death of a friend. In my point of view, censorship is unnecessary because, through intuitions and education, people should be able to recognize goods and bads and not blindly follow what is presented to them.

Cite:

Plato's philosophy of a good life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDiyQub6vpw

Plato's censorship: http://www.stephenhicks.org/2012/01/21/plato-on-censoring-artists-a-summary/

Some of my points are from this book I've read (PG-13)

: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subtle_Art_of_Not_Giving_a_F*ck

Blog Post #6: Is Achilles considered a hero today?

Achilles is praised as a hero for ancient Greece time but would he still be considered a hero in today's modern society? To answer this, we have to understand the virtues of a hero back then and today.
At Greece time, a hero must satisfy these virtues:
Nous: intellectual and wisdom
Kleos: glory (earn on the battlefield)
Time: honor
Arete: excellence in all skills
Oikos: homecoming
Xenia: hospitality
In today society, a hero does not need to have "Kleos" or "Arete" but is more common and usually share these traits: bravery, courage, selflessness, caring, nobility, and respected by society. They are the people who put their lives at risk for others' safety and wellbeing. From these definitions, they could be common people in our society such as soldiers, police officers, doctors, firefighters, fathers, and mothers.
Achilles could be considered a hero both in Greece and today's society as he displays virtues of heroes in both standards. However, due to cultural differences, a person with today's worldview may not consider Achilles to be a hero based on certain instances such as when he was displeased when King Agamemnon takes a slave, a woman named Chryseis away from him or the fact that he even owns slaves. However, in Greece time Achilles' reaction is justified due to King Agamemnon has dishonored him by not showing "Xenia" (the hospitality virtue). Even so, Achilles would defy Greece's virtues by withdrawing from the battle but at the same time value "Oikos"- a virtue for homecoming. Therefore, it is complicated to determine if Achilles is a hero in such instances.
In the closing scene where Achilles return the body of Hector to his father, Achilles shows an important tradition of ancient time: honoring the dead, even if it is your enemies'. This tradition is practiced to this day as bodies, remains of soldiers are retrieved from the battlefield for their families to honor. 

Blog Post #5: King Gilgamesh

What makes Gilgamesh interesting is that Gilgamesh differs from many other hero archetypes in that he does not start out as a respected figure, rather, as a tyranny hated by his people. However, as the epic unfolds, he displays many good attributes of a hero such as courage, bravery, and the care for his companion. Through the development of his character, the reader could sympathize with Gilgamesh throughout his journey such as when he is in grief for the death of his partner or for his fear of mortality.
Gilgamesh makes readers reflect their own mortality through the way he could live forever through his legacy. Also, he also shows the importance of a true friendship and how the sudden disappearing of it could be painful.
I personally could emphasize with Gilgamesh when he lost his friend through my own experience. When I was fifteen, my family moved from Vietnam to America and I had to leave behind my best friend who had always been with me. Needless to say, it was sad but thanks to the technology innovation of the twenty-first century, I could still facetime him and fly back to visit him once a while. However, that is unfortunately not the case for Gilgamesh.