What Albert Knox meant by in the quote is the fact that as people get older, they lose interest about the world. We no longer ask, 'Who we are' or 'Where did the world come from', because we've already asked and answered these questions in the past. Taking in other people's theories and answers about the world, we formulate our own ideas about how the world was created.
Some believe that the world must have been created by God, since God is supposedly the only one powerful enough to be able to create itself. But how do we know that for sure? In the 1st chapter, Sophie thought that even God cannot create itself before it had a "self". Others believed that the world and the universe may have appeared out of nowhere, and as scientists suggest, the Black Hole, the Big Bang, etc. But we still don't know what came BEFORE the big bang, and the black hole, that is why we sometimes wonder about that very first cause, the cause that had caused everything and itself.
But even after all these theories philosophers in the past came up with, we still do not have a definite answer to the questions. 'Where did the world come from?'. That is why I think that every single person on Earth can and has wondered numerous times in their life, about 'Why we are here?' and 'How the world came to be?'. We can never lose the ability to think, to be curious, because that is the nature of humans. It is just that everyday life has shaped us in such a way that we're too busy all the time to think about philosophical questions. We are always occupied with family, with school, with work, with friends, with our own hobbies and interests, that we no longer have the time to think about these questions. Not only that, the way the world has become also restricts and restrains our ability to think and to be creative. We were always told, when we were young, that THIS is right, or THIS is wrong. THIS is the only way to do it, or THIS is the way you should behave. It is because of these limitations that we seem to lose our ability to wonder, the ability to think for ourselves. It is because of our environment, that we no longer wonder about life important questions, not because we have lost the ability to.
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4 comments:
Boris, I completely agree with your idea that in modern society, we are often too occupied with education and jobs and family etc. to be worrying about 'who we are' and 'where God came from'. I.e. when Sophie says that she has trouble concentrating on school work because she is thinking about philisophical questions. I think that at certain points in your life there are things more important than just thinking philisophically. If we concentrated all our effort into big questions like 'how was the world made?' and none into learning and being educated, the only thing we would be wondering in later life would be 'why couldn't I have concentrated in school so that my total income wasn't coming from a part-time job in McDonalds?'
I must agree with your point of view! I must also say this is a very logical approach to the question, well done! Yes, as we grow up we get so caught up in our own life that we have no time for philosophical questions such as "Why'd we exist?" this however, doesn't mean we "lose the ability to wonder" as Alberto Knox stated. We are basically brainwashed into what to believe and what to follow according to what the society provides for us, this may be what Knox is referring to: our ability is "lost". However, we would never stop wondering, as it is humans nature to do so; we still wonder on a day-to-day basis, throughout our lives we still ask ourselves if we should do or say certain things, is this not called wondering? It’s not only philosophical questions that we have to ask ourselves to be stated as "wondering".
I agree with your point of view about the fact that we are too occupied to wonder about these "life questions".
It's interesting that you've pointed out about limitations - do we really have limitations to how we think? Isn't that the reason why people rebel? I must agree with that thought as we, as humans, will never "give up" our human nature and not wonder/ be curious; nobody can forbid you to think or tell you how to think. Afterall, we are in control of our own thoughts
I would say that I agree with you when you said we don't know what happens before the big bang,black hole, therefore we won't have a definite answer and so we stop wondering. Also we stop becausing of all the philosophical questions that pops up when we grow up. Good job for taking philosophy and notice this.
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