Response to Kimi's Post

I agree with Kimi's post about lying. When do you know whether its wrong to lie? Something is clear. Lying is bad, in general terms, but if you want to protect your interests or feelings of someone important to you, liying could be the best option. Rethorics and demagogy in discourse are built arroud “half-truths”. And these are the main arms in political arena. Even among certain philosophers. Is lying a bad action? We could conclude by saying that lying is relatively bad action.

Response to Marian's Post

I agree in part with Marian's post about plastic surgery. I also think that plastic surgery has become a fashion in the last years. Some people get addicted to plastic surgery and then look artificial. I also think that plastic surgery can be good in certain circumstances (after an accident or to correct extreme physical defects). Nevertheless, I think that the majority of people who do plastic surgery do it to feel better and look cool. It is probable that the fashion of cosmetic surgery is the most attractive issue of the matter as famous actors or actresses. But I think that most people would not need to recur to cosmetic surgery if they would accept their body as it is. Everybody has physical defects, but we have to learn to accept them. I do not understand why thirteen of fourteen year old girls consider the possibility of cosmetic surgery when their bodies are not completely developed. The worst thing is that some parents use surgery as a possbile present if they pass all their subjects. I can't also understand people who want to look much younger than they really are. In my opinion, people who continuously use cosmetic surgery to look younger or better, are people with a weak personality who can not assume their own defects or the pass of time.

Response to Amina's post

I agree completely with Amina's post about gambling. It usually appears to us as
an attractive hobby. In films, TV and books,. gamblers always win and become richer. But the reallity is different. In fact, as Amina says, hundreds of families were destroyed by this addiction. Because gambing begins as a hobby but in the majority of cases it ends as an uncontrolable necesity to the gambler. For me, gambling does not make any sense because you put your money at a risk with the intention of gaining more, because Casinos are built to earn money, not to give it to you....

Villains or heroes?

The last week we talked about bandits that remained as heroes in people's minds. We see some examples like Robin Hood or Jesse James. They were considered heroes because, when they robbed banks or properties of the rich, they usually shared their bounty with poor people. Apparently, this is the same origin of mafia organizations. Usually it is said these criminal organizations were born to protect people against the abuse from the authority. This is the reason why in some areas, mafias were supported by people. Some godfathers were considered as some kind of heroes among people they were helping out but, in the same way like all other villians are true criminals that have to be prosecuted by the law and police.

Experiments with drugs

In relation with the two last posts, I will show you a video that I found on youtube (click here to see). This is an experiment carried out by Dr. Peter Witt in the 60's. Dr. Witt gave different drugs to spiders and saw how the aracnids made different types of web deppending on the type of substance that the doctor gave them. The conclusions were that:

*The spider with LSD made an unfamiliar web (not very effective to trap flies, I presume)
*The web of spider with caffeine was not affected, but the aracnid became extremly nervous
*The spider with marijuana became lazy and did not build the web
*The spider with alcohol, built the web and tried to find a mate that rejected it (oh dear...)

This is a very interesting experiment. We can not extrapolate spider's results to humans (we have a very different organisms) but we can see how legal drugs (like caffeine or alcohol) affected the behaviour of the spider (but not their work).

Drugs and control

During our last lesson, we talked about drugs. I found this lesson very interesting, especially when we talked about the relationship between drugs and intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century, like Aldous Huxley. In his most famous work Brave New World, in which society lives apparently an age of prosperity and stability (some kind of futuristic utopia) a drug called soma plays a fundamental role to avoid self-consciousness and guarrantee the eternal stability of the system. Soma is the perfect drug: It permits you to take holidays away from your stressful life and you never suffer any kind of hang-over, physical and psychological effects. Soma is so important in this society that workers earn it instead of money. With the control of people by this drug, the absolute government of the utopia does not have to worry about rebellious thoughts. In the lesson, we can see how governments tried to realise Huxley “utopia” (we can call it distopia, probably it is more correct) and tried to find the perfect drug to manipulate population (well, they do not find it at the end, but TV could be effective in the same way). We saw some experiments in british soldiers with LSD ( Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) and we could read about how some soldiers of Vietnam war claimed for drugs to endure that hell.

Legalization?

Should marijuana be legalized? It is a question that we have to be doing to our society during the last times, but we do not have a response yet. Usually, marijuana is related with hippie movement and the 60's. Some marijuana smokers claimed by the legalization of this drug because it is considered a soft drug like alcohol or tobbaco. In fact, certain types of high graduated alcohol could be more dangerous for us than smoke marijuana. For this reason, some countries like the Netherlands created certain cafés in which it is allowed to smoke this drug. Probably, the major problem to legalize marijuana is the social perception about it. In spite of the fact that some of legal drugs can be more dangerous than this, people do not perceive their risk. All the contrary happens with marijuana that is seen as a dangerous drug. Well, it is dangerous in the same way than tobacco or alcohol. If you abuse of them they can destroy you. The debate of legalization continues in our days. It is a tricky question without an easy answer.

Not bad cinema: Awful cinema

Last week our lesson took place in: The Lighthouse Building of Wolverhampton. This week, our topic for the lesson was “Bad Cinema”, and, with this purpose, we went to the Lightouse to enjoy a film about bad behaviour (sex, alcohol, robbery...you know). Someone told us that some critics thought that this film should be forbidden (interesting...you know that forbidding things are usually the best). But, at the end of the film, I was terrified. Not because of the topic of the film (it has a plot without any sense for me), not even because the “strong scenes” (where were they?). I became terrified about an awful film and how we can waste two ours of our life seeing that. Well, maybe I am not ready to see this kind of film (this kind of awful film) I do not know, but I think that a film, at least has to have a coherent plot in which some things ought to happen. The film “Kids” has a confusing plot and it sells the “rebel without reason”. Moreover it does not have very deep characters, all of them are flat and without personal marks.

Well, next time I visit the Lighthouse I hope to see a film, and not a serie of scenes of apparently bad people without any sense.

The worst of sins

In the last week's lesson, we talked about masturbation.We talked about the ancient roots of this act in Mesopotamian and Egyptian societies and how some myths about the creation of the world are related with this act. Moreover, we can see how especially during the victorian age, it was considered not only “the worst of the sins” (this meaning began to be used in middle ages) but also a sign of sickness or madness. Some authors especulated that this act can even cause death. We also see may devices created in order to avoid the “sin” (We can see an example in the picture of this post). We can understand how, after Dr. Freud's analysis the vision about masturbation changed a lot, however it continues to be considered as a taboo, and of course, a way of being bad, in our days.