Father and Daughter

          In "The Road" the main bond and relationship expressed is the relationship between Father and son. They both care deeply about each other even though they both feel as if they are not really sure what the other person is thinking. The lack of understanding they have of each other makes their relationship more distant but their dependency for each other keeps them together. They are each other's world and they must trust each other and work together in order to survive and keep existing in this bleak post apocalypse world they live in.           My father and I have a similar relationship to the father and son in which I do tend to trust and lean on my Dad more than my Mom. My Dad and I aren’t big communicators but we have a trust and respect foundation the same way the man and son do. We do not feel like we need to express everything we feel and think in the moment but at the end of the day I know we can depend on each other in case of anything. My mother and I have a good relationship as well, one in which communication plays a greater role. This differs from the boy and his mother’s relationship in which the mother abandoned them because her love for her son was too great to watch him suffer. Because of the abandonment though, the boy probably feels as there is no trust or connection between his mother and him.

How Do I Know What I Know

• Nurture- to bring up; train; educate.
• Experience- the totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered.

             
           Everything I have learned up to this very day can be summed up in two words: nurture and experience. The one that has mostly affected me though has been experience because as they saying goes, you sometimes have to see it to believe it. When I was too little to understand what events and actions meant, my parents’ nurture came into play. They nurtured me with their beliefs of religion, philosophies, goals, and aspirations which at the time became mine as well. They helped me to understand and know my religion of Catholicism as well as more general aspects of beliefs such as pursuing my education and knowing right from wrong. As I was able to interpret events and happenings, I started learning more through experience than through what I was being told. Instead of thinking I wanted to be a doctor just because that’s what my parents expected of me, I started to explore other careers such as teaching and writing based off what I came to believe were my interests. I started figuring out the truth based off what I went through, not on what other people said or told me. I know that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are not real or existent thanks to my experience. Up to this very day, I believe I know what I know thanks to nurture and more importantly, experience.

Our Meaning

            Our meaning is something important to us. If we were to not have meaning then there would be no reason to live on. Our meaning defines not only who we are but who we were and who we aspire to be as well. Everybody has different things that add on to their meaning. Religion is one of them. Most people base their meaning on this world from their religion. Many religions say that humans’ meaning on this world is to help others and save ourselves from sins and whatnot. Others believe that our meaning is to merely reproduce and just continue on living in this world. Whatever meaning we give to ourselves, it’s something personal and valuable to us. It changes the way we view our surroundings, our environment, and our world.

            For me, our meaning is to enjoy everything we are given as much as possible. We are given the greatest gift of all: time. Time is something extremely valuable because once it’s gone, it’s gone. You cannot regain lost time as the saying goes. By being able to say that we have appreciated and enjoyed every last second we were given is to say that we have lived up to our meaning. Our meaning is not to live self consciously and doing what others perceive as normal but to do things that we are really passionate about and giving it our all.

God in 2010

     In a society where everything seems to derive from cold hard facts and evidence, God is something that remains based off of abstract values and faith. It is something that greatly varies from person to person. It is easy to see that God in society has been one of the greatest controversies of the world and remains as one today.
     From the beginning of civilization and in other words, society, has been fighting over what perspective they have on God. While some see him as Jehovah, others see him as Jesus. The lack of compromise over how to define God has led to millions of lives lost and even more beliefs. In society today, the trend of atheists is slowly increasing and while I have nothing against religious pluralism, I do think that believing in something greater or higher to live for is healthy. Without it, it makes life pointless since in the end death is death and why work so hard for death?
     God in 2010 in essence is still the same as it has been for centuries long. God is something elusive and in a way, ethereal which people up to this day cannot completely agree on a right justified definition for.

Do Candide's Punishment Fit the Crime?

        I really do believe that Candide's punishment fits the crime. The time in which Voltaire was writing this parody is very different from today's. If we were to judge it from a modern day perspective based off modern values, then no we would not think his punishment fits the crime. \
         At the time though, there is a major philosophy that continues on throughout the story which is Pangloss's philosophy. Pangloss's phlosophy states that everything in the world is created for the best. Everytime that Candide receives a punishment, he seems to believe that he deserves it because it'll result into the best end. Based off of Pangloss's philosophy, every punishment fits the crime, whichever it may be since it's the supposedly for ther best end.
        While in today's world, getting whipped a couple thousand times in order to join the army and becoming homeless for kissing a girl may be a little extreme. I don't believe that in today's liberal world that Candide's punishments fit his crimes. At the time that Candide lived in though, with Pangloss's philosophy and all we would have to say that they were justified.