Inductive or Deductive

'Contemplation is the greatest good,' was stated by Aristotle. The highest form of contemplation is possibly hapiness, combining it with a virtuas character. It aims at nothing outside of itself. It may aquire an amount of exploration and explanation just to understand what the statement is actually trying to say. We focus more on action and may refer contemplation as "doing nothing". The question that can be asked are: What is man's greatest good? What is the source of deepest happiness? and is there really a greater good and would it apply to everybody?

It leads up to Descartes 'cogito ergo sum' where he attempted to prove his existence as a thinking being, by thinking, 'I think, therefore I am'. There are also allot humourous alternatives made:

"I'm pink, therefore I'm spam"
"René Descartes was a drunken fart - I drink therefore I am".

Optical illusions as metaphors

This is an optical illusion by Julian Beever who is an artist who has spent 20 years creating pavement art in Europe, USA and Australia. Many of his creations are optical illusions, such as this one, where Julian appears to be perched on a ledge, waiting for Batman and Robin to climb the building and rescue him.

All there is is just pavement in front of him, and the street below together with the crowd, plus the building below him on fire, are all tricks played on the eye. It is also the angle that it has been taken at to make the illusion more effective. At first the impression that it gives you is that it seems to be real but then quickly you notice that it is actualy just an illusion due to the fact that what you are seeing is not really possible. At times it acts as a metaphor on how we see things wrong because the brain makes a wrong interpretations, so we see things differently from the actual reality. Taking this from another angle there will be no optical illusion as it may not even make anysense of what is actually there.

We see with our brain and not only with our eyes. When an image falls onto the retina, nerve impulses are sent to the brain where the actual perception takes place. The brain puts together bits and pieces of information, matches the vision we see with our eyes with the images stored in our visual memory, so that we know what the object is, and interpret visuals so that we know where the object is.

What should be taught in schools?

In school I think we are being given the very basics needs of modern day knowledge, we get a package with subject choices and with those we can get into university after we get the diploma. The thing is we don't learn how to live life in the world outside school, specially when it comes to money and how to deal with certain cirumstances. Besides the subjects we have now we should have a class or have it applied to certain subjects on how to deal with "real life" situations. For example in business we should learn how to use money wisely, how to deal with taxes and how to invest money, teaching us the basics of starting a life after or during school so that we have a solid start. Besides that we should be given a form of social dynamics, things we should know about the community, what social conditioning is, how we should not care what people think of you and how to make a social circle for example. Other than that also having a form of martial arts taught at school will be dope.

Are we scared to go beyond our limitations?

An elephant, when young, is tied with a length of rope to keep it from escaping. After struggling for a while with this, the elephant soon learns that it can't break free. But even years later, when the elephant has reached massive size, it still won't fight against the same thin rope, even though it could easily snap it with just a tug. It has learned its limitation so well that it no longer tries.