That is a question each and every parent asks every time their kids go to school, or do they. The recent gun related incidents in several US schools and elsewhere around the world, have prompted legislation that makes gun ownership a bit tad harder but there are always loopholes as the incidents themselves have shown. Guns have been in the blood of all Americans since the Constitution includes a phrase that states, each and every American had the right to bear arms and it was interpreted literally as is. Gun control which has been in place ever since crooks started to tote guns and so law enforcers had to catch up and started to carry their own (for protection). Does the world need guns? Ask yourself, and you’ll say no but get involved or have somebody you know involved in gun related incidents and you’ll suddenly have a change of heart (most probably).
All of us have been exposed to a society that has been made and shaped by weapons of all shapes and sizes and all of them were invented for self-preservation from other humans. Guns is a way of saying don’t mess with me or I’ll mess with you and it’s not a very comforting idea to see one in public for it always raises your blood pressure at mere sight. The US has had a long and hard history of gun related violence and so has the rest of the world but the basic and main idea of bearing arms has been lost in translation so to speak in all the violence and crime that has been related to and blamed on these weapons of choice. They are small, deadly and easy to carry so what else could you ask for in a personal protection measure, others carrying the same weapons! Paranoia is the game and if society cannot deal with the problem, then should we allow society to take care of itself by allowing everybody to carry guns? You be the Judge!

Scientology has been called a cult, a religion, a pseudo-science and many other names. Scientology has fallen prey to more speculation when news of many celebrities in Hollywood, have been identified with associations to the said organization that many view with skepticism. Research reveals that Scientology is a body of practices and beliefs that are based on the works of American Speculative Fiction author L.Ron Hubbard who is the recognized father of the organization. The main regulatory organization for the previously unknown group is the Church of Scientology, a hierarchical organization founded by the author himself. Many other groups who work outside the main body use Hubbard’s works as basis for their own interpretation of the initial knowledgebase. During a time when people were deeply engrossed in a way of finding believable ideals that other religion can offer, scientology filled the gap. Their declarations as a church comes when Hubbard notices that there are many supporters who use his work in a myriad of ways, unifying them in the Church of Scientology which allowed him to standardize the interpretation of all his works. The ideals Hubbard interpreted are rooted in the works of many a famous philosophers like Bacon, Spencer, Freud and many others. His accumulated body of knowledge encompassed the whole philosophical theater from then till his time, incorporating some of the ideals of Hinduism and many other religions.
The combination of all those bodies of thought has resulted in a group that revolves around eight fundamental ideals that have to maintained and kept in balance. In Scientology, there is no absolute right or wrong but rather a body of ideals or events that lead to such. The scientology cross has eight corners, each representing eight ideals or dynamics on which they base their teachings. Self, Creativity (procreation family and Sex), Society (group and community), species Survival, life forms in general, matter, spirit and Infinity (Supreme Being) are the eight basic fundamentals areas they focus on. All decisions a practitioner of Scientology makes is said to need to impact all equally weighing them against these basic ideals.
Summing up all the information, they can be seen as an organization that has been derived from the many bodies of thought that is based on the acquired knowledge of many philosophers all combined into one body of knowledge. May you see it as a pseudo-science a religion or anything else, as long as it does not endanger the lives of their following then they should be left to do their own business.

The damage has been done and what we are doing with either supporting these types of work is either to fuel the fire that is already raging between all races and religions making it burst into a conflagration that might spell our end. The Danish government’s reply to the outcry of Muslims is outrageous and is a sign that better relations and understanding between people from all over the world should be at the main agenda of the UN, where even the Secretary General has received fire for his statements towards the said cartoon. 

The root was a cartoon but the implications are far reaching than the pages of the newspapers they were printed on. I am a Roman Catholic and how would you feel if Jesus was in that cartoon instead of the Prophet Muhammad, or the great Buddha for Shinto’s? the effects might be too hard to quell and such insensitiveness to issues like these which are so trivial and could have been avoided in the first place fuels the rage and anger of young Muslims who have been educated in radical Moslem thinking infusing violence into the spreading of the word of the prophet as part of the whole deal. I am not a Muslim but I feel affected by such insensitiveness which was done just for fun or the right to express ones self. You be the judge, should the said cartoons have been allowed to go on to the presses again and again? Or should the media have recognized its role in the protection of the rights of those who might be affected by the fallout of such short sightedness? 

We all fail to recognize the need to live in harmony with each other for this earth we live on is just one earth. No second chances, for if we end up destroying it, we don’t have anywhere else to go to. Time will come when all of us will be gone from this earth and all of us would return to what we were made of, the earth itself, dust. All of us would turn to dust after we die and that only has one color, grey or brown. We might have similar DNA yet we hate each other so much which still baffles most people. Look at each and every child who does not know how to speak, take one from each country on this earth and place them in a room and you will not see any prejudice or violence. Inside that very room they are just kids, kids who don’t care about religion or skin color or where they were born. 

I’m still amazed at my daughter’s friendliness towards everybody, the mailman, the kid who lives off the street, the stranger who passes by, all she says is “HI!” and her face lights up with a smile even though she doesn’t know that person. The innocence of youth is what we loose first as we get an education on this earth, as we learn right from wrong which should be one of the things we shouldn’t change with ourselves. “Give a smile from time to time, it’s free, it makes people happy and it doesn’t cost a cent.”

As we have seen in the past posts, more and more philosophy students are finding work in the most unlikely places like manufacturing and design. Their analytic mind that questions every detail is proving to be invaluable in and out of the workplace further establishing their place. The move of industry and commerce to more philosophical approaches allows them better customer satisfaction for they look into the possible questions that are to be asked and formulate the solutions and answers into the products as they are designed minimizing the need for support and follow-up processes lowering costs. Products that speak for themselves are the best weapons of industry simplifying the support structures needed for their product base allowing development of better and more human friendly gizmo’s and gadgets. We will surely see more and more industry leaders adopting the philosophical approach to their business for unstable markets that can have the power to make or break an institution needs innovative ways to promote and make products better while lowering overhead costs considerably. The products we see today on the market are product of intensive research and developments in their functionality and lifetime which has suffered greatly in times past due to industry shaking events on the global scale that are forcing more and more business hung out to dry and close shop. Hopefully the adoption of better philosophy in their approach and outlook for the future will have an impact on their futures which applies to all scales of businesses from the smallest home based units to the biggest multi-national firms that are tackling diverse markets as they enter new market areas.

At this time Natural law has been divided into two main areas; the law of man and the law of Nature which is said to define what where and how things happen around us. This in turn relates to most modern views of the so-called natural Law, the definition of which is still an enigma to this day even with all the sciences and theological bodies that try to define and give meaning to it. Analyzing religion from all sides, we have a common fact in that all of the sects/groups have a single being at the top, Jesus for the Christians, Muhammad for the Muslims, Buddha for the Shinto and so on and so forth.

Summing all of this up, the term “Natural Law” is still a vague yet seemingly defined concept that causes us to go back to the questions our ancient forefathers asked themselves, why are we here, how does the world and nature work out as it does and what may be the future for us in this ever-changing universe which “Natural Law” controls but whose true meaning is still out of grasp. Many philosophical and scientific genius have defined it but to look back, their definitions lead to more questions rather than answers. Science as we know it is an evolving body of knowledge and Philosophy as well is such that both have a common function, which is to give us reason, a reason to find ourselves in our place in this time and space and time of thinking as we evolve into the future human race. No one authority should claim supreme authority for man is a thinking being capable of creating his own view from what is happening which makes the task ever more difficult. The true definition of Natural Law might be out of reach but we are all embodiments of the said law however incomprehensible and vague it may be.

When the Romans came, they adopted and created their own set of laws that became the standard for legal; theory and which was to become a part of the Roman Empire’s reason for success in their conquest of the known world. They formulated laws that derived from the natural laws of Aristotle’s times that stated things happened for a reason combined with their view of man’s reason in the whole equation. Government was created and the senate was formed, comprising of people from everyday lives when it started, turning into a circus and playground for the rich, famous and influential in the empire’s later years. The Romans worshiped gods and deities which were descent from the ancient set of beliefs which were from the foundations of faith created by men in Aristotle’s time as they sought for an explanation for why man was here and who was making all these events possible. The branches of sciences have been defined and they were being improved on by the many so-called experts of  the day.

Christianity was a growing religion which was based on doctrine that there was only one GOD who was responsible for all the events and was the embodiment of early understanding which had quite a loose division between religion and the sciences. The coming of Jesus (which is still a controversial fact that scholars are debating to this day) which is said to be the embodiment of GOD who became man along with prophets who preached the works of GOD (this is the time when many of the world’s modern religions figures were formed such as the belief in the prophet Muhammad who was said to be a descendant of Abraham) into their own right or religious groups.

Who was the individual that coined the said term? Well, after much searching and research, as it turns out, no one? Yes they are strewn all over on t-shirts, bumper stickers and posters plus hundreds of other stuff yet in the most basic definition, the term “Law of Nature” has no scientific basis and is mainly a creation of man. The term “Law of Nature” has been found to be a generalized terminology used to describe the whole body of laws that man has formulated through the ages into a singular definitive description hence the term, laws of nature.

Natural law was seemingly conceptualized by the Greeks when the decided that there was something that controlled the things that happened around them. The coming and going of the stars, the moon and stars plus the changing seasons, they looked at is as if it were following a set pattern. This pattern was the defined lay of nature. In a time when man was starting to ask the question why am I here and what purpose do I have for being here it was a plausible explanation. This is also the time when the many sciences were developed and formulated, separated from the theoretical or philosophical world by trying to define using set measures, such as the concept of time, seasons and many more which allowed these natural factors to be predicted hence making them into a foreseeable event. The factors which also say make the flowers bloom during the said months and bear fruit best when a set of conditions were set allowed cultivation of domesticated crops ending the nomadic lifestyle.

This saying has had a profound influence on me and the way I look at the world. We humans have a funny way of defining our goals and the measure by which we reach those goals. Some People measure their success by the amount of monetary funds that have been gathered, some by the amount of assets they have. For most of us, well we go on living day by day in utter stupor without really knowing what we want till we get there. That is human nature and human nature makes us humans dissatisfied with mostly everything making it imperative to improve anything we see.

May it be technology, wealth, assets and many other forms of measure that we tend to gauge the productivity of our daily lives. Why not try, how many people have I helped today? How many hungry mouths have I helped feed? Or even, how many old people have I helped across the road? These are the values of yesterday that must still be behind each and every one. In our search for a reason to live we must always keep in mind that we are all brothers on this earth and the\is very earth is the only planet we can call our own. Pollution as a result of development has become a critical issue for us as we cannot go anywhere else once we ruin this earth of ours.

The preservation of life on this earth is the single most important reason for our existence and all should have that in mind whatever the race, skin color, or religion. All faith’s are based on the fundamental fact that we all share this earth with each and everyone of us and that what you do today can have influence on the future of your fellow man. The trash you throw today can be the environmental disaster of tomorrow so be responsible in your daily life. In our quest to find and understand human nature and the way we think the saying might be right for we never know the results of daily life till it has passed and that life as we live it is filled with uncertainty for all of us.

Till the next posts, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

These are totally unrelated areas of study in philosophy yet they are somewhat similar due to their aim, the study of force. Politics is the study of how political force in relation to the general public and Legal Law is the study of how to best laws can be used to achieve social and political aims. The two are often mixed and used in conjunction with each other because of this simple truth. Legal Philosophy determines or studies, which laws are better, and whether this one or that is better for all or that if this law should even be followed at all due to underlying circumstances that might substantiate invalidity. It tries to explain the relationship of social factors and human nature in a balanced outcome deciding that the outcome would be best for all. Political philosophy on the other hand is defined by the development of a government as it evolves into its current state. Meaning the development of the political structure of a country is highly dependent on which political system it has been based upon and how it’s people have reacted to those systems deciding which is best to apply. True to this, many governments and political figures muddle and try to erase the fine line in order to justify their acts. Those acts then elicit response from the public and the legalities of such actions are questioned further muddling the distinctions. Politics should always follow a certain limit and so does the legal system so instead of focusing on these personal political agenda that they try to substantiate by using the law. Politics and religion for example should always be separated due to a never-ending battle that would ensue. Governments are formed and maintained by the legal system and they should share a common goal which is to represent the society for which they represent in their best interests and not their own.