SO BE GOOD FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE

I believe that the good should be rewarded for their actions because rewarding good people encourages others to be good. This works the same way with being evil as well. If those who are evil are punished it will sway people away from doing evil things. The first representation of this I can think of is the star system in elementary school. If a kid is good they get a golden star or some kind of treat they can show off and feel proud of. Alternatively if a student is bad they either lose a gold star that they have previously earned or get some other punishment. There are many versions of this in elementary schools, but for the most part they encourage students to try and be good and set a good moral compass early on.

I personally feel like in the adult world the good are rewarded less and the evil are punished more heavily. By the time you are an adult you are expected to behave in good manner and the reward is that you don’t get punished. Of course that’s not all true. The reward you get for being good is more non tangible and more a positive emotion. For example if a person runs a charity to help children get necessities they need, that person running the charity may feel a sense of pride or happiness for doing so. On the flip side people that commit evil are tried by the counties judicial system and, for the most part, punished heavily. I think its good we have a way to punish those who are evil because, as previously mentioned, it deters people from bad actions, but also gives those who commit evil punishment. Good should be rewarded and evil should be punished.

Humans should act ethically even if they will be punished for doing so because it can lead to long term societal growth and may lead others to act ethically which ensues change. The first example of this that comes to mind is Rosa Parks. She refused to give up her seat to a white man on the bus. In my mind this was an ethical action because she shouldn’t have to move just because of her skin color. As a result of her ethical actions she was arrested for her actions. Even though she was punished for her actions it led to people protesting because others thought that what happened to her wasn’t right and people protested. Her actions ended up aiding the civil rights movement and contributed to an amazing cause. I believe that humans should act ethically can even if they’re punished for it.

God seems to punish Job even though he is a good man because God has a perspective on the world that humans can’t comprehend. God makes this clear when he says all the rhetorical questions to Job after Job questions God’s neglect of the world. Us humans aren’t all knowing or all powerful. When good or bad things happen in life we see them as such. For events like Sand Hook, 9/11 or the Holocaust we don’t know why God let those atrocities happen and we shouldn’t question God because we can’t understand God. We live in a world where good people can be punished and evil people can be rewarded. No matter how we try to justify it in our mind and rebel in our minds that’s just the way it is.

I WISH SOMEONE HAD TOLD ME . . . Response

In 8th grade I used to live in Indiana, a more musically competitive state than Connecticut, and I signed up to compete in ISSMA (Indiana State School Music Association) solo competition. Students would pick a piece of music from a list and preform it in front of a judge. The judges would grade your performance and you’d get a gold, silver, bronze or participation medal based on how well you did. However during this time I was making the move to Connecticut so I had to fly back to Indiana and preform to get my medal.

I distinctly remember how I felt when I was sitting outside the room I was to preform in. In my head I was stressing myself out. What was on my mind most was that my band teacher, mom and grandmother were going to sit in the room while I preformed. I was extremely anxious about not preforming as well as I could and being a disappointment. Especially when I knew my mom paid a decent amount of money to fly me out to the performance. I was sitting against a locker looking like a ghost with my skin growing paler each passing minute. I would quickly glance at music, as if it would help me learn it any better, and look down at the floor breathing heavily.

While I was sitting down and observably stressed out, my band teacher saw this and he offered to walk me to the water fountain to get a drink. My lips were dry and it couldn’t hurt so accepted his offer and we walked together. On the way to the water fountain we had some small talk, but at the back of my mind still stood the mountain of stress that was standing before me. My mind feel like it was stuck in a thick fog and I couldn’t quite think clearly. I took a sip of water from the water fountain and once we began walking back to the room where I was to perform my band teacher said, “The only thing that matters is that you’re proud of your own performance”. I realized that over the course of my whole life the score that the judges gave me wouldn’t determine anything and that most people would forget that I even performed in the first place. The important part was that I was proud of the tremendous effort I put in. Even if I made some mistakes as long as I could hold my head high I would be fine.

The piece of advice my band teacher gave me is so valuable to me because of my deep respect for him as a person and that it helps me in my day to day life. If I have a hard test and I’m stressed out about a test score, I think back to what he said. As long as I know that I put forth my best effort and I’m proud of that, it isn’t the end of the world.

MY LIFE AS I WISHED I LIVED IT (OR CARPE DIEM) Response

Five things I want to have possessed or experienced by the time I reach the end of my life are buying a house, getting married, having children, becoming old and having time to do the things that I enjoy. In addition to this a quality that I want to be remembered for is being a person with is understanding. All 6 of these things are important to me personally and to humanity as a whole.

Personally, buying a house and having a place of permanent settlement is important to me because over the course of my life I’ve moved a lot. I’ve lived in California, Indiana and Connecticut. In each state I’ve moved multiple times and I can say with absolute certainty that moving isn’t a fun thing to deal with. As result buying a house and having a place to live that I won’t have to leave is something that I want and is really important to me. More than that it is important to humanity because people settling in a place permanently is why we have society, countries, nationalities etc. If everyone were nomadic and never decided to settle in one place we wouldn’t have the majority of the things we have today and it’s essential for humanity to grow.

Getting married is important to me on a personal level because I feel that it is valuable to have a partner that may be with you for the rest of your life. I think that companionship, love and bond of trust are very important and sound very comforting to have. Marriage is important to humanity on a cultural level. The first recorded evidence of a marriage ceremony was in 2530 B.C. in Mesopotamia. It shows that in early civilizations the value of a committed relationship between 2 people was seen as important. In many wisdom texts, such as the Book of the Dead, there are ideas that you shouldn’t should sleep with anyone that wasn’t your wife. Even though it was purely a social arrangement, it was still very important for people to have a marriage partner and to be committed.

Having children is important to me because I feel that the experience of having children, raising them and being a parent an integral part of the human experience. I also think that it is an experience that will alter how I view the world in a way that I have no way of knowing yet, but I want to explore. In addition the bond between a parent and child is something I want to have sometime in my life. I want to know how my parents saw me as they raised me, although I’ll never know exactly. It’s important for humans to have children because on a biological level it’s needed to continue the species, but it’s more than that. In many early cultures there are many traditions around having a child and passing on the knowledge from parent to child. An example of this is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah in Judaism. During the ceremony the Torah is passed down from generations. Your grandparents pass it to your parents and then to you. It’s traditions like that, that show that early civilizations had this understanding of the value of the bond between parent and child.

I want to experience what it is like to be old because it means that I was lucky to live that long. I sometimes question how I’ll view the world when I get into my 80s and I’m curious to know. I also want to live long enough to see my grandchildren and I want to know what my value of family will be by that age. Getting old is important to humanity because it’s a valuable perspective. Having people around that have seen and experienced a lot of thing is important for educating younger generations. It brings in a unique perspective that many people don’t have. Early civilizations found this important and we see this through archetypes in stories. A protagonist of a story tends to have a mentor figure and this figure is often depicted as elderly. I think this becuase even back then people knew that the elderly often knew things average people didn’t and passing on this knowledge was important to the human species.

By the end of my life I want to have had the time to do the things I enjoy. This is because my hobbies are a way for me to destress after a long day and giving this up would decrease my happiness over all. My hobbies are important for my mental stability. I think that it’s important for humanity for people to be able to do the things they enjoy. In early human history once people didn’t have to worry about food people would create art and create stories. I think this is very important because it shows that people needed a way to express themselves in a creative manner and entertain themselves. It’s way people created sports and ways to view them. People pursue entertainment as a way to have joy in their lives and do things other than work.

A quality that I want people to know I had by the time I die is that I was understanding. Being understanding is important to me because I feel that in this day and age it’s something that society lacks. This is especially prevalent in the political polarization seen in U.S. today. People aren’t even willing to hear the other sides of certain issues before making a final judgement on something and that’s dangerous. I want to demonstrate to others what it means to be understanding before I hit the bucket. I think that it’s important for humans to be understanding and hear each other out because it can prevent a lot of terrible events from occurring. If two sides genuinely took the chance to hear watch other out and compromise I think a lot of human life could be saved with this quality.

Utnapishtim Replies

Having no permeance means that humans will not last forever and we are mortal. In society today our world likes to play with ideas of impermanence because people are afraid of death and the unknown. This drives humans to want to become immortal or live longer. An example of this are companies created products that are marketed as anti aging. Companies including Sephora, Olay, Alta, etc. use phrases like anti aging to appeal to peoples desires to stay young. Even though humans know that they will not live forever they still seek out a longer life span.

The reason why people are able to get up and live through their daily lives if because humans don’t live forever. The fact that we have a time limit is the reason why we feel we need to do things. If people had as much time as they wanted on this planet, they would never feel rushed to do anything. The fear of death is a device that drives us. The fear of losing things makes humans want to create a legacy. This is a concept shown in The Epic of Gilgamesh. His journey of immortality taught him that humans can’t be immortal and that mankind will live on even if he doesn’t. When he returns from his search for immortality and makes back to Uruk the narrator states, “…returning engraved on a stone the whole story” (Sandars 117). The quote is important because it shows that he has learned that there are many ways to live on besides being physically immortal. By writing his story in stone is him leaving behind his legacy and living on. Even today we read about him and hear his name even though he’s long gone so in some sense he has achieved immortality.

Even though we all ultimately die, what gives us meaning is life are the relationships that we form with others. In The Epic Gilgamesh an example of this is bond he created with Gilgamesh due to his the socialization the Enkidu went through. When Enkidu became conscious of his own death he states that, “I must sit down on the threshold of death and never again will I see my dear brother with my eyes” (Sandars 89). This quote shows that the relationship he had with Gilgamesh was an integral part of what gives his life meaning and later on in his sickness he states, “Once I ran for you, for the water of life, and now I have nothing” (Sandars 93). This statement implies that without that relationship with Gilgamesh, Enkidu has nothing else. This shows how important relationships are to people and how much meaning it adds to our lives.

Mortal humans create a sense of order and eternal life through stories passed down through history. Millions of stories have been passed down through time. The majority of these stories have themes, meaning and idea in them. These stories allow the ideas and actions from the past to live on eternally. Gilgamesh does this through his story etched in stone which allows his journey and name to live on forever. Works of literature can teach us valuable lessons which give us a sense or order much like various religious texts. Even our government today is built off of the ideas of people throughout time which keeps our society in order. Literature allows mortals to create a sense of order and eternal life.

Thinking About the Hero

I think the core aspect that all works that feature a hero character have in common is that there is a side that is portrayed as the “good side” and a main hero character that opposes an “evil side”. Whether or not they are heroes depends on whose perspective the hero is being viewed from. If I was working for the “evil side” and had to fight the hero I would see them as the enemy and possibly myself as the hero. From the perspective of the “evil side” they are the “good side”. A hero is defined as someone admired and has some outstanding achievement. In todays society a hero is someone who helps the less fortunate and does good deeds. It could even be someone who defends our country. Any action the society feels is morally correct a and that we justify is a heroic action. I believe that a woman can be a hero just as a man can. Despite this many works of fiction portray men as heroes instead of women because of the gender roles society. Many of the superheroes we idolize such as Spiderman were written in a time where men were viewed as superior and stronger than women thus men were mainly depicted as heroes. In more modern times women are being portrayed more as heroes than they were before. Heroes serve as models for what society views as the righteous way to act of behave such as saving people from disasters or fighting against oppression of some kind. Heroes serve as a moral compass for people to learn how to behave similar to religion in some ways. They show people how to behave and exhibit qualities of courage, leadership, etc. that others should follow. I think in some ways humans need heroes to serve as a moral compass and to teach generations that follow how to behave in an acceptable manner. It also can be a good instructional tool for young children to differentiate between right and wrong. I think that the quote “Unhappy the land that needs heroes”, by Bertolt Brecht means that a land that heavily worships heroes is bad because if the hero that the people are worshipping has values that are warped then the values and morals of the people will also be warped. This would create a society that could have what we view to be morally incorrect values that are harmful. A hero could also be used as propaganda to support a politicians agenda.