In common society, we constantly hear phrases that encourage us to have confidence or to believe in ourselves. These phrases are so common that they are fully embedded into our beliefs and we never stop twice to think about them. Nevertheless, philosophers such as Socrates have thought and voiced their opinion on this topic. Socrates states that honesty with one’s self is always good. I fully believe that honesty is always good, but I would never believe that deceiving your self is never good.
In our adolescent years our parents and elders attempt to push positive thinking and the basic ideal of an “I think I can attitude.” For many, the belief is that thinking it will not help if you do not have the mind or body to conquer the task in hand. If you think about this in a philosophical approach one may change their mind on the matter. For example, if an athlete deceives themselves and has the belief that they cannot play a sport, or perform a specific play in a sport, then they will never have the opportunity to complete the dilemma. Although the athlete will never know, he or she might have been able to play that sport and will forever miss out on the enjoyment of playing the activity. In this case the deception of one’s self is bad because if they would have looked at the facts and believed in themselves-like their elders may have said- they could and would have succeeded.
The belief of Christianity includes the idea that the Devil causes a believer to partake in wrong doings. For the sake of this argument we will examine the principle idea that everyone has their own “Devil” deep inside them. The Devil can be linked to self-deception in the conflicting case of right and wrong. For instance, take the simple idea of lying. Deep inside the mind of a liar, the brain might be trying to convince another part of your mind that the lie is okay. Of course, these examples are all figurative. Fake ideas or not, the liar is deceiving themselves and the net result is bad. The views of Socrates do apply in this case. He believed that the moment before a bad deed is done; the “evil-doer” feels like they are doing good because otherwise they would not have a legit reason to partake in the action, or in the words of this essay, deception. In views on the subject I feel that deception is a bad thing even if it causes you to do a simple thing like lying.
In any argument one must understand the key counter argument. The other side of the debate is when you deceive yourself to do something that you are not good at and tell yourself you are good. Many times (as mentioned earlier) the thought of being something you are not can force you to succeed. In this case the deception turns out to be positive in the essence that one will be able to reach goals.
Whether or not you believe in the devil or believe in the idea of different levels in the brain having a power struggle of ideas, there will always come a time where the brain will have the chance to deceive itself. Personally I still feel that the mind is playing tricks on you is never quite a positive thing. In simpler terms, it would be much easier if our minds would just stay straight and agree to one universal idea, but maybe not. This could be what makes life on Earth so grand and mysterious.
No comments:
Post a Comment