The unexamined life is not worth living? and a modern day gadfly

Or so says Socrates. According to him, if you aren't constantly asking the big philosophical questions about life, and specifically your life, then what are you even doing still? Your life has no purpose. He didn't exactly say it in those words, but still. This is his argument for why we should all have philosophy, and all be questioning and examining. While I think that it's true that become more knowledgable and understanding things more fully sometimes leads to a more fulfilling life, I still do think that ignorance is bliss. Being happy with your lot in life and never questioning anything probably isn't morally satisfying for a lot of people. However, if it is, I say knock yourself out. I think a lot of us kind of wish we could be living in ignorance. Because while knowledge is power, a lot of the time it is also pain. I understand, however, that this isn't exactly what Socrates meant. He knows it can be painful, he shows that with the story he originally spoke of (although Plato wrote it down, yes), the Allegory of the Den. He knows that the unexamined life can be blissful and content, but it's still not worth living when you're not actually experiencing "Truth". But I'd still take contentedness over truth any day. Maybe one's existence is only a shadow of reality, but if it's a happy existence, I think it's worth living, and the choice of whether or not that person wants to take the risk of experiencing what is true and shaking that existence to the ground is their choice.

Okay, now for the second question. Who do I think is a modern-day gadfly? I suppose the person in my life who would most resemble that would be my father. Which is probably a sort of generic answer but I mean really, he's always questioning my brothers and I. He wants to make sure we're not blindly assuming or believing things that we haven't fully examined. Whenever I make a large statement about my beliefs or philosophy or otherwise, I become subject to thorough questioning and challenging from my father. It can be annoying sometimes, and it can shake me when he asks a question that I don't know how to answer, and then I have to rethink that statement. However, it's one of those "you'll thank me for this one day" deals, I'm pretty sure. It's caused me to be more wary of everything I'm told and everything I tell others.

Eulogy

So, we're all gathered here to mourn the loss of one Andrea Wilberding. But not really, since I'm writing this in present tense so it won't sound like much of a eulogy. Anyway. She goes by Andy and is a high school senior. Anyone who met her freshman year knows that she was exceedingly annoying during that time so we're going to pretend that that whole year didn't exist. Anyhow, what can I say about her? She has a number of passions, the strongest of these most likely being music. Music has always been very important to her, and she's been playing viola for almost 8 years now and is acceptable on a few other instruments, like violin and guitar. Listening to music is something that she does whenever she's not playing music. Another one of her passions is concerning the outdoors. She's been backpacking since she was eight and has hiked and backpacked in a number of different states. She's spent most of her childhood and young adulthood reading. She may not have had many friends when she was young, but it was pretty much just because she liked books a lot better than real people. Nowadays she still reads frequently (although she likes people a little more now-seriously, I'm friendly, I promise). If she had to choose a favorite book it would probably come down to Wicked by Gregory Maguire or American Gods by Neil Gaiman. She lives on the south side of Chicago and has two parents, two younger brothers, and a dog (She loves the dog the most). She's a bit of a nerd (well, more than a bit) when it comes to certain topics, like literature, science, and music. She's heavily involved in GSA and various other queer rights-related activities. Other things she enjoys but probably wouldn't be considered passions include certain video games, laughing at sketch comedy shows and bad 70s sitcoms, watching shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and, funnily enough, blogging. I guess this post ended up sounded more like some sort of weird internet dating site description than a eulogy...which is less than desirable but it's pretty hard to write a eulogy about yourself in the third person present tense. So there we have it.