u/BearReal123

I'm in engineering and have to take an HSS elective come Winter. Boy am I stoked. I haven't written a proper essay in a while and I'm getting giddy with excitement at all these cool cool courses you ArtScis get to take. "MST232H1: How to Be a Barbarian: Beard, Battles and Belief at the Dawn of the Middle Ages" like holy guacamole that's so friggin tuff.

My naiveté aside, I'm really torn between PHL232: Knowledge and Reality and PHL265: Introduction to Political Philosophy. I have zero formal exposure to any philosophical thinking beyond what glimmers I got of it in IB TOK and whatever I've passively absorbed online. Of course I'll have an open mind and try to appreciate either course in their entirety but I still can't decide between doing a course about metaphysics and knowledge or focusing on the ideas of different political thinkers. Besides how interesting the course descriptions or past syllabi seem to me, are there any other bits of advice and criteria that might be worth considering? I'd say I don't mind their difficulties but I guess I should know how these two compare on that front to be pragmatic and currently I just understand that, like any philosophy course, there is a lot of work required to appreciate the content of the many readings. Would anyone also be able to comment on their experience on either or possibly both if that's a combination not unheard of?

All this course selection stuff is overwhelming I like shutting off my brain and waking up to my timetable being pre-filled by the engineering Gods.

I know these kind of discussions aren’t useful for the personal attainment of peace but it’s something I really want to discuss with someone.

I’ve always had an irrational fear of the sci-fi concept of teleportation. If every cell in my brain were to be transported one by one how can I be so sure it will be ME on the other side? Or neuralink. Even if it were a dumbed down version such that rather than “enhancing” the mind, one replaced a few cells with a chip that produced the exact same electrochemical impulses, would I still really be myself? I get the impression that in all these cases the “I” should be unchanging and what I fear of being different is just the experience of my waking world and that so long as I feel any sense of of being a subject experiencing anything then consciousness has been untouched. But it just feels so strange because this framing makes me realize how disconnected I feel from the real “I”. The real “I” is sort of just always there, regardless of what I do or think or how I change. Perhaps I’m not saying anything new but it took this odd hypothetical to appreciate that.

Oh my God. If you just were to drop me on the street and really really pick and pry at me you will find nothing. A man with no faith in anything, no talent. Just a claim to love learning and on the days I feel like I’m not getting anywhere it is unbearable. I have nothing to contribute to this world but my hurt and my angst and my wrongdoings and for that I fear either the Howell of hella wait me, a well earned karmic suffering or perhaps nothing at all because the universe oses nothing to good people to be reward es and bad people to be punished despite the dictates of our laws. I have internalized a perspective regarding morality that’s is so poisonous and doomed in a way of which I am aware but cannot just ignore. At this rate when all my loved ones perish of old age I will just end it all. I don’t have the strength or support in myself to do anything. I’m just another voice of many from a world of immense privilege who may very well bring the world they came from tumbling down over their sloth. I am immobile. I can’t move. I don’t want to move. A person who doesn’t want to move deserves never to move again because that is what’s best for the world around them and in alignment with their one and only desire. I’m ashamed and don’t have the words to properly explain why nor an ear to borrow, not that I should wish upon my worst enemy to hear me lament over and over semi annually. I want to fade away.