Children Will Listen to your World Views

(I tried posting this around 2am when I had finished it, but the internet was giving me problems, so here it is now and there will be another tonight.)

Now while technically the 2nd is officially over, trust me I did not forget about blogging. BUT SO MUCH HAPPENED YESTERDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just had to wait for it to all be over if I wanted to accurately write about my day.

So first off, IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!! I am now officially 16! (And since I finished getting my safety certification today and I’m 16, I can go on the floor to help coach at gymnastics meets now!)

I was awake from the start of yesterday because I was up reading the next chapter of The Falconer: Step 2: The boundaries of Subjectivity and Objectivity. When I started reading last night I hadn’t planned on staying up too late, but then I was hooked. So much was happening and making me think so deeply that when I was finally finished, my mind was so blown that I was still up for another hour, until 2am, just lost in thought.

I still don’t even quite know how to describe it, you will just have to read the book yourself to go on this fantastic mind journey, but this was a text I sent last night around 1:20am to a friend after just reading it:

THIS BOOK!!!! I honestly haven’t even figured out exactly the best way to describe what just happened. It was talking about world views in the sense of understanding your self and your views of the world as either subjective or objective. Then it talked about quantum mechanics and proved “matter, therefore, at the foundational level and to the best of our observational abilities, does not exist except as a probability.” Then continued to talk about a story with this guy named Kevin who majored in philosophy and physics and was deeply pondering Xeno’s paradox which is the one about how getting from point A to B is impossible if you must always travel half of the distance and he was pondering if this was true with thoughts and trying to get to answers. Then he was able to release energy from his hands and people were confused and he was like “it’s science and energy”. But he contemplated suicide very calmly just because he was stuck and confused then people meditates and sure enough he was fine after they were sure he was going to do it. Then it started talking about what do you really believe and then ended with this last paragraph (I’ve given up on even trying to explain this because I’m sure the rest is a mess because I’m just ranting/ having an Anya moment and trying to cipher it myself)

And now I’m just at that point where I can’t even think or process anything so I’m just sitting in bed wide awake

 I’ve been trying to think more about my personal views on how I view the world, and well, it’s hard; I’m still discovering it myself. Trying to decide on my own views has always been difficult for me because I easily can understand multiple opinions, and it is something else I would like to further learn and discover in school. Now… HMW make that happen?

One idea I had was to have a Table Lesson with ID like how Mr. Usher did with his class. (This is my shortened version of what happened during the Table Lesson):

Mr. Usher talked to The Children about this concept through the lessons of a table. In this exercise he first gave two definitions to make sure everyone knew what the conversation would be about:

Subjective: Characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind; experience or knowledge as conditioned by personal mental states. (In other words, a subjective point of view means that you believe the world is as humans perceive it.) 

Objective: as object, phenomenon or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptive to all observers; having reality independent of the mind. (In other words, you believe that regardless of what people think, things are the way they are and that is set and stone.) 

Mr. Usher asked all of the Children to go to one end of the table or the other depending on what they believe; after some debating and discussing first though. He then asked everyone to back away from the big table in the center of the room and close their eyes. Mr. Usher asked if anyone could prove that the table was actually in the room without moving or opening their eyes.

Of course no one could though because humans are dependent on their senses to describe the world. Therefore, we really can’t prove that anyone or anything really exists without imparting some of our own personal thought into the matter. So it is hard to really believe entirely objectively.

However, if we think entirely subjectively, then in theory humans could control anything and everything in the universe if they just think hard enough about it. This is also hard for me to believe entirely, though.

So as of now I don’t think I’m completely subjective or objective in my world views. Which I think is understandable, because I might be 16 now, but I’m also only 16, and I still have much to learn.

And as the PHENOMENAL movie and musical Into the Woods teaches us, “children will listen”.

Back in 8th grade I played the Witch in MVPS’ production of Into the Woods Jr. (which is pretty much just the first act of the full show). I was super excited to see the movie because I knew it was suppose to be great, and it has a really impressive cast. I finally saw it last night which is why I didn’t get to blog until so late, and it did not disappoint.

As my aunt said, “Fairy tales are suppose to teach you lessons. Usually that means everyone lives happily ever after, but no, in Into The Woods they keep the first half nice and happy. Then they teach you some real lessons.”

This is definitely one of Disney’s darkest films, because it doesn’t really end with your typical happy ending. Almost everyone dies and it is due primarily to trickery, lies, curses, unfaithfulness, and self doubt. Instead of ending with, “And everyone lived happily ever after”, this movie ends where it starts, by telling a story to the children about how your actions effect everyone around you and you need to learn from yours’ and others’ mistakes.

It was pretty powerful to acknowledge how sometimes bad stuff happens because everyone makes mistakes, and the best thing for you isn’t necessarily a nightmare or a dream, but somewhere in between.

Children aren’t born with developed world views, but they will listen to what you tell them and have the ability to form opinions based on what you say and what they learn from it. So “be careful the things you say, children will listen”.