A few weeks ago, I managed to hit over 1,000 twitter followers for this blog. For some people, that won’t sound like many. However, my mind was blown. I remember starting this blog in my bedroom while studying my A-Levels. At the time, I struggled to get 50 people on twitter to follow the blog and the biggest fan of my blog was my philosophy teacher. Now, while my old philosophy teacher is still the biggest fan of the blog, it is now bigger than I could ever have imagined. So, in celebration of this milestone, I have decided to celebrate the only way I know how… by writing an essay on where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going.
You can definitely tell that I was an A-Level student while I was writing this. The amount of information I was trying to fit into this post was a lot, ranging from empiricism to the problem of analogies to the problem of other minds. Something I have learnt over the years is definitely to focus on one issue instead of many.
However, I was quite proud of my younger self for this blog. Defining crying as an internal, emotional reaction and then using an analogy to apply this to other people was a very creative solution. Unusual solutions to problems was a foundation to this blog which I want to carry forward with me.
Ethics of Mental Health on Youtube
This was a piece I wrote in response to a YouTube video by JackMaate, who delved into issues such as whether mental health is subjective.
The writing of this is still clunky but is an improvement from my first blog post. I also had no sense of paragraphing.
I realised at this point that trying to write 2000-word blog posts was not what I wanted to do. I would become bogged down in trying to capture the entire picture which was often huge and complex. I wanted to find a way to make writing blog posts more manageable.
Despite these issues, I am proud of this article. I still maintain that we should not be the judges of whether someone has mental health problems. Our initial reaction to someone saying they have a disorder should never be whether they are telling the truth. Instead, it should be a position of support. If someone is lying, it is on them morally. We are not the judge and jury in this case.
However, I would like to acknowledge that subjectivity is a stronger argument (not necessarily a correct one, though) in philosophy than I have given it credit for. This is the focus of my dissertation currently and hopefully will lead to some posts once I’m done. However, what will not be compromised is my commitment to developing an understanding of mental health which empowers and helps those who have them.
Writing about philosophy and YouTube is something I would like to do more of. It is an ethical micro-society with its own code, accelerating movements such as cancel culture and questioning morals around capitalist norms. I find it fascinating so they’re will be more on this blog about the philosophy of YouTube. If anyone knows of any books written on this, please comment below.
Love Island: Is Watching It Ethically Wrong
This is one of the articles that I challenge myself over. It could be seen as a defence of Love Island in general. However, I don’t think it is.
The year after writing this, I boycotted Love Island and still have to this day. It seemed hypocritical to me that Jeremy Kyle was cancelled immediately after a suicide, but Love Island is still allowed to continue despite three suicides being correlated to the show. It came down to a question of what show was popular instead of what was the morally right thing to do. Even if it is not cancelled, Love Island definitely needs to consider whether it is worth it and what support they are offering their contestants.
With that being said, the overall point still remains. It is naïve to believe that through the censorship of culture we can solve the issues of society. It merely reveals the problem, and it is through discussion that we can truly engage with the it. Censorship is not a solution. If anything, it’s a hindrance.
I love this post. At the time of writing it, I was going around universities, looking at BA Philosophy and History Programmes. At the majority of the philosophy introductions, the lecturer would try and define philosophy. This amused me. By asking what philosophy is, we had already answered our question.
I felt this post was also true to the origins of the blog. There is nothing more absurd than questioning what you take for granted. It made my mind think in an unusual, unconventional way that could not be questioned as philosophical thinking.
Furthermore, the conclusion to this blog is one of the few that I still stand behind fully.
This is where the current blog is at. I want to move forward with the idea of series, which allows me to focus in depth in topics, but 750 words at a time. The whole concept of parables and philosophical thought experiments fascinates me and I’m enjoying taking a deep dive into what we can learn from them in terms of philosophy.
What’s Next?
It has come to my attention recently that the majority of philosophers are white men. While their philosophy should not be discounted because they are white and male, there is wider philosophy that needs to be explored. We live in a modern age of diversity. To truly appreciate life we need to understand the philosophy of the different cultures around us. This is why I am committed to increasing blog posts around the LGBTQ+ community, BAME people, women, those with disabilities and people with long term physical and mental health conditions.
~o~
I would like to take the opportunity to say than you to everyone who has read this blog, particularly if you were here from the start. This is to many more years of philosophical absurdity!