The Glad Game
Post by: Tabsybelle
One of my issues with life in general (and life in England specifically) is that people, I feel, spend too much time noticing the bad things and not enough appreciating the good. By no means am I saying we live in a Utopia where we can do nothing but watch in awe as life unfolds: my point is just that, you know, looking on the bright side of life is never a bad thing. So I’ll attempt to redress that by starting off the Glad Game. Join in 
*Freedom Of Speech
I don’t mean complete and utter freedom of speech by any means (the 9pm broadcast watershed alone brings home the point that there’s a lot I don’t want people expressing into the general public spectrum. Things to do with National Security also come under the same umbrella) but I’m even more appalled by the fact that Chinese Google is still censored. But I love the ideals behind it.
*The Collective Consciousness
Those medieval nobles were, I feel, too right in fearing the many-headed monster. I love the fact that human nature is such that people who oppress and repress and take advantage of other people will, in some way or another, be overthrown and replaced, whether it’s violent like the Civil War, or passive, like the Industrial Revolution. Even today - I’m thinking of the Tibetan monks, of the students’ protests in Pakistan. (I do know there’s a grey area when it comes to terrorists/freedom fighters, but that’s possibly a post for another day).
*Plato’s Forms
Because to me, it’s a perfect example of why I love philosophy: a bastion of original thought and lateral thinking that is so absurd that no-one today takes it seriously, yet so logically sound that it just cannot be dismissed!
*Words…
…are the underlying basic point of life. Communication and language and pretty much everything you can think of, is there in front of you because of the written or spoken word. As a Literature student, I’ve had it brought home to me many a time how phenomenally powerful a few lines on a page can be. And as for the spoken word - Hitler is a case in point. Repulsive as his ideals were, his charisma when speaking was scary persuasive. Words and language (especially the English language with all its peculiarities), I’m extremely extremely thankful for.
I think that’s it for now from me. But add on!
November 17th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Words make you feel happy… because of Hitler? You are an odd lady…
Have you ever read Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie? The “ambassador” plays a similar game in that book, picking up on everything people hate and finding something to celebrate. Unfortunately, he ends up dead within 50 pages. Maybe optimism has it’s limits, aye?
November 26th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Tradition !
I thought that the traditions of England were fading away,but with a recent visit to parliament and seeing the speaker enter the house of commons in full robes and with other folk in robes, along with other small things that Enlgand does makes me proud of some of the silly English traditions.
November 27th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Surely looking for the bad in life is an English tradition.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Haha, I agree with David.
And DAve - they make me happy in spite of his existence, not because of him.
Words are beautiful.
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Plato’s forms: “so logically sound that it just cannot be dismissed”?
i take issue with that… ever heard the phrase “dies the death of a thousand questions”?
Mr. Kuhn told us in philosophy the other day that he had an invisible demon in his watch that made it go. and however many reasons we gave him why it wasnt there, he could answer them by making up more fantastic abilities that this demon had. his demon theory had no basis in logic whatsoever, so it was impossible to disprove logcally.
that’s why you can’t say plato’s forms thing isn’t true if you ask me - total absence of logic not logically sound.
sorry about that.
i’d like to second the love of absurd philosophical (and scientific) theories.
and add ice cream to the list, if i may.
p.s. hello everyone who doesn’t know me. i’m sorry if i crashed your party with my philosophical rants… tabs told me to look at the blog and i got sucked in…