Kaunijar’s Student Blog

Goodbye Resolutions

By now(and this applies to you no matter what time of year it is) the New Year’s resolutions have been and gone by their millions: I’m going to be staying healthy this year, all year! No chocolate for me, you can forget it! Beer? I don’t even remember what it tastes like…

Except, by the second week in January most people who bothered to make resolutions have discovered that being unhealthy tastes much better, chocolate is actually quite good after a hard day at work with your boss yelling at you, and beer, well…Where do we begin; we’d be here all week, let alone day. Most people who give up beer for a few weeks only miss it more. And so it begins again. The same old tired cycle of denial and denial and denial…

It’s a bit sad really. I’ve had quite enough of this garbage and I’m sure you have too, haven’t you? Yes, I thought so.

So surely this is a sign that the New Year’s resolution is as dead as a dodo, isn’t it? I mean, how much longer do we have to keep pretending to one another? For the next hundred years? Forever? What a horrible thought…

My idea to rid the world of this plague is as follows, and I propose we start it now and end the misery: I say why don’t we have a new thing called an End Of Year resolution, and we implement this at the end of November. That way, by the time Christmas comes around, we might want to binge a bit, but then we can PROPERLY begin and it’ll be loads easier because we’ll have got a head-start. How good does that sound? Yes, I know, it does sound pretty amazing. Do it now and spread the word!

Similar Posts:
I Want Everything Made of Oak : All this modern furniture is…
Thicko-Central : Working for a large London company, I suppose…
What We Can Learn From Famous TV Detectives : As you will know…
A Lawn Game I Played Last Summer : I played an interesting game…

An Intellectual Debate Of Sorts

Why is it that the people who don’t seem to read or study much – and instead spend their time in the Great Outdoors with mother nature battering them at every opportunity – often seem to possess more common sense and intellect than some who spend their life-time studying books? I can tell you. Not because I am some kind of philosophy genius (that much should be obvious!) but because the answer is actually fairly obvious when you examine the question: spending a lot of time in the Great Outdoors – whether it be rock climbing, running, or just good old adventuring – means you have to do a hell of a lot of problem solving. Take rock climbing as an example: every action is a calculation; a problem to be solved quickly and effectively. Subconsciously too, there’s a lot going on, more than you could ever want to know. As the organs tire, for example, they tell the brain that energy is running out. In turn, the brain sends messages back more efficiently, and various parts of the body conserve their energy, so that the body can function better as a whole and for a longer period of time. All this means that every time you go up the face, you are learning massive amounts about the way the world works. Doesn’t that sound just as good, if not better, than reading mountains of books?

So have no fear. Even if you find things like organising Skiing insurance difficult and you haven’t really got a clue about philosophy or anything like it, that doesn’t mean that you aren’t as intellectual as someone who has been studying a long time. And after all, before studying was the norm, man had to rely on merely his wits to get through the day in one piece and return to the cave with some meat.

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

Praise For Mike And John

Much is made of evolution, yet very little is made of when man (or woman, of course) discovered the concept of walking. It must have been a fine day, all those years ago, when one man – or possibly two, and maybe they discovered it entirely by accident when they were drinking fermented rain-water, who knows? – put one foot forward and realized the gravity of his find.

It might have gone like this:

“Here, John” – (I don’t have a very good grasp of Neanderthal names so this will have to do, or alternatively you can use your own more apt name) – “Look at this. I think I may have found something”.

John, or whoever he might be called, looks over. What he has spent all week making out of bits of wood and Rhino skeleton resembles, in a surreal sort of a way, what we now know to be pantone espresso cups. “What?” he says, “can’t you see I’m busy still?”

Mike is smug. “I can,” he says, “but check this out!” He then puts one foot in front of the other, until he has covered a small distance (and please ignore how they transported themselves before, for arguments sake let’s just say they hopped with both feet, ok?)

John faints.

Fifteen minutes later John wakes up, and asks Mike if he really saw what he thought he saw. Mike says he did, and this induces a heart-attack. A shame, considering that the following week he was due to be the equivalent of Mike’s best man, but still, this is nothing unusual in Neanderthal times, and it definitely beats being decapitated by a dinosaur (I know dinosaurs didn’t exist at the same time as cavemen, but for the sake of this story humour me).

See? It’s worthy of much more praise than it gets.

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

Male bonding behaviour and other unexpected gems

Stag parties are the strangest thing. I’ve been to a fair few in my time – well, three or four, but I’m young yet! – and while they’re all different of course, they all seem to share certain similarities. There’s the laddish banter, normally conspicuous consumption of alcohol and – very occasionally – food, and surprisingly often there is women’s underwear involved somewhere down the line.

It seems to me that all these things are indicative of pack behaviour. By sharing jokes, often about the groom to be’s manliness or lack thereof, a stag party who have just met in a pub or on a plane or train already have something in common. Almost inevitably their use of humour becomes almost competitive – the playful denigration of the stag being matched by an almost aggressive sense of bonhomie towards one another. Sometimes – though not as often in my own experience as I might have expected – this extends into what the Victorians would probably have called bawdry, but it’s interesting how infrequently this happens. Perhaps it used to happen more in the past, our present age’s relative familiarity and openness about matters of the flesh allowing us to almost take these things as read.

But the women’s underwear is particularly interesting. On one level of course, it simply links in with the desire of everyone to prove their masculinity – and denigrate that of the groom. But is there a connection between the impending marriage and the low level feeling of sexual transgression that comes from seeing a man in a pair of fishnet tights? That somehow before entering what is perceived to be a normal state, the groom needs to be put through the abnormal? That there needs to be a kind of humiliation before reaching the heights of the wedding ceremony? Or is it just an occasion for a good laugh?

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

Things We Hate

Growing up, I didn’t want to watch my mother change my granddad’s adult nappies . The very idea of seeing Granddad’s bare bottom scared the life out of me – and it still does – and I couldn’t see why my mother made me come in the room with her when we were round there and Granddad lost control. Years later I know the answer: my mum hated doing it as much as I hated seeing it, and the reason she brought me in there was because she wanted to teach me a valuable lesson: sometimes we have to do things we absolutely don’t want to do. That’s life, for all of us, and it doesn’t matter where you grew up or what status your family has, we all have to do stuff that makes us feel physically sick and feels like a total waste of time and energy.

The thing is though, when you think about it, doing things you don’t want to do can also be a good thing. OK, so looking at an elderly man’s bare bottom can never, ever be considered to be a good thing, but things like eating your vegetables when you hate them, or doing PE at school when you are a slightly bigger lad, are actually good. And all this got me thinking…how must people who don’t need to do things they hate develop as they grow up? People like princes and princesses and the like, I mean. Because if you ask me, that’s what being human is partially all about. And not even just humans: all living beings have to do things they despise. For example, I bet even ants hate trekking up and down to collect food, but they have to do it, otherwise their society would fall apart.

So, next time you have to do something absolutely rubbish, just remember: that’s life, and it’s what makes you grow into who only YOU can be.

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

The Arguments for God’s Existence in A Nutshell

And in recent times many have declared that God does and does not exist. Well when we all can get away from thinking about our living room furniture and how we can change their look, we should consider the following four major arguments for the existence f God.

This argument tries to prove the existence of God using the laws of logic, and logic alone. Its origin is said to have been from the times of St. Anselm during the eleventh century. Anselm was a theologian and philosopher and also the archbishop of Canterbury. The argument basically says that by our simple understanding the idea of God then we cannot say that God does not exist. This argument sees God as the perfect being and demonstrates that once God is conceived to exist then he must exist.

This argument is also known as the “Cosmological argument” and tries to prove the existence of God using the existence of the universe as it focal point. Thus because the universe is here, then it must have come into being by a divine hand, and that divine hand is God. This is so since you cannot get something from nothing. This argument see God as a creator and whom is all encompassing and is beyond time and has no end.

Also known as the “argument from Design”, this idea put forward the view that there must be a God because the universe is so ordered. If there was no design then there would have been no life here. It suggests that God has a special interest in human beings.

This argument seeks to address Gods existence through the presence of moral laws. These laws are basic commands that tell us how we should live and act morally. So there must be a being that instilled these morals in us.

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

P Factor

Sometimes I drink fosters lager and read philosophy, other times I drink red wine and read philosophy – although if you asked me what I was doing as I was doing this I would probably tell you that I was drinking philosophy and reading red wine – but anyway the point is that I read philosophy a lot and generally enjoy it. Generally, I said: I definitely don’t all the time…

I mean, I would be the first to admit that philosophy is very confusing, very contradictory and often highly irritating (most of the time you have to read two other books to know what one book means, and even when you do that the answers aren’t exactly clear). In fact, sometimes even just the thought of reading any kind of philosophy – or indeed anything related to it – brings me out in a high fever. So I understand what people say when they say that they don’t really get it. And philosophers throughout the ages haven’t really done themselves any favours, have they? I mean, as a friend recently put it to me after he told me why he didn’t read it any more “philosophy is (insert expletive) because every time a new philosopher comes along he says that everything that came before him was rubbish, how does that make any sense?” and he has a point. And thinking about it – and especially reading it written down as I do now – it is pretty arrogant, isn’t it? After all, who has the right to say that someone else’s brain isn’t as worthy as theirs?

All these reasons probably point to why there is X Factor and not Philosophy Factor – although I still maintain that it could be quite an interesting show.

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

Sitting Down With A Parent Problems

Every now and again, and you might associate with this, you sit down with a parent and for some odd reason known only to themselves they decide to start telling you about when you were very young. When you were four, for example, and you fell over and headbutted something and wouldn’t stop crying (hilarious! Or was it?) or when you were six and you saw an oven for sale in a shop and kicked it and put a dent in it and your parents got into trouble and had to pay for it (actually quite amusing). Or when you were six and a bit and you got your very first hamster. This is what I remember vividly, only in my case my dad was reminiscing about my brother doing the kicking. He was saying how my brother was kicking the hamster around the living room, having the time of his young life, and how much fun he was having doing it, screaming and jumping up and down (the hamster crying out for help if I remember rightly: in the dead of night I still hear those cries…They haunt my dreams). And I was there. I was in the room watching the hamster being kicked about, being bullied and tortured and harassed and all those words so synonymous with nastyness. And it was a great story, until he finally came to the conclusion: “shouldn’t have kicked the little fella so hard,” dad said, smiling oddly, “killed him instantly. It was over for him, a brain hemmorage I reckon, or something.” That really ruined my day. From then on all I could think about was that poor hamster and its last dying seconds inside the ball or death and doom. Thanks for that dad, but next time keep your rubbish stories to yourself!

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

Why You Need Us

Here: watch me disprove various things which people think students are all about. I’m sick of it, this attitude towards student-hating, and as a studier of all things philosophical, I sort of feel like it’s my moral duty to stand up and be counted:

1) Students are not “student scum”. Gone are the days of binge drinking. Nowadays we are all so terrified we won’t be able to get a job that we spend all out hours cooped up in the library studying. Seriously, you know you need to go out and drink more and vomit on the street more when your dog has more of a social life and goes on more walks than you do…

2) Students do occasionally pay with cheques, but basically this is rubbish: we do all our banking online, don’t you know. I mean seriously, only old people who don’t know how to use computers still write paper money out which takes days if not weeks to clear!

3) Students don’t just want to be in education to avoid working a job for longer. Ok, I am not going to dispute that that is undoubtedly part of the attraction, but many of us want to get out to work, honestly we do!

4) People think students are JUST students and that’s who they’ll always be: utterly and fundamentally WRONG! No, we are set to be the new and incredibly trendsetting leaders of society, re-setting the rules and working out how to fly to Mars and all that other stuff that the pre-computer age have no idea about. (Plus, we do really useful things like inventing better technology: without us the hr management software of the future would be rubbish, so try getting by without us!)

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…

Philosophical Musings

I’m amazed every day by various people’s colliding and conflicting views on philosophy and its surrounding subjects: some people think it’s the best thing ever, and some people think it’s complete and utter rubbish that proves nothing apart from the fact that we think we know it all. As a student of this I should probably fall wholeheartedly into the first category, but sadly, the more I learn about it, the more I feel like I fall distinctly somewhere in the middle. Which is no bad thing, of course, because if we don’t question things then they just stay the same, don’t they?

I mean this: times change. Back in the day, when we didn’t have home laser hair removal cream and all kinds of incredible technological inventions, we didn’t know half the things we do now, so of course science was affected, and thus was popular culture and the collective mind of the people. Not only that, but the way we interpreted everything around us was different: there were so many mysteries compared to the modern age. There were so many things that we were just beginning to guess at, and philosophers were guilty of making some of the biggest fundamental mistakes of all.

Over time, of course, newer philosophers with a bone to pick have attacked the views of the olden day masters, calling them out of date and ridiculous. I’m not sure how you prove it either way, and perhaps it isn’t even about that.

But all this doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t need philosophy, of course: as we all know it inspires free-thinking and a change in the way even simple things are considered, and, in a changing world that needs all the help it can get, surely that can never not be a fantastic thing?

Similar Posts:
Things You Can Do Other Than Drink : I have been on antibiotics…
London 2012- Showcasing cultural unity  : Any and every…
The Future? : I’m in business, am well up with the latest…