Where am I?

We are so insignificant on this planet with 8.1 billion other people living. Yet, when we do things we typically disregard the existence of other people and events and only focus on ourselves. For example, when we are stuck in a problem we don't think about people in a worse situation than us, and because of this, we are also ungrateful for a lot of things. In our own lives, we are the main characters, no matter what other people do or tell us to do, we are only going to listen to ourselves and worry about ourselves.  Even Claudius Ptolemy, an Egyptian astronomer, thought the Earth was the center of the universe, and ideologies and beliefs stuck for 1400 years before scientists like Galileo and Newton showed up. In the speech, "This is Water" by David Foster Wallace, Wallace uses an analogy with fish to further explain the topic of self-centeredness. The point of this little story was that the fish themselves did not know what they were swimming in. And it is very comparable to us, because we pass many other people and things every day and we know so little about them, and what they're going through because we are only focused on ourselves. Wallace also uses an anecdote of a person going shopping after work to prove his point. In that anecdote, he was driving through traffic because everyone was trying to do the same thing as him, get home. This is an example of what we don't think about in our day-to-day lives. This habit of ours could be a good and bad thing. For example, focusing on yourself because others are letting you down, is a good thing to do, but if you are not aware of your surroundings and who you are around and only care about what's happening to you, you'll be missing out on a lot of things.

Comments

  1. Mithun NandhakumarSeptember 17, 2023 at 12:02 PM

    The birds eye view is a very profound perspective. Like you said people should definitely consider it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. David HeSeptember 17, 2023 at 3:00 PM

    I like how you juxtaposed old philosophy with current issues like the insignificance of a single human in a world of 8 billion. The connection to Wallace's speech was a nice touch lighting the end of your blog with a hopeful impactful view.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aswin GopinathSeptember 17, 2023 at 9:31 PM

    Thaneshware, I agree with you that we should focus on ourselves and also at the same other people too. I like how you compared the egyption astronomer analogy, of how we thought the earth was the center of the universe but later on we found out that we were a small part of it, to a person being self centered, I think this helped to cement you main message.

    ReplyDelete

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