Salome Coronel

Contemporary Philosophy Document- Based Question

The last 150 years of humanity have been one of the most important years of
history. In these last century there have been events that humanity wont be able to
forget, not even if they wanted to. Many of these events have demonstrated to the
world how cold and cruel humans can be with their same specie, and some others
have demonstrated this is a reality we can change if we want to.

Some of the quotes provided belong to memorable periods of time such as,
World War I, World War II, Fall of Berlin Wall, the Apartide, these among others.
These have been events that have changed the way people think in a colossal way. For
example the genocide that occurred against Jews, homosexuals, and handicapped
people during World War II has been one of the most shocking events in human
history. The murder of more or less 6 million Jews for the superficial reason of them
being impure helped the world open its eyes and realize this type of skeptic
towards any ethnicity can lead to massive deaths such as this one, the Holocaust. Just
like Winston Churchill said, There is more blood than paint upon these hands. All
those thousand of men killed. We thought it would be a little job, and so it might have
been if it had begun the right way. This is a reflection of how the murder of all these
Jews was so big and impacting that at last people realized they had chosen the wrong
path to deal with their problems.

Another event in these quotes is the non-violent resistance Gandhi had towards
the British that were invading India at the time. Thanks to Gandhis exemplary way of
dealing with problems humanity was able to perceive that actually there is a way to
solve problems without having to use violence, these was an event of one of a kind
that very few had the privilege to see. Gandhi is one of the most iconic figures of a
peaceful and reflective human being; thanks to his actions many people realized that
violence is not the only answer to our solutions. Another exemplary figure he are able
to visualize in this quotes is Nelson Mandela and hes endless fight against racism. All
the words and actions this man was delivered to the world has demonstrated that in
some way we are all the same, and there is no realistic reason of why we should hate
someone only because they dont look like us. All the love this man delivered in his
speeches gave the world a new perspective about this stereotype about black people
that had lived in our world for decades. Besides these two peace figures we have a
science icon that gave the world a new perspective about intelligence, Albert Einstein.
Even though he was a genius, he knew it all and had it all, when he was called to
contribute to war with one of his inventions, the nuclear bomb, he said he has been
given a large brain by mistake (). He described how killing was wrong in any sense,
even people justified it with war anyone who dared to kill was a murdered, he was
completely against killing. Here the world was able to perceive that even the man who
can invented it all realized humans cannot and shouldnt kill between their same
specie.

With all these events we are able to see all these iconic figures, and events are
just ways of conducts individuals have decided to adopt and have as consequences
these enormous tragedies the world has gone through. Philosophy reflects that the
world we live in is full of different perspectives and realities, for example Hitlers
perspective and reality was a complete different one than the Jew perspective. Hitler
thought he was doing a good to his country, while all the did was a bunch of murders
for no reason. With these events we can see many theories related such as the
multiple reality theory, the relativist theory, and John Lockes state of nature theory.
This State of Nature theory we can relate by some events that when humans dont live
under rule they become wild and uncontrolled. And on the other hand he have
Thoreaus Civil disobedience theory that can be related to the events that happened of
the fall of Berlins wall, some might think the measures this government took was the
correct one while others might thinks its completely incorrect.


Sources used:

Winston Churchill
Erich Maria Remarque
Gandhi
Einstein
Mandela