What brought me to do a course in philosophy was a recent period of self-questioning and an exploration of my own existence and beliefs. I began my personal philosophical journey by asking myself about my purpose and what it was to exist with no purpose in a world without reason. Our course would cover nature, society and the individual which led me to think about the parallels between these topics and my own journey so far. Several months ago I started by philosophizing about myself as an individual, realizing that I felt purposeless and felt a lack of meaning to the world. I then went on to consider society and whether I could bring meaning to my world and life by creating a purpose for myself through society and my interactions with it. I did this by asking the questions, how can I benefit society and by doing this would I be creating value for myself as an individual? I am yet to fully answer these questions but still consider myself to be questing after a clearer understanding. I originally thought that my personal philosophizing neglected the topic of nature, perhaps because we are taught about nature from young through our parents, our experiences with the world and throughout our education. As a trained scientist I have questioned the world and how it works for many years perhaps without realizing that this is a type of philosophy itself. So maybe my journey did begin with questioning nature before questioning myself as an individual and then in turn exploring my role in society. However, is there a link between nature and the individual like I have drawn between the individual and society? There is the obvious interaction between the individual and nature, but can nature determine the way we think, act and exist as an individual? Our thoughts are controlled by nature in that they are merely a result of different chemicals, nervous reactions and hormones travelling through our nervous system and around our brain. We have seen through medicine how one can change behaviours through drugs, chemicals and even surgery, so are we merely a consequence of a bunch of randomly arranged chemicals and a fluke of evolutionary genetics? Are any of our decisions, questions and thoughts actually our own or are they all predetermined by our molecular makeup? How influenced by nature are we, are we actually in control? What does it mean to think, and when I am happy or when I am sad, when I act wisely or otherwise, am I determining this or is it my genetic and chemical consistency? This is becoming an increasingly asked question as modern medicine enables scientists to identify more of our genes and attribute certain of our behaviours to them, but is this just an excuse for us to alleviate ourselves from any responsibility? Blame our genes. Blame nature. Blame not the individual, for we know not what we do.
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