>Leadership
>James MacGregor Burns, winner of the Pulitzer prize, once said that there is no such thing as ‘bad leadership’, only good leadership or an absence of leadership altogether.
Do you agree?
Category Archives: Philosophy
>What is death and why should we fear it?
>What is the dominant life form on Earth? How do we decide this? Is this life form better than others?
>Should we aim to achieve happiness?
>We often talk about happiness, and all people agree that it’s a nice thing to have. But should we try to achieve it as individuals and/or as collectives e.g. states?
>Does universal morality exist?
>*Everyone (with the exception of a few weirdos) believes that murdering for the sake of murdering is wrong.
*Every culture has a limit on the number of women one can marry (yes, some say you can have 10 wives while others say only one, but there is still a limit), therefore suggesting that it is wrong to simply sleep with or marry any woman one pleases.
*If we make a promise to someone and break it, we try to justify it. However, if one breaks a promise to us we feel wronged, therefore implying that breaking a promise/treaty is unjustifiable.
*If there was a person drowning in a nearby creek and we had the ability to save them without any threat to our own lives, everyone would probably do it (again, with the exception of some weirdos)
These are the arguments of a theorist known as C.S. Lewis. He argues that universal morality exists even among different cultures. Now I ask whether or not his arguments are strong?
Is there universal morality?
>Is progression linear?
>A few sub-questions to think about…
- What is progression?
- Are there stages of history that societies pass through?
- Do we inevitably improve ourselves individually and collectively?
- Was everything chaos in the beginning and will it be in the end?
- Was everything ‘eden’ (the Hebrew word for pleasure/paradise) in the beginning and will return to it in the end?
>Should you obey laws if you think they’re wrong or immoral?
>This question was pondered by pretty much every great philosopher: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, the list continues.
>What age are we living in?
>If a group of historians from the future gave you the chance to name the age we’re living in today what would you say and why?
>Banker’s bonuses
>Should they be taking them or not?
>What is equality and who is equal?
>The concept of equality has changed over time. At first it would have been all members of a group, then a class and sex, then a sex and colour etc. Did you know that some of the first advocates of communism said women were possessions and should therefore be shared like everything else?
So what does equality mean to you today? Does it mean all people being completely equal in rights etc? Or do you think animals should be treated equally too? Maybe you’d go the opposite way and perhaps say that people should not be considered equal?
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