Does the punishment fit the crime?

Does the punishment fit the crime? Did Candide really deserve to get kicked out of the castle just because of the one little innocent kiss he had with Cunégonde? Well that all depends on who you ask. According to her father it completely deserved. After all that’s why he kicked him out. The way he saw it Candide didn’t deserve to be with her because she had seventy two quarterings on her coat of arms and he only had seventy one. This means that she could trace her ancestor back one more generation than Candide and that’s enough in her dad’s eyes to make Candide unsuitable for her. This may seem strange to us but for people of noble descent back then (and maybe even now) this was a big deal because that was how they maintained their status and titles. However, being a modern day teenager I can’t possible agree with this punishment. To me its equivalent to getting beaten when you’re a young child for not eating all of your broccoli or getting kicked out of your house for forgetting to make your bad in the morning. That doesn’t seem fair to me at all. On the other hand the punishment was a blessing in disguise because only by leaving the castle and experiencing the real world could Candide learn the truth about the world and leave behind the optimism that Pangloss imbedded in his young mind. Only through this was he able to leave behind his ignorance and gain some life experience.

Who is the modern day gadfly/Socrates?

Who is the modern day gadfly/Socrates? A gadfly is a person who is constantly hovering around you and others in an annoying manner provoking you. A gadfly does this through requests, schemes, and criticism. Socrates was a gadfly back in his day. He would spend almost all his time going around Athens poking holes through people’s false beliefs and ideas. He would do this by playing the part of the ignorant and questioning the individual without rest until he got to a question that the people couldn’t answer themselves. The point of this was to force the person to doubt or at least relook at his or her ideas and start thinking about whether or not they are the right ones to have. A modern day gadfly is Stephen Colbert. He invites radical republicans to his show and talks to them until he finds a way to make them slip up and stumble around for an answer to a difficult question. He also pretends to be radically republican himself on the show which is pretty similar to pretending to be ignorant. Another good example of a modern day gadfly would be Michael Moore. His documentaries are about him running around after people in power and asking them difficult questions about why they have done certain things in the past that have hurt many of their employees and other similar scenarios. In his movie about Wal-Mart he goes to the Walton family and asks them how they feel about the thousands of ma and pa businesses they’ve put out of business and why they have such bad pay and benefits for their employees.

Is the unexamined life truly worth living?

Is the unexamined life truly worth living? What did Socrates mean by this deep and complex statement? What I believe he was saying was that if you don’t look at your life in perspective and look around you and question the world you live in you are not truly living and I agree. If you are just living your life by instinct and just doing things because of basic impulses are you really living? Are you fully conscious in this state of being? I feel like if you don’t stop or slow down while you are living your life to observe and question and examine the world around you and your own being you are living a semiconscious half asleep state. This state is very close to the state of conscious that I imagine animals are in. they realize they are alive and that they need basic things like food and water and shelter but don’t ever wonder why do I need water to not die. I think the reason Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living is because as humans and as homo sapiens we are capable of more than animals so we need to be expected to live our lives at a higher level of consciousness. It’s not ok for us to just mentally coast by through our lives and if we do we are not living life to the fullest and not even attempting to do it. Personally, I would not want to live an unexamined life.

Eulogy

Vlad was a good young man. He lived 18 full happy years on this world and enjoyed his time here. He always faced difficulties well starting with being thrown into first grade not knowing a word of English after moving to Chicago from Bulgaria. I remember when he was first learning the language at school and all he would do is play little educational games on the computers in school. Boy he loved his time with those games. His favorite part of the day back then was playing sports during recess and going to gym class. Vlad was a good student always doing his homework and class work and never talking or playing around with his friends too much during class. Well maybe once in a while, but for the most part Vlad was well like by his teachers. Vlad also had many friends that he loved spending time with and hanging out with after school or at sleepovers. But then, just as Vlad was happy and satisfied with his school, he transferred to an IB program at another school. This was the second major difficulty Vlad faced because he didn’t know any of his new classmates. Over time he got to know them and they became friends. Vlad loved, until his last day, to watch all types of sports on TV or live. Vlad’s favorite part of junior high was playing on all the competitive sports teams the school offered, especially soccer and track and field. Vlad was overall a very dedicated student athlete who loved to represent his school and compete. This characteristic did not change in high school where he was on the varsity football and track and field teams all four years. Vlad broke his wrist in his junior year which slowed him down on the field but he remained dedicated to his team and continued coming to practice with little hope of playing again just to help out where he could. Vlad was a young man of great loyalty both to his team and to his friends. He continued to hang out or at least keep in touch with many of his friends from junior high, middle school, and even as far back as first grade. Vlad also loved his family and it was hard being separated from most of them by the Atlantic Ocean but he kept touch as best as he could. Above all Vlad valued his family, friends, and all sports.