"The unexamined life is no worth living for a human being"
To me this quote tells me that there is no point in living a life that has no meaning to you or two others. The sad truth is that many people do live this life and it goes to show that people are acting without thinking. Imagine if everyone lived a life where they had taken the time to question themselves and their choices, there would be more happy people and ideally less problems. Of course there is still the great possibility that there would be those who find their life so deplorable that they would go into deep depression or even wish to die.
According to Socrates's principle, a person can only be truly and completely human if they subject their life to the tests of critical self-examination and through that examination they can finally achieve their greatest happiness. I agree with this principle but living in a society where many things do not require much thought doing this for everyone would be nearly impossible. People are not willing to question themselves, because sadly many of us think that how we are living is set on stone. Most people believe what they feel, think and know is the only correct thing and would not be willing to go through the series of critical questions. I wish we could all go through self-examination to reach that fulfillment but I know that it can never truly be a reality.
Michael Moore
According to many dictionaries a gadfly is a person who upsets the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, making people think he is just an irritant person. Many politicians and social commentators are said to be modern gadflies. Michael Moore is an American liberal filmmaker, social critic, author and activist and he would be one of many modern gadflies. He has written many works that criticize globalization, national and international corporations, weapon ownership, U.S Presidents (George W. Bush and Bill Clinton among others), the Iraq war and many other things. Michael Moore is known widely for his liberal political activism, he refuses to accept the title by merely saying "If we're not politically active, it ceases to be a democracy." With this he defends his critiques by saying that if people do not question the government and the status quo then democracy, or the rule of the many as Socrates defined it, would not be in existence. Michael Moore takes the role of examining life in the United States for us, he questions the actions of our leaders and many people do not like that because it goes against what they believe. In a way the modern gadfly examines the life we currently life in and exposes to the population giving them the option to take it a step further and examine it for themselves.
I agree with the fact that many people chose not to examine their lives because they think that they couldn't change it even if they wanted to. So many people think that if they've already made several bad decisions in their life that they can't do anything about it so they continue to screw up. You brought up an interesting point about how some people would actually be worse off examining their lives. Most people would see a self examination as a way one could improve oneself, but it is quite possible that one would feel worse about themselves upon examination. Most people think of a life examination as a way for one to learn from the past and improve in the future, but it's also likely that one could be discouraged by their past and may not even want to continue moving forward.
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