Who am I?

Who am I?

 If someone asked me who I believed I was I might glibly say I am Dharma Castillo, a community college student, religiously a Scientologist, who is interested in showing emotion through sculpture. However is it that simple for me to say who I am? In terms of reality I would say that my reality isn’t uncontrolled randomness, I have a good grasp on reality. I figure there are beings in this universe that don’t have the reality of uncontrolled randomness and then there is the group of people that “know”, they know that they are here to play a game.

A game of life, they aren’t in their own uncontrolled random universe. For an example I know the basics of how to operate in my area, I know that I need to take care of myself, my relationships (family, partner), and my group. Eventually once I can get these things figured out to a point where I can consistently be at cause over them I can start to move up the line, I can have more control and understanding for helping of mankind, plants and animals, MEST, understand myself as a spiritual being, and possibly eventually if I can get past the current game I can start to understand the supreme being.

I know that in order to get through this universe I have to decide what my beingness is, is it that of an honest daughter, a bum, or a person that takes absolutely no responsibility. Once I get out of the initial struggle of realizing who I am going to be as a person I can sort of go from there to set up my goals, my relationships etc. People spend a lifetime trying to figure out who they are and they get it wrong a lot. I know so far I have moved away from being an immature teen that has a lot of friends to someone who keeps her relationships to the barest of minimums.

Why does that define who I am? Because I decided that I no longer wanted to surround myself with people that had no morals, integrity, or ethics. That was my first step to realizing who I was. I have literally met people my age that have no hope, I swear no hope for the ever realizing who they are and growing up, so that was my first step to realizing who I really am.

 How ought I to act?

 I am someone who has goals to have ethics and morals. Now how do I know to differentiate wrong from right, is it just to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people is that what is moral or is it a step past that. Ethics is a personal thing to me it is going to be my choice, to decide whether or not I want to do the right thing. There has been no “known” workable solution to personal ethics as evidence by the declining ethical level of society.

Ethics is naturally native to the me, I always want to overcome my own lack of ethics, if I feel helpless I start to sort of “do myself in”…I know sometimes when I do something that is out integrity I sometimes almost want to get caught subconsciously and will make mistakes because of it. When the community comes in to stop me and make me put in my ethics in, its justice.

So then how do I figure out what is right and wrong? I can find one thing that I know is right, such as I know taking care of my little brother is right therefore any grade away from that would mean I am approaching wrongness. The ultimate wrongness is death. The scale of right to wrong would have to consider everything present to future. If mankind continues to use an irrational plane that is made out of lack of data and warped viewpoints then it will survive less and more will be destroyed. There will be more pain and eventually death and that is evil.

There are a lot of people in this planet that “think” they are being rational, yet any sane person could see that mass murder could never solve they’re problem. There is always a solution to a problem, even if it isn’t “fun”. Weak, coward, irrational are the ones that hurt people and think it’s the only way they can live their lives…once you get past that you start to learn, it isn’t. I can say I have been there and done that. When people start to become anti-morals they are also anti-self, the goal of man is to survive and the more he does anti-moral things the more he is acting anti-self.

Consequently that is my thinking, or the beginning of my reasoning of ethics and who I am and sort of how I look and hope to conduct my life. It’s not easy, I grew up knowing that stealing was not going to make me a better person, it just wouldn’t that all I knew, so when my friends did it around me I shook my head. However every time I did something against my values I went a little bit more down a dwindling spiral, and eventually had almost no personal integrity. That’s the point where I said why the hell not and I justified it, as being badly influenced, my roommates fault. That’s not rational though because she didn’t make me, it was I that did the act. I chose to do it, I knew it was wrong. Every step I took away from that wrongness, every time I said “no” instead of “yes” was the closer I got to gaining back my personal integrity. That was me deciding to be ethical, putting ethics into myself and that is who I am.

What am I?

What I am isn’t just a question I can simply answer this or that and say it is true, unfortunately it isn’t that easy. For me it is something I know is true for myself but not necessarily truth. It is easier for me to reductively reason who I am. For an example I know I am not my name, not my job, clothes I wear, my school, neighborhood, worries, or my past. I figure to a greater or lesser degree they are a part of me but not necessarily what defines me. I know I am a being this includes a mind and a body.

My mind thinks, remembers, computes, and reasons. I have found also that there is a reactive part of my mind that thinks irrationally. I have found that this is true because there are times I see myself doing something that just isn’t me. Where I can later reflectively or rationally look back and say “wow who was that?” that was not me. That was my father, sister, friends behavior etc but not me, that’s not who I am. I think the more I realize who I am and the less I try to be other people subconsciously, or consciously the more I will feel control over what I am, even physically.

I know I have the power to change, grow because I have; I have changed in a infinite number of ways since I was born. I want to say I know I am a spirit that will never die but I guess I can’t really say that because I myself have not presentally experienced that to the fullest sense however I think and therefore it is true to me that I am a “spirit”, for lack of a better word... I have a life, not necessarily “inside” of me but one that is me. This life experiences, deals etc. with feelings, touch, words, emotions, questions, answers, and sensations…infinity and that is life. That honestly encompasses me in almost the fullest sense that I am aware of. I have an infinite ability to determine this and change it however I don’t think I am to that point yet as being, I am just not that aware, yet. It isn’t an easy journey I know that but it is what I have figured is my goal in life, to understand and survive in the physical and spiritual sense.

Where am I?

I figure I create my own universe to a greater or less degree. I sort of decide things are the way they are and then therefore they are. I think if I were more aware as a being that I could change MEST to be sort of my “way”. However I have decided I am not to that point, therefore I am not to that point…ha-ha. This is actually the hardest question for me to reason because I honestly haven’t reached the point of thinking past me. I try here and there to help out my universe and understand it, however currently it is beyond me. I sort of let matter, energy, space, and time to push me back and forth as it pleases and I believe the moment I start pushing back is when I start to create my own universe. That’s sort of where I am, in a planet that people in this universe basically thought up.

Obviously these questions are not easy to answer however I feel like I have a good grasp on initially realizing what’s going on. I really enjoyed taking this class and reaching a greater understanding on knowing instead of just saying “Who are you? How ought you to act? What are you? Where are you?”

Philosophy Question

“Why was Utilitarianism regarded as a subversive theory? What does utilitarianism propose social response to crime should be? Why? Do you agree? What is your moral perspective on the current penal system in the United States?”

The idea of utilitarianism is that the morality of actions is determinable by the amount of happiness and unhappiness they create, taking in account all the people affected, and counting them all equally. The right/moral action is that which bring the most overall happiness, greatest good for the greatest number of people. It is sort of a reductive approach to ethics where the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. It was regarded as a subversive theory to law and order because for an example if a man had been known to be a criminal to underground society however could not be found guilty of the charge because the witness was killed, the utilitarian might say well the greatest good for the community is to lock him up and throw away the key, however law and order say that he is innocent until proven guilty and therefore should be free. Utilitarianism could be seen as a justification for a way around the law.

A utilitarian would propose that the social response to crime would be one that only justifies punishment if it benefits the greater society, such as the only time punishment like incarceration would be moral is if it is used to prevent future crime which would have to be greater than the harm it would cause to the individual himself. It has to be a punishment that ends up having the most value as well because in order for it to be the greatest good it would have to cause the least amount of misery. They believe this because it seems like the most pragmatic solution to crime. I agree that it does seem like the best solution to imprison and rehabilitate the individual who committed the crime however some might disagree and say it hasn’t been the best solution because of the product of prisons.  However that is because we don’t live in a society that follows completely a utilitarian rule. A lot of people that are being incorrectly imprisoned and a majority of criminals are not being probably rehabilitated so that they can go on to lead healthy lives. The justice system just does not work however it is the greatest good for the society because we cannot have crimes continuing to be committed.

My view on the penal system currently in the U.S. is upsetting I think a lot of Americans feel that they are not cause over the system and cannot help change it and help it become a better place for criminals to rehabilitate themselves rather than a place of further chaos. Because I am a Scientologist I believe that Criminon which means no crime is the best solution. It is a nonprofit that looks to address the causes of criminality and restore the criminal’s self-respect through drug detoxification, education, and common sense programs. Criminon says “By making them responsible for their actions, people under the Criminal Justice system can become ethical and productive citizens.” I think it is wrong to allow the prisons to continue to be in the state of chaos and continued criminality that they are and the only way I can feel cause of this is to help donate to Criminon which is in over 35 countries. It is a slow step but it is definitely moving in the right direction which is to help the penal system. It has to get to the point where when we send someone to prison we actually can say with confidence that it will rehabilite the individual so that they can eventually lead a healthy life rather than somewhere we put them to get them at least out of our hair and even allow them to act even more inhumane to each other because after all they are criminals anyway. This is where I disagree with Utilitarians