Third lesson; or "Check whether your posts post + emotions and reason and Spock"

Checking back in, at last. I just discovered my last couple of posts never posted for some reason. I am terribly sorry for not checking this out earlier, and I will just quickly repost them all.

Let’s jump right in with the touchiest subject ever: emotions and rationality. In the red corner in this match we have Emotions! It’s really easy to say: “Oh, I’m rational, no emotions in my life.” But that definitely isn’t true. Even pop culture and fiction has no character (that I know of) who is totally emotionless. What about Spock, for example? He’s supposed to be an emotionless rock. But emotions aren’t only useful for conveying the way we feel or for motivating us, although those are really important factors. According to them, Spock IS emotionless.

But Spock is an officer, right? He makes decisions about his life and lives of others. He has a code of conduct and can decide in a split-second. THAT is the most important aspect of emotions: they help us make decisions. If you want to eat a piece of fruit, and you have a choice between an apple and an orange, which would you choose? Let’s say you choose the orange. You probably did that because you like it better than the apple. If you did it because it’s cheaper, then you did it because you like money. If you had no emotions towards neither money, oranges or apples, you would be stuck forever deciding, because then all options are equal, and there is no reason to choose either. Like in that philosophical problem with a donkey: he starves to death between two haystacks because they are completely the same and equally distanced from him.

Also, emotions keep us alive. Fear helps us escape from an unfightable danger, while anger helps us fight a lesser danger. If you met face to face with a King cobra (like I did this time), your emotions would help you see whether you would try to fight it or to escape its bite.

Now on to the blue corner. Here is the Reason! Reason only bows down to cold facts, and so is a perfect way of knowing in case you need to do anything precisely (by the way, ways of knowing are the ways or methods you use to reach certain conclusions). Reason is also a part of our consciousness about ourselves, and helps us distinguish between reality and illusion (though it can make a mistake every now and then).

Next post will be about the infamous Stanford prison experiment, so sit tight!

And don’t forget a towel! 😉

Second lesson; or "That little thingy we call language"

Hey reader, Filip speaking (writing?). Ready for second lesson of Theory of Knowledge? Well, I'll jump into it either way.

Our ToK professor called Theory of Knowledge "Theory of Everything", and although Stephen Hawking and the guy who directed that movie would disagree, I find that to be true most of the time. By forcing me to write this blog ToK gave me a perfect tool to share a part of me with you (since my lazy self would keep procrastinating new posts). But it also brings some tasks with itself, like homework.

My homework for today: find 5 words from 5 lesser-known languages, and translate them.

I know, I know; I promised a positive post this time around, and nearly extinct languages are pretty negative. But my ToK professor demands it, so please endure it for a little bit (I'll throw in a few interesting facts along the way, scout's honor!)

Okay, number 5: Transylvanian Saxon

As the name suggests, this language was spoken by Saxons (AKA Germans) who settled in Transylvania in the Middle Ages, in modern-day Romania. But most of them moved to USA, Canada, Germany and other Western countries, leaving a small number behind. And then Nicolae Ceausescu (this guy) literally sold them (yes, SOLD them) to West Germany during his rule (and for a nice amount of cash per sold Saxon).

The word is wiweln - "bedbugs in flour"

Apparently, they had a lot of those cases...

I wanted to put "vampire" (for obvious reasons), but it is almost the same as in English or German, and that doesn't count.

On to number 4: Ainu

Ainu was spoken on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, with other variants being spoken on Sakhalin and Kuril islands. Fun fact: in 2007. only 10 native speakers were alive. 

The word: kamuy - "god"

It was a tight race between that and nuca (meaning "Russian"), but honestly nuca sounds like a racial slur, so I went with the safe word. This word is also probably important in their culture (more on that later)

Number 3: Manx

Manx isn't from China or something (as it may sound), it is actually from the Isle of Man, between UK and Ireland. Now, the last native speaker of it died in 1974, so you may be tempted to call it extinct, but the people are trying to revive it. Today, around 100 people speak it fluently, with 50 more children being educated in it since 2011. Nothing like some good ol' Celtic to spice up the life, eh?

Word is Keesh - "Scotsman"

Unlike other languages from this list, Manx is well documented (there are road signs and audio files, even the Bible was translated into it - and Game of Thrones as well, I presume), so it was easy to find a dictionary of it. And keesh also means tax, and is a part of phrases like "impose", "overtax" and "toll-keeper". Ah, the Celtic amiability...

At number 2: Kawesqar

Kawesqar is (was) spoken in southern Chile and on the Wellington island off the coast of Chile. In 2006. only 12 native speakers were alive, so I guess it has gone extinct by now.

The word is aswalaḳ - "yesterday"
 A very poetic word (the Beatles agree).

According to Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (what a name!), this word also means "tomorrow", which is less poetic. Seems very bizarre to have one word for two different time markings, right?

Aaand number 1: Kasong

Kasong is a Cambodian language so forgotten that there are no monolingual speakers of it (everybody uses Thai) and even the ISO list of codes for languages has no code for it. To compare, that list adds a three-letter code to pretty much every known language, spoken or extinct, except Kasong. Weird, huh? Anyways, over 50 years ago native Kasong speakers were forbidden from speaking their language because the government of Cambodia thought it interfered with the official language, Thai. The speakers became ashamed of the language. Yay, human rights!

The word is...
*drumroll*
 fɛ:t.B - "twins"
Obviously, that isn't how you write it, but I found no other ways to write this but phonetically. So, feast your eyes on one of the most random and unknown languages in the world.

At last, to more fun subjects. Still here? Great.
These languages all help save the culture of their people through oral literature they keep. All nations' epic songs wouldn't be remembered for long if their original languages haven't been kept in one way or another in new languages. For example, Nordic epic song "Beowulf" was saved in English, influencing J.R.R. Tolkien to write "Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings", which in turn influenced all fantasy writers (including George R. R. Martin, who wrote " A Game of Thrones" and made me and a ton of other previously normal people addicted). And imagine how many more stories were told in other languages, and are waiting to be taken and edited into a new bestseller. Remember Ainu language? They had (and maybe still have) a huge treasury of epic songs they used to sing. The ceremonies of singing them used to last for hours, sometimes even days.  What a sight that was.

But languages are just a part of communication, and we had a chance to put our skills in that area to a test: treasure hunt!

Not really like that, but still, we had to find a treasure. And it quickly turned into the stampede scene from the Lion King. Only thing we had were clues like riddles, pictures, sing language and even equations to lead us to our goal. As you surely anticipated, my team won.

For our efforts (not just mine, I'm not that egoistic), we got a ton of candy just before another ToK class. Bad idea, future and current teachers. Combined with a dull theme, they made all of us restless. Yes, the professor had to silence us a million times. And yes, we shared the candy, Scrooge McDuck.

This was a more language-centric post, but that was the subject of ToK. I don't want to stray too far, since this is for school, after all. More interesting posts coming!
See you next time. And bring a towel ;)

First real lesson; or "Stephen Fry, Nazis and Anakin Skywalker"

Hi, welcome to the second week of the Guide. And I already feel exhausted.

This entire week for me was a cycle of eat-school-eat-sleep-repeat. But there wasn’t enough sleep. Arriving at my second TOK class, I felt like falling asleep. Luckily, our first task, making a mind map for language, was colorfull and interesting enough to keep me awake until the teacher reached the important part: Stephen Fry.

No, she actually showed us a video of him talking about power of words (and if you don’t know who he is, I’ll assume you went to Mars to save Matt Damon for a while). His main example was the National-Socialist Work Party of Germany (AKA Nazis), and how they used slurs such as vermin, rats and similar to present Jews (and others) as lower-class beings. More precisely, Jews were in the fourth class of people by Nazi classification (yes, you do make a classification when planning ethnic cleansing, apparently), and were blamed for Germany’s defeat in World War One, the Great Depression and many other things. Basicaly, if something happens, Jews did it. Famine? Jews did it. Disease? Jews did it. Bayern Münich loses a match? Guess who did it. A meteor falls? Probably Jews again.

Now, imagine listening to it since primary school. You would probably want to get rid of Jews, right? Well, that was the Nazi plan, and also the plan of everybody who ever waged a war or commited war crimes. Rwandan genocide was also mentioned as a prime example. Make your opponents lesser beings, and you will be supported. Like that quote: “All evil in this world stems from the belief that some lives are worth less than others.” Pretty true, right?

Oh, it didn’t get any prettier. She showed us a trailer of a movie named “Hannah Arendt”. Heard of her? She was a German-Jewish philosopher who was a reporter during the trial of Adolf Eichmann (I guess not many people have heard of him, though). She coined the term “banality of evil”: when regular, normal people do horrible things simply because they are, so to say, “stupid”, only following orders. Her claim caused controversy, but since I took psychology in IB program, I can actually relate to that, in a way.

Presenting Stanley Milgram, social psychologist from Yale. He made an experiment where he had one participant administer electric shocks to another (who was, in fact, acting) under orders of somebody who was seen as a figure of authority. Milgram was influenced by Arendt’s book, both as a psychologist and as a Jew. He was denied a position on Harvard for this unethical experiment, but he proved Arendt’s theory.

See, any of us could do things like that, in case enough propaganda and psychology is used. And since I live in the promised land of Balkans, I’m pretty sure we will see another war here. Nationalism is okay, in certain boundaries, but what the politicians here are doing is the same thing Nazis did. And all the talk on war crimes and genocide and Haag trials… Honestly, the sooner all three sides admit that they all have commited war crimes, the better. The breaking of Yugoslavia was a bloody mess where everyone took what they could, encouraged by demagogues. One author even named Serbian government during the war years fascist.

That is another problem of the modern world: too many perspectives. One almost wants to be ordered what to do. It drives me crazy, like little children who were fighting: “He started it!” “No, HE started it!” What is the truth? That is a question I want an answer to, even more than “How do I know what I know?” Maybe I’m too pessimistic and it is a mistake to write this, especially since it will be on my IBO registry profile, but… I will take the risk of looking like young Anakin Skywalker in the Prequels (feel free to comment “I don’t like sand” if you think like that)

So, after this long spilling of my mind on this virtual page, I’ll make myself some black tea and enjoy.

You should enjoy too. World still has a chance to surprise even the pessimists like me (foreshadowing the next post). Also: treasure hunt at my school!

See you next time. And remember to bring a towel 😉

Guide Frontpage; or "What the Hell is Theory of Knowledge?"

Welcome, reader. This is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Theory of Knowledge, since it is being written for my Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class, but I will include other topics as well. So, please enjoy (and if you are my TOK teacher, please don’t mind me getting off track sometimes ☺)

Anyways, I’m sure you all remember the routine of school. After a while, all classes, even new ones with new professors, start to feel the same. In the IB programme, new ways of incorporating multimedia have kept the boredom at bay so far (looking at you, History and Serbian). But when I entered my classroom for TOK, I thought it will be a bit boring.

I mean, how do you explain abstract topics and terms to a bunch of hormonized seventeen-year-olds?

But our professor did a great job, asking a question I never asked myself: how do I know all the things that I know?

How do I know that a person is kind?

How do I know what symbols are associated with which people?

How do I know how to be polite?

Apparently, I will learn quite a lot about learning in these two years (expect a blogpost at least once a week, and feel free to contact, or punch, me if I don’t deliver). From Scouts, food and writing to wars, politics and philosophy, all that is in my head will be here, eventually.

Welcome to an amazing journey.

And don’t forget a towel! 😉