Philosophy in Macbeth

I realized doing my English assignment how easy it is to relate philosophy to almost anything if you just a little over analyze it. (=)

So I thought I'd share some philosophical issues the Shakespeare play "Macbeth" brings up - and I find interesting.

First of all, it could be called - A moral play, or a play with a moral. It is very clear that the play takes a stand on the actions of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (LM from now on) - that they are wrong and even immoral. So it deals with issues of morality - one could look for the reason of their plan to be wrong. Is it because they broke the contract between citizens and a fair king by murdering Duncan?(contractarianism and legitimacy issue, political philosophy) or is it because murder is wrong as a deed?

But the play seems not to support the last stand. As we read in the end - Macbeth is killed and it is a great joy for the crowd.

Is it wrong because Macbeth expressed a desire to become something he is not? because he has let his will to power take over him?

This brings up another issue - the issue of identity. The question is - how much of this tragedy has happened because of Macbeth's ambition (personality)? and to what degree was it caused by the witches and LM that encouraged him and pushed him towards fulfilling his secret desire?

We can look at the issue from different philosophical perspectives.

the first is the deterministic one - Macbeth was conditioned to desire power and had an inner ambition to become the king of Scotland. The witches and LM were just triggering off something that would have happened no matter what.

The second perspective is the witches prophecy has actually changed Macbeth's mind. That he can change as a person and change the direction to which his life is going by taking action.

Another philosophy we could bring in to Macbeth is Nietzsche's. His idea of will to power the will to power is very much present in the characters of Macbeth and LM in the play.

Also - his notion of guilt. Nietzsche says that human beings have impulses they act upon, like beasts, and that one of those is violence. That humans enjoy violence. He also says that with the course of time the animal that is the human being has tamed itself. That we now suppress our impulses and turn them inwards. This combined with the guilt (unredeemable debt) we have to our ancestors leads to our own destruction.

This idea is very much present in the character of Lady Macbeth in the play. She does express a will to power, an impulse that Nietzsche claims we all have. But then the consequences of her deed and her violence make her feel extreme guilt which is turned towards herself. That finally destroys her - as she starts sleepwalking, hallucinating and finally she kills herself.

Hope this is not too far stretched :p

Just thought it's kinda cool how you can apply Philosophy to this kind of things. :)

Activism

A main argument in favor of democracy in John Stuart Mill's article is the kind of society it creates – an active one.

He claims that democracy, as the rule of the people is the best way of governing since it involves everyone. It does not include only a despot or a small group of influential people (aristocracy). In the other forms of rules the decisions are being made for and you sit passively in your house – not involved. In democracy, Mill says, people are forced to engage in their future and the future of their state and are ought to actively participate. This affects the behavior of the people – it not only that in voting they become active but rather they become active people (which is desired).

I am afraid I don't know how much of this is actually present in Modern democracy. I don't see leaving your house once every few years to vote as being active rather than passive. In what other way does democracy encourage activeness?

I can tell about my surroundings back home that I barely know anyone who is actually active in politics, including me. I grew in a society where instant media surrounds me – every round hour there's a news flash on the radio. We have the internet access 24 hours, the news channels on TV and a newspaper on our doorstep every morning. Yet it seems that many times they just pass by us… especially teenagers.

One reason for this I can think of is lack of political or activist education. This was never something that has managed to really catch my attention. We used to have a "news hour" every Friday in primary school and junior high but it somehow remained quite superficial.

On the other hand – you cannot make people interested in something they're not.

Why are we not interested?

This is exactly the problem with Mill's argument – I think many people feel they do not really have much say in their government's politics. It is a problem with representative democracy – it does involve a small group of people that decide for everyone else. Yes, once every 4 years we get to choose those people - but that doesn’t require much. Moreover, many times people feel the choice they have is between a douche and a tard sandwich. It is not a real choice and they personally really do not matter much in the future of the country because so much has and will be decided for them.

Take India for example – How can democracy make 1.3 people active? Would all of them been active it was complete chaos. But then again – how can 535 people represent this huge country?

I'm sure so many people are actually passive because in the biggest democracy in the world they don't count for much. A proof for that could be how political families have ruled the country, for example the Nehru family, for FOUR GENERATIONS, only Indira and J. Nehru together for more than 30 years! What kind of choice does this leave for the common people? (I hope what I mean comes across though I'm having some hard time to phrase it)

It seems to me that democracy can only help you reach activism in small and distinct groups. Otherwise – it might just lead to the opposite…

I close the shutters in hebrew

This is from a Hebrew children's song.

All the verses tell about different things the singer does in Hebrew. Daily things - I wake up in Hebrew, drink my coffee in Hebrew, count sheep in Hebrew and tell you good night in Hebrew,

but (!), he says, at night - when I dream - I dream in Spanish, my mother tongue.

I know we've been all over language and not only once and it is a common topic in muwci and among Philo students. But lately I've been experiencing again and again little things that make me think about language.

I feel so comfortable now in English - I don't have to think before I speak, it comes out naturally (almost all the time) and even when I speak to Israelis on campus I sometimes mix a word here and there in English (but not when I talk to people back home).

Yet in a way I really identify with what the children song says. It's is not that I literally dream at night in Hebrew - but I feel that the language has deep roots in me. That other languages may be communication tools and are great and interesting and wonderful to know - but Hebrew is something that relates to culture for me. English is a culture - but it is a muwci culture for me, a limited culture, a culture I adopted but I didn't grow up with. A culture of a global village and of internationalization.

I had so many ideas lately to do something for the next wada concert - and I've been trying to translate several songs in different occasions and even a skit - but I never seem to be able to translate the feeling. To translate it properly. (I even wanted to translate the Children song now - Dreaming in Spanish but found it loses its magic)

I don't think this prevents people from really getting to know me. I am who I am right and here (that relates to Hume's article we read last year, I think - that our mind is a theater and our identity the actors that keep changing. a bundle of perceptions)

I do feel I can express myself and get across to people. What I feel does not come across is not my identity but maybe more my culture, my background. It is something I would very much like to share with others - but find it hard without the Hebrew.

I'm sure people have a different "feel" in their language. They joke and maybe behave slightly different (or appear to behave) but since we live here for so long now and feel comfortable in English and our identity has been shaped in this place - I think we can truly get to know each other and the mother tongue is not a necessity for that.

But it is a necessity for me. for my interaction with myself and for my soul everywhere. In a Hebrew speaking community, an English speaking community or on your own - it does not have to involve anyone else but the strong feeling of affiliation I have with it. A personal thing.

This is the children's song, by the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlKXixY9LYE

Levels of Exitment & Project Week

I hope this makes sense. I tried to get some related points across - about the difference between first and second year, excitement, project week, and how that relates to our situation right now.

This also relates to my previous post and to project.

I've noticed that in a way the second year in muwci is less exciting than the first one. Not less fun - but less exciting - and that has a logical explanation.

When we first come EVERYTHING is new.

At the beginning almost every time you meet a new person on campus you think "Maldives! wow! so cool", or "Norway, that is so exciting!"

Also everything you see around the college and in it - is completely new. India, the boarding school, the UWC - it overwhelmingly exiting.

What I have noticed this year is that things are much calmer for me. Of course I was excited when we we were expanding and 100 new people joined the community. I'm also very excited about my two-sort-of-new CI's which are very challenging, about being a coordinator and a second year in general..

But it is so different from the first year! instead of being taken care of you are now the senior.

The amounts of work and the fact we live in this artificial ideal community affect that a lot. Somehow I feel, if we even had just one day off - we could have appreciated it more.

That's why I'm really excited about project week. I hope that could be our little break, after which we come back with renewed powers.

But I suppose quite some people do not feel the same as I do, since around 50% of our batch stays on campus. I guess that's also a break, having free time to work and spend here. But it does relate to the first part of this post - the excitement.

I think Project week is *the* opportunity to get off campus for a while! go out.. see some other places. I think it is one of the things that excite me the most here and give you a chance to explore other places and experiences.

the real world

Well, in almost every way I think - muwci is not the 'real world'.

It is a tiny community of carefully selected people. 200 people who are very different indeed, yet most share some common qualities - not only wanting to come to a UWC.

Only the fact that we don't have discipline problems in this school is unrealistic... and that's just a tiny detail out of many more. It is, in a sense, a very idealistic community, in the sense that it is trying to be ideal.

I wonder what living in a very-clearly unrealistic world for two years does to us.

Because sometimes I feel it is somewhat unnatural. That when you go out, when you go to school, when you go back home and when you take part in afternoon activities - it is always the same people and always the same place you encounter.

Back home you have so many different circles of friends - from school, from the youth movement, from your far away childhood, from dance lessons or basketball, and on top of that all you meet knew people and you spend time with your family. And everything you do is in different places and atmospheres - you go out and you go to another city or to someone else's place or to the beach or to a party or to a wedding or a fest or a movie...

and here when we go somewhere it's almost always Pune - again with the same muwci people.

I think it obviously makes our relationships more intense and close. We experience so much together - some things that others could probably not understand.

But in a way it also makes the end so intense. I don't think I will ever again live with these kind of people in such a place that keeps you busy busy busy all the time with them.

And the goodbye is so weird also - how do you just leave your home for two years? your HOUSE-mates in a way, the people that functioned as your classmates, your friends, your housemates, roommates, coordinators, teachers, students (to each other, yes) - the people who most of the positions in your life for two years?

I'm not sure what is exactly philosophical about this post. I guess it's the contemplation over our life?

In some way I want to say this is not the real life. Real life probably starts when we leave here again...

I cannot say this place is not amazingly great, enriching, teaching, developing and challenging... it is all of that. It has changed me a lot.

I think I'm pointing out that it might also have negative sides to it - maybe in the way of doing it. I don't know how easy it will be to recover from this different dimension called muwci and how it will be possible to connect it back to our previous lives.

The Poor of Your City Take Precendence

The full quote (a Jewish proverb) :
"In the case of a Jew and a non-Jew, the Jew
takes precedence; a poor person and a wealthy person, the poor person takes precedence; a poor person of your own city and a poor person of another city, the poor of your city take precedence."
(The English parallel: Charity begins at home)

Just some points that crossed my mind regarding this...

* I can testify, that personally the easiest thing is to agree. It makes sense. I do care for my close environment first. I do care for my friends, the school, whatever is happening right here and right now the most. In school they always tried to prove us this - by showing us how the newspapers always report on different accidents and incidents abroad and you are always more compassionate towards the Israeli or the Jew.

* I wonder what the origins of this feeling are. Are they rooted so deeply in us because of our nationalistic education? (and I'm not talking about Israeli education specifically, but generally about most of us) why do we have different degrees of caring and compassion for different people?

* I can think of some reasons. Maybe our mind requires this kind of categorization. Arabs (in my case) are usually "against us" - so we care less about them. Americans are generally supportive of us, that means we should probably be in their favour most of the time. If we had to judge every single person individually in order to make up our mind or form some sort of impression we would probably go crazy (and won't have enough time.)

* I understand cultural identification that makes us feel closer to different groups of people. Yet one thing strikes me - the randomness of this identification. Had I been born an Arab I would probably place Jews or Israelis at the bottom of my compassion list. What a small coincidence determines something we feel so strongly about!

* Finally I want to look at the Economic aspect of this saying, for it does not only talk of moral support or cultural fraternity. It talks about the poor. It talks about people who disadvantaged or underprivileged - and prioritizes who should be helped first, who is more equal or more important.
And that makes me think - is this attitude what causes the enormous gaps between let us say Western countries and Eastern Countries? Developed Economies and Undeveloped Economies?
How did a manage to grow having my quite normal, safe life with abundant food - so used to this being so normal while in other parts of the world people are starving? What causes us today to see this is kind of normal, or distant?
Has this maybe something to do with this attitude, this proverb...? Our affiliations...?

Language and Inequality

My CI, Active English was lately joined together with another CI, Pre - Akshara English.
Both CI's used to teach basic English to 5th, 6th and 7th graders in the Azde village government school twice a week. Due to changing attitudes towards our activities in the Azde School we have contacted the Paud School and are now shifting our activities there.
Last Thursday was the first time I went down with the CI down to the Paud School, and it has really made me think. This is my second year in India, and I have been travelling in both south and north. I've been living here in "rural Maharashtra" (?) for the last year and visited some of the biggest cities in India - Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Cochin and Calcutta, yet the inequalities in India had never appeared so brutal and real to me as when I visited this Paud school.

3 kids on one (little) table, 60 kids in class room, the English teacher that does not speak English... No syllabus, just a text book (which is in a much higher level than the kids are), the closed mindedness that I can not explain.

Some of my co-years and I started a new CI that helps 12th graders from the Paud high school in preparing for their final English exams. They are all in my age, and all very eager to succeed. All of them have been writing essays on how important education is and how they want to have a job and be successful during our last in class assignment. And this keeps striking me – we are exactly at the same age, and I know they are not lazy and success is important for them – yet they have been prevented from the education I have been complaining about back home. How big is the gap between me and them, and more striking, between an Indian who studies in muwci and an Indian that studies in a government school in the village.

And this also relates so much to our last Global Affairs session in which some people in my discussion mentioned how English has so much to do with the elite English speaking class that exists today in India.
I don’t know how a country can keep on functioning like that. It seems not much is done about the circle of education, of English…
After talking so much in class about hypothetical equality and socialism, I'm trying to think – what could be done? What is being done in India? How can such inequality prevail?
It also makes me think of our role as a CI. Are we really helping these kids? What does this hour a week do, especially since we seem not to get completely through or completely understood, especially with the language barrier?
Wouldn't it be great if we could change these kids' life? If we could walk in to the classroom and communicate, and explain and be understood? Sometimes I feel we could have done so much more if we all spoke Hindi or Marathi, that this is what these kids need, real communication.

I'm not sure what this post is about. It is about language, practical inequality, and our role, a little bit, I guess. Hope it's not too messy.