Humanity can refer to ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Humans tend to possess these things naturally. Screwtape generally characterizes humanity as being stupid. He makes them out to be animals who act on emotions. Screwtape wants them to feel worried with what they do. Humanity plays a critical role in how Screwtape tries to lead human beings to damnation. Keeping humans wondering, anxious about what may happen next, is a great way to control them. This is why Screwtape says humans can be influenced because this is in fact true. Humans can have significant changes made to their life through the most infinitesimal emotion. Having power over somebody’s emotions is a huge part of their life that is hanging in the balance. This is also …show more content…
Regret is a powerful emotion. Regret will beat a person down and keep him there if he lets it. Moving on, another feeling that can affect people greatly is suspense. Not knowing what the future holds can scare an individual. This then leads to extreme stress that could prevent a person from doing what he needs to do. In Letter 6, Screwtape says: “There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about will happen to them” (Lewis 25). This idea reinforces the fact that humans do worry about what will happen in the future. It can be horrifying to not know what may happen. In Letter 15, Screwtape says: “It is far better to make them live in the Future. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time-for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays” (Lewis 76). This points out how humans need to be careful to not overly focus on the future because often times it holds things we do not know about. Suspense and anxiety may lead to fear and fear makes people susceptible to the devil’s attacks. Screwtape knows
For example I could be offered the opportunity to get the job I always dreamed of but then I decline because the fear of not doing what I needed to do like finish school haunts my brain. The reason why that can be a problem is because even though I know I would do extremely well at my job there is always the fear of something going wrong and then I 'd have no other type of work due to the fact of not finishing school. Another example would be missing a family members wedding because I still needed work to be done. It 's always the precious moments that always get shot down due to the fact that people are constantly told they need to do this or that and they listen and continue to miss every single moment or opportunity in their life that could change them
Everyone has heard the saying, “Oh, the humanity!”, but what does it mean. What is humanity? Merriam-Webster defines humanity as “quality or state of being humane” or the “quality or state of being human”(“Humanity”). Humanity is being kind and compassionate and helping out your fellow man. Maus is a great tool to use to study humanity. Maus shows the depth and degress of humanity and inhumanity of humans. The novel also shows how people's humanity can change for better or for worse.
The balance between fear and foresight is a necessary component for an individual to maintain a healthy lifestyle, an imbalance of these components can potentially put people in difficult situations as it relates to their survival. Fear can be a humbling experience when it is not balanced with foresight, the nuances of that particular experience instills a subconscious thought in an individual that resonates with fear, in terms of people realizing their mistakes and making the necessary adjustments in life.
In any other way controls or dominates the second person and causes the second person...
... bad thing to control your emotions rather than them control you. It is hard to care about everyone and everything; most feel as though they don’t have the mental capacity to do this but caring about everything can result in completely grasping a perfect human state. Metaphysics has helped many try to strive to create a more empathic world to combat this phenomenon of socially accepted apathy.
Human beings are the only living species that base their lives around time. We have calendars, we have clocks, and we have created an entire system in order for us to feel like we are aware of everything. The reasoning behind this is that we fear uncertainty. Since we consider ourselves at the top of the living food chain, we hate to feel as though there is something more powerful than us. When we don’t know things, we feel helpless because we can’t do anything to stop it. Whether it be if your crush likes you back, whether there will be a pop quiz next week, or whether life continues after death: no one likes the uncertainty of not knowing something. In the novel A Tale for the Time Being, the author, Ruth Ozeki, brings light to many different concepts but the one concept that stood out to me was this one. Instead of allowing allows her characters to combat the fear of uncertainty instead of fall prey to it. Ruth Ozeki shows us through Nao’s behavior and the suicidal tendencies of her father, through time, and through the helplessness that Ruth feels towards Nao, that it is okay to accept the unknown.
The notion of humanity is a picture intricately painted using the ideals and morals that define us as human beings in contextual society. The audience is influenced by the morals and values present through techniques in texts to paint their own image of humanity. Our ideals and morals that differ in texts through context, scrupulously shape our image of humanity
regret. The idea of time and how it is finite is one of the main
Humankind has always had a thirst for power; over its peers, environment and spiritual beliefs. To quench this thirst it has gone as far as genocide; but has often employed more subtle techniques, such as mind control. In today’s socio-economical and political worlds, mind control plays a key role in dictating tastes and lifestyles; as well as controlling political thoughts, views, and people’s understanding of the world. It is accomplished using various channels to condition people’s thinking. Publicity and advertisement campaigns saturate people with products, broadcasting over radio, and television which in itself is a prime example. Many religions employ mind control, conditioning their followers to obey without questioning.
Working in reverse, the future is an unknown, vast, nothingness, that we know little about. Most of the time one does not know his or her own future, yet in Macbeth two characters, Banquo and Macbeth, are given prophesies of what is to come. Shakespeare shows us the dangers in knowing one’s future. Both men who received prophesies from the witches were murdered in the play, suggesting that discovering the nothingness of the future is dangerous. The present is only time in which there is something. The present is the time emotions can be felt. There is an importance in the present, because decisions can be made and acted upon. Macbeth talks about “present fears are less than horrible imaginings” (1.3. 137-38), providing evidence of current emotions and suggesting that they are only less horrible when the future is known. Finally, the past occurs only seconds after the present and it creeps in on us in another vast, unknowing way. We are often unaware of how our pasts develop and grow as each day passes, bringing us closer and closer to the day in which the future and present are no more. Shakespeare describes this time as “signifying nothing” (V.5. 26). Once something is in the past it has no emotional capacity, ability to be acted upon, or imaginings. The significance of life is not in the past or future, but in the present. The present is the only time in which we can experience life in a way that is balanced and decisions can be made. Although many may want to know what the future holds, Macbeth shows us the consequences of discovering the nothingness of the future. Once Macbeth realizes what he’s going to do in the future the decision-making possibility in the present is stripped from him. Finally, the past may influence our present decision, but once something is in the past it signifies nothing and cannot be altered. Overall,
Fate, being always truly unknown and seemingly static, is not something that one should tamper with. It leads all decisions and outcomes, if one so chooses to believe in the concept of predestination. In Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, three witches decisively go against their orders and toy with the lives of thousands of people by telling riddles of the future and it’s biddings. Evidently, all those who were given a glance into their future by the meddling trio soon let sanity slip through their fingers and fell into their eventual demise. Banquo, who being told of his kins’ fortune and fames soon to come, grows weary of his friend and is soon killed out of fear. Although his timidity was wise, it did not help him in living to see such foretellings. Lady Macbeth, although she never directly spoke to by our mischievous trinity, suffers along with the fate of the others when she allows herself to cover herself in the tendrils of greed and lust. When one allows themselves to be engrossed in the words of another stranger, though how plausible the words may be, they will fall just as Macbeth did. At first, he was not keen on getting his hands dirtied to fulfill such preposterous fortunes, but soon fell short of his mind and destroyed the vast majority of Scotland and of himself. Fate is a dangerous and unavoidable truth in life, it can destroy the ability of free will and the freedom that living should bring you.
THE POWER OF THE MOMENT: The ability to stay in the present is a virtue. Most people are always living either in the past or in the future. So they are either worrying about the past, worrying about the past pains, the past results, the past failures, past relationships, past struggles, or they are ruminating about the future fears, the future impossibilities, the future achievements, future possibilities. Worrying about the past or future would not benefit you as you are putting yourself in a position of disadvantage.
The hindsight bias, as defined in the article Hindsight Bias and Developing Theories of Mind by Andrew N. Meltzoff and Geoffrey R. Loftus, occurs when “people armed with advanced knowledge of an outcome overestimate the likelihood of that particular outcome, in essence claiming that they ‘knew it all along’” (Meltzoff). People who are victims of this very common bias can be drawn to the idea of going to the past to fix all of their problems because they live in the present. Knowing what the present holds, people believe that if they went back in time, they could change the future and, in turn, have a better
Life is constantly throwing curveballs. They come from every angle, at differing speeds and all make diverse, lasting impacts. Yet, no matter how many are thrown in our direction, one may never be able to know when or from where the next is coming. Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, once said that “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forward.” Meaning that, much like the curveballs, there is no way to understand what life will throw at us in the future, yet we must learn based on the experiences that have occurred in our past. For instance, when one becomes aware of the fact that a curveball is in their near future, and is ready to throw them off course, there is no time to think of what steps to take in order to get out of harm’s way. One must act solely on instinct, while simultaneously thinking through the process. We must then continue to think it over after the ac...
From the moment they wake up, people experience events that trigger certain emotions. How people react to these events may depend on that person feels during that event. In terms of whether our emotions control us or we control our emotions, I believe that to some extent emotions control us. Because we cannot change how we feel in response to certain stimulus, emotions control us. However, people have some control over whether or not they act on their emotions. Emotions at that given moment can influence our actions. If people can control their reactions, then to some degree we are controlling our emotions. However, the prompts raises several important questions. How can one’s emotions alter other ways of knowing such as perception or reason?