(shitty) philosophy 101

I like to study philosophy, and I have a lot of opinions on stuff. so here they are.

mind you, most of these were copied from a website, because a) i'm too lazy to think up my own questions and b) they're good questions and i'm bored

some of these are really genuine and introspective, others are just plain stupid.

here we go.

what is the meaning of life?

I don't think there is one, I would argue it's more about what the meaning of your life is. everyone has a role to play in society and I don't think it's reasonable to try to find one universal meaning for everyone.

what makes someone a "good" person?

While one could argue that the concept of "good" is subjective, I think those arguments are somewhat futile because of the simple fact that we as humans have an inherent sense of good and bad in the form of emotions. They say it feels good to help people; but then the real question is: are you helping the person because you actually want to help them, or are you helping them because it will make you feel better about yourself / make you look better to others? I believe the answer to that question would determine whether someone is a good or bad person.

"shopping cart theory" is also a good litmus test of sorts.

If time travel were possible, would it be wrong to alter history? 

This is a tricky one. 

Humans have had some dark times throughout our history. Assuming that, in this scenario, the "real" timeline of history (the one we're living in now) is the timeline which is being altered, I think it'd be insulting to the people that experienced these things to erase it from history, because, even if history is literally "rewritten", that suffering still happened. Furthermore, there is the old saying "those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it", which I believe to be undoubtedly true; as if one were to alter history, we never would have learned from the wrongdoings of those that came before us.

So, in short: while one may think that it is beneficial to alter history, and even if it may seem so at first, it will ultimately cause more problems, and, in fact, things could've ended up much worse than they actually did. The survival of humanity isn't a boat you necessarily want to rock.

Can inanimate objects be either bad or good?

This one is just stupid.

If we're talking "good" as in "objectively good"; no. Inanimate objects are just that: inanimate. They do not posses free will and are therefore unable to make any decisions that would lead to them being deemed "good" or "bad". They just kinda exist.

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that's all for tonight; i'll add more tomorrow. promise.

if there's any questions in particular that you'd like me to answer, send them to me!