The Apology

One of the most fundamentally true statements ever uttered is “the unexamined life is not worth living”. This statement was professed by the one and only Socrates while he argued for his life during his final trial. This statement was recorded in his pupil, Plato’s, text entitled The Apology. In our modern lives we have endless distractions; in our modern lives we have constant stimulation, and in our modern lives we have a need to constantly seek cultural approval -over all else. These never ceasing qualities of our culture lead us far from fulfilling lives; ironically all that our own media show us are images of people living fulfilling lives and yet all we can dream of is fulfilling our lives. These societally imposed ideas of gaining cultural
These types of pressures and distractions lead our youth into situations of self-doubt and even self-harm. This is why it is more essential, now than ever before, that our culture takes action in integrating mindfulness into its set of cultural practices and norms; the more normative we make mindfulness (the art of examining life) the more likely we will see a cultural shift for the good of the youth. We will see a shift in consciousness flow like a river of positivity; this shift will be from looking for approval from one's culture to looking for approval from oneself. This shift from seeking others approval to self-approval will obviously incorporate the idea of examining one’s life. Without examining one's life, we are at the mercy of the stimuli placed in front of us; these stimulus's placed in front of us are more than likely distractions like-- social media and other popular mediums of mass media. Today, our culture’s youth are in great peril; this peril is the indirect danger of losing a cultural pursuit of truth and fulfillment to the pursuit of pleasure and instant gratification. This essay will examine the advantages of living an examined life through the pursuit, and utilization, of mindfulness, in juxtaposition with living one's life for the pursuit of instant
Piles of waste cover our earth. Waste is buried in heaps inside of landfills, and there is also a continent of waste floating out in the middle of the ocean called “toxic garbage island”. This is a result of unconscious decision making; we unknowingly stand by our unconscious decision to believe that when we dispose of a piece of trash it’s never worth a second thought; however, there is no logic behind this kind of thinking. We simply take for granted the fact that we don’t see the physical results of our pollution. If our everyday lives were filled with piles of trash, we would be more likely to want to change our ways; unfortunately, once our trash is shipped off to another landfill- we forget about it- and go right back to our wasteful ways. This would not be the case if we were to change our actions through utilizing mindful decision making. To quote Slavoj Zizek on the matter: “We shouldn’t react to these heaps of waste by trying to somehow get rid of it”(Zizek, Pervert's Guide). Instead he suggests that we simply, “accept the waste” and “accept that there are things out there that serve nothing”(Zizek, Pervert’s Guide). This is the first step to any change- acceptance; to accept the repercussions of our actions would be the first, most basic change we could make, and to follow we could then start devising plans on how to deal with