Couple of years ago, me and my childhood friend sat on a couch at my house,
watching the cartoon Tom & Jerry. I, viewed Tom as a bully, always trying to catch
the smart and witty Jerry. My friend, do not share the same opinion, he believed that
Jerry was obnoxious, always instigating Tom even when he was resting and Tom
was simply doing his job as a cat.
Good day to the judging committees, my name is Zeidan Naqeeb, a mere 19 years
old from UiTM Alor Gajah. “There is nothing good or bad but thinking make it so,”
said Hamlet, written by Shakespeare. It continued a long philosophical question of
our perception to reality and today, I would like to share my views on this, titled “The
Philosophy of Thinking.”
Ladies and gentlemen,
Our understanding of reality was shaped by the working of the complex webs of
thoughts that weave itself together inside our mind. Reality itself is not an objective
truth, where one plus one is equals to two. Rather it opens as a subjective
interpretation coloured by our very lens. Similar to Tom and Jerry that I mentioned
earlier, one can perceive something as good but to another person, they might see it
as bad. This of course depends on who you are asking and their beliefs are.
Friedrich Nietzche, who philosophized the idea of perspectivism shared the same
thought. He described human knowledge as being subjective. He stated that our
understanding of our surroundings, stimulus, and actions are shaped by our own
perspective, interpretation, and biases. If I were to asked you today, what do you
think of a man robbing people around and using the money he gained for his own
belief and mission, you would probably called him a criminal, am I right? However
when it is inside a story book, we view Robin Hood as a hero. Such is the very basis
of Nietzche philosophy of perspectivism. As John Locke once stated, our mind is a
tabula rasa, a blank slate. He believes that our knowledge and perspectives originate
from sensory experience and empirical observation.
Fellow ponderers of reality,
Nietzche also
To draw everything to a close, So let us continuously ponder, learn, and seek the
truth with an open mind. May we embrace the subjectivity of truth as a catalyst for
intellectual curiosity and the building blocks for our understanding and wisdom, after
all the Greek philosopher Socrates once said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing
you know nothing”.