When it comes to trying to define our own "character," usually we attempt to define it based upon our own experiences and thoughts. But just as we all carry with us different experiences and ways of thinking, we all can derive slightly or sometimes even vastly different understandings of what char...

"I Am My Own Wife" was a great play that involved a lot of thought and hard work. A one-man play was a great idea for this storyline, but it was hard to follow at times. I wonder why Doug Wright chose to use only one individual to play all of the characters in this play. Could he have used more t...

The power of our unconscious beliefs plays a great role in our lives. Life occurs exactly how we order it. Our words, thoughts, actions, and beliefs are all working together to order up the results we are creating. We have the power of creating the life we want, instead of getting what we think we d...

Even on an intuitive level, people often express the problem of the "egocentric predicament" or the fact that we are limited in our perceptions as to what we personally think and feel and experience. Our ability to obtain objective knowledge is limited by our biases and our perceptions. Qu...

Today, when a person says that someone builds castles in the air, they are usually metaphorically describing someone who dwells in a realm of fantasy, and has a poor grip upon reality. The poem "Mopsus, or The Castle Builder" literalizes the metaphor of castle-building in the air in its t...

It has been well-established that every individual personality is the sum total of her or his life experiences. Since a person's life experiences usually represent a mix of influences such as family upbringing and values, religious teachings, and social culture, it follows logically that ea...

Norman Mailer: Excesses all around One of the giants among mid-20th century American novelists, Norman Mailer has been described in a recent review of his latest book, The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing, as "Aquarius in winter," a not-so-gentle aging of his own 1960s' sobriquet, Aq...

Ned Herrmann wrote several books on whole brain and creative thinking, especially as they relate to the corporation. Initially, Herrmann worked for General Electric in management training, but as he continued to study and develop his theories on creativity and using the whole brain in thi...

Crime and Punishment Essay In war, a general has no room for his own personal feelings and emotions. He has to make logical decisions that will ensure his side victory, and relies on his intelligence, not his morals, to succeed. If he were to make decisions based on his desire not have people get...

Beauty and Women Since the beginning of man and through the rise and fall of many different civilizations there have been differences of opinion on what makes someone beautiful, or more importantly what characteristics of women are attractive to men. The answer to this question is perhaps the b...

Children may like fairy tales because they show good triumphing over evil; adults may prefer them because they trigger childhood nostalgia or a social event close to them in their lives. The fact is that fairy tales were written to be enjoyed, and although have become universally loved, they all con...

In "Boys and Girls," the girl is in a constant struggle between trying to live in an environment that makes her feel content about herself, and her family's perspective of how she should reside on the basis of what is proper and right in their society. The girl believes that the work...

Margaret Cavendish Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World is an embankment by the imagination upon human desire. Constrained by the physical limitations of this world, Cavendish's ambition and love of thought carry her to the farthest reaches of her own imagination and to the creation of ...

"Drugs are bad." It's an everyday saying that is said for a reason. Not only because it tells somewhat of an "opinionated truth," if that exists, but to give a fine, general description to one's temptational desire. Evil was brought into the world by temptation. Ar...

In Ayn Rand's book, Anthem, Egoism played an extremely big part but wasn't revealed until the end of the book. Ego means "lacking in ones own interests" meaning that you don't do what you like to do and don't have your own feelings. During the book everyone who was living in the ...

Book Response "As a Man Thinketh" "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." We can't control the things, which enter into our mind, but we can control what we do with them. We are the masters of our own destinies. We can choose the type of person we want to be, by us...

How God Does or Doesn't Exist from Descartes and Lockes' Point of View Position or Issue No.1. Ever since the beginning of time, man has raised the same questions over and over again; is there a higher being than us? Is there something immense out there? Could there even be a way f...

Lost Highway: Interpreted but Never Explained The purpose of this essay is to explain the psychoanalytic and postmodern ideals portrayed in the David Lynch film "Lost Highway." His works are, for the most part, non-linear, absurd, chaotic and emotional. Lynch takes the rawness of human...

Descartes and Nietzsche both state with the individual, but in different ways and senses. Descartes starts his investigation of what can be known with certainty with the thought experiments of the individual, namely, the individual perceiver and thinker, namely, himself. Nietzsche, is concerned wit...

Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl is one of the most important literary works in Persian language. The central theme of the story is an attempt toward the resolution of the writer/narrator's dualistic experiences of the real versus unreal, the sensual against the spiritual and death as opposed to life. ...

"Wild Swans"-Psychological Approach When reading "Wild Swans" one might interpret Rose in two different ways, as a victim or an accomplice. It would be easy to say that Rose was an innocent victim in the situation, but looking deeper into the matter one would see that she wa...

Nowadays, censorship is one of the most controversial topics that are discussed by most people all over the world because of its serious effect on different elements in the society. Some people say its right and others say its wrong. However, Censorship is the process of banning and controlling s...

Sophie's World Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder, is a fantasy novel that explores the history of philosophy. It takes place in Norway in the 1990's. Some of the themes in the book are philosophy and free will. Dreams in the book often foreshadow events that occur later. Sophie is ...

What is justice? What is wisdom? Can the meanings of these words even be universally accepted? Every individual has their own idea of how these words are defined. These concepts, among many others, are challenged and dissected in The Republic by Plato. The Republic is a philosophical book that ...

In the play "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare, the cause of Hamlet's "Rash and bloody deed"(III:iv) is primarily because Hamlet is thrown into an uncompromising situation. As Prince of Denmark, he is put in a position in which he must deal with the betrayal and murder of this father by his own fa...