Assignment 1

“The World Itself becomes a habit in no time at all”

When I look around the room as I am writing this, there are numerous things that should make me stop working and gaze at in pure wonder. For instance, the computer I am typing this on is a genius invention that has near limitless potential and possibilities that, in theory, could save thousands of lives. However, it does not. So I ask myself, why is this? Is it because I have grown up in the midst of growing and expanding technology? Or perhaps it is something deeper which “Sophie’s World” discusses in such a way that once read, one can never go back to thinking in the same way again.
“To children, the world and everything in it is new” basically sums up what I believe to be the cause for our lack of wonder in the world. I believe that children are continually amazed because they do not understand how the things they see work. My favourite extract from “Sophie’s World” was the part when the father begins to fly, yet it is the mother and not the daughter who screams in fright and terror. To figure our whether I would be like the mother or child, I simply place myself in the position of watching a family member do something unnatural and then it occurs to me that I think I would definitely yell with shock. But why should it? After all, can we explain why we are even here on this planet, or the fact that we act in certain ways? Some things in life cannot be explained, no matter how intelligent or scientifically advanced you might be. Therefore, if you are not gob smacked by the gift of life, then why should you be terrified by someone taking flight right before your eyes? The answer is that earth and everything that resides within it has become so familiar to us that we do not question the reasons behind it anymore. But as soon as we take the time to stop and begin to question, we then start to perceive every thing like a little child again.

Another theme which occurs throughout the first chapters is that of Identity. A key example of this is where Sophie is regarding her reflection in the mirror and questions herself “Who Am I? An obvious answer to this might be “Sophie Amunsden”, but that is not answering the question asked. There has to be more to life than just a name that defines what kind of person you are. This confuses me, as if someone says to me “who are you?” I would honestly not know what to say. Again, as soon as we start to think about our identity we are becoming philosophers like Sophie. Unfortunately, the troubles and strife of our everyday lives consume us so that we have no free time to reflect on ourselves. By doing this, we actually lose our sense of individuality and become “part of the crowd”, someone who just goes with the majority. Sophie herself claims that she was “saved” by the mysterious philosopher, and that she no longer is condemned to a life of no-questioning

To summarise, I think that we definitely do lose the novelty of new life as we grow older, which is completely natural. However, there are some things, sometimes called miracles, that we cannot explain and we are entranced by. It seems a fact of life that those things we do not understand awe or spark fear within us. We do take many things that we SHOULD be enthralled by for granted, which is a real shame, as the world contains countless wonders in every corner.

George O’Neil