paracosm 2

following my first post, here's the next prompt of the project:

"...I am picking a question for each participant from the exam questions for All Souls College, an Oxford college specializing in theoretical sciences. The exam is renowned for it's difficulty, and I invite you to explore the question rather than need a straightforward answer. For you, I offer three options--feel free to explore them all, but I am only giving three so you have a choice!

1. "Thinking is my fighting." - Virginia Woolf; Discuss.

2. Does it matter what a judge had for breakfast?

3. Should scientific progress make us optimistic?"

my answer to this:

it has taken me a while to put my thoughts together for this prompt; i think it's fitting with what virginia woolf stated, isn't it?

let's think about thinking, even if it sounds redundant. as humans, isn't thinking what has distinguished us from all other living things? it's a very general statement to begin from, but i think it's important to state it as a premise.
the human has progressed so much through millennias, constantly evolving himself (on a biological point of view) and evolving in his thinking methods. once, it was hunting, then foraging. then it was how to operate the first vehicles and factories and then war, nuclear weapons, the Internet. we are constantly evolving and we do so by thinking and experimenting. everything starts from our brains.

and as a woman, this is a fight harder than any other; not because we lack the capabilities or anything like that. on the contrary, once we started thinking hard we never stopped.
this could be such a long prompt to speak about but i want to keep it short. what i want to highlight is the following: women were given a specific place in society, in life. a place that was not at all fit for us. but brains can stay dormant only for a while, they need the output, it's why they're often compared to lightbulbs. women have been fighting since the beginning of time and that started exactly from thinking.

sometimes, the only weapon a woman has is her mind. whether we're thinking only for ourselves or we speak up, i think it's important women keep on thinking with their brains. so much brainwashing has been done, it is still in progress actually. but in my opinion if we keep on sharing our thoughts, our breakthroughs with each other, we can definitely keep on winning fights as well.

i also want to say a few things about the 3rd option.

how many times have we read "is scientific progress really progress?" because people think about it like the destruction of that primal-state life we have advanced from. i don't think it's easy to talk about it like everything's either white or black; there's definitely an all-encompassing grey when it comes to scientific progress. one can judge and one can support it at the same time, knowing both sides of the matter are worth listening to.

personally speaking, i admire what the human brain has been able to do through time, when it comes to scientific knowledge. we have managed to build cities, explore space. we know how to make living things from scratch, we can study science on all levels. and should we talk about the world wide web? i don't think it's fair to us, saying how all of this is detrimental to our nature. but is it optimistic? that's highly questionable.
scientific progress also brought us global warming, the destruction of the ecosystem and i can't exactly see a very bright future ahead of us. am i perhaps too vague? it is definitely challenging, i will give that to the All Souls College.