As we all know, Alexander pope was a famous poet. He gave us lots of thoughts about the faith of life by publishing his poems. The life is not always going to be easy, when pope was young, he got Pott’s disease. This disease made him stop his growth, and he never married until he died. “An Essay on Man” was a famous poem that he wrote about the faith of life. After the discussion of the class, I felt directly that the god had the power to regulate human’s life. In pope’s world, he thought there was a god made the world goes round. For example, he wrote that “Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, And drawn supports, upheld by god, or thee?” we had discussed those lines in class, I thought we were just the human beings. Although there were something which we could control, there were something would be out of control. If something is going to happen, it will happen.
When I read this poem, I was kind of learned some life lessons from it. People might have different thoughts from me, but I did believe it. Pope wrote “All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee […]; All partial Evil, universal Good […]: One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.” When I read those lines, I was started to think about our real life. Human could not prevent themselves from the natural disaster. Since we could not predict when will it be happened. In addition, most of people may think the natural disaster was a bed thing. If you think it in the opposite way, the result is gonna be differently. For one thing, earthquake will not only destroy people’s house, but it will also make a great of economic loss. Think it on the other way; the earthquake is also the form of the earth release of energy. To sum up, whatever it will happen, it is going to happen. The god is always above us, it make the order of the world. All we need to it is follow the order. “Whatever is, is right.”
I am agree with you. In the real life, we are under the God, and can not control things that unforeseen, like snow storm, God controls it. We should follow the order of God. However, we can control our behavior, feelings and thoughts. Everything has both sides. Some people think bad things the positive side, but some think on the other side. On the life, people who think on the positive will have a easier life.
We may not be able to prevent natural disasters but we can certainly defend ourselves from it. Although nature is mighty and we should fear it, we’ve come to a point where we can handle it (to some degree). With that being said, natural disasters are only “disasters” because they affect people. Does anyone care if a tropical storm hits an uninhabited island? No, it’s just another natural event. But I digress, I believe people are in control of their own destinies. Whatever happens will happen but what’s important is what we do afterwards. Do we sit around and wait for the hurricane hoping that it doesn’t kill us or do we get up and protect ourselves? God isn’t going to rebuild your house so you should probably pick up that hammer. (Please don’t take any offense to this. I’m not trying to bash your belief system).
I believed that God paved a particular road for all His kids. He controls our destinies, and plans forehead. We would never know what are going to happen tomorrow, even next second. So don’t bother to change your destiny by yourself. What should we do is simply start living each day with passion and zeal.
I agree with what you said, we cannot control the world and what we cannot see. The storm is a perfect example, we learned the storm was coming, we prepared and we dealt with it. As for personal destinies, I feel that they are set, but we can alter them slightly by our choices in our daily lives, whether we choose to go to college or not, or work for the promotion to make more money per year.
After I read Pope’s “An Essay on Man,” I felt that Pope wanted people to respect God and don’t become too arrogant. I agree that human could not prevent the natural disaster. However, I don’t believe that the natural disaster is control by God. Although I do not believe God control everything, I agree that people should not become too arrogant. People should respect the natural environment. People cannot develop without consider the environment. Some problems, like air pollution and greenhouse effect, were caused by human.
Yes, I agree with you that we human cannot control everything that we wanna control. Also, I do believe that even God cannot control everything. For example, we cannot control the natural disasters happen to the world. When the disasters happen, what we can do is accepted it and just let it happen. We do not have any power to prevent or stop it. I think it should be the same way as something that happen unexpectly to our life. We should or have to accept it and not to avoid it because we can’t. We might think of some ways to get experience or learn from such experience. When next time it happen again, maybe we could solve it.
I agree about your opinion but not everything. I am christian so I believe God strongly and obviously sometimes I realized we are so small and weak like dust and flies in the God’s control. Therefore, I feel so peaceful or worried about that because God is already known everything even I never expect about something which is future plans or natural disasters or personal problem. And seriously, I thought that it will be so great to read God’s mind then we can do something to prevent or never worry about future. But most problem is always we realized God’s mind and plans after happened something already, we just assume that “Ah it was a God’s plan!!” and we just complain why we didn’t know that?? but we can never know God’s plans. So, we have to do something our best in our power. I think we don’t need God’s plan, just we can but do our best then we can do to change God’s plans and God’s mind. It is human, it is us.