(Review of Plato’s Republic chapter VII, X)
One of the most frequently heared complaint, especially from Chinese high school students goes like this: why do we have to learn math when courses as such cannot even prove itself useful in our daily life, say, do I have to use a formula to count how much I need to pay？(I don’t know much about the situation in western countries, but judging from the Message delievered through their movies, and their posts online, their situation isn’t any better than its counterpart in China) No exaggeration, it is also frequently heared in universities.
Similarly, physics, geography, any curriculum that costs time to study and more brain to understand are suffered from such discrimination. While, classes such as painting, music are preferred by students because all they have to do is imitating and enjoy.
Sadly, the time they have to spend on math far outnumbered the time in music. It is partly because the schedule in school ban them from investing more time on the latter one. Another reason is that, they have to cope with exams which exclude music and those who are good at math are more likely to be esteemed as “good one”. Truly, our social system almost link the subjects directly to a person‘s career by examination.
All of these simply proves that a person learn the difficult subjects is out of sheer necessity. What about the fundamental reason？How many people would learn maths voluntarily if school no longer schedule it as a compulsory class？
We need these subjects to rise above the changing and cling to the real.
The best answer has already been given by a person thousands years ago！Unfortunately, too many of us has been blinded by the changing so that fail to seek the real reason behind it.
He added that
This science is in all likelihood, absolutely necessary to us since it evidently obliges the mind to employ the pure intelligence in the pursuit of pure truth.
Without these science, human beings, though capable of seeing the sunrise and sunset, fail to see it is because the rotation of the earth. They suffer from the droughts or floods but do not know it is the power of nature. Thus they are prone to be cheated by rumors.
As Plato puts it
The process of measuring and counting and weighing made their appearance most agreeably to aid us in dispelling the tricks of fancy and to overthrow within us the power of vague notions of degree and magnitude, quantity and weight, and establish the principle which has cacultated or measured or weighed.
The power of pursuit of the truth and reason lies in that
Whenever we see a case in which our mind is perplexed and unable to distinguish objects, we will not laugh irrationally.
Instead, we will think whether we just step out of the true world, or whether we has come from the depths of ignorance to a more brilliant life.
Provided that you do not even think all of these mentioned above matters in your life, you will not ignore the following things that I am going to say because no one in their life can cull misfortunes, which can loom over all people’s life in different forms.
Reason will tell us that
it is best to keep as quiet as possible in misfortunes and check all feeling of discontent, because we cannot estimate the amount of good and evil contained in these visitations, and at the same time impatience does not help us forwards, and none of the affairs of this life deserve very serious anxiety, while grief stands in the way of that behavior which we ought to adopt in our troubles in a moments day.
On the other hand, we must maintain that the element which prompt us to think of and grieve over, our misfortune, and which has an insatiable appetite for lamentations, is irradiations and idle, and the friend of cowardice. These are the power of reason in our life while French Revolution will let you know that reason can change a world.
Thus, never give up on learning, thinking. When you feel it is painful to do, just bear in mind that a person who is chained from their birth in a subterranean cavern will always feel hard when he suddenly see the light of the day. But in the end, he will learn to appreciate everything in the real world.
