Children in Need at the Student Union

Every year the country is united for a very good cause: Children in Need. The University of Winchester’s Student Union is of course no exception. A high level of dedication was shown amongst staff and students throughout the entire day, which would impress. The canteen staff even dressed to impress clad in a colourful array of clowns outfits serving Pudsey related foods such as cakes and popcorn. Downstairs in the terrace bar, an all day karaoke was taken place where students and staff both sung their hearts out to raise money for the cause, and was highly entertaining for on-lookers…or people outside seen as they could be heard a mile away.

There was also a challenge set by SU staff, which I personally found entertaining, and a very interesting way of raising money. The contest was called ‘Lost and Found’ which challenged teams to get as far as they could without spending any money. The winning team traveled approximately 400 miles north and back within 10 hours that day, raising a similar amount of money, helping to raise the over £1,000 that the SU managed to raise in total.

Children in Need also managed to expand itself into the Student Night, Flirt – popular for it’s cheap drinks and great variety of music. This didn’t change but thrown into the mix was a giant Pudsey (yet to be identified), students dressed in fancy dress (including a giant baby a.k.a Chris Dillon), and various advertisers. Although numbers were lower than most Friday nights, the charitable spirit did not die down, nor did the happiness behind it all. Drinks were flowing, laughs were had and dancing was done whilst a massive projection of the live coverage of BBC’s Children in Need event was placed behind the DJ booth – so students remembered exactly why they were there in the first place.

Rousseau and the Social Contract

In a recent lecture we talked about another influential western philosopher, Jean-Jaques Rousseau. He is ultimately famous for producing the well-known document the Social Contract that in my opinion is rather invalid.

When studying Rousseau and talking about him in both the lecture and the seminar, I came to realise that he was somewhat a master of contradiction, and the Social Contract, I feel is a good representation of this. The main reason for this being that when describing the State of Nature, which is the state of which all humanity was at before government and social rules were in place, Rousseau uses phrases such as ‘savage’ and ‘chaos’ which of course are negative. So he introduces his theory of the Social Contract, which, in all essence means we surrender all our rights as human beings to the government and have to follow them and their rules like lost sheep. Rousseau himself even held a particular distain for Contract, although I praise him in his ability to be humble in admitting that the Contract was a ‘necessary evil’.

We also learnt in our lecture that Rousseau wrote a book on how to educate children. This is also ironic as he had five children, all of which he placed straight into an orphanage. Rousseau also held in high opinion the classes, which is again ironic due to the fact that said five children we given birth to by his common law wife, a servant.  The irony and outrageousness continues when he introduces the General Will. My general understanding of what Rousseau is trying to say is that we all have an equal mind of what is right and what is wrong, therefore when laws are created, they are created in a equal mind, therefore we are agreeing with ourselves – all of this being an element of freedom. However, if people do not agree with this or go against it, then Rousseau implies that they should be forced to be free – I find this to be an interesting concept that holds an ambiguity of meaning.

In conclusion, Jean-Jagues Rousseau was not so much a rational man, but a passionate one, therefore a distinct founder of romanticism. Despite my initial opinion of him, the fact that he is passionate is something I praise, therefore putting me into a conflicting opinion about him overall.

John Locke

We spent the majority of one lecture talking about John Locke and I think this was perfectly justified, for many reasons.

John Locke obviously captivated Bertrand Russell as a good three chapters were dedicated on educating the reader’s of Locke’s life achievements, contributions to philosophy and the impact that they had upon the population both current and old.

Of course I am slightly biased as he is a Christian and we share many values and therefore I agree with many of his ideas such as God has given mankind the ability to discover knowledge and morality.

Much of Locke’s words were influenced by Newton however Locke had a very individual mindset.  As well as this, Locke lived through many significance periods of history which are believed to have influenced his works suck as the Civil War, Cromwell as a dictator and probably most importantly, the Exclusion Bill. 

His works divided into many important subjects, the two most famous being Social Contract and the Human Understanding. Of these I personally prefer the Social Contract and found that the most interesting as it particularly explores the idea of giving power to humans to make them a ‘moral God’  and linking it to his exploration of God giving Adam the power to ‘rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air’ (Genesis).

Locke was a very important man of his time as his ideas were held highly in politicians opinions for a very long time. I think this is perfectly deserved as respect his opinions, mainly because when creating philosophy, creditability and consistency have not been able to co-exist, and even though Locke hasn’t changed this, he sacrifices consistency for credibility, which I highly respect. On the downside, this opens up opportunities for mass debate but upon reading Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, I’m beginning to think that that was what philosophy surfaced to be for anyway.

First Impressions are not everything

When first looking around at universities this time last year, I was convinced that I was going to go to a larger university. I came to the conclusion that these places would have more to offer in terms of night life, boys,  shopping, fancy restaurants and more boys – all the important things of course.

So after my intensive search of a grand total of one university, I set my heart on my home town’s local uni – Kent – because I am a bit of a home girl.  To study law I needed to get the grades of ABB which seemed do-able and a target I didn’t mind aiming for, I would live at home instead of campus to save money. I seemed to have it all sorted. How times change..

A-levels crept up and ABB didn’t seem that obtainable, Law seemed less appealing, living at home seemed even less appealing that I moved out seven months prematurely and even the night-life and boy factors didn’t seem that important anymore.

In a moment of distress I went to stay with my cousin who is now a third year student here at Winchester. As she went to work and I was suffering from severe boredom, I decided to go for a walk. Winchester seemed utterly dull. No-one was around, there were loads of trees in place of what I willed to be interesting buildings, massive houses that I could never afford. I stumbled across a sign pointing towards ‘University Open Day’ and thought, hey why not?.

As I walked down the lane past Beech Glad and Medecroft I came face to face with the Student Union building and was amazed. Captivated even. It was a very interesting building, seemed to have potential night life and just generally had a good feel to it.

I went back home, logged on to UCAS, did a bit of editing and suddenly I was opted and getting offers to study Journalism and Law (of course this later changed to Events Management and Journalism as I found Law never was and never will be the track for me). Winchester became my firm, and only choice and now here I am, reveling in the fact that I have made the best decision ever. Even the 7:1 ration of girls to boys doesn’t bother me as back home I have an amazing fiancé who’s hopefully going to join me next year to study.

Furthermore, my initial impression that Winchester was a place for no-one under the age of fifty and that night owls weren’t welcome has been completely shot out of the park. This was confirmed Thursday night when me and my housemates decided to go for a walk at 10pm and arrived back home three hours later after walking around the city and seeing it in all it’s glory including the River with the moonlight reflecting off of it romantically, the Cathedral surrounded by mist and the town all lit up.

All off this just confirms one strong belief I have – first impressions really mean nothing at all as often they’re decided by a biased or close mind. But once you open your minds and thoughts to the possibilities of something being the exact opposite, you can make a properly evaluated decision on them. I did this for Winchester and this month has made me realised that I don’t want to be anywhere else.

It is good to be different.

When I went to my first couple of lectures of my journalism course,  I was very sceptical of our first piece of reading to study: Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. As a girl from a small town, apart from local news and grand news of the outside world, I often denied any historical importance and therefore found it hard to understand the link between this book and the History and Context of Journalism module.

However, after much battle against my will to emerge myself into an additional fresher’s fortnight, I picked up Russell’s book and read about the many men who have often set the grounds for our beliefs and theories of the world. Although some philosophers such as Hume, I found very hard to get on with (of course not personally) as I think his sceptical mind of the world didn’t help his followers take confidence in what he believed, the two philosophers who I actually enjoyed reading about were Descartes and Spinoza.

Descartes was considered to be the founder of modern philosophers and one of the first empiricists. I learnt in the lecture that the reason for this idea is that he didn’t take any of his predecessors’ theories and adapted them for his own benefit, but he developed his own beliefs from scratch. I personally admire this as often when reading through the stories of the other philosophers I see distinct similarities, which became repetitive and therefore made the reading rather tedious and harder than it originally was. Individuality is greatly admired by me. As well as this, he is the originator of the famous phrase ‘I think, therefore I am’.  He backs this up by saying that even when someone doubts this theory, the very fact that the person doubts proves his or hers existence.  As well as this, Descartes claims that using the senses to prove something is pointless as they are forever changing, therefore man must use thought. I find this very clever, and that he was somewhat laughing at his predecessors and possibly saying something along the lines of  ‘so what do you make of that eh?’.

Spinoza was also one of my other favourite philosophers. This is mainly from a religious point of view. As a Christian, I very much agree and love Spinoza’s theories. Some that I agreed with are that if you learnt o love God, you begin to understand yourself and all around you, that God has no knowledge of evil because there is no evil to be known and that in God, there is no negotiation. The only thing mentioned in regards to Spinoza’s ideas that I found a little hard to take on board is that there is no free will, only by what is pre-conceived by God.  I was always taught that free will did exist but God just knew what you were going to chose before you did, but this is a debate that has baffled many for years more intellectual than myself, so I will not rise to the challenge.

Both Descartes and Spinoza found themselves in my favour, mainly due to their originality but, however quite naively, they are ones I actually agree with. Now, after reviewing all of the philosopher’s ideas collectively, I’m beginning to think maybe I should have been slightly more open minded…

Introduction

Hey,

My name is Danielle (Dannii) Perrin, I'm studying Events Management and Journalism, I'm originally from Folkestone in Kent and this is my blog dedicated to my Journalism course.