Week 8- Integration 1 My Journey to find what I believe in among millions of meaningless philosophies and a whole lot of false prophets To start to talk about what I believe and what I’ve learned through my experience at Notre Dame, I’d like to start with what we did in week three, talking about how faith informs the way I see the world and how that has developed here at Notre Dame, a school where faith is intertwined with a strong liberal arts education. We’ve seen this in Father Pete’s talk (“The Role of Faith in Our Story” by the Campus Ministry- Moreau FYE week three) And also in the talk about two Notre Dames (Two Notre Dames: Your Holy Cross Education by the campus ministry- Moreau FYE week 5). I’ve been raised Catholic, however, I’ve never been particularly religious. I think I’ve actually become less religious at Notre Dame. During my first week here, after going to church for the first time since my sister's first holy communion (she’s only nine years old so it wasn’t that long ago), I realized that the experience of church isn’t an experience I found meaningful, even if I was to believe that God exists. I feel like the time, effort, and money spent on church could be better spent carrying out God's word through the world and helping others. I don’t see the purpose in chanting prayers and literally preaching to the choir instead of using those devoted people and resources to give shelter to the homeless and heal the sick. I think the whole idea of having huge, expensive monuments for buildings is antithetical to the anti-materialist message that is supposed to be spread here. People need to practice what they preach (another cliche, I know), but I believe that how devoted a person is to going to church has really very little correlation with being devoted to being a good person. I feel like religion and devotion to God is for too many people a type of moral high ground that replaces them actually acting morally. I think this moves towards a discussion of what the truth actually is, like we discussed in week 7 and read about through articles about bias. (“How to think About Implicit Bias“ by Keith Payne, Laura Niemi, John M. Dorris- Moreau FYE week 7) In my QQC I wrote a lot about recognizing bias and specifically confirmation bias. I believe religion is no different; God is a way for people to interpret morality. I think these concepts of purpose and morality are not objective in any way shape or form. There is no right or wrong answer, and I feel like the idea of there being an objectively right answer is wrong, and pushing your idea of the right answer upon others is a bad habit that I see in a lot of overly religious people, and even something that I see through Notre Dame mandating two theology classes to people regardless of their religious beliefs or lack of religious beliefs. I’m not personally bothered by classes (In concept, I haven’t taken the classes yet so who knows), but I just think it’s definitely a valid viewpoint. I think a more interesting point is that since there is no objectively right way to view purpose or morality, I believe religious codes should always be flexible and open to new perspectives and opinions. I’d be surprised to meet a person who lives and believes everything in the Bible; I think that person would be very strange in today’s day and age. People choose what parts of the Bible to believe, and these choices are made by a person, and sometimes from their confirmation bias, but not from a higher power. Religion is something that a person chooses to believe in and it’s something that comes from the person more and less from the Bible, and saying that what the Bible says is absolute and correct is something that I don’t believe in. In a way this essay is my personal creed, my variant of Christianity. So what do I believe? Well I tried to cover how my upbringing made me develop my own beliefs in my where I’m from poem based off of our content from week 6. (“Where I'm From” by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZMeqWWOIs- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZMeqWWOIs- https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=859bc1a8-0d0f-4eb4-a1c1-d0a45c429187 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/ http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html George Ella Lyon- Moreau FYE week 6). I think I have pretty distinct opinions on a lot of topics, so I’ll just go through a few of the topics we covered in our Moreau class over the weeks. In week one we talked about the power of vulnerability. (“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE Week One). I think closeness within relationships is often created through vulnerability and it is important to be vulnerable to show your most true version of yourself. I think any healthy relationship si one where both parties are able to be true to themselves and are able to both show the other person their flaws and accept the flaws of the other person. Of course, there are many other things that Go into a healthy relationship, but this is a specific topic that I find very important. We also talked about recognizing red flags in week four (“5 Signs you're in a toxic friendship” by Grotto Moreau FYE week 4). In week Two we took a survey about our character traits and even took a survey about being your authentic self, and this is also extremely important in relationships. (“VIA character Strengths survey” by VIA institute on character- Moreau FYE week 2). I think these types of character surveys, even when done well (which this one was not) are actually pretty bad for people because people have personalities that aren’t able to be boiled down into 60 questions that rank 20 traits. I think a character quiz to find which harry potter house you are cna be fun, and one designed by psychologists can tell you about yourself a little, but overall one that focuses on your strengths and weaknesses on 20 almost unrelated topics can actually be unhealthy by misleading people into believing they are something that they aren’t or ranking them low on a quality when they actually are good, or just giving people insecurities about their weakness rather than helping them identify their flaws. Just to sum it all up, I’ve thought that my purpose and what I believe in was something I should come up with for myself, and that it really doesn’t have to do much with Theology or religion at all. I have goals I want to accomplish in life, and I believe my purpose here is to have fun and cherish life, and to help other people and contribute to something bigger than myself. I see so many problems in the world, and I want to help fix them or inspire others to help fix them. I want to leave the world better than I left it, so that when my journey here is written down, it’ll make for a book with a happy ending that I can look back on and say that it was good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0&feature=youtu.be https://grottonetwork.com/navigate-life/relationships/signs-of-toxic-friendships/ https://grottonetwork.com/navigate-life/relationships/signs-of-toxic-friendships/ https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register?registerPageType=popup