Reflection Week 3

This week was mainly focused on philosophy and thought during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Particularly interesting was looking at what was written during the Warring States Period. This was a time of political instability and the various negative things that tend to ripple out from that. So the thinkers we looked at were attempting to make sense of turmoil and hypothesize on an ideal world, where people are good and rulers are strong. The way that looks to different people varied, but it typically involved compassion and kindness, which seems to have been lacking in that reality. Looking through history, periods of war and instability typically cause shifts in thought, but others lack the hope that these thinkers seem to hold. I believe it was around the time of the World Wars in the 20th century that nihilism was the response to the turmoil of the time. Rather than thinking on ways that the world could improve, popular thought shifted towards the hopelessness of the situation.