Cohen was asking if following your dreams , world will be a better one...what's your opinion about this?

Answer 1

I dont know Cohen..perhaps Ill meet him somewhere in my journey of life.
anyway, if you mean 'world' instead of 'what', then a dream to make the world a better place for everyone is a good dream to follow.
if you meant what, then your own dream is the better one. never let another person tell you their dream is better than yours.
Yet if your dream is negative and not shared by others, perhaps its best you did some research on it like why its bad, why people think so, and why you probably shouldnt do it if people disagree so much. if its positive like Naruto's, then by god..believe it!

PS: I agree with the last two answers, yet obviously your here to give your opinions too and not ignore it like others. ;)

Answer 2

We will try a Pascal kind of approach:

You follow your dream in life, then there will be 9 possible logical outcomes:

* It makes your world better and the world of others better.
* It makes your world better and the world of others does not change.
* It makes your world better and the world of others worse.
* It will not change your world and will make the world of others better.
* It will not change your world and will not change the world of others.
* It will not change your world and will make the world of others worse.
* It will make your world worse and the world of others better.
* It will make your world worse and will not change the world of others.
* It will make your world worse and the world of others worse.

In short:

You | Others
-------------------
up | up
up | -
up | down
- | up
- | -
- | down
down | up
down | -
down | down

Now in order that people will continue to read this and for space reasons we will need to simplify above model. We will drop the no change possibility both for you and the others, so the model is then:

You | Others
-------------
up | up
up | down
down | up
down | down

Let's call p_y, the probability of your world to become better and p_o the propability of the world of others to become better.
Let's call w_y the 'weight' of your propability to change the world to the better, w_o the 'weight' of the others propability to change the world to the better, u_y the 'weight' of your propability to change the world to the worse, u_o the 'weight' of the others propability to change the world to the worse, then the total change of the world is:

W = p_y * w_y + p_o * w_o
+ p_y * w_y + (1-p_o) * u_o
+ (1-p_y) * u_y + p_o * w_o
+ (1-p_y) * u_y + (1-p_o) * u_o

Now let us assume that each of us are as important than any other individual in this world, therefore we will substitute w_y = w_o/N with N being the world population.

It might be important to notice that we anchor here the point of view of the question asked: ' ... world will be a better one ...' is now the world for all individuals on this planet (like humanity as a whole) and not any longer in the sense of 'my world'. We took the individual out by not substituting w_o = N * w_y.

Also there is no doubt, that by following your dreams your personal world will be better (optimism, placebo effect, having an aim in life, aiming for something higher and so on), which means: p_y = 100% = 1

W = w_o/N + p_o * w_o
+ w_o/N + (1-p_o) * u_o
+ p_o * w_o
+ (1-p_o) * u_o

Now the world population is pretty big, and one can reasonably assume w_o/N is close to zero and neglectible, Just mathematicaly of course, because in words it means that the input of one single individual is negectible compared to the input of all others on this planet which will leave us with:

W = p_o * w_o
+ (1-p_o) * u_o
+ p_o * w_o
+ (1-p_o) * u_o
= 2 * p_o * w_o + 2 * (1-p_o) * u_o

No surprises here: By assuming the world as the world as a whole and taking the individual out of the calculation, the total change W of the world is by redefining the propability and weight:

W = p * w + (1-p) * u

with W: Total change of the world, p: Propability of others to change the world to the better, w: Weight of the other individuals to the change of the world to the better, u: weight of the other individuals to the change of the world to the worse.

Now Mr. Cohen did not ask this question very precisely, surely to improve the discussion value of this question and for a weakness of the english language in which 'you' can be both plural and singular: Does he mean by 'following your dreams': You and only you as individual is following your dream while others do not, or everyone is following their deams? Because the first assumption is very egocentric, we will pick the latter one: Each of us should follow our dreams.

So, let's take a look at the factors p, w, u which decide the total change W of the world.

* p: Propability of others to change the world to the better, it is a value between 0 and 1, we could make a statistical analysis what other people think. Certainly there will be a conflict of interest at times, people have different dreams, is that outweighing the good what might be done following our dreams? I don't know. My best guess is it could be around 1/2 but it is a guess, so all we can say it is a value between 0 and 1.
* w: Weight of the other individuals to the change of the world to the better. Well, what might be the best what can be done when we will all follow our dreams. We will be all happy, have enough to eat, live in peace and harmony. So how can we weigh that? We just have to start to make a scale and give that one a value, let's say 100.
* u: weight of the other individuals to the change of the world to the worse. I can find a lot of horror scenarios how the world could change to the worse. Am I a pessimist? Maybe, but one still has to fair, it could happen. So what will be the value of this weight compared to 'paradise' on earth which we gave 100: 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or even more?

So u will always outweigh w to calculate W, no matter what p is with one single exception: p is 1, meaning it is impossible the world would change to the worse.

Conclusion: By assuming Mr. Cohen was asking 'if following your dreams...' as in 'we all should follow our dreams',we showed in a logical approach for the world as a whole:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
If it is possible to change the world to the worse by
following our dreams, then this is going to happen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Answer 3

are you talking about Andrew Cohen the great western philosopher, i have heard lot about him and also read some of his text.
I have book which contains discussion between philosophers and one of them is Cohen and also read his articles in news papers.
Well now coming back to your question, i definitely think Cohen is right in saying that.
maybe what Cohen meant was what if we follow our dreams, we will be happy, no resentments, life will be full of hopes and faith.

Dreams have always shared relation to hope and faith for if we don't have faith in ourselves we cannot go after our dreams, hope and faith is what keeps us from falling apart when we are suffering but when hope is not there we became destructive for sometimes oneself and unfortunately for others.

Today's world need to have dreams, there is so much violence.

following ones dream give a constructive goal for each human being.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

I believe in a world where everyone can follow their dreams and each person will then be doing the greatest they can for the world. I think it would be a paradise

Answer 6

wtf the point is to post our opinion on his question thingy why did u start another thing