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! Weʼve just read about transcendentalism and idealism, expansions of Platoʼs work. They were interesting to me, perhaps only because I just read Platoʼs Pheado. The man who wrote about them seemed to steal many of the ideas, although said they were founded in Platoʼs works. I donʼt believe at all in the realm of ideals, the idea that behind every object and concept there is the essence of the object or concept. It says that objects may posses these ideals, such as the Good or the Even. This means that they are intrinsically that, they are Good. This doesnʼt make sense because an objectʼs status depends on its surroundings, or is relative to them. This makes each object have many possibilities, they can be Good or Evil. Plato used the realm of ideals to try to soften the idea of death, he concluded that the soul was immortal. The guy weʼre reading about is interesting because he said that imitation is suicide, and being a conformist is against your soul. He says that genius comes with nonconformity, which I agree with. He tells people to practice nonconformity and ensure that they are not simply spreading a commonly held idea or following in the same thoughts that their ancestors did. He said that the only progress is through nonconformity, something original. Thatʼs great, Iʼve always thought that, and I think itʼs ridiculous that we are reading the same books in our schools as our parents did years later, the entire culture has changed, so the way of learning should have too. It hasnʼt, thatʼs one of the problems with our education system. We should be more open to change, we always have a tendency to do what our parents did.