Bring Your Own Meter Stick
(Originally written for an issue of the Panorama, ISKL’s High School Publication)
“Before you jump to any conclusions, this isn’t actually an article about meter sticks. Not literally, anyways.
Read the following quote, and see what comes to mind: “Man is the measureâ€
The phrase is attributed to a famous Greek philosopher, named Protagoras. What does it mean, you ask?
Put simply, it’s a profound statement of what Protagoras believed to be the true realities of life. Rather than resigning himself to the status quo, it was his philosophy that everything – everything – in our lives is, ironically, measured and defined by humanity itself! That is, something is “fact†simply because the majority of our society appears to believe it such. It’s about being confident in what you believe; whatever that may be. Parallels to common day adages like “Where there’s a will, there’s a way†become evident as one begins to apply such a belief to various issues of day-to-day living.
It was about a year ago that a former teacher of mine, Mr. Bisset, introduced me to this multi-faceted statement. He related it to a time when he was in South Korea for an MUN conference: When he went to sleep one night, he’d had $200 U.S. dollars in his pocket. And yet, when he’d woken up, he had significantly less; despite the fact that he still had the same number pieces of wrinkly bills in his pocket. Evidently, this rapid degeneration of monetary value was the result of what we now refer to as the “Asian Financial Crisisâ€, which occurred way back in 1998.
