Wednesday Wisdom

Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 in the village of Mvezo in South Africa and belonged to the Thembu royal family. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand, becoming one of the first Black lawyers in Johannesburg. In the 1940s, he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and helped found its Youth League, advocating for racial justice and equality. After years of nonviolent protest and later leading the ANC’s armed wing against apartheid, Mandela was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. Unfortunately, he died on Robbens Island prison in the 1980’s.

Wait, What?

Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990, after 27 years behind bars, as South Africa began to dismantle its apartheid system. His release marked the beginning of a new era, and Mandela quickly took on a leading role in negotiating a peaceful transition to democracy. In 1994, he was elected as South Africa’s first Black president in the country’s first multiracial democratic elections. As president, Mandela focused on national reconciliation, ending racial divisions, and building a united and democratic South Africa, serving one term before stepping down in 1999. He was revered for sacrifice and leadership in justice and redemption and lived until 2013. Yet many people seemingly and wrongfully believe he died in jail which has created what is known as the “Mandela Effect”.

The “Mandela Effect” is a fascinating psychological and cultural phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how it actually happened. It challenges how we trust memory, and when paired with logic, it opens up a deeper discussion on perception versus reality. It is believed that human brain seeks pattern recognition and then tries to use logic and reason to fill a memory gap. This false narrative called confabulation is reinforced when there are a multiple people believing the same falsehood.

Do you remember eating Jiffy peanut butter, well it’s Jiff, or Darth Vader’s line in Star Wars “Luke, I am your father”, wrong it’s “I am your father”. The monopoly man having a monocle? sorry he didn’t and never had, this is just another of multiple examples of a collective distortion of the truth. The Mandela Effect is a glitch in how we remember, and we use logic to fill in the blanks, alas sometimes incorrectly.

Saturday mornings were filled with great philosophers like Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn in a cartoon form. We all fondly remember Looney Toons as those crazy but witty cartoons logically named. However, its Looney Tunes which was named from Merrie Melodies, the original idea of the cartoons.

Logically when it comes to memory, like any good carpenter, measure twice, cut once.

And now you know...

Thanks, Dad, for the gift of curiosity!

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.