From: alt.philosophy
GatherNoMoss writes:
"Given that there are no answers to be found in philosophy (of a secular nature), a lifetimes worth of thinking about philosophical questions leads to frustration and disappointment leading to brain cell destruction, senility/madness. Synapses wear out. Philosophical questions lead one's mind to circle over and over and over certain questions and ideas.
It's hopeless, there are no answers. Things wear out...neurons rust on the vine.
A philosopher begins to drool in their forties. In their fifties they begin watching cartoons their free time. In their sixties they're ready to move into Nietzsche's old room at the insane asylum....cross eyed and unable to even utter gibberish. ("God is dead"...HAHAHAHA)
The %1 percent that don't meet this end did so not because they find answers, but because they become famous and have plenty of public/peer adoration, acknowledgment and encouragement.
Those %1 have young impressionable nubile groupies and their egos along with their libidos are stroked just fine thank you and that all it's all about anyhow (maybe they DID find answers through philosophy in this regards).
For the rest of you...philosophy is bullshit.....run...RUN ! "
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V writes:
Thank you for your post GatherNoMoss. You bring up many good points in it.
First let me say that philosophy serves me and I am not slave to philosophy. Of course, like all things human and requiring judgments to be made - sometimes my judgments have errors in them.
The contemplative life finds it joy in discovering the truth. The study of philosophy has helped change my life. What I write I also reread myself periodically to crystallize what needs to be done to keep my peace. It is also a good roadmap for how I got to where I am today, as it is easy for me to forget.
This technique has a firm grounding in historical philosophy as well. Greco - Roman philosophers, Marcus Aureoles in particular, would use their own writings for such purposes - to read their own writings as a model to live their own lives. This is why they thought so highly of maxims. I think it was a fellow named Pseudo-Isocrates that said, "For as it is the nature of the body to be developed with appropriate exercise, it is the nature of the soul to be developed by moral precepts."
Whether we use maxims, slogans, or long stories these are all good supports for us to keep us going in the right direction with our lives. (once we get a handle on right and wrong via peace promotion and peace destruction.)
See:
http://jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ ... ?topic=4.0
As one critic wrote me...
"Are not philosophers merely the confused and disaffected trying to make sense of their plight?"
Huxley answered this best:
"The highest object that human beings can set before themselves is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown: it is simply the unwearied endeavor to remove its boundaries a little further from our little sphere of action."
No, I don't run from philosophy...I run to it.
Philosophy plays a big role in my life as well for providing tools to live at peace. I am only interested in practical application of philosophy though and not bickering and arguing over the unanswerable. So, I prefer truth based discussions over ego based discussions where the truth gets overshadowed by rhetoric.
A philosopher is a doctor of the soul.
I was at a philosophy symposium a few years ago and talked with a professor about a teaching / mentor relationship he had with Ayn Rand. He went on to say how after a year they broke up the mentor relationship on a sour note. After I questioned the professor about Rand's personal life as well as her state of inner peace and happiness, I could see that with all her talents of 'smarts' she was bankrupt when the subject turned to peace smarts, contentment and happiness. She was ego based and not practice based when it came to peace generation. Furthermore, she not only destroyed her peace, but from the information that came out of our discussion, the then student's peace was disturbed at the time and it still sounded disturbed decades later as a distinguished professor and author.
This clued me into that 'academic smarts are not the same as peace smarts.
It also reminded me that philosophy only goes so far with giving a person a good life.
One must not only have the right philosophy, but one must practice it for it to be of any worth to the individual and others.
Knowledge without application is useless.
The branch of philosophy that deals with the study of ethics and virtue has also helped me along in life.
What is virtue and ethics? Some authorities define it as 'excellence of the soul' or moral excellence. (Although the Greeks thought of 'soul and form' in different terms than say Christians think of soul. For example, the soul of an eye would be its ability to 'see' and whether this ability was good or bad would decide whether the soul of an eye had 'virtue' or excellence.)
Virtue is not learned from the classroom, other than memorizing definitions.
Remember, a fool can only say what he knows ~ it takes a wise man to know what he says.
How do we become a success at living a virtuous life and really know what we say?
As a lecture on Aristotle mentioned: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
We develop it by practice. Practicing 'excellence of the human soul' is how.
A successful philosopher is not one that just talks the talk but he or she actually walks the talk in their daily affairs.
Personally, philosophy has played a big role in yielding peace dividends to me. But, just as water and air sustain life, water and air also will also destroy life when in excess. So it goes with most other things when they are out of balance...especially our thinking. Sure some people as well as philosophers get stuck in 'Over Thinkers Syndrome' They get stuck trying to answer the unanswerable.
Myself?
I am a Practical Philosopher, as well as a practitioner of simplicity. Once in a while I look at the unanswerable along the way, but I try not to get lost in it.
As someone once wrote ... "if you don't know the answer then just say so."
But as I have mentioned before in this post, sometime too much of a good thing turns it bad.
See:
http://jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ ... ?topic=8.0
The Greeks used to teach harmony and balance as part of the Trivium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium
In the 'tenants of reason' they went into much details with the subject of harmony breaking it down into proportionally, prudence, balance, fitness and aptness.
Not subjects you hear a lot of nowadays.
I guess the philosophers nowadays find these too simplistic to waste time on?
As an individual that has lived a very out of balance life, seeking and finding a modicum of balance has changed my life from one of pain, into one of happiness and peace for the most part.
But staying balanced take effort, since by its very nature, balance is always in flux and requires constant adjustment.
"Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured and rapidly fall back into failure" ~ James Allen.
and
"Just as water floes downhill without effort but requires outside forces and energy to make it move uphill. So the human consciousness falls to its lowest levels of the senses without effort and energies to make our consciousness gravitate to more than our base desires." ~ Hindu Sage
I have talked with lots of philosophers over the past decade and many of them seem to prefer to spend their time debating the unanswerable instead of using philosophy as a tool to guide them for living a life at peace. When the topic turns to practical application of philosophical tools via personal experience, they stare at me like I am an alien. Now this is not the case 100% of the time, but I see it more often than not, at least with the philosophers I run into ay symposiums or college gatherings.
Sometimes I am guilty of getting lost in such unanswerable topics myself.
The real problem is not in the discussion of concepts that no human is able to answer.
We do not think in a vacuum, so thoughts come and go and who can say where they will lead?
But as for 'when they go' and how much space they take up in our life and in our heads...that is our choice.
You see, the bigger problem arises when we lose ourselves in such thought or become addicted to it as a distraction from living. And, as all addictions do, they cause us detrimental problems in life due excesses
The study and practice of philosophy can provide a foundation of underlying inner peace that the rest of your life can be built on.
May I suggest you seek balance with your philosophical studies? Let philosophy serve you. If one puts their inner peace first, it will help guide them in a healthy direction.
"Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth - that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.
Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing - then rebuke them, as I have rebuked you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care and for thinking that they are something, when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."
Plato - Socrates Apology
Take care,
V (Male)
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
Philosophy is bullshit.....run...RUN !
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