the spirit of philosophy

[Peter Kropotkin]

yesterday went to Berkley, to a bookstore called Moes and bought
a book... A Short History of Chinese Philosophy" by Fung Yu-Lan...
Now I am not quite ready to dive into Chinese Philosophy as I am
still engaged in Indian Philosophy, but to get ready to engage in
Chinese Philosophy.....and the very first Chapter is called, Yep,
"The spirit of Chinese Philosophy"

and within that "spirit" you have two types of philosophy...
one is ''otherworldly" and the other type is ''this worldly''
of the two, we can think of most philosophies as being ''other worldly''
Plato for example... and Aristotle as being ''this worldly''

''this worldly'' philosophy is engaged in the daily task of dealing with
social affairs in human relations... not with how to get to heaven or
to find peace, but how we act and interact with our fellow human beings...
political thought is within this ''this worldly'' philosophy...

and one of the questions of philosophy is this... is philosophy something to
know or is it something to experience?

or as Marx puts it... it is not enough to know the world, we
have to change it...

clearly reading the threads and posts around here, most are quite
happy knowing the world... to transform or change the world is
not the objective of most people around here...
they are interested in the ''passive'' form of philosophy... to spout one's
philosophy as ego... which is to say, look at how smart I am because
I know this...but my objective is quite different... I am always engaged
in getting people to act, to turn thoughts into actions by means of
philosophy as a ''way of life"....

take a value, say justice and use that value to live your life..
when faced with a question, you wonder, what does justice
mean in the face of this question? and recall, that Justice is
equality... to be just is to be equal...equality before the law is
a fair judicial and political system... and so the question becomes
how do we achieve justice/equality in our modern world,
given how unjust and unequal our political and judicial systems are...

so, every single question we have, should somehow engage in our lives
as practical questions...and that is the engagement we should
have with the world.... how do we practice justice as an everyday
value, is not only a philosophical question
but a judicial and political question...

we let try this: what is the ''philosophical spirit of our own current age?"

a pretty good word for our current philosophical age is:
Moribund.... at the point of death....

I mean even around here, a philosophical website, who actually attempts
to challenge their own beliefs? rare few...most use this site to practice
polemics about their favorite cause...see Age or vegetarin for this sort
of polemics...

the question becomes, how do you philosophize? what is your goal?
are you actually interested in seeking/finding the truth or are you,
as most people around here, trying to convert others to your point of view?

what I would like to see is the democratization of philosophy...
in that everyone, every single person is engaged in philosophy...
but that is the Chinese way... for as the book I just bought says,
not every single Chinese person practices religion, but
every single person practices philosophy.. (or at least that is the goal)
and that should be our goal as well... instead of promoting the egotistical
goal of reaching heaven, instead we should be engaged in the ''this worldly"
philosophy... what does it mean to be human? and what is the path to get
us from being animals to being animal/human to finally becoming fully human?

Kropotkin

[Walker]

Spout
2a: to speak or utter readily, volubly, and at length
b: to speak or utter in a pompous or oratorical manner

I hear you.

[Peter Kropotkin]

in looking at human thought, we have, for the most part,
a negative view of what it means to be human....

for example, from the east, we have the Buddha saying that being born
is suffering and living life is suffering and death is suffering...
a rather negative viewpoint, don't you think?
and then we have in the west, according to the bible/Christianity,
that man/human beings are born in guilt with the sin of Adam...
all human beings are born with sin.... now that viewpoint is also
a negative one... we have hundreds of millions of people living
and believing in a negative viewpoint...

perhaps our times is about creating a positive viewpoint of
what it means to be human....

one thing that connects the Buddhist and the Christian is
the lack of choice... one cannot choose in either religion...
one is automatically going to suffer and the other is automatically
going to be born guilty with sin... there is no choice....
and both offer ways to escape their particular fate...
the Buddha escaping suffering by following the rules of Buddhism
and Christianity by following the rules of god, one can escape sin....

and I reject both paths.... life is not about being born in sin and life
is not about suffering... both put way too much emphasis on
their particular belief.. sin and suffering....

and what is the path of philosophy? to find a positive way of life within
the values of existence...the value of philosophy is to find choice in our
lives...I can certainly focus my life on being full of sin or of having
my life full of suffering.... but there is clearly more to life than sin
or suffering...

if life is sin or suffering, what about the beauty of existence?
music and the ARTS and love and the beauty of the sunset?

by what we look at, determines whether we focus on sin/suffering or
beauty.... I choose to look at beauty... and that puts the negative thoughts
of sin and suffering into context... yes, yes there are truly bad days within
existence... but they too shall pass....continued existence, or what we call time,
does minimize the pain of wounds... I can barely remember what my father looks like,
he passed almost 40 years ago...and that is the ''beauty'' of time... it may not
heal all wounds, but it clearly diminishes them...

I have been ''wronged" by others... and today, some years later, I
can't even remember their faces... or what they did...I just remember
being ''wronged"... today it means nothing... I don't need to focus on
sin or suffering, I can simply focus on becoming... from being my current
self, to becoming my future self... and although I am an old man, I still
have much to work on....especially mindfulness... I must learn to pause
before I speak... I tend to just say what's on my mind.. instead of
thinking about what I am saying...and it has been a lifelong problem...
I am always in trouble for my words.... had I simple thought about
my words, I would have saved myself a whole lot of trouble....
mindfulness......something I need to work on and work on my whole
life, right to the day I die....

but in my life, one of the things I have done is follow Socrates..
the maxims of ''knowing thyself'' and ''unexamined life isn't worth living''
and I have tried to keep these two maxims front and center in my
life... I have tried to follow a path.. let us look at some paths...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have many such paths before us...

but it depends on the goals that determine what path we should take...
I am not interested in the material path... the path of acquiring
things... that has never held any interest to me...the path of
the trinkets of existence... the seeking of wealth, titles, power,
material possessions, fame.... those items are ''ad hoc'', of the moment..
for none of them last very long... wealth comes and goes, as does
fame or material possessions and power and titles.... they are
temporary, brief, transitory, to use a fancy word, ephemeral....

what is the path to something that might last an entire life?
the path of becoming... to make oneself a good person,
to be a good person... to improve our soul... each of these paths
are lifelong.. and that is as close to eternal as we can get...
and what does sin or suffering have to do with improving our soul?

nothing.....we can improve our soul and have nothing to do with sin/suffering...
and why should we become better people, have a better soul?
that is the second brick in the wall.... we human beings are social creatures..
we live and die within a state/society/civilization....we could be the
beings that hamper or create chaos within society/state, but why?
it doesn't benefit us at all to create chaos or cause ''trouble'' within
a state/society.... to steal or kill or commit adultery.. those actions,
while maybe fun, do not benefit us or our society...

our fate, our own personal fate is tied to the well being and functionality
of the state/society we live in... an unfunctional state/society harms us,
personally, and collectively... a society/state that has chaos within it,
will not function very well if at all... and that harms us... believe it or not,
but your own personal goals are directly tied into the well being of the state/
society you live in...a society/state that works, works for you to gain your
own goals... a successful life requires a successful state/society....
it is that simple...one demands the other....

to achieve our own goals ahead of the state/society may have short term
benefits, but in the long run, it damages both the state and society we live in...
that WE LIVE IN... and that point becomes one of the paths of existence...
we live within a state/society... and or as someone has said in another context,
a rising tide lifts all boats....the state/society is a rising tide and it lifts all
other boats, you and me...

Kropotkin