Given that the whole of humanity is rising, that the lower tiers of intelligence traverse to a higher plain than before, there must eventually come a time when all humanity are philosophers, artists and scholars, and the tears will be no more.
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What will philosophers like us be when the norms have caught up? Can you imagine something as ghastly as happy philosophers, or does ‘being philosophical’ pertain to that tranquillity and not to how we are. Can one gain wisdom without the aggregate of suffering, as that surely pertains to ones depth of experience, or otherwise has experiential knowledge.
So, intelligence without wisdom? [is what the norms will become]
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Now consider a world which facilitates a world full of ‘druids’ [philosophers, bards, artists, scholars etc], and the necessary aggregate of that! ~ where future ‘normal’ people would be wise intellectuals, as opposed to unwise ones.
I am not speaking of me in particular, I would place myself in the group philosopher, artist, druid, or some such thing. But yes probably, I can learn much of what the ancient philosophers knew, and I also know many things [almost everything about the world] they didn’t. I don’t buy into hero veneration. [test; take any sentence the ancients spoke which you care to and i’ll try to improve it where possible ]
We should be looking at this globally, the average human is more intelligent and has a better understanding of the world now, than the ancients, and even people 100 years ago did.
Would you suggest there is a height to this? E.g. That the great philosophers of old cannot be surpassed.
Wherever you draw your lines, eventually all humanity will move up to and beyond them. Given that is, there is a continued advancement, where without that the argument is null and void.
If as you imply, there is a ceiling to human accomplishment then we will all reach that, and in that also become The Davinci race!
There is another philosopher type, the hypothetical philosopher.
This type makes up theories, such that nothing is a bubbling something, or that nothing happens when we die.
These theories are just internal ideas, with no connect to reality.
The other type of philosopher is the word warrior.
This type may have good ideas, but has struggle condensing and communicating their ideas into a palatable format.
So they make long paragraphs, and big books to explain simplistic ideas. This “wows” people, makes their ideas seem more complex than they actually are, and they call it literary genius.
We’ve all got that potential within us - to be wise, a philosopher.
The truth accumulates.
Also, we needn’t suffer directly to our person to be wise.
We can have empathy, and relate deeply to the wider environment and the past. To use those as a means of gaining wisdom. To embrace the pain of the world, in it’s long journey.
It is a failing of any ‘philosopher’ if they can’t nurture their own wisdom to sprout within others - not a failing of the other.
This is why all those who seek to divide us are fundamentally confused.
Happy. We wil not have the need to sit and contemplate, nor to work through the horror of the world. We will just be able to live and play with the lambs in the garden (of uuh…Eden?).
Lest we should happen to end up on the bad side of Socrates’ wise exclamation:
“By all means marry.
If you marry a good wife, you’ll be happy.
If you marry a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher.”
~Socrates
More information is availableI now, but I would not subscribe that “the average human is more intelligent and has a better understanding of the world now”. Most humans do not make use of the fact that more information is availableI now, and a lot of the nowadays information is waste (you can easily convince yourself of it by reading some ILP threads). So it is also possible that the IQ of the humans is now lower than it was e.g. 100 years ago.
The average SAT score has dropped 20 points since years ago. 200 years ago, humans could walk 18 miles in the snow. Nowadays, humans can barely walk 1 mile. These are facts.
“The whole of Humanity is improving” This is fantasy.
Technology is improving, which is making humans even weaker. Keep watching the TV and drinking your synthesized Koolaid.
@Arminius:
I do not think he was a philosopher. I just enjoy hhis lifestyle and his movies. It is inspring. Also the resolve of this man and the way he looked at life are special. Perhaps it can be called a philosophy, or sanity. I am not sure. I just enjoy him.
@Trixie: Good assertion. what will you do about it, or what do you recommend the world to do about it?
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