What is there to understand? To understand anything we have to use the same instrument that is used to understand this mechanical computer that is there before me. Its workings can be understood through repeatedly trying to learn or operate it. You try again and again. If it doesn’t work, there is someone who can tell you how to operate it, take it apart and put it together. You yourself will learn through a repetitive process—how to change this, improve this, modify this and so on and so forth.
This instrument, thought, which we have been using to understand has not helped us to understand anything except that every time we are using it we are sharpening it. What is Philosophy? How does it help in day-to-day existence? It doesn’t help in any way except that it sharpens the intellect. It doesn’t in any way help to understand life. If that thought is not the instrument and if there is no other instrument then is there anything to understand?
‘Intuitive perception’ or ‘intuitive understanding’ is only a product of the same instrument. The understanding that there is nothing to understand, nothing to get, is a dawning. Wanting to understand is a drudging and serious undertaking. A lot of time and effort is often wasted. But when once this understanding that there is nothing to understand somehow dawns on you, the very demand to be free from anything, even from the physical demands, is not there any more. But how this happens defies description. There’s no way it can be shared because it’s not in the area of experiencing things.
It may also be relevant to add that people like to ask questions to which there’s notoriously are no answer to, but ask because they like to excessivly navelgaze and mentally mastubate, so it comes down to this usual cozy chat and not relevant philosophy.
But where do these questions take their birth? How do they formulate themselves? They are all mechanical questions. The whole thing is mechanical.
There is nobody who is asking the questions there. There is no questioner who is asking the questions there. There is an illusion that there is a questioner who is formulating these questions and throwing them at somebody and expecting somebody to answer them.
But reality is that it’s only cozy chat, people just doesn’t have the mental aptitude to recognise what is elevated truths.
People will ask the same questions over and over, what is the purpose of life, what is time, what is this and what is that, etc.
I have quoted excatly the definition of what time is, but the morons can’t comprehend it as it is boring and not rethorically beautiful, thus ignore it and keep discussing and asking.
Peope are fools, people are cozy chatters, there should be a forum section where these cozy chatters could be put and leave the reasonable intelligent people to the normal fora.
This forum , internet and the world in general constantly gets an influx of new people, while you may have discussed a topic past your exhaustion point or came to a conclusion you felt was satisfying or adequate.
That doesn’t mean everyone else in the world has, hell i’ve seen a thread of this exact subject over a dozen times.
People doesn’t come asking what 2 + 2 = ?, because they’r taught what it is, thus we can build upon this knowledge. People doesn’t come asking what a car is, because it’s already explained, nor do they come asking what a washing machine is, because it’s already explained!
If people are forced to learn, they won’t come asking silly selfexplanatory questions.
If people are forced to read some very basic genres of science before being able to post here, it would help greatly on the quality, specially if there was a sanity test.
Good argument!
Maybe my test may be overly tyrannic, but firstly there should be a forum for cozy chatters, then the rest of the forum should have admission test and evaluation of former posts.
Question would be simple: “What is Objective Truth?”
Just that no one could answer it but me.
A lot of people come one here and say, ‘philosophy isn’t useful in everyday life’ or 'philosophy has no practical advantage. They are correct: it doesn’t.
Well, if that’s how you feel, then you have no need for philosophy. If you were wondering how philosophy can help you fix your bike, or your depression, or your marriage, the answer is simple: it can’t.
If you were wondering whether philosophers were necessary for society to become more technologically advanced, to build more roads or mine more resources, again the answer is simple: they aren’t.
Philosophy is an attempt at a structured form of thinking about deeper questions about life, spirituality and ethics, among other things. If you commonly think about these things, philosophy may be useful in helping to develop your thoughts about such things. People who are discussing philosophy are normally drawn to these questions naturally, for one reason or another. They are trying to codify and understand their answers to these questions, hear alternative or new answers, and decide (with the help of basic rationality) which set of answers are the most convincing. They are doing this because they have a desire to find out these answers, and this desire is enough to motivate their pursuit of philosophy.
But, if all you think about is practical stuff, and you just want to do stuff that has practical advantages, then philosophy isn’t for you. If ethics to you just means doing what your parents told you to do, the there’s no need to think much further than that. You ought to just ignore philosophy’s existence, studying philosophy will be of no benefit to someone who isn’t already curious.
“The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power. The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them—from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default.” -Ayn Rand
Don’t accuse me of being a Randroid, now, but her thoughts on the importance of philosophy are true. You will have a philosophy if you know it or know, the issue is if your personal internalized philosophy makes any kind of logical sense or not.
This is only an issue if you make it one. In the practical sphere, people get by with their inconsistent belief systems perfectly fine.
I mean, I choose to make it an issue. Because I’m a philosopher (or try to be). And I think its important, and so do you. But for people who only want to operate in the practical sphere, they’ll never discover the value of philosophy.
Philosophy, to me, is a reaction to the environment, to one’s daily life.
Philosophy is a means for me to understand and resolve conflict I experience.
I’ve seen members here who show disillusionment towards personal philosophy and I wonder whether the source of this reaction is an inability to see the bridge between their thoughts and their day to day life.
I believe that there’s double edged sword in philosophy and that’s abstract thinking. When we are abstract, we (often obliviously) bypass the defenses we have when speaking about the specific (day to day). This allows us to express ourselves in a purer, less diluted way. This is the pro.
However, once this abstract expression has been made, it’s hard to draw that truth back into the specific. As one tries, one is confronted by the defenses and mistakes(?) one has made in the past by hiding this truth from reality, the day to day. If the defenses burn the bridge, that is when disillusionment appears to arise. The con.
But just because a philosophy is rooted in observations of the world, that doesn’t make it a practically useful thing. Not in the sense that a bike pump or a bridge are useful, anyway.
I’m replying to this post because your words struck me the hardest (sorry to the rest of the users that I haven’t replied yet to my own thread)
I’ve often come to a state of mind or a state of being where I realize the whole “chase” (the questioning, the worrying, the abstracting) was there just for the sake of, as you say, sharpening it. Realizing that the whole thing is a game so to speak.
The odd thing is, however, that even though these moments of clarity will come, they will just as soon leave and I will forget what the whole thing was about. Right now for instance, here I am trying to put into words something that seems to be troubling me, because I wouldn’t even attempt to put it into words if it wasn’t. Intellectually I “know” that the whole thing is just a game so that I may get even better at the game (and realize that it’s a game).
So then a profound moment of clarity will come to me. But then once this moment of clarity comes I cannot put it into words. I can’t articulate it (even though that’s what I desire most to do at that time). I have no reference point. The only reference point I have is this feeling that I’ve been here before. That I’ve once again returned to “moment”. Thought ceases and I am left to dwell in the power of this unknown state that is at once the most known state there is.
It is a clusterfuck paradox, and I don’t know how to handle it (even though I’ve handled it before by just letting it go).
So you might reply with “what is there to handle?”, and you’d be right.
There is nothing to “handle”, but it still feels like I need to do more “sharpening” and keep going through this wheel until I finally give up and stop playing this stupid fucking game. The deep absurdity of life (or maybe just thought and language?) is utterly awe inspiring to me. It’s also deeply troubling. Because it doesn’t feel like I have “problems”. It feels so often that life itself is a problem (until at a single moment, in the blink of an eye, it no longer is)
It’s possible the human mind isn’t even fully able to understand anything philosophy tries to answer. Tools like logic and reasoning and observation and science are great for solving physical problems, understanding of science here leads to completely indisputable fact that if shown, everyone can agree with and it’s value can be demonstrated.
Human mind seems terrible at philosophy, or metaphysics. Which is why there are thousands and thousands of variations of philosophies, political ideologies and religions and ethical codes and whatever. We don’t have significant variations on nuclear physics or aerodynamics, there is no debate or confusion there, but for some reason the same mind that can proof without a doubt the validity of physical theory can’t figure out politics or philosophy or anything else worth a damn.
Maybe the human mind just isn’t fully evolved enough to really grasp these things, no more then an ape can understand advanced maths or pilot a helicopter.
Man is just a memory. You understand things around you by the help of the knowledge that was put in you. You perhaps need the artist to explain his modern art, but you don’t need anybody’s help to understand a flower. You can deal with anything, you can do anything if you do not waste your energy trying to achieve imaginary or unreachable goals.