The unexamined life isn't worth living

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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let us begin here… the unexamined life isn’t worth
living… for the most part, people don’t actually
take this seriously…an examination of one’s values,
beliefs, ideas and place within the state/society/universe…
the other criminally neglected aspect of Socratic thought is
this idea of ‘‘Knowing thyself’’… who are you, what is
your ‘‘mission statement’’ in life… are you like god,
a hypocrite? do your words and actions fail to match?
Who knows because people fail to actually investigate
their own self and their values/beliefs…

In reading the threads and post around here, it is clear
that for most people, they are polemical…

Polemics: a speech or a piece of writing expressing a
strongly critical attack on or controversial opinion about
someone or something…

and the important aspect of polemical writing is that it
begins with an unexamined belief or value…
polemical writing begins with a faith or value that
is unexamined… liberals are a danger to America…
that is a clear example of polemical writing…
(at this point, some will try to accuse me of polemical writing,
and yet, at every single point, I attempt to explain my
viewpoint… conservatives are a favorite attack of mine
and yet, I explain, in detail, why I hold conservatives
to blame for our current malaise and problems…
you may not hold as I do, but few ever lay out
a counterattack)

So, what is the point, or reason for existence?
Who knows because few ever try to work out
our own individual and, AND collective reason for
existing… What is the goal, purpose of existence?
or the answer to the Kantian questions, ''What am I/we to do?"
''What can I/we know?" ''What should I/we believe in?"

I am one, but I live, and I must live in a collective
society/state…the very nature of being human lies
in being part of the state/society… being part of the
collective is part of being human… any desire to
destroy the state, via Anarchism, or as it should be
now known as, Trumpism, also destroys us individually
because we are not isolated or separate from the state
or the society… a reduction of the state services also
harms us individually… and all of this is known if
we simply examine what the state/society is and does…
and our role within the state/society…

a fundamental aspect of existence, is our relationships…
within our relationships, with each other, with our working,
with our state and society, we can explore what it means
to be human… via our relationships… we can examine
who we are and who we can become… for we are not
set, fixed creatures… we change and adapt as our situation
and circumstance dictate… and that is a vital aspect of
being human…much of the examination of being human
lies around our ever changing and adapting to the new
environment we find ourselves in…

In our examination of being human, we find out that
human beings are always moving, changing, adapting
to the new challenges of our lives… I am growing older,
I just turned 66, I must adapt and change to this new reality…
I plan to retire by the end of the year, tentative date, Dec 6…
and I must change and adapt to my new reality…

think of being human like the earth… the earth is revolving,
24 hours a day, but it is also moving through space, and circling
the sun, the earth speed is roughly 18.5 miles per second,
and we are circling the galaxy, which itself is moving through
space… and we are just the same, we age, moving,
and we also move within the space we have, on a planet
that is moving… at no point does a human being stop
moving until death… at every age, we change and adapt
to that age, but we also change with our ever changing
circumstances, new relationships, new jobs, our
ever changing jobs, our relationships with the state
and the society is always changing… because
both the state/society is changing, and we are changing
at the same time… there is no standing still to being
human…as we travel from past to the present to the
future… that movement also changes us…

My own changes include what are my hopes for the future…
what is possible for me has changed… I can no longer hope,
as I once did, to become a great runner, I ran track and cross-country
in high school, but that day has passed, and today, my hopes
and possibilities lie elsewhere… I can still relearn German,
and I can become a great philosopher, those possibilities
still exists for me… but many other possibilities are no longer
possible for me… and I must learn to accept that…
as we age, we change our possibilities for what might be…
at some point in the future, all the possibilities that exists
for me, will end… and I am left with the last possibility,
and that is death… as we age, that becomes, more and more,
our only remaining possibility,…and part of aging is
learning to accept that… I am, even today, changing
and adapting to my own personal circumstance…
as you must to adapt to your own ever changing possibilties…

but few of us ever examine our own possibilities…
and therein lies part of the human problem…
we fail to examine what it means to be human…
and what is possible for us…

Kropotkin

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A life not understood, is a more difficult and less successful life.

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Peter, although I agree with the idea that we need to know ourselves, your words are themselves unreflected in many ways. They come across like impulsive outbursts, and it makes your position weak. You can do better!

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Bob:
Peter, although I agree with the idea that we need to know ourselves, your words are themselves unreflected in many ways. They come across like impulsive outbursts, and it makes your position weak. You can do better!

K: I thank you for your thoughts… as I wrote them as a ‘‘Thesis statement’’
Which is to say, opening remarks to some sort of theory or thought…
they are not meant to be the ‘‘argument’’ they simply reflect what
I am going to write about and thoughts for you/reader to engage with…
and as such, they are not going to be particular brilliant or ‘‘reflective’’
they just lay out the groundwork for my ‘‘Thesis’’… as far as doing better,
we should all engage in that… including me…
I will try to do better next time…

Kropotkin

5

.
Some are very happy with not examining their lives or themselves, and even balk at the idea of doing so.
.
Philosophy, self-examination, and introspection are not for everyone, or… maybe not everyone is capable of it.

6

There is another word for something like this :
Getting your priorities strait.
Examination would result in a new adjustment in
our values, desires, priorities, etc.

7

Pretty sure life can be awesome even if we don’t examine it. I certainly examine my own life and everything else around me, but it would be silly to claim that every unexamined life isn’t worth living. Just another example of platitudes pretending to be philosophy.

1 Like
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HumAnIze:
Pretty sure life can be awesome even if we don’t examine it. I certainly examine my own life and everything else around me, but it would be silly to claim that every unexamined life isn’t worth living. Just another example of platitudes pretending to be philosophy.

K: Well, you certainly know all about ‘‘platitudes’’…
but your statement doesn’t stand up to any sort of
examination… for example, ““Pretty sure life can be awesome’’
How would one know that ''life can be awesome” if one has
nothing to compare it to? Life being ‘‘awesome’’ is such
a subjective thing… for example, I was born handicapped,
severe hearing loss, is that also ''Awesome?”
or at two separate times in my life, I was homeless…
I once went three weeks with a jar of peanut butter as
my only food… Today, I am legally deaf, and how ‘‘awesome’’
is that?.. and yet I see people today, in my store, that are barely
able to walk or must use a wheelchair, or mentally disabled…
and how ‘‘Awesome’’ is that? To be ‘‘Awesome’’ one must
have context of some sort… ‘‘Awesome’’ compared to…?

As far as examining your own life, is it too, ''Awesome?"
and how would you know? What criteria would you use
to work out how ‘‘Awesome’’ your life is?
How exactly would one go about making an ''Awesome"
life? How does one go about making an ‘‘Awesome’’
life without any examination of their life and other
possibilities within their life? So, show me how
one makes or creates an ‘‘Awesome’’ life without,
without any examination of said life?
How are we to understand an ‘‘Awesome’’
life without any sort of examination of what
‘‘Awesome’’ means?

Now you might say, everyone must decide for themselves,
and that is one really large, massive platitude you are hoisting
on us… how does one know or understand the status
of their life without an examination of that life?
How does one know if their life is ‘‘Awesome’’ without
some sort of examination of life?

Kropotkin

9

let us follow this out a bit… in a ‘‘examination of one’s life’’
how do we work out say, religion or the belief in god? I
hold that, for most people, their belief in god comes
from their childhood indoctrinations… no, then
why do Jewish children believe in the Jewish god,
and Christian children believe in a Christian god,
and Muslim children values come from Muslim families…
this certainly suggests that our ‘‘relationship with god’’
or religion is largely based on our childhood indoctrinations…
For a lot of people, god looks suspiciously like they do…
for a lot of women, god looks like a women, and for blacks,
god looks a lot like a black person, and for a whole lot of
people, god looks white… and that is nothing more than
childhood indoctrinations…

Later in life, when one reexamines their values, they
might come to that realization that their belief system
is simply one that was indoctrinated into them as children…
and adulthood is often one mired in a reexamination of one’s
values and beliefs… often, but not always…

How do we overcome our childhood indoctrinations without
some sort of self-examination of values/indoctrinations?
now one might say, why would we want to overcome our
childhood indoctrinations? to live our lives out with
values and beliefs that are not from us, but from our
families, the state, the media, schooling, childhood indoctrinations…

under this theory, we should always have children believe
in their indoctrinated values… like always holding belief
in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or how, for children,
there is no such thing as cause and effect… things happen
magically for children… a tree magically appears next to them
or that stuffed Rabbits can talk…or people can magically appear
or disappear for children… no sense of cause and effect within
children…you mean that sort of failure to examine our beliefs?
to hold to childhood beliefs all our live? Holding to childhood
beliefs and values as an adult is not acceptable in being an
adult… I am 66, should I hold to childhood values
and beliefs or, or should I hold to age appropriate values
and beliefs? the answer is kinda obvious… but that
is only possible if one were to, you know, examine
their values and beliefs…

the ‘‘MAGA’’ motto is really upon reflection,
rather stupid… make America great again… requires
some sort of examination of what values and beliefs
made America great the first time… or that we even
lost our greatness… to believe in ‘‘MAGA’’ requires
us to take for granted, that we need America to be great
again, that we were great, that greatness is possible,
a whole bunch of assumptions are required to make
the motto ‘‘MAGA’’ work… and that is only possible
if we were to examine those values and beliefs…

One of the great problems today is this failure
to examine our values and beliefs and see if they
are part of the problem or part of the solution…
I hold that most beliefs are part of the problem,
including holding to a god or Christian values and beliefs…
and in large part they are part of the problem because
they are indoctrinated beliefs and values, not values
and beliefs that have been examined to see if they
have any validity at all…or any reason to exist…

Kropotkin

10

“and what exactly was the question?”

“the question was, can an egotist psychopath add anything relevant to such a brilliantly concoted chain of reasoning?”

“well, why not, whatever, this is a public place and all…”

“well, you were talking about an unexamined life. and how, at 66, you should be able to reexamine the beliefs and concepts held dearly for a lifetime and see if they still hold some water. also you talk about indoctrination. well, did I say talk? you SCREAMED about indoctrination. and I would concur to the general idea defended, the necessity of looking at a mirror, and see if we are not just regurgitating the same basic mottos over and over again not because they mean anything, but because that’s what’s we’re used to do, that’s our comfort zone. but how can you be a perfect example of what you are proposing here- a perfectly reasoning man? you don’t respect the adversary. you don’t even ACCEPT him. it’s obvious your mind evolved in an authoritarian landscape. like everyone who wants to ‘change the world’, you preach on a desert. you’ve severely alienated yourself from your neighbor, and your discourse, so disjointed, is further proof of that. whenever the neighbor approaches you, you already know what you’ll say to him. he’s probably just one more MAGA worm with no respect for others. yes, I know this is not much commendable advice, coming from a psycopath, but at 66, one would expect you to be, say, a little less dense, a little more humane. you employ as moniker the name of an admirable individual, a man who lived to his word, a man who never contradicted himself. and you give him a bad name with pathetic outbursts totally unfitting a 66 yo sage. just my two cents.”

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The simple easily destroys the complex if, in its brilliance, it manages to describe it entirely. When there’s nothing to say — one is forced to say a lot.