in a post the other day, I suggested hope as the answer and UR said,
that “hope” belongs in the religious domain… not philosophy…
we know that religion has lost its hold on man… the lack of a universal
moral/ethical theory shows us that…we can no longer trust or defend
the religious in us… we must find our way in the world without religion…
hence, my suggestion of hope lies outside of the religious arena…
but where does hope belong? I hold is the second most important
emotion/feeling we have (behind love) and one could easily make the argument
that hope is as important as love in the human spirit…
we need hope to get out of bed every single day…seriously,
why get out of bed without hope?
I would even go so far as to suggest that in the Holocaust, in concentration camps,
those who held out hope survive longer then those who gave up hope…
this “truth” is enough to suggest to us that hope makes life bearable…
I go to my shitty job in hopes of one day being able to retire from it…
what hope drives you every day?
I don’t believe that hope reside in the religious sphere, I hold that hope
lives wherever human beings reside and not just the religious area,
but in every area of our lives…
for with hope, we can survive anything…
without hope, we can’t survive the day…
and then what does this have to do with philosophy?
part of what a philosopher does is create hope… hope that we
can find out what the really important principles are and then live
by those principles…and we hold out hope that philosophy
can give us a reason to hope…which gives us a reason to live…
Most of this makes sense. I am not sure how you will factor any of the following into a philosopher creating hope but here are my two cents and what I am confidently sure about. I do believe hope is somehow tied to motivation just like addiction is. If hope surfaces into the mind from the brain then there must be some sort of neurological explanation for hope and as most things in the brain are being shown to have some sort of psychological correlation it would make sense that this works the other way round when you consider that our consciousness is the result of past neurological processing.
Hope is more than just an emotion. Hope is part of a system of mental processes which without hope do not function at their peak. Hope has cognitive and dynamic properties. It is like a reserved function in the same system that optimism typically functions within. When people are positive, they approach their problems with the appropriate mindset and methodology, which enables them to be creative and successful. Hope is like a fallback mechanism, usually filling in for optimism when for some reason our optimism is repressed.
We must remember that there are always unconscious processes happening in the brain and these are drivers to the mind. It can be said that hopes are unresolved entities in the brain and when we become conscious of one of our hopes then we are simply pushing an unresolved entity into the mind - it becomes our focus momentarily and resides in our short-term memory for as long as it needs to. The unconscious processes never truly let anything go unresolved if they can help it.
Hope can be a true lifesaver. Hope should never be taken lightly. Hope is a constant regardless of whether it is expressed or repressed. People who have hope have both the determination and the willpower to achieve their goals.
I guess you have to be the one who decides what domain hope belongs to. Different religions do make claims of hope and philosophy have somewhat dealt with the question of hope for some time but we do now have psychological explanations and it is obvious that we can infer neurological connections associated with hope.
My hope is that one day I will fully understand the mechanism of curiosity but this is just one of the hopes that drives me every day.
I have all the regular hopes such as, I hope the world will become a better place eventually. I hope that people start looking outside themselves but this is more of a wish and wishes are like unattainable hopes and unattainable hopes are like opinions(everyone has one).
Given that hope is such a powerful thing, I would be interested in your thoughts when you reconcile it into your philosophy.
I think the world is still pleanty religious.
Some religions even out-do corporations.
Philosophy is about wisdom, which is about clever beliefs
and clever choices. There is some negative philosophy,
but successful philosophy tends to be quite positive.
We hope truth is possible for people.
But some philosophers give up and say that truth doesn’t
exist or is impossible somehow.
But that isn’t really wise so, maybe it doesn’t count as philosophy.
Stupidity is the opposite of wisdom and thus is the opposite of philosophy too.
Dummies that claim to be philosophers.
I actually got the idea that Peter was talking about what we knew as the major religions like Catholicism in which case it is relative to the hold that these old mega religions had over people. In the case of Catholicism, they did take the extra step on top of bible teaching to get at the truth by making an attempt to reconcile it with science no matter how successful they were. At the same time, there were things being taught internally and I think to this day that is extra-biblical for want of a better term - if I am not mistaken, Judaism may have followed an analogous path.
What I am saying in a nutshell here is that these particular religions were not solely focused on strictly bible teaching - Islam, Christianity, and Judaism as the state religion - I guess I could have said, the state religion in the first place. So in the west for the most part religion has lost its hold over man. As we don’t really have state religion anymore.
I don’t think I explained this well at all - hopefully, you get the picture as I am truly no expert on this matter.
Philosophy is about wisdom but smaller philosophies can be removed from the larger body of philosophy that is no longer reminiscence of what we view as philosophy proper - this is where a lot of people come unstuck identifying philosophy. I also think the philosophical consumer is responsible for his choices - philosophy can only guide. There is plenty of negative philosophy and it is important too - it is good in some cases to do a comparative analysis between opposing views. Truth is relative Dan - the absolute is what people have issues with but that is all I have to say about that since I am happy to let others have their flame wars about it.
Personally, I am confident that the creation of hope is already in philosophy - it just depends on the delivery.
The current plan has no hope if you are intelligent enough to understand it. It’s just various shades of better or worse in the current plan. Not too exciting.
You have my full permission to hate me for it…hope is just one of those things I place a high value on…often laymen will jump on the self-help bandwagon and because different authors(gurus) express things in different ways some laymen experience false hope(often baseless)…
Some things just make me feel sad. Thank goodness for hope.
encode_decode:
Personally, I am confident that the creation of hope is already in philosophy - it just depends on the delivery.
K: that is a very modern statement… where the delivery is more important then the content…
EC: You have my full permission to hate me for it…hope is just one of those things I place a high value on…often laymen will jump on the self-help bandwagon and because different authors(gurus) express things in different ways some laymen experience false hope(often baseless)…
Some things just make me feel sad. Thank goodness for hope.
[/quote]
K: hate, not at all… I was just pointing out that for the modern world, delivery is far
more important then what the content is… politicians practice this all the time…
say nothing, but say it with some flair and gusto and drama and people don’t realize
that the politician has said nothing at all… but it sounded good…personally,
I am a content guy… what they say is more important than how they say it…
: that is a very modern statement… where the delivery is more important then the content…
Yes this is true but both re mingled into memory and down the line become epithetic and they turn into symbols of vague memory.
We forget that the function of important commandments once had relevance
We forget the simplicity of philosophy begets its own downfall that the content brings forth the important phoenix renewal of some thing and idea where in it’s deswnt , of philophy a reductive reality that must measure it’s descent by exact measures of frames of reference
Limits are reached where content can no longer be delivered on a diminishing slope where content can no longer be delivered
Only a functional utility remains and we become robots to our own self justification.