as I expand my studies of eastern/Chinese/Indian philosophy
I note that they/the eastern school of philosophy approaches
philosophy differently then we do… and they approach it, as
the ancient Greeks/Romans approached philosophy… I have written
about this before… the Greeks/Roman from the ancient pre-Socratic
philosophers to the rise of Rome and then the Romans beyond to the end
of the Roman empire, all did someone we don’t do today… which is
live our philosophy… we study philosophy but we don’t live it…
it is a field of inquiry like math and history and economics but we
don’t take what we learn from these disciplines into the way we live
our lives… the two are separate… we live… and we study…
they are two distinct and separate matters whereas for the Greeks/Romans
and the Chinese/Indian philosophers what they studied was how to live…
the philosophies they studied they tried to integrate into their lives…
philosophy wasn’t an abstract, separate study of life… it was meant to
be something we live by… to engage with philosophy as a way of life…
that is what the Ancient Greeks and Romans and Chinese and Indian philosophers
did……….
today, here and now, we so called philosophers, we don’t engage with philosophy,
we simply study it and then go about our business doing whatever the hell we want,
regardless of the philosophy we might have studied 5 minutes earlier… because
there is no connection between the philosophy we study and the lives we lead…
until we live our philosophy, we are simply engaging in mental masturbation…
stroking what feels good mentally…philosophy as a means of feeling better
about one self…
instead of using philosophy as a means to engage with who we are
and to indicate our Kantian questions, “What am I to do?” instead of answering that
by thinking about how much money we can make or what will give us fame, money,
sex, power…we use philosophy to understand “What am I to do?” or “What am I
suppose to believe in?” or “what values should I hold?” not just to feel better about myself
or to flatter myself… “I am the Ubermensch” words spoken by young
men who think themselves superior to others because it flatters their ego…
mental masturbation…
instead of true, honest philosophy which is to engage with philosophy
as a way of life… meant to be lived, not studied as an abstract,
transcendental, hypothetical study of how people are to live……
for the east, philosophy is to be lived, to be a way of life…
are you prepared to engage in philosophy as deeply?
Kropotkin