{"id":450,"date":"2023-03-31T13:33:58","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T13:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/?p=450"},"modified":"2023-03-31T13:55:32","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T13:55:32","slug":"getting-philosophical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/?p=450","title":{"rendered":"Getting Philosophical"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is truth? That used to be an actual question, long before our current culture of \u201cIf I get enough people to believe my lies, then that is the truth.\u201d Formerly, some people would think about and try to understand \u201cthe truth.\u201d Those people were called philosophers, or sometimes time-wasters by the anti-philosophical. Those were the \u2018good old days.\u2019

\u201cI would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man’s guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.\u201d Albert Einstein

What Al says is true. You\u2019ll notice he didn\u2019t speculate on whether philosophy and reason would be woman\u2019s guide. The wise man never speculates on what women are thinking. So I\u2019ll follow Al\u2019s lead and temporarily re-open up the beautiful sanctuary of philosophy for you select few men with so much time to waste that you are reading this in order to avoid facing our messed up state and world.

As I recall from my college philosophy class, it was Socrates who invented philosophy by asking questions. This is called the Socratic Method, named after himself. He thus became the inventor of name-brand marketing as well.

Socrates\u2019 most famous dictum is \u201cKnow thyself.\u201d Apparently ancient Greeks only spoke in King James English. The way to know yourself is to keep asking questions until you push beyond the limits of your present knowledge and belief. For some of us that only takes one or two questions. With that in mind, I imagine Socrates is probably sorry he didn\u2019t think up these questions:

\u201cIf a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?\u201d

\u201cWhy is a person who invests your money called a \u2018broker\u2019?\u201d

Socrates\u2019 most famous philosophical question is the one that has both inspired and stumped philosophers of all ages and cultures \u2013 \u201cIf a man speaks in the forest and a woman doesn\u2019t hear him, is he still wrong?\u201d I think it was Socrates, or maybe it was Plato. Or Brad Pitt. One of those guys.

When you are philosophical, you can repeat deep thoughts like these:

\u201cBefore enlightenment – chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment – chop wood, carry water.\u201d Zen Buddhist Proverb

\u201cYou never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.\u201d William Blake, Proverbs of Hell<\/em>

\u201cMany men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.\u201d Henry David Thoreau

Now we are getting down to the deep stuff. As I recall, Thoreau went on to talk about women and beer.

Other philosophers point out the difficulty of achieving absolute truth by thinking about it, which is perhaps why people don\u2019t go into philosophy much anymore.

\u201cThe opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.\u201d Niels Bohr

\u201cThe charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.\u201d Aldous Huxley

It is not only intellectuals who can \u2018talk philosophy.\u2019 Two of America\u2019s greatest philosophers are
(1) Yogi Berra: \u201cWhen you come to a fork in the road, take it.\u201d And
(2) Mae West: \u201cToo much of a good thing is wonderful.\u201d
In another culture, they would be considered Zen masters.

That reminds me of an incident in philosophy class which didn\u2019t really happen, but it should have. At the end of the course, the professor gave us our final exam and said, \u201cUsing any of the philosophical methods we have examined in this class, prove that this chair does not exist.\u201d The highest grade went to the young woman who spent about fifteen seconds composing her answer before she walked out. It said, \u201cWhat chair?\u201d

It is already too late for me to take the wise counsel of mathematician and philosopher Lewis Carroll, who said, in Alice in Wonderland<\/em>, \u201cBegin at the beginning and go on \u2018til you come to the end; then stop.\u201d

It\u2019s hard to know when to stop, when you can\u2019t really remember what you were talking about, and why; (if in fact you had any actual subject you wanted to explore when you began typing.)

So I should have stopped several paragraphs ago, but no, I had to go on. Rats. I\u2019ll never be a philosopher. Or a writer. Too bad I\u2019m not getting paid by the word. Or by the number of blogs into which I inject \u201crats.\u201d



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What is truth? That used to be an actual question, long before our current culture of \u201cIf I get enough people to believe my lies, then that is the truth.\u201d Formerly, some people would think about and try to understand … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fridaygoodnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}