My new book is finally out! It’s a book that attempts to find wisdom by examining the meaning of expressions that are commonly used on an everyday basis. For instance, we all use expressions such as, “to age gracefully,” “to live life to the fullest,” or to “snap out of it.” We talk of “true love,” “free love,” and of “making love,” or of “getting to the bottom of something,” of “making it,” and of “hating to admit it.” We use these expressions because they communicate something important about a given topic that we find to be deeply meaningful. We use these expressions, but we don’t necessarily take the time to reflect on what we really mean by them. The point of this book is to encourage people to reflect on what these given expressions and the topics they deal with, really mean to one’s self. My hope is that, upon reflecting a bit on what such expressions mean, each person will be more readily equipped to put into practice the wisdom needed to make such meaning a reality in one’s life. Hopefully my interpretations give some helpful insights, but the main point is for each person to discover their own interpretations and meanings.
Tag Archives: Wisdom
What Philosophy Has Meant To Me
In February I receive my undergraduate degree in Philosophy. I therefore felt it a better time than ever to briefly express what philosophy has meant to me over the years, and why I’ve always felt attracted to it.
In 2011 I travelled to Turkey. At the hotel in Istanbul my friend and I entered into conversation with two male employees of the hotel who were also university students; the one studied business and the other psychology. After hearing that I studied philosophy one of them replied, “You will have a rich life, and I don’t mean money.” I was floored by his comment. I was floored, not simply because it had been uttered by a young kid, but because such a statement would hardly ever be uttered in America, a place where the use of the word ‘rich’ to denote anything apart from material wealth would be seen as ridiculous or bizarre. Yet other countries value philosophy and acknowledge its worth in ways that are largely alien to American culture as a whole. In other countries it still seems largely understood that material possessions cannot replace the wisdom and satisfaction gained from trying to understand what life is ultimately about, to find lasting satisfaction and not just material comfort, to make life meaningful as opposed to simply making a living.
Philosophy for me has always been about wisdom and not knowledge. This is not to say that philosophy does not inform knowledge, or that knowledge is not important. For me, however, my drive to acquire knowledge has played a secondary role compared to my drive to acquire wisdom, where wisdom is associated with an understanding that gives life lasting meaning.
When we say a person is ‘wise,’ we do not necessarily mean that such a person is smart, though being knowledgeable and being wise are not antithetical. Generally, for a person to be wise means he or she has an understanding of things that encompasses, not just the world of facts, observations, etc. but the world of the living human, human life, or the existential life. A wise person is someone who has an understanding of how to maximize life. Sometimes it is shortened to an understanding of the “real world,” but that too misses the mark for the “real world” is usually in reference to the world of having to make a living, a world that is important, but nonetheless fails to take into account the full human experience.
By a “wise person” one means someone who has the ability to differentiate between what holds a temporary significance and what has lasting value, what can bring temporary satisfaction and what can bring lasting happiness, what one temporarily holds true and what one will come to see of lasting importance. By this it does not simply mean knowing how to make a living but knowing how to make living meaningful; one can make a living and still be left with the question, “What was the point of it all? Was it worth it?” For me, philosophy is about understanding who one is in respect to everything else, the rest of the world, how to find meaning in it. This “meaning” is the aim of wisdom.
Unfortunately, the distinction between knowledge and wisdom is one that is given little attention, even in academic philosophy, though the term ‘philosophy’ itself means ‘love of wisdom.’ Knowledge lays out a set of observations, principles, and facts. Wisdom is what allows a person to apply the later successfully. It is one thing to collect a set of data and draw concluding principles from it, it is quite another to reflect on the ramifications of said principles and successfully apply them to how one decides to live; more importantly, how one decides to give life meaning or purpose; how do the facts inform questions that sit at the core of being human. These are questions that humans end up having to ask about their personal lives; what is the meaning of my existence? What can give it lasting happiness? What do the facts mean to me? How do they inform my actions? Do they make me happy? Such questions are often pushed aside for the sake of more “practical” issues, but with the cost of isolating a person from an acquired understanding of life that can have perennial value.
Philosophy for me also has more of a practical side as well. Though I value it most as a way to understand wisdom, philosophizing nonetheless provides one with a set of skills that I have found applicable to almost every aspect of life. The most frustrating question I, or any philosophy major can be asked, is, “What can you do with a philosophy degree?” It’s frustrating because the answer is so obvious to me – anything one wants. Of course there is no job or profession called ‘philosopher’ like there is for other fields; for instance, one who studies engineering gets a job as an engineer, accounting, an accountant, law, a lawyer. But this quality is philosophy’s strong suit. Whereas other studies are largely defined by what one will become professionally, the study of philosophy is defined by how one chooses to apply the skills learned from it. As such, it is more a way of life. The skills of analysis, critical and imaginative thinking, and assessment are skills that can be applied to anything. There are arguably no fields where the ability to think, assess, analyze, imagine, and critique are not important.
Philosophy has been important for me because it embraces that part of myself which is not simply content with the practical matters of making a living, or obtaining knowledge, but with the part of myself that wants to give lasting meaning to my life, and to understand it deeply when every aspect of it is taken into account.
Why Study? Beyond the Grading Principle
A couple months ago, me and a friend were discussing our grades for the semester. After revealing my grades they responded, “You’re smart.” I then tried to explain why I did not think grades mattered, and how hopefully, if I am smart, it has little to do with grades.
To most people, such a belief is perplexing. Grades are meant to be a mark of intellectual achievement, a sign of intelligence. This is true to an extent. The problem I have, however, is that such an estimation reduces the value of a fact from a personal and adaptable piece of information to a lifeless bit of material that is only seen as important in so much as it externally designates intellectual success.
Grades divorce the fact from an applicability that is relevant to how a person confronts and navigates the conflicts and questions of life. The result is that learning, and the search and attainment of knowledge, is made into a lifeless enterprise. That is, once a person attains the grade, there is no motivation to retain the fact or to see it as having a lasting and flexible quality that can be applied to life. Learning becomes lifeless. Wisdom is divorced from knowledge.
There are scores of people who have achieved academic success, but who cannot engage intimately with what they learned. Conversations with such people are very bland. But of course, such people usually point to their grades to console themselves. Worse is that these same people often fail to have opinions of their own, and are intellectually handicapped in the face of subjective discussions. What happened is that such people took the grade and substituted it in for the fact that it represents. The concern is then for the grade and what society says of people who have good marks. There is no longer a concern or motivation to retain the fact once the grade can stand in for it.
The attraction to holding onto the grade at the expense of the fact itself limits the utility of knowledge and keeps learning from being seen as an evolving and dynamic process. Not only that, the search for knowledge and wisdom is kept from being a way by which an individual connects with the wider world in a deep and meaningful way. The reduction of knowledge to a grade is thus another example of the common human desire to objectify concepts and dynamic processes into actual things. Like all things objectified by the individual, they are meant to correspond to the individuals perception of itself as a fixed thing.
Of course, it is not just the idea of a grade that is at fault. The idea of a fact is also one that is quite stultifying, for without an attitude that understands knowledge to be more than a simple piece of information from long ago, facts appear lifeless and irrelevant to present circumstances. Why should one know the battle of Actium was fought in 31 BCE or that Alexander the Great was Macedonian?
Thus I want to express what learning means to me, and what motivates me to study. My hope is that this will give some sort of an idea into why, once a semester of school ends, I’m still reading and writing papers, and why on some Friday nights I prefer to stay home with a new book and reflect on my thoughts. Lastly, I should point out that this search goes beyond what is commonly referred to as the distinction between “book smarts” and “street smarts.” There is a degree of truth to “street smarts” embracing actual “hands on” experience in a way that academically minded individuals do not, but the same shortsightedness that prevents certain people from moving beyond the grade, prevents those preoccupied with “street smarts” from seeing the dynamic utility of factual application and appropriation.
Learning for me is like interacting with a living breathing entity. There is nothing dead about history or information in general. To see things otherwise is a failure of the imagination and an inability to take seriously what it means to actually live; to be born from a process of causes and effects, and to participate in those causes and effects without limits. One thinks history is dead because one interprets an event as static while also reducing the great figures of history to individuals of an equally static and far away time. Yet both events and the people who participated in them are linked by themes that constantly resound through the ages no matter the time and place. Caesar is gone, along with his Roman Empire, but empires still exist. The men whose desire for power creates them still exist. War still exists. Tough decisions; both communal and existential still exist. The concept of a belief, which governs the making of those decisions, still exists. Internal conflict regarding how to act, who to love, and when to fight, still exist.
It is because such things exist that history is very much alive. Thus one can read Thucydides and perceive a cultural and temporal gap between our time and the Peloponnesian War, but if one engages the text with the right mindset, one realizes that there is no, or very little gap between Pericles decision to go to war with Sparta and decisions that we have to make on a daily basis. That is, we read of a person who had to make a decision; a decision based on beliefs. We then realize that this is something we all do everyday. Thus when we read history we get an understanding for realities of the time and see them recurring in our own. We engage with history to sympathize with other individuals who have had to experience the conflicts of life, and we learn from them. They let us know that as individuals our struggles are not as unique as we imagine. They recur as facets of what it means to be human.
Most people have never been or will never be in a position where they must make a decision that affects a whole country, but everyone knows what it is like to make tough decisions, and to be in conflict with what one may want against what a particular situation affords.
In a similar way as to how history is not dead, literature is not fictitious. The stories themselves are largely made up, but the actual dilemmas and experiences of the characters are ones that individuals understand every day. Moreover, the authors that compose literary works draw from the same emotions, and experiences that face people everyday. That is why literature has such an incredible power to move us. There is no reason history can’t be experienced in the same way.
Thus there is more to be discovered, experienced, and appreciated if one can break through the habit of seeing things simply. Nothing is simple. By this I mean no thing is isolated from the rest of the world. The father of a friend once quipped to me when I was young that, “simple minds are impressed by simple things.” This was in reference to a rock I was looking at. The truth, however, is that only a simple mind finds things to be simple. That rock was not just a rock. If one looks at it closely with a particular probing eye, one sees the thousands of pieces of sediment composed of it. One appreciates how solid it is and the hundreds of years taken to make it so solid. One might see a fossil remnant in it and begin reflecting on what it means to leave an imprint in the world.
Thus one constantly moves from an engagement with an object to that object’s relevance and reflection in one’s own life. A rock was a product of patience. It is engaged in time. It was constructed like all things, and like all things, it will pass. There is no reason that the line that designates animate and inanimate things has to be strict or exist at all. Nor does the line between such things as plants. One can look at a tree, and be inspired by how firm it stands in the middle of a storm. Surely such an appreciation is relevant to an individual’s life where he or she needs strength to be true to one’s beliefs, even in the midst of a storm of contrary opinions?
What this drives at is the realization that every piece of knowledge represents a gateway into a larger world, a world of interconnectivity. This interconnectivity has the power to bring the past to us, and to make it an active, and living presence in one’s life. It has the power to blur the line between living and non-living things. Looking at things deeply allows one to realize that life is constant exchange and relationship.
Thus studying for me is an engagement with the world that molds the past and future into the present moment where living and non-living things find their relevance in a dynamic and constantly changing process that represents, at its core, the very universe itself. Such an appreciation can never be designated by a grade.
Existential Conversations 