Unfinished… (2007)
Open Letter To Future Generations
Did you ever look at all the wars and other craziness going on in the world and wonder how grownups could be so stupid?
The civilized world is structured and run by people who have PhDs (they’re doctors of philosophy) or have been taught by them; so the first place to look for seeds of widespread craziness and stupidity, is in the socially accepted philosophies from which our world policies and politics have been generated.
There are many schools of philosophy being followed and taught now, in both the Eastern world and the Western world. In my own attempt to trace the present sources of world-craziness, I’ve started reviewing Western philosophies by reading (and outlining) Bertrand Russell’s “Wisdom of the West”, a brief overview of ideas beginning with Thales in Greece during the sixth century BCE, to the language-games of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Russell’s book was published in 1959 and doesn’t include the new philosophical movements that will train the next generation; so I plan to continue reading other sources, to the present day.
Philosophy is really, at heart, an ongoing search for the most accurate words to use to describe life’s journey, in so far as humans can SEE and EXPERIENCE reality and express the TRUTHS about it. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” is the beginning of the philosophical statement for American democracy.
Philosophical truths give us rules to live by, for our beliefs and behavior. At the same time, the ongoing search for truth produces AGREEING but CHANGEABLE policies and laws for our institutions, that require acknowledgment and/or acceptance of the same truths as our own, allowing us to use our true beliefs and behavior to successfully navigate life without pretense. The ARTS help keep the governmental laws in sync with the natural laws of personality that humans use for constructive relations.
Philosophers present their personally known truths as “theses”, ie, as theories about how to make life a truer experience for people — in terms of ONTOLOGY (theory about the nature of being), EPISTEMOLOGY (theory about the nature of knowledge), and COSMOLOGY (metaphysics concerning the nature of the universe ) or COSMOGONY (theory of the origin of the universe — God and angel territory) . Each philosopher describes and explains the definitions and rules that were followed to reach the truths of that philosophy which might serve as a framework of knowledge and action for others.
Mature humans — in the year 2007 — realize that we still know very little about existence; so there’s no TOTAL AGREEMENT concerning what reality and the truth are, or how to talk about them. As a result, there are many different lifestyles and systems of organization for families, religions, schools, governments, and professions — each with its own philosophy.
In Thales’ day (more than 25 centuries ago), science, philosophy, and religion evolved at the same time, although — before Socrates, as today — philosophy was not influenced by religious traditions and practices. But they all used primitive methods/systems for gathering and expressing observations made about life. Eventually the information that we now recognize as “science” was re-defined to deal only with what can be observed and proved scientifically about material things.
Meanwhile, philosophy continued its focus on all of human experience, expressed as the perceived relationships between MATTER (the known material-and-energy world that science deals with) and MIND (including invisible metaphysics which is beyond scientific proof at this time). Instead of scientific proof (where the same tests by different people are required to produce the same results), philosophy seeks LOGICAL proof, using arguments consisting of words, mathematics, and/or symbols. There’s no “standard” proof in philosophy because there’s no “standard” person or mind, so different methods of logical proof have been used through the centuries.
Several recent philosophical movements have deleted concepts of God and metaphysics from consideration (which has sounded alarms in many minds); but religion (ie, religious philosophy which DID exert strong and destructive influence over all of philosophy and science between the time of the fall of Rome until the end of the Middle Ages) has continued to focus on human experience relative to God, spirit, and metaphysics which are beyond scientific and logical proof at this time.
The logical proofs of philosophy are inexact and leave wiggle-room for distortion. In ancient times, centuries ago, people who preyed upon this weakness, for their own advantage, were called Sophists or “wise” deceivers who operated on the edge of philosophy (from pages 60-62 of the paperback version of “Wisdom of the West”). They knew how to spin the truth just enough to escape detection, while turning truth into a lie that seemed workable.
More recently, ancient Sophists’ wiles and traditions have been learned and adopted by today’s neo-Sophists who have access to even more knowledge and better tools than their ancient predecessors had. No longer limited to individual citizens or small groups to flim-flam one-at-the-time, they now have direct access to the entire world through the Internet and media, and to governmental laws through lobbyists. Their pseudo-philosophic hooks can spin any philosophy, policy, word, or definition to their own advantage and deposit it anywhere, as “evidence” and influence. Much of what is happening in the world at the present time, and since the 1950s, seems to be due to the activities of Sophism.
Reading the “Wisdom of the West” (especially the last one-fourth, from Hegel on) has given me a better understanding of present world-events and politics. Hegel valued strife and considered war morally superior to peace. Several philosophers have been influenced by Hegel, including Karl Marx who held views that many should serve the few elite, and which support violent overthrow of opposing systems. Many of today’s governments are based on the philosophy of Marx who presented his famous dictum: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the real task is to change it”. In some places of the world, the changes are occurring through violence to TRUTH which also changes interpretation.
Bertrand Russell described both Marxism and Hegelism as untenable relics of the 19th century; but describing world progress since World War I, on page 389 of the paperback version, he says of Marxism: “It is the only political theory which has maintained its ingenuous faith in spite of the disturbances that have upset the world since then”. So I ask: could it be that Marxism’s positive outlook is because of its SUCCESSES in creating disturbances, causing violence that has increased expotentially over time and human ignorance?
Every established philosophy begins with a statement of what its truth consist of and why — its “argument” and logical proof. But sometimes one basic philosophy splits off into different views, depending on how certain terms in its statement are DEFINED. This happened in Christianity — the first split occurring after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, beginning the establishment of the different protestant denominations. And in American democracy the differences have produced democrats, republicans, and independents — or the liberals, conservatives, and moderates.
Sometimes the different descriptions and definitions produce foolishness, especially when words carrying understood-truths in one place are transferred WITH ITS TRUTHS to another place where the words are misunderstood to mean something else. Some such examples use words like “collections”, “aesthetics”, and “economy” which have been coveted and contorted by flim-flam artists for decades:
In mathematics and Greek philosophy, “collections” relate to infinite numbers, so records of numbers labeled as “collections” do not mean anything definite, although the FALSE assumption is that the records — financial statements, for example, or statistics needed for the making of laws or for counting votes — represent an accurate tally of all existing accounts. Sophists — using ancient notions that “all things are numbers … find … (and understand) numbers and control the world” (page 22 of the paperback version of “Wisdom of the West”) — control and distort actions that depend on accurate accounts.
“Aesthetics” is a word that has near-iconic meaning for many people because — in the ARTS — it’s a set of descriptions ABOUT things or environments that humans observe, not only through the five physical senses but also through “the sixth sense” of instinct and metaphysics; and the things observed within that context sometimes express ideas about truth and beauty. But the word “aesthetics”, itself, is not truth or beauty; aesthetics relates only to opinion and taste and is spoken of throughout “Wisdom of the West” as “the appearances”. Yet, “aesthetics” can be used to falsely IMPLY truth, beauty, and metaphysical spirit to the naive, while using the “economy” of “Occam’s Razor” (pages 209-211, 377 of the paperback version of “Wisdom of the West”) to limit discussion to what can be perceived through the five physical senses, as a “science” for gathering statistics — even ignoring the part that mind plays in this as “behaviorists” do, and labeling it “truth”. The philosophical and scientific uses of the word “economy” in this way can mean an invalid half-truth (which is what the American economy is becoming).
Since Heisenberg’s discovery of the “uncertainty principle” in quantum mechanics, in 1929, some people have felt free to use scientific uncertainty about specific quantum particles, as a loophole to wrongly label, as SCIENCES, the studies of infinately complex and varied HUMANS and their ACTIVITIES — which won’t fit any definition of science unless (or until) we’ve been turned into mindless robots, made totally stupid by disease, or drugged out of existential being and hypnotized. Yet (since 1811) we’ve had the misnomers such as the “social sciences” and “political sciences” — which are really changeable arts or philosophies that produce statistics; and statistics are estimates or random variables — as far away from science as they can be. The fact that scientists use statistics doesn’t make people who use or generate statistics, scientists.
People generally try to avoid becoming involved in important life-situations that are controlled by philosophies which distort one’s own truth into a lie, or that create uncertainty where common sense should rule but doesn’t. And people who find themselves in situations that actually obstruct one’s own sense of reality are in especially awful situations, resembling insanity.
Unfinished
