Thought Itself

A few years ago, I saw and giggled a bit over a piece done by the humor site the Onion about an existentialist firefighter who muses that, in saving three lives, he was merely postponing the inevitable, as death will come for us all:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/existentialist-firefighter-delays-3-deaths,17500/

At the time, I was amused, but when the piece popped up again yesterday when a friend posted it, I realized that it, misrepresents existentialism as a sad, depressed philosophy obsessed with despair and death, as many have done.  In the very beginning of the piece, the firefighter says:

“Like any other man, I am thrown into this world, alone and terrified, to play a meaningless role in an empty life.”

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Fanon did argue that we are thrown into the world, that this is terrifying, and that life can seem meaningless, but also that life is only terrifying and meaningless if we do not have the courage to give our lives meaning, to take responsibility as individuals to grow and discover even if we do not see any final end or justification to the process.  This fictional firefighter is actually talking like a nihilist, not an existentialist, speaking like an existentialist who has given up.  I have a video about Nietzsche that explains why existentialism is not nihilism I made a few months back that explains further:

Anyone familiar with the famous debate knows that one of the key differences between the two thinkers is that Chomsky asserts that there is something that is human nature, though he admits it is hard to define, and that there is something like a just society, while Foucault argues that there is no definition of human nature without institutions imposing their power on others, and that no society can be completely free or just.

In his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), Goethe wrote, “misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice”.  Later, after many similar quotations from others, this was shortened and labeled Hanlon’s Razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Often, what we think are sinister, organized conspiracies are nothing more than human beings afraid of losing their power and privilege and acting without much long term thinking or planning.  Sadly, we can see countless examples of this throughout history and across all cultures.

You can trace the weaving of a cloth, but not human thought.

Some philosophers and scientists have said philosophy is useless. Several philosophers have declared philosophy dead after saying what they think is the last word. While people are serious fools, including philosophers and scientists, is the pursuit of wisdom useless?

Wisdom is the ability to reason, think critically, debate and gain greater perspective, different from simply acquiring knowledge or creating technology. Most people believe the world could use more wisdom, but most also believe it’s their neighbor who needs it.

When I was a kid, my sister and I thought my father’s exercise bike was the dumbest thing ever. He would pedal and pedal, and never get anywhere. We didn’t understand he was training. If you go to the gym and put all the equipment back when you’re done, someone could say you haven’t done anything. However, if you need to do anything, training seriously helps. Thinking about thinking and questioning ourselves and others is difficult to weigh in dollars or pounds, but it improves your mind and life.

All of this is obvious, particularly when some jerk argues with us about anything. Why then do some say philosophy is useless or dead?

Philosophy, like all subjects, is entrenched in institutions, and institutions aren’t always bastions of wisdom or freedom of thought. American and British Analytic Philosophy continuously says that we can say true things, science is real, and consciousness comes from somewhere, which never struck me as deep wisdom.

On the other hand, German and French Continental Philosophy has deep ideas but expresses them in an impenetrable forest of language that the average person can’t read or figure out how to use. Both schools have become specialized conversations among experts, and no one talks about helping the average person get wise.

Academics is also Eurocentric, so rather than gain a general and global understanding of human thought, philosophy departments ignore all but a small number of ancient Greek and modern European thinkers. Again and again the West is declared to be rational, although no one knows what rational is exactly and history makes this seem doubtful.

To make philosophy more useful, we should study the whole history of human thought, make great ideas understandable, and use them to gain perspective. Like knowledge, there is no limit to wisdom, and it will always be valuable for improving ourselves and our fellow fools.

Why are people such fools? Why are we all, you and I included, so ignorant, hypocritical, and self-centered? We’ve landed on the moon, but millions still starve. Nukes and pollution threaten all known life. Are we designed to self-destruct? This great ape could use greater wisdom.

Anthropologists say that in the simplest cultures, when people screw up, first they are mocked. If they continue to screw up, they get the silent treatment, and if they screw up bad enough, they are kicked out of the tribe. We should mock humanity, without getting kicked out of the tribe, because we can always get wiser.

Life is like a box of orangutans, which means, you pretty much know what you’re gonna get. Heraclitus, my favorite Greek philosopher, Zhuangzi, my favorite Chinese philosopher, and Nietzsche, my favorite German philosopher, enjoyed comparing us to apes to keep us humble and open to evolution, to becoming a greater ape.

Human beings are the smartest thing found yet in the universe, and yet, we are idiots. We are DUMB…D. U. M. dumb! It truly takes an ape this smart to be this stupid. A Buddhist once said we are all insane, and few get much saner, which is a refreshingly honest perspective.

In Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat tells Alice, “We are all mad here!”, and explains that a dog wags its tail when it’s happy and growls when it’s angry, while a cat wags its tail when it’s angry and growls when it’s happy. Alice says that she calls it purring, not growling, and the cat says, “Call it whatever you like!”.

Whatever you believe, there is someone opposed to you who is crazy enough to think you are crazy. Is thought itself a form of insanity, the confusion of a dream with reality? It is certainly a useful hallucination, and you can use your illusion, much as Guns n’ Roses did in the 80s, but it doesn’t take any skill or smarts to believe what you think or are told.

The old way of being stupid is thinking religion makes you moral and loving compared to others. The new way of being stupid is thinking that science and technology make you rational and self-aware compared to others. Believe it or not, I believed in science when I was three years old, running around museums in a triceratops t-shirt, but I was not a genius boy for doing it.

I’m not religious, but if you use religion to become a better person, I’m all for it, and I’m not a scientist, but if you use science to help others, then I’m all for it, but if you merely believe in the religion or science you were taught, that makes you nothing at all, certainly not a revolutionary who will be remembered. It is not believing or belonging, but questioning and changing, becoming a better person, a greater great ape, that makes you the greater ape.