‘Philosophy helps’ is the theme of the videos I am making for my grandchildren. You have heard Phil refer to them. I am quick to talk about how philosophy helps, as my friend Heather knows. I like to give examples of how it helps. Our conversation yesterday about Ray Kurzweil got me to thinking. What kind of a person is this guy? Why does he want to continue to live? I think he and any person who thinks like him need some philosophical help. I don’t know anything about Camus yet, but I’m pretty sure he’d say that this is the big question – why do we want to continue to live? That’s a philosophical question, the type you can discuss in the Atheism and Philosophy class. Would you rather live for 500 years in idleness (for there is always tomorrow), or have 85 years of a life with meaning? Think about a Black Mirror episode or The Good Place. What is the meaning of life, anyway? Asking and trying to answer these questions results in a better, happier life. That is how philosophy helps. It can give you a life with meaning, eudaimonia, happiness. And that is what we all want. You can start with Plato, can’t you Savana? Kurzweil could really do with a chat with Socrates.
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I'm no psychoanalyst, but I'd bet it has something to do with losing his dad at an early age.
ReplyDelete"Though Kurzweil was young, it would have been a poor bet to issue him life insurance using standard actuarial tables. He has unlucky genes: His father died of heart disease at 58, his grandfather in his early forties. He himself was diagnosed with high cholesterol and incipient type 2 diabetes — both considered to be significant risk factors for early death — when only 35. He felt his bad luck as a cloud hanging over his life." https://www.wired.com/2008/03/ff-kurzweil/
"One day, sitting in his office overlooking the suburban parking lot, I ask Kurzweil if being a singularitarian makes him happy. "If you took a poll of primitive man, happiness would be getting a fire to light more easily," he says. "But we've expanded our horizon, and that kind of happiness is now the wrong thing to focus on. Extending our knowledge and casting a wider net of consciousness is the purpose of life." Kurzweil expects that the world will soon be entirely saturated by thought. Even the stones may compute, he says, within 200 years."
DeleteI agree, Ed! Philosophy helps, especially with big questions like these. Personally, I'd rather live a shorter life full of meaning than the opposite. What is the meaning of life? I guess that's what we're all trying to figure out!
ReplyDeleteI, and I think most of my peers would be inclined to agree, would choose to live a shorter life of meaning than a longer life of idleness. I am not religious, and ultimately I do not think there is a grand purpose to humanity that means we should go on. I do not think, though, that this perspective means we shouldn't live. I personally find meaning in people and love and fighting for people and art and life itself. I think, if anything, feeling that my life is absurd or ultimately meaningless to be uplifting, as it's up to me to create meatning.
ReplyDeletePhilosophy definitely helps, if we can change the way we think about things, then we can change how they affect us, and how we react to them. If more people took a step back from their worldview and looked at it in a different way, then I think many would reconsider how they act and how they treat others, and the environment.
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