I'm not sure if I'm getting ahead of myself here by posting another blog so soon but I figured I'd get this down before I forget to mention it in class tonight. I'd like to share something that I hope people comment on and I figured it was a good way to start off the class.
Last night I was in my dorm room with my roommate looking at the optional readings/watchings/listenings for our previous class period.
"Would you mind" I asked her, "If I played this NPR clip about philosophy?"
"Go for it." She replied (might I add that my roommate is quite accustomed to me subjecting her to listening to various obscure podcasts on topics that might be a bit dry.)
So we listened to the 'I Believe' segment and discussed it a bit. She then hit me with her view on philosophy (one that is probably pretty common in youth today) and in return, I attempted to understand it and our conversation went something like this:
"I don't really like philosophy."
"Really? Why?"
"It's just so depressing..."
"You mean the whole discussion on the purpose of existence and the "Why are we here?" question?"
"Yeah I just feel like the more you know about things, the more depressed you get so I choose to just not know about things."
"...do you know what philosophy is?"
"Um, not really."
"Well how can you not like it? Philosophy doesn't have to be depressing, although there are some perspectives that are difficult to get excited about and there are some philosophers who are hypocritical, egocentric, and quite frankly depressing but I still find merit in some of their ideas. That's all philosophy is anyway, ideas and thought."
"Well, I don't hate it, I just don't like talking about it. Haha... I don't really like thinking too much either. I know I sound like an idiot but I'd just rather concern myself with my group of friends and my interests and philosophy just isn't apart of that."
"You know that you and your friends wouldn't live the way you do without some influence of somebody else's ideas."
"Oh I don't deny that, I just don't really care."
After I had the discussion with my roommate I read the last chapter of Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy (which is free on the Kindle if anyone is interested) and the concept of the "uncertainty of philosophy" struck me. I kept finding bits of that passage relating directly to the discussion I had with my roommate and her view of philosophy.
I could be wrong but the same apathetic view of philosophy (as well as other areas of study) is everywhere. When I look at it from an individual point of view I'd like to approach it from a "to each her own" standpoint. Let people think what they want, it's not hurting anybody. Different people have different needs and that fine, right? But when I hear so many kids my age tossing aside something like the study of philosophy, something that is very well the foundation of human livelihood, the uncertainty of philosophy truly makes me sad.
I think that philosophy liberates us from the limitations and pressures society needlessly places on our shoulders. Just like the women in that youtube video we watched who would cut the corner of the ham when in reality there was no need to. We believe, think, and live out a lot of things that we should learn to let go of because they are only impeding.
ReplyDeleteRhianna, I think you get to the real point in your last sentence, where you talk about conscious vs. subconscious philosophies. Although what we're reading in class are historic texts, and people may not consciously agree with them now, they are very much part of the collective subconscious of Western culture. For example, 97% of the American public has probably never read Plato's Republic, but the ideas about art he presents there are still very much present in our society. (We'll talk more about this on Wednesday.) Studying these texts and ideas is what moves them from the subconscious to the conscious level, where we have a chance to critically assess them and decide if they work for us in the present; or if not, how we should modify them.
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