This is in response to the article "Why?" which appeared in NAR 37 (the
subliminal binary issue).
I was struck by the term "non-philosopher" that the author used. There's
no such thing. The "non-philosophical" views that the author espoused are
themselves part of a philosophy of how life ought to be lived and what a
person's goals should be. There are many, many people who feel that such
things as philosophy and religion are "impractical," but I feel that the
term "practical" out of necessity carries with it ideas concerning what is
useful and what are good goals to strive towards. These ideas are based on
an underlying bed of philosophical ideas, even if they may be
philosophical ideas that have become so entrenched in society that most
people don't even recognize them as such anymore -- they just conform to
them like sheep and assume that they're merely "obvious." Deciding what is
"practical" requires serious thought (philosophizing!) concerning where
you place your values, as well as your program disk! In other words, you
must ask yourself, "Is having a girlfriend really worth the hassle? So
what if I have a beer belly? What difference does smelly feet make?" Et
cetera, et cetera.
Now, before you consider this a boldface attack, let me inform you that I,
too, have had psychological problems similar to those that the author
admitted to. I had an extremely thick "shell" for most of my life.
(Growing up as someone who's a little "different" in a very conservative
small Midwestern town will do that to a guy!) I suffered severe depression
only a couple of years ago, and I am still amazed that I escaped out of
that ordeal without doing myself in.
By the way, I, too, am a big South Park fan!
Also, I am not trying to promote any particular belief system. I myself am
still "searching," trying to find my own answers. To that end, I must
offer the following conciliatory notes.
Cloistering, as the author points out, is not an option -- well, at least
not a very good one! However, it is not because you shouldn't
"philosophize," it's because wisdom requires experience. In order to learn
about life, you must first "get a life!" Americans tend to shun old age,
but peoples of the East tend to put their senior citizens on a pedestal,
and for good reason -- these people recognize that, since older people have
more life experience, they are likely to have more wisdom, as well.
Another trend in Eastern thought is to find "enlightenment" in the moment,
i.e., from living, and that all forms of life experience can be used as
part of the path to enlightenment. Taoism, for instance, often scorns
scholars for their useless dependence on "book learning" and praises the
simple farmer for learning from real experience. The process of gaining
wisdom is often more important than the wisdom itself.
Okay, so you want an analogy to something more "practical" than Eastern
philosophy, such as, oh, say, computer programming? I'm sure, this being a
technical university in a computer-savvy age, that most of you are
familiar with the acronym GIGO (i.e., "Garbage in, garbage out").
Cloistering yourself to do your philosophizing would be like mental
incest. Your observations (data) would become very narrow and distorted,
and so the end result would also be garbage.
To conclude, let me go back to Eastern philosophy, in particular the
concept of Yin-Yang, i.e., the balance of seeming opposites and their
dependence on each other. Life is meaningless without a personal
philosophy, but true life wisdom cannot be gained without "living." Like
almost everything else in life, these "opposites," thinking and living,
must be kept in balance in order to achieve satisfactory results. This is
why I find many things of value in Eastern thought. While Western
philosophy is often fractured, narrow and dysfunctional, many Eastern
philosophies strive, instead, to consider experience as a whole and not,
as Westerners tend to do, seek to put discrete labels on things or think
that you can only go to one extreme or another extreme instead of striving
for harmony. A good cook must always remember to keep the ingredients in
proportion, or else the customers will vomit! Now that's practical!