Disparate thinking
Created on Mar 14, 2019 (updated Jan 1, 2020).
#How this works
I write at least one essay of 500 words or more (with optional audio recording). The more support, the higher the rate of releases. To maintain quality, the rate will not exceed one essay per week.
Once enough essays have been collected, they will be compiled and released as a book. Supporters of the project will be offered a discount on the cover price to be determined at the time of publishing at no less than 40% off the cover price.
#Goals and todos
- 5 supporters or 10 up votes
#Backstory
I think a lot. Like a lot a lot.
I reflect alot. Like a lot a lot.
I’m sitting here, looking at those four sentence (fragments) wondering if they’re how I really want to start this. Yeah, I suppose they’ll do.
Since about the age of 10 (1990) I’ve made it a habit of looking for alternative ways to think about things. If you need a different perspective from the one you have, you come to me — at least most of my friends do. I’ve arguably even made my living at doing this.
This projects is exhibition and exploitation of that ability. Here we’ll mainly talk pragmatic philosophy. I call it “pragmatic philosophy” because I am, at this point, not an academic. I am not academically or otherwise formally trained in philosophy. And, I have very little patience debating whether existence exists, just as I’m sure existence is completely indifferent to whether I exist.
Growing up, I remember telling people about these ideas I had. They would often reply with, “Where did you learn that? Who taught you that?” and so on. My reply was often, “Well, no one.” And that sort of opened the doors to various ideas of mine being dismissed.
Later in life, I would stumble upon the same idea said by someone long before I was born and I would say, “See, maybe I’m not crazy.” Of course, having a reference resource just opened a new world of ways to dismiss the idea, “Oh, well that’s an invalid source” or “That person was [insert pejorative].”
In both cases, the same thing happened. The idea wasn’t being challenged, the source was. I came up with a lot of maxims based on this turn of events:
- Somebody had to have the idea first — where’d they get it from?
- You can’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t know the wheel exists.
- The source cannot be grounds to confirm or deny the content.
(That last one came in handy as an art major.)
Most of them have an underlying principle or belief that really helped inform my youth; the belief being: Everything that exists must have a creator. (Later I would find out this has been talked about by at least Thomas Aquinas and seems to be called the unactualized actualizer…kind of.)
Anyway, that’s what this is about. Talking philosophy. In a pragmatic way. Whether I know about the works of others or not. (Fair warning, I tend to talk about ethics — how living, sentient beings should behave and interact.)