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First of all this is about my own philosophy and not at all about anyone else's, famous or otherwise.
Secondly, philosophy is not about what one states that one believes but about what one really believes and by that I mean it is about the ideas that each of us has that make us do the things we do and not do the things that we don't do and it is also about the things that we say except that it is not about the things that we say about philosophy.
Baffled by that? Okay, understandable I guess so let me elaborate.
Let me assume that you are a driver of a car and if you are not then just think about someone you know who is and who you have travelled with while they drive.
You know how it goes. If we were to interview any driver, you in this case, they would say, you would say, something along these lines. That you are a pretty good driver and other drivers are the problem. But I bet you also have a philosophy that says something like be considerate to others.
The point I am trying to make, badly as it happens, is that each of us has a philosophy by which I mean that we all have a way of thinking about things in a certain way that can be described as our philosophy in life.
When you are driving you exhibit your real and actual philosophy. When you are being interviewed about your driving philosophy you will idealise and perfect it and gloss over or deny the flaws and contradictions.
That is what I mean by philosophy. That is what IS philosophy. It IS that 'inner' thinking that each of us has and is not the proclaimed thinking.
Of course if people talk about philosophers when the word philosophy is mentioned then that is another aspect of philosophy and not one I will include as a rule on this web site.
People say they are for justice, freedom and the right of the individual but it takes but a few minutes to get them to inflict injustice, exercise various denials of rights to others and generally behave and live in a way which makes it obvious that what they have to say about their own philosophy is either a pack of lies or they are completed oblivious to how their professed thinking is completely contradictory to their behaviour.
Thus I am not at all interested in what people say about their ideals and their philosophy - it usually counts for nothing. What I am interested in is in watching how they behave because that tells me all I want to ever know about their philosophy in life. They are living it. We live it. I live it. You live it. You may be proud of it or ashamed of it. You may be aware of it or oblivious to it. But each of us lives our own philosophy.
When I write about my philosophy it is with this in mind. I try to look not just at how I think but how I have behaved over the years. I try to see if I am in complete agreement with myself and if I am then I feel qualified to speak about my philosophy and if not then I don't.
You may want to press upon me the dictionary definition. In which case you miss the point here. My point is worth the effort to grasp. It is a simple point but it is an important point. Philosophy is not something written in a book and lying on a dusty shelf in a forgotten library in a ghost town in a country long since erased from human memory. Philosophy is like religion in that religion is not in a church or crammed into our minds by ignorant people posing or deluded into thinking they know something about God - usually they know nothing. For the word religion to have any value that kind of meaning has no useful place and likewise for the word philosophy to have any useful value then it has to apply to each of us in an everyday way.
Do you begin to see my point yet?
It is well worth it to make the effort because then you can begin to understand and use the word to your own thinking advantage whereas until you then the only use of the word religion and the word philosophy is to talk about dead ideas or ideas that might just as well be dead for all the use they are to anyone with any honest intention in life.
Theology, like religion, becomes redundant when you have a certain kind of awareness, when you know that the spiritual reality really exists. Philosophy, like long dead philosophers, has no useful purpose unless you understand how it can apply in your own life and to grasp that all you have to do is grasp that it is all about how you think, how you really think. If either of these ever serves as a useful tool it is simply to act as a stepping stone towards a greater understanding and awareness of reality. If they don't do that then they are pointless and distracting occupations that take us around in circles and not very pleasant circles at that.
The best kind of thinking is the kind that has disposed of religion and philosophy and the like because they are handicaps to understanding and true knowledge. Once that has been done which is a kind of house cleaning that disposes of unwanted rubbish, then we are in a better position to begin learning what life is all about.
Religion and philosophy pose or are posited as giving us a better understanding of what life is all about but the man or woman who is not will to carry such unwanted baggage around in their minds is freer to be able to view life with clearer vision.
In fact that is one of my objectives in this web site (and blog) to present you with ideas that can help you to do just that. I hope I have given you some insight into two of the worst culprits that stop us from seeing clearly and then once you see clearly then your religion and your philosophy are completely different things entirely and absolutely.
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