Entries Tagged 'Philosophy' ↓

 

 Why Life Choices Are So Damned Hard to Make: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (761)

Summary: Life choices are so hard to make because there’s a Gap between important questions and their answers are filled with things that can’t be quantified. To answer important life questions, you have to start asking different questions.

It’s a long one, folks (almost 17 minutes!) - but I think it’s worth a listen.

References:

• Don Clark has a great article on Bloom’s Taxonomy, if you’d like to know more about it.
• Evelyn has a beautiful post on the Gap as it relates to the space between thoughts. It’s a wonderful, informative read.

As I was uploading this screencast to YouTube (last week), I checked Twitter and saw that Duff released the second part of his interview with Clay in which they touch on learning to ask the right questions. Great job, guys!

@Duff: Great job with the podcasts. Thanks for allowing me a spot with the PowerUp! tip - I can’t believe the cheesy one made the cut! I really enjoyed the conversation last week.

@Clay: I feel like we’re swirling around the same ideas from different perspectives. You provide some really good insights in the series. Keep it up, my inspiring friend!

I would’ve commented there, and I may yet, but I did such a good job of screwing that up last time that I decided to make somewhat intelligible comments here.

This week’s Food for Thought:

What’s the difference between offline friends and online “friends”?

(If you answered that online friends are ones you made online, you get 10 Smartass points. Proceed directly to the university nearest you and sign up as a philosophy major with said points.)

Sure, it’s a Web1.0 type of question, but I think in the digital world we live in, it’s become an even more pressing question. We now have so many ways to connect with people we’ve never physically met, and our connectedness gets tighter and tighter every day.

Yet many people think there’s still some qualitative difference between the types of friendships such that offline friends get the status of true friends and online ones are “friends,” with the quotation signifying something like people we’ve met online, talked to, and like - but not to be confused with friends sans quotations.

Here’s the deal, though: through blogging, I’ve met more people that I actually like than I generally do in the real world. It’s also much easier for me to get to know people online than off - you don’t have to worry with sometimes-inhibiting social factors like gender, status, and race.

But there’s also the weird feature with online “friends” that I know more about them and less about them at the same time. I can tell you how old their kids are, what their kids like, what their favorite type of music is, what they’re most scared of, and all sorts of very personal facts - yet I don’t know what they’re kids’ names are or whether the name they use is actually their real one.

It’s strange, really - we expose more of our inner selves through online relationships at the same time that we hide more of outer selves.

I find this interesting because it’s the exact opposite of what we do in offline relationships.

I was reading an offline friend’s Facebook page the other day and he mentioned some things that he liked and disliked. I’ve known this guy for thirteen years and I didn’t know some of the stuff - and it was pretty basic stuff that should’ve come up in the course of our friendship. That happens to me quite often, and I don’t spend much time crawling around on Facebook and Myspace.

Something else to consider for those with blogging “friends”: consider how much time per week we spend reading each other’s writing. Sure, a lot of the stuff can be very impersonal - my blog being no different - but in some ways those are conversations that we are a part of sometimes on a daily basis. I don’t talk to my offline friends on a daily, or sometimes weekly, basis - yet I leave comments and shoot emails to my online friends everyday.

I should note that one of the things that makes blogging “friends” so nice is that they are dealing with the same issues and you don’t have to introduce them to the blogosphere at the same time you’re talking about something you’re thinking about. They get it because they’re doing it - so you can get down to the meat of the conversation without trying to explain what RSS is so that they understand why RSS subscribers matter.

My point: many of us are spending more time and attention on our online “friends” than our offline friends. From one perspective, that would seem to make their friendship more important to us than offline friendships.

Yet, at the same time, most of us place more weight on the offline friendships, and they still remain friends sans quotations.

For many of us, this issue is not merely an academic point any more. The online world is a critical part of our reality - and part of that reality has a very social component. Our lives are enriched by people we have never, and likely will never, physically meet - yet they still get second-class status as far as the type of relationship we have with them goes.

Is it time to drop the quotations? Is it time to stop the favoring of physical friendships over the non-physical ones?

(The worry here, of course, is that the people reading this blog have a much higher likelihood of saying “Yes” because they are already on the blogosphere. But consider what the answer would be if you were answering someone who wasn’t already part of the choir.)

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Photo Credit: Rainfalls

This last week has been a bit strange on the writing front - I’ve mentally written a lot of posts, but I haven’t actually written them. Now we’ll just have to see whether they actually materialize into something worth reading.

The reason for the strangeness of the week has been due to me being on military orders for Annual Training. I had a huge list of things that I needed to have my company and myself do - so that took some time, but the real reason was mostly psychological. It’s always that switch for me when I start working to time and not to task.

Needless to say, I’m back.

Since this weekend was really busy, I didn’t get to put a Food For Thought post out. The pondering this week is a result of the conversation between me and Bill in the comments of 12 Ways to Practice Courage. What’s bothered me for a long time is what makes a particular act courageous. (It didn’t help that Kelly had a post some while ago about the most daring thing she’s ever done - that started me thinking about it all over again and I declined to comment.)

Before we start, this is not purely an academic point that I’m presenting. It’s prompted by situations I’ve been in.

I’ve been in mortal danger no less than five times throughout my life. I could talk about all of them, but it’d be a really long post that may or may not be interesting. The one that really pops into my mind, though, is from a convoy gone…weird…in Iraq. I’ll keep it as short as possible.

On said weird convoy, we ended up going through a largish town during Market Day. Going through towns during Market Day is very much akin to driving 30 tractor-trailers through the middle of a fair - people and animals are everywhere, meandering with their wares, and really, really pissed that this huge trucks are coming through the middle of it. It doesn’t help that those trucks have people with guns, and some of those people are quick to point them at you.

My convoy also had the fortune of escorting Third Country National drivers - so for every one military truck, we had two or three TCN trucks. These guys were usually scared shitless because they had no idea where they were going, couldn’t speak English, and they knew they were in danger.

What would inevitably happen in these types of situations is that a TCN truck would not follow the truck in front of it closely enough and people and goats would start running between that truck and the one in front of it. The natural thing to do is to stop, because running over people is not something people naturally do. Once that one vehicle stops, it becomes a crosswalk from one side of the market to the other. The end result is that you end up with your convoy cut in half - and that’s bad.

Once our guntruck had ended the crosswalk situation, the second half of the convoy rushed to catch up with the first. In the excitement, another of our TCN drivers hit a curb really hard and the generator he had poorly secured on his trailer fell off…in the middle of Market Day. He stopped - and he was the third to last truck of the convoy. Still left in the convoy was my mechanic’s truck, my truck, and the trailing guntruck.

The crowd, out of curiosity, immediately swarmed that truck and the generator. There was no moving of any of the vehicles. My mechanic radioed up, but I still couldn’t see what was going on, so I got out of my truck to go see.

The crowd parted around me with a buffer of about 3 feet and then would close up behind me. For about 75 meters this happened - and I was completely isolated from my truck and my driver.

(I doubt many of you are transporters, so I have to make clear two major points: being unable to move your truck is terrifying, and being isolated from your truck with a crowd of neutral to hostile people is bone-chilling terrifying.)

As I approached the mechanic’s truck, it began to dawn on me that we were in a bad situation - for he had that “deer-in-the-headlights, what-do-we-do, I’m-scared” look on his face. The only two things that went through my mind were 1) please, Specialist, don’t start shooting, and 2) we have to get the fuck out of here. If he started shooting, dozens of people would have died, because everybody would have started shooting. And if we didn’t get out of there, something bad was going to happen.

There was no way to recover the generator, and we had to get out there, so I went against standing orders, placed an incendiary grenade on the generator, and we left (the crowd parted enough due to the intimidation of our guntruck.)

(I’ve left out a lot of detail to make the story shorter.)

Only when we meet up with the rest of our convoy outside of town did I realize what how bad that situation was. It would have been really easy for someone to jump from the crowd with a knife, or shovel, or any of the other tools they were carrying and overwhelm me. There were people walking on the rooftops with AK-47s.

But at the time, I didn’t think about any of that. I didn’t worry about my personal safety and I didn’t think about the danger I was in. My overriding thoughts were: 1) please, Troops, don’t start shooting, and 2) we have to get the fuck out of here.

I didn’t sit in the truck to deliberate what was the courageous thing to do. I didn’t fight the urge to sit in the truck because it didn’t really dawn on me that I had the option of sitting in the truck.

None of this is meant to be bragging or boasting, but rather, I’m just making it clear that I wasn’t thinking about the actions I was taking. I was just acting.

But is “just acting” worthy of moral praise? For it seems to me that a lot of people “just act,” but they act badly. The married man who can’t control his sexual urges comes to mind here - for, presented with certain situations, he can reasonably say he was just acting. He didn’t mean to hurt his wife - he didn’t think about it. But the fact that he didn’t think about it doesn’t seem to make any difference to the nature of his actions - although if he did it knowing it would hurt his wife or so that he would hurt his wife, that seems worse.

Of course, if the analysis for courage works, then it should work for truthfulness, friendliness, and the other virtues. If it’s the act itself that counts, why do we stress intentions?

What do you think?

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Fridays (or, in the case of the last few weeks, weekends) are Food For Thought Days. On these days, I drop the normal “here’s a solution” standard and instead write a “here’s an interesting question” post. My goal in these posts is hence not to provide answers, but to introduce good questions.

I have had several comments here recently about the “new focus” or the content on my “new blog.” This seems strange to me, for it feels like I’m writing about the same stuff I’ve always been writing about in the same ways that I’ve always been writing about them.

But it’s also got me thinking more about The Ship of Theseus. The Ship of Theseus is a classical philosophical puzzle about identity. I’ll give the quick version. (Note: if you’re a professional philosopher, you will not be happy with the quick version. But you likely won’t be happy with much of anything I write here, anyway.)

Imagine you have a wooden ship in your backyard and decide that one day you want to take it apart piece by piece. You go about taking it apart, delicately removing each part as if you were going to use those same parts to rebuild it later (should you decide to do so) and storing it in your garage.

Now, here’s part of the problem. When you remove each piece, it still seems to be (intuitively) the same Ship. Removing one plank from the floor, for example, doesn’t seem to make it a different ship. However, if you keep up with the process, you will end up with all of the pieces of the Ship in your garage, but it will no longer be the Ship of Theseus, since, by hypothesization, you won’t have a ship - you’ll have a pile of wood that used to be a ship.

But at some point in your deconstruction, the Ship had to move from existence to non-existence, unless you want to say all the pieces in the garage is the ship. At what discrete point did the Ship cease being the Ship?

A further wrinkle: suppose that, rather than just tearing the Ship apart, you decide to replace every wooden piece you removed with an aluminum piece of the exact same dimensions. So, when you start, you have a completely wooden Ship, but at the end, you have a completely aluminum Ship. But, at each discrete stage of time, you only have a ship that is one piece different than it was in the previous moment.

An even further problem: suppose that you decide to use the wooden planks you removed in the case above to build another Ship which is materially identical to the original ship. At the end of that project, you’ll have two Ships, one aluminum and one wooden, that each have a claim to being the Ship of Theseus. They can’t both be THE Ship of Theseus, but it could be true that they both could NOT be the Ship of Theseus, but the problem becomes, when was the Ship of Theseus destroyed?

A few options:

• The Ship of Theseus is what it is by the individual parts that make it up.

In this case, the second you removed the first wooden plank from the Ship, it ceased to be. But the individual atoms in the wood are forever changing, with the result that the Ship is never itself.

• The Ship of Theseus is what it is because of its structure.

In this case, the Ship remains the same ship throughout the change from wood to aluminum, so you have the seemingly inconsistent result that the Ship of Theseus is both an aluminum and a wooden ship. Furthermore, when you have two ships (as in the last thought experiment), they both have identical structures, so you wind up with the result that both are THE Ship of Theseus - meaning that two discrete things are one numerical thing.

• The Ship of Theseus is what it is because of its history.

In this case, the Ship remains the same because of its particular role in the history of the world. Parts come and go, but the actor remains the same. You’ll still wind up with the problem in the case of Theseus duplicates, because each share a relevant history with the “original” ship.

Now, the real problem is not at all about ships, but instead about that that makes us who we are. We know that parts of who we are changes from year to year, but we still think we’re the same people.

Is it because of our parts - i.e. the individual matter that makes us up? Breathe, and you’re no longer the same you.

Is it because of our structure? Lose a limb, or cut your hair, and you’re no longer the same person.

Is it because of our history in the world? Were you to be duplicated, you’d either have a existential twin, or you’d cease to be.

Is it because of our thoughts, feelings, and all the other stuff that goes on in our heads? Lose your memories, and you’re no longer you. Have a radical change of heart, and the person you were once before is gone.

Is it because of our souls? Souls could logically be duplicated and would run the same risks of the Ships. (Sidebar: soul talk, in general, is a way to understand what it is that is us through time. Our physical bodies come to pass, and theories of identity that posit spiritual existence before and after physical existence have to have some device to allow for identity through the different phases of our existence.)

So, despite the fact that I changed blog domains, concepts, and taglines last month, the core parts remained the same. What, then, makes it a “new” blog? (Note the trick: the question is not about the blog.)

If some material, structural, historical, or spiritual part of you, at some particular time, enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my feed, commenting, or sharing it on StumbleUpon, del.i.cious, or Digg by using the handy form below. Thank you for your time and support!

Photo Credit: Maggie-Me

Even though I was unable to post this or last Friday’s meditation, it’s still a goal of mine to write something that steps away from the standard topics on Productive Flourishing and instead just gives something to think about. For this week, it’s not a meditation, but instead an applied philosophical problem.

Before you run away thinking “Oh No! Charlie’s hitting us over the head with philosophy again!,” rest assured that we’ll not be talking about whether color exists in the universe or some such thing. The problem we’ll be talking about is the Problem of Dirty Hands and how it relates to personal development.

In short, the Problem of Dirty Hands is a recognition that sometimes, to do something good, you have to get your hands (morally) dirty. It’s often applied to the political spectrum, because the part of the art of politics is promoting positions you don’t agree with so that your other agendas can be pushed forward.

But we’re not talking about politics. What I’m talking about is our involvement in social organizations. What has prompted this for me personally is that the Boy Scouts of America have contacted me several times wanting me to take part in their national Eagle Scout registry.

I’ll not get into all of the details of Scouting, but needless to say, being an Eagle Scout is a great honor and is the highest rank that a Scout can achieve. I used to be proud of the fact that I’m an Eagle Scout - that is, until I found out that the Boy Scouts of America have an exclusive policy towards people of alternative sexual orientations, agnostics, and atheists. There are four categories of people that can be denied registration from the Boy Scouts of America, and the fourth type (the other three are previously listed) are felons. Felons, agnostics, atheists, and the GLBTQ community - what a motley crew!

(For more information, visit Scouting For All’s webpage. Also keep in mind that my main contention is not whether the BSA should have the right to exclude whoever they wish, but whether I should take part in such an organization.)

The problem is that I am the person that I am due in large part to the wonderful men and women of the Boy Scouts and the experiences that I’ve had through that community. I also think that I could and should give back and help mold the next generation of Scouts. If you’ve been reading this blog for a bit, you also know that groups can be very effective agents for personal development. Being involved in groups of people committed to excellence helps you excel.

But I’m very uncomfortable being part of an organization that I feel is bigoted and shameful. Sure, individual and regional organizations may have defied the National Council and produced their own inclusive policies, at risk of being banned and censured, but the root point for me is that, officially, the organization has a bigoted and shameful policy that I don’t want to be a part of.

I’ve hitherto decided that it’s not worth getting my hands dirty - my moral cleanliness is more important to me than the potential good I might do. But some of the stuff I’ve been working on for my dissertation is starting to make me feel less secure in that position. To make the point clearer, I’ll give some perspectives for thought:

• “The Keep Your Hands Clean” Perspective:

What’s important is that you choose your conduct based off of what you think is right or wrong. It may be unfortunate that there could more good advanced in the world by you choosing an alternative action, but choosing a bad means for a good end is never justified.

• “The Get Your Hands Dirty” Perspective:

What’s important is that you choose your conduct based off of what produces the most good. If you can make the world better, and don’t do it, you are at least minimally morally responsible for the world being less well off than it otherwise could have been. Whether you get your hands dirty to pursue a good end or not do something that would create a better situation, your hands are still dirty.

• “The Get Your Hands Dirty But Clean Up the Work” Perspective

nother option is to stay within the organization whilst trying to change it. This perspective acknowledges the obligation to help while not accepting the undesirable features, but I still have to wonder whether, by promoting the organization (via participation in the organization’s projects, etc.), I am also promoting the organization’s policies.

Of course, there are other alternatives, such as finding other organizations that pursue similar ends without having the undesired exclusivity, but the question is whether those organizations are as effective as the Boy Scouts of America due to its cultural entrenchment.

That’s my specific problem, but it’s obviously just a species of a general problem. People from certain religious communities have a similar problem: is it worth remaining part of a church that begins to take on exclusivist and bigoted policies, even though those organizations at the same time promote otherwise noble social ends? Is it better to remain clean or to promote the social good, when they are mutually exclusive?

People in activist organizations are also in the same boat. I personally don’t agree with all of the policies of the NAACP, NOW, or the Sierra Club - but, then again, I think there’s a qualitative difference between not agreeing with the NAACP’s stance on affirmative action and disagreeing with the BSA’s policies that categorically devalue certain types of people on indefensible grounds.

Helping others and promoting social goods in the world is both intrinsically good and good for personal development since we become better people by actively doing things that make us better. And the best way, often times, to help other people and promote social goods is through collective activity, but sometimes being involved in those collectives make us dirty.

No answers here…just food for thought. What do you think?

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Photo Credit: Photos By Rose

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else
there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others.
–Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Commentary:

I’ve had a few setbacks this week - good things I was expecting did not come my way.  I was originally frustrated until I really thought long and hard about it and realized that the things did not come my way because I hadn’t done the things I needed to do to make them happen.  Expecting rewards where none were due, I blamed others and was frustrated.

Blaming others when failure is a result of your action (or in my case, inaction) is a waste of time, energy, and spirit.  Focus instead on what you can do to correct your own mistakes, and in those failures, there is an opportunity for growth.

Take the lemons you’ve reaped and make lemonade.

(This selection came from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching (Amazon, $7.96).)

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Clay (author of TheGrowingLife) wrote a brilliant comment on my last post dissenting (somewhat) about the importance of words, roots, and their meaning. I started to write a comment in response but it became clear that that response is its own post.

First, I really appreciate Clay voicing his comment, for multiple reasons. I love dialogue and not getting a free lunch with what I say. I also enjoy having true beliefs and ideas, even if that means I have to get rid of some things I’d like to believe. That said, if anyone reading this blog ever disagrees with me, please comment to that effect.

His main question:

Words are symbols, and when it comes to our internal (and even external) personal development dialog, don’t we get to chose the referent?

Okay, what’s our (me and Loren’s) deal with words? To say that it’s typical for a philosopher and an English professor to worry about words isn’t helpful, though it’s true. The reason we (maybe I shouldn’t indict her on this one) worry about words is that a good word, or phrase, can be worth a thousand pictures.

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Loren at Writing Power asked a question the other day that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently since I was thinking about metaphors and how language affects our thinking and behavior.

Her question:

“What term would you like to see replace “passion” in our personal development lexicon?”

The reason we want to switch terms is because passion’s etymological roots and current connotation don’t capture the concepts or feelings that we’re trying to describe.

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This Friday’s meditation is an original in the Taoist spirit:

Try to be everywhere, and you will find yourself nowhere.
Try to be there for everyone, and you will be there for no one.
Try to always be available, and you will never be available.
Try to work all the time, and you will not work anytime.

Build a small fire and sit close to it,
and you won’t need as much wood.

Thoughts:

This koan was inspired by correspondence I had with a friend last weekend.  He’s burning himself out by trying to do too much - the success he has found exceeds his ability to keep it going.  But he can’t stop feeding the fire.

I wrote yesterday that productivity is not about getting more things done, but rather about the nature of things we’re doing and how they fit into our flourishing.  Sitting close to your fire and basking in its warmth is far better than doing so much scrambling to keep the fire going that you never enjoy its heat.

What’s your fire?  Are you sitting close to it or struggling to keep it going?

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Photo Credit: starfires

Are you feeling down today? Want to know how to save time? He’s in a dark mood today. I’m trying to get more done.

All of the sentences above involve the use of metaphors. “The essence of metaphors,” Lakoff and Johnson argued in Metaphors We Live By, “is understanding one kind of thing in terms of another.”

(Sidebar: The Metaphors We Live By was one of the most influential books I read as an undergrad. It’s a mind-blowing read that’s well worth the time and money. Use the link above to grab yours from Amazon.)

Many of us don’t realize the power of metaphor even though our thinking is inherently metaphorical. For one thing, humans are generally very visual creatures, which is precisely why visual aids to goal setting help motivate us to actualize our goals.

But the more fundamental point about metaphors is that they have a powerful effect on our behavior. Since our behavior is partly determined by how we think about things, changing metaphors can have a powerful effect of changing behavior. Another important fact to remember is that metaphors do their work below the cognitive level - we don’t think about the associations, yet we act on those associations.

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