Be a Philosopher again!
These days, I draw on my experience and training to share life-changing ideas in an entertaining way. That’s not how I started. I once was the questioning child with fresh, untainted views. That’s all of us as philosophers. I’ve also been the fifteen-year-old falsely accused of ‘borrowing’ a whole paragraph of John Locke who discovers he has some talent and the eighteen-year-old, with the courage and naivety of youth, who leaves the comfort of his home country and of his language, despite the lack of encouragement and the numerous warnings against such a move.
As we grow, we are taught to restrict our reach. We become bystanders of a growing spectacle but actors of a diminished territory. Our aspirations to change the world evaporate. We focus on reasonable, necessary and worthwhile goals: making a living and supporting our family. Changing the world, abolishing poverty, creating an economy for everyone, finding a place in an automated world, and transiting to a moneyless society are, it seems, unsurmountable ideals. They will remain fantasies until enough people keep their philosopher-child’s visions alive in their realities as adults able to act.
The obstacles are many, but what are obstacles if not barriers for us to overcome? Opportunities which reveal our triumphant selves? Nature shows the way. Minor, incremental, continual steps move mountains.
Fellow philosophers, you can contribute to the quest
by taking any of the following small actions:
