Scouting the future <== recommended
Times Online - UK
PG Wodehouse certainly thought so. One of the characters in his first Jeeves and Wooster novel, written in 1923, is an overzealous Scout called Edwin who ...
Finding Nonsectarian Military Leaders <== today's less alert item
BAGHDAD (AP) -- The biggest obstacle to building Iraqi security forces is finding leaders who are experienced and not bound by sectarian loyalties, a senior U.S. general told The Associated Press on Saturday....
Mount Everest Highway Plans on Hold
LHASA, China (AP) -- Environmental experts must conduct a study and give their approval before workers can build a planned paved road up to the Mount Everest base camp, a Tibet government official said Saturday....
Navteq Charts Growth of Digital Maps
CHICAGO (AP) -- Getting lost is getting rarer nowadays, and any yahoo with a keyboard or a GPS device can find precise directions or pinpoint the location of an out-of-town landmark. Now drivers hooked on digital maps are looking for more than just streets and turns. They want ever more accurate and up-to-date points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels, theme parks and more. For digital mapmakers like Navteq Corp., it's up to road teams like Ann McNeil and Rich Joyce to deliver....
Analysis: NASA Culture Still Broken?
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- At NASA, once again, the problem is its culture - a habit of dismissing the concerns of knowledgeable underlings....
Robots Clear Waterways of Deadly Mines
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- As it slowly moves in the shallow water along a beach, the robot splashes its fins like a small child playing in the surf. But the prototype device has a serious mission: destroying mines that could kill Marines and Navy SEALs as they come on shore. Such technology is considered the future of underwater bomb detection....
Report Warns Against Too Many 'Net Rules
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression....
Cuban athletes leave Pan Am games early amid defection fears
addenda <== RSV, July 29, 2007
What It’s All About
~Presentation to the Georgia Mountain Writers Club~
As the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined. The following was written by a twig bent in 20th century North American culture for other twigs similarly bent.
“Philosophy” is the name given to the study of the problem of “What It’s All About”. The study appears to have originated in western culture in ancient Greece some three thousand years ago – though, of course, it goes back much further – we just do not have the records. It is the offspring of “religion” and the questions that children ask - though today it often refuses to acknowledge its heredity. It is the mother of mathematics and the hard and soft sciences - the father being tools/technology - the sciences were technology written down until the “discovery” of statistics and the formalization of logic.
The raison d’etre of philosophy is the examined life: as we see ourselves, as we see others, and as we see the world in which we live – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Examined_Life. The study of the examined life collapses into the questions “what is the meaning of life” and “how should I live”. These have to be answered in regard to both the individual and the community.
Ambrose Bierce defined philosophy as “a road of many paths leading from nowhere to nothing”. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is truth in this definition: “philosophy” today appears to have no well-defined origin or end. This problem currently appears irresolvable – possibly due to the limits of our senses and mental abilities. (A variously attributed quote goes “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”) Philosophy will continue to be the study of questions associated with the examined life not yet amenable to statistics and logic.
The remainder of this essay will document my opinions on the current state of the study of the examined life.
Vince Lombardi is famous for, among other things, saying something about his values:
- my first priority is to worship and obey my God
- my second priority is to nurture my family
- my third priority is to contribute to the health of my country
- my fourth priority is to make the Green Bay Packers the best American football team
“Meaning” and “purpose” at the moment have no definition outside the human context. So it is the human context that assigns “meaning” and “purpose”. These collapse into our values. The above are the values that gave meaning and purpose to Lombardi. Other people have other values, but whatever the values, they are what provide “meaning” and “purpose” to the life of the individual and the life of the community.
We derive our values from out experience. We share a common culture but have a unique existence. For the “sane”, our values are similar but to an extent unique – and they will change (generally slightly but sometimes not) as we acquire more experience.
My values as of 2007 are similar to those of Lombardi:
- nurture my family
- value my friends
- contribute to the health of my community
- seek new experience
Suggested Reading
- The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge And Action by John Dewey
- What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (Very Short Introduction) by Thomas Nagel
- Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again by Andy Clark
- Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary by W. V. Quine
- The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850 (Norton Critical Editions) by William Wordsworth
- Lucretius: The Way Things are: The De Rerum Natura of Titus Lucretius Carus by Lucretius. Translated by Rolfe Humphries (among many others).
- http://www.esrnational.org/september1_1939annotated.htm
- Far Away And Long Ago: A Childhood in Argentina by W. H. Hudson and Nicholas Shakespeare
- Idle Days In Patagonia by W. H. Hudson
- The Time of My Life: An Autobiography by Willard Van Orman Quine
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