Raw REALITY: Rough, Yet Better Hope, Empowering WISDOM!

To those who search for. and love wisdom, the honor of the human spirit, there is something even worse than “Fake News“. Worse than fake news? No-Nothing News, data without worthy passion nor deep knowledge, with inferior explanatory powers, gumming up minds with the absurdity of their vacuity… No-nothing, know-nothing information deforms the passion engine at the core of humanism.

Greater explanatory power, from powerful knowledge networks viewed as data points, is how better understanding is established.

It is often argued, pathetically, that, to avoid pathos, the pain, one should disguise reality… And sometimes one should, in desperate cases, as when lying to a dying child. But life is not an unending despair. Most of the time, life is joyous, thanks to the realism our wisdom embraced.

Thoughts are the tendrils of the spirit, reaching out for reality. Loving wisdom, is the essence of what made humanity human… However, what is “wisdom“? How to love it? What’s wiser? Something that is more true? Are there methods to guess better truths? Wisdom is not just parroting yesterday’s thought, or lack thereof. Wisdom is not just reacting minimally to the waves of happenstance, like a barnacle clinging to the rock of existence, washed by furious surf of no particular significance.

Human wisdom consists in a striving, figuring out more understanding than ever before: wisdom requires an effort, a rearrangement of neural circuitry, an expensive and expansive spirit. Human wisdom is pretty much the opposite of what barnacles do. Human wisdom is not about rolling a rock, the same rock always, as Camus would have it. Our ancestors would have stayed in the trees, if such were the case. Wisdom consists part in embracing the human condition, part exploring new frontiers.

Thus wisdom is not popular, for those attached to the comfort of yesteryear’s ways. Wisdom is not as popular nowadays, in the dominant nation, the USA, as it needs to be. Why that? The USA didn’t become dominant from wisdom, as expressed by the better angels of our nature. Instead, the USA became the mightiest nation on Earth from relentless and cruel acquisition of territory… plus some good fortune.

The consequences of willfully neglecting what truly humanity rests on, namely much more tender loving care, are everywhere visible… in the organization of the world the US imposed, thanks to its might. And what did this US organization bring us? Terrible wars in the first half of the Twentieth Century, where the USA played “Deus Ex Machina” (the God pulling the strings of the machine)… And now the Sixth Mass Extinction, thanks to the US superiority, mother of all superiorities, fully resting on a wealth of fuel burning, to make ever more CO2 (until it becomes unbearable, justifying a switching of the roles empowering a new pretext for mass violence).

Thus, ironically, indeed, philosophy is more necessary than ever… Precisely to contradict the brute force approach which has made the USA so successful.. And this deliberate feeble mindedness has been turned into the world’s organizational foundation.

Philosophy DEVOURS FEEBLE MINDEDNESS, our civilization’s, and any civilization’s, Achilles’ heel.

Feeble mindedness always has been the primordial agent in the collapse of civilizations. This time, we are dragging not just civilization, but the entire biosphere with us.

Wisdom swims in oceans of truth. Thus, the wisest want to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, or the potential, probable, or plausible truth. So help us truth!

All we know about the universe, we know through our minds. What the universe means, is entangled with what our minds mean. Mathematician cum philosopher Pythagoras died around 496 BCE, a century before Socrates (a lesser philosopher).

Yes, that’s an arrogant task. But the most interesting one. Indeed, fundamentally, the quest for truth is the essence of what makes humanity different… and superior. Searching for truth is, fundamentally, in first approximation, what is called the “love of wisdom“, philosophy.

Tellingly, philosophy is 89th among the majors in US colleges (2017 CE); hence philosophy is not viewed as worthy of study at all!… While the poles melt! The ship is melting, mon Capitaine, and sinking… Yet the capitaine smirks, and says: no problem, let’s think about something else while we sink!

We live in times when youth feels wise to not love wisdom: it’s all about money, that is power, as conferred by the powers that be. We also live in times not seen before, where an animal species, us, has become divine enough to mess up its nest:

For thousands of centuries never that high… Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere are higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years. During ice ages, CO2 levels were around 200 parts per million (ppm), and during the warmer interglacial periods, they hovered around 280 ppm (see graph). In 2013, CO2 levels surpassed 400 ppm for the first time probably in three million years.

Philosophy is the set of methods one has to use to guess truths, any truths, or methods to find them, when one cannot yet use the scientific method. Science allows to find truth with certainty, philosophy enables to guess what the truth could be, or what it ought to be (say in ethics).

Some have pontificated that philosophy is all about death. But life already is. All about death. Verily, philosophy is more about giving birth. To truth. As if death were not all what matters. (The best way is to be socially dead already; philosophy is best invented in the desert.)

Anybody finding therein what she or he considers to be a mistake, or an outrage, is vigorously encouraged to leave a comment, however bold, and to bring her or his piece of perceived truth to the fore! I will be always thankful, even if I get dragged in the mud!

I try to find out what is really happening, and, or, what could happen, and what is not happening, or could not possibly happen. I try to find out what is right and what is wrong, on many important questions, and in all sorts of ways.

In other words, I apply thinking relentlessly, even ferociously. I view high emotions as integral, and conducive to thinking. (Zen like Descartes’ method being just one of these emotional states.)

This is why thinking evolved: to find what the truth is. Thinking evolved precisely because it was the ultimate instrument of domination of anything in sight (be it domination of one’s erroneous, or misadjusted self, or of one’s own ideas and emotions, or plain, old domination of the universe).

Thinking evolved to predict effectively, profitably and ambitiously, not to cower in a corner, modest and dazed. Thinking evolved to save lives, sleep, and eat well.

Prometheus’ punishment was a regrettable misunderstanding some Greeks made. We did not steal fire from someone, and certainly not from inexistent gods, we created our mastery of fire, and fire made us what we are, as we wished. Mastering fire was not a sin, the Greco-Romans were wrong on that one. Mastering the unknown, and creating what was not before, is what we are. Fire was part of what we have evolved to be. Masters of the universe, for better or worse.

Philosophy is the state of mind conducive to finding the truth, whatever it takes: weird facts, weird states of minds, exotic knowledge, crazy new perspectives, fancy interpretations of one time events, not just advanced mathematics and the most recent sophisticated knowledge, are vital ingredients.

The philosophical jargon (for want of a better word), brandished, in the last two centuries, among some often viewed as philosophical, is avoided. So is the reverence for reference, a characteristic of the disease that has devoured most of professional philosophy for generations (with the notable exception of Nietzsche).

This is not so much because most commoners do not know about it, but because more recent scientific research has often proven that pseudo philosophical jargon is inappropriate, or even hopelessly erroneous.

Established science is truth so I use it as massively as possible. It’s as close to certainty as we will ever get. Thus science is not shunned, just the opposite.

Philosophy and science are two sides of the same coin: understanding, the essence of the human genus, and of the human genius. The methodologies are complementary, not contradictory.

 

False scientific language and erroneous semantics is shunned.

Yesterday’s science is often today’s technology. Thus, it guides humanity… And not always in the right direction!

Moreover, not all “science” is adulated, far from it. As some elucubrations presented as science are not really science, but science base speculation, I do not refrain from excoriating them. (A prime example is the Big Bang, a certainty for most, far from certain for the Enquiring Minds!)

I cut science down to digestible size, any time I can. Science needs imagination, based on speculation, to progress fundamentally.

Economics, politics, religion and history are viewed as target rich environments for the enquiring philosopher. Engaging philosophy in economy, politics and sociology is the occasion for a reality check of said philosophy.

As the main goal of philosophy is to reveal better ways to get at the truth, in other words, reality, it’s important to engage in such down-to-earth checks. Psychoanalysis is central to the philosophical method. (Psycho-analysis in the sense successful Cognitive Therapy uses.)

Since we are the ones producing truth, by examining ourselves better, we make the source of truth higher quality. Any progress in psychoanalysis is bound to be painful, not to say scandalous, as it puts into question  all knowledge laid down before, and those, individuals, institutions and structures, that rested on it while producing it.

A lot of hard core science derived from criticizing old preconceptions first, so it has been part, and fruit, of deeper psychoanalysis.

The hardest subjects are confronted with the greatest enthusiasm. Just as in mountain climbing, the harder, the better. No mountain is high enough for our universe devouring ambition.

So what is philosophy? It’s not about obscure notions, it’s not even a distantiated way of contemplating life. Instead, it’s at the very core of thinking, spindle neuron territory.

Philosophy is viewed as a METHOD. Philosophy is the set of all the methods of reasoning, and emoting that are best when, at first sight, little evidence seems at hand.

Thus philosophy is the cutting edge of human inquiry, whatever the inquiry is (be it of justice, grace, logic or science). And whatever the methods used (poetry is OK, and so are hard core facts, or the goriest considerations; if it happens, it’s under examination therein: censorship is not applied).

Hence philosophy is the most advanced neurological activity, probably the strongest driver of human evolution, being the most connected to the frontal lobes. In other words, it cannot be boring (if it is really what is taught, rather than the sort of fake, pretentious knowledge that one gets in exchange for a lot of money, and that Socrates was already, and very correctly, riling against).

The point of view of the present site is not just that of the highest, global civilization we have, from all continents, all histories, and all the hardest and deepest subjects. It is the point of view of  the more advanced, more global and ambitious civilization we need, extending its imperium over all men, beasts and space known, from nanotechnology to Alpha Centauri and beyond. From fashion to hard core math.

All good ideas are asked to contribute, all bad ideas will be punished. And no superstition shall be in the way of truth. Even if the truth is felt to be base, at first sight. In general, superstition is viewed as a juicy target. The higher a mountain of prejudice is, the more worthy it is to climb it.

A lot has to be incorporated, for wisdom to contemplate, because a lot has to be rejected.. but only after consideration. Philosophy is an unending search for higher wisdom, always elusive, but still many conclusions have been reached, here and there, and everywhere. Per the nature of advancing knowledge, many of these conclusions falsify certainties taken for granted before.

But not all is destruction. Some conclusions are positive, building new hypotheses, not just deconstructing old ones. For example: respecting individuals is a must, and a pleasure, but respecting despicable moods, and stupid systems of thought is the highest form of immorality, and inhumanity. It is not an option for civilization. This philosophical cleansing starts here.

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The post “To Those Caring Enough To Think Better!” will increasingly contain in succinct form some of my main themes, and will be periodically boosted.

[The Tyranosopher website (http://tyranosopher.com/) was run concurrently (at a more sedate pace). It contains older works that are not found here (shorter and more tentative posts are on Pan Terra (http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/ ). Since I was not the person posting the Tyranosopher essays, it seems practically stopped.]

Tyranosopher.