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A brilliant depiction of what a 21st century Enlightenment can be.
Source anametheus
Reblogged from anametheus
Being Fully Human: Formative and Transformative Activities
Activities may be divided into two categories, formative and transformative.
Formative activities are any activities that by themselves leave our perception of the world unchanged. For example, watching a football game. The qualification ‘by themselves’ is inserted to remind the reader that potentially any activity given the right circumstances can become transformative. For example, going to the cinema is usually a formative activity, but there is a possibility that a movie will affect us in such a deep way that it literally transforms the way we view reality.
Formative activities may be pleasurable, but at the end of the activity we remain the same person we were when we started them, and sometimes we even feel a sense of emptiness at the end of the activity. The reason for this emptiness is that man is always trying to find the solution to the problem of existence, and he is trying all these activities with the hope (whether conscious or unconscious) that they will be the solution to his problem. When he realizes that they are not, since he is unchanged at the end of the activity, he feels a vague but nevertheless distinct sense of emptiness. It is the feeling of failure, which increases over the years as all the attempted ‘solutions’ fail to solve the problem of human existence.
As soon as he realizes that each of these formative activities do not solve the problem, he tries to perform them conjunctively with the hope that what one formative activity couldn’t solve many formative activities together would. He goes to work, but his work is boring, and if it is not, just the fact that he has to do it is enough to remove much of the enjoyment of it – but he realizes it is not the solution. He tries to buy things with the money he’s making, and he believes the more he can buy the more he will approach the solution, so he works harder in order to buy them. But as any rich person will tell you, things bought are not the solution; at best they are a temporary alleviation. The excessive amount of work he is required to do makes him idealize ‘rest’ and ‘relaxation’ and he thinks that if he could only not work and ‘relax’ on some beach in an exotic island he will solve the problem, but when he retires on that island he gets bored and realizes it is not the solution. He searches ardently for love, for ‘the one’ person that will be his salvation, but when he finds her and has a family with her, he realizes after a number of years that not only she and their children weren’t the solution, but now he is burdened with even more responsibilities and has to work even harder. He devotes himself to all sorts of hobbies: jogging, basketball, hiking, sky diving, rafting etc. he tries everything in case one of them is the solution. Then he believes he might find the solution by doing all of the above together; when he realizes it is difficult, he believes that if only he could find a golden ‘balance’ between all these activities he would find the solution, he would be happy. But adding zeros does not get you a one in whatever way you add them – it only postpones the realization of the result of a pointless addition. Sad though it might be, this postponement can last a lifetime, and thus, as Thoreau reminds us, people reach the end of their lives and realize they have not lived.
The solution does not lie in formative activities. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t engage in them, they make up the spice of life, but spices can’t replace a meal. The nourishment of the soul is to be found in transformative activities. As I mentioned earlier, the transformative quality of an activity may not be due to the activity itself but the conjunction of many factors simultaneously. However, there are some activities that are transformative themselves and do not require the simultaneous presence of additional factors. Transformative activities give birth to our inner potential and allow us to do more, think more, feel more – be more. What are some examples of transformative activities? The archetype of a transformative activity is philosophy. This is for the simple reason that the very aim of philosophy is the transformation of life into the good life, the life worth living. Philosophy as it is practiced in the universities these days has forgotten its real purpose; that the analysis of concepts and the examination of aspects of reality, is done in the service of the good life, and not as an end in itself. Contemporary philosophy has taken the means for the ends. But philosophy is an examination of both means and ends, and its domain is not limited to the crude division of academic departments. Philosophy deals with the totality of life, and the totality of life is not limited to logic and metaphysics but it encapsulates physics, psychology, sociology, biology, literature, history, just to mention a few. That is why specialization is nothing but a reflection of modern times rather than inevitable necessity. A plant cannot ‘specialize’ in gathering water, while being ignorant of how to face the sun. In the same way, a man will not flourish unless he has a thorough knowledge of himself and the world he is living. Only then, can he spread his branches, face the sun, and bear his inner and most beautiful fruits. Only then can he be fully human.
In an era still dominated by a naive belief in scientific method [1] many people believe that if they just diligently follow a step-by-step guide on leadership, in addition to imitating what their current leaders do, that will somehow eventually result in them becoming leaders too. But that is the mindset of those who obey, not those who lead. If it leads anywhere, it is not some place new other than a dull reproduction of the status quo.
Having the courage to disobey and venture alone into the unknown because you feel something better can be built there as an enactment of indepedent thought instead of a juvenile reaction to authority constitutes a large part of what it means to lead.
But where to? You’d think an answer to that question would make an essential chapter in every contemporary leadership book. Yet a casual glance at the contents of Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by John C. Maxwell, one of the most celebrated authors on leadership alive today, reveals that knowing where to lead is apparently not something a contemporary leader needs to know [2]. Perhaps the fact that we’re more interested in becoming leaders than in knowing where to lead is why we’ve been going nowhere.
Leadership is not just about expertise. What’s the value of expertly leading people over a cliff? Not much; by that logic Hitler and Stalin were great leaders. To make a fetish out of the techniques of leadership is to glorify the means over and above the ends. I think we can do better than that. We have to.
I studied philosophy, not management. I wanted to know what the good life is before trying to lead myself or others to it. You can’t be a good leader if you’re not a wise one, and wisdom is the province of philosophy, not management. We need to integrate both.
When you integrate both you want to lead somewhere better, not just lead. That’s what’s at the core of being an entrepreneur. If we want a better future, we need more entrepreneurs and better managers.
Successful leaders abolish the conditions that make them necessary, just like teachers through teaching students successfully, lessen the gap between themselves and their students till it disappears, thereby creating an equality that enables a more sublime relationship to emerge [3].
Notes:
[1] Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did a good job in demolishing the idea that there is a single prescriptive scientific method and that science progresses in a uniform way by following its dictates.
[2] Don’t be fooled into thinking Chapter 4 “How Should I Prioritize my Life?” has anything to do with overall ends. It’s more about how to prioritize not what those priorities should be and why.
[3] See Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955. New York: Owl Books, 1990, p.96-97.
Source anametheus
Reblogged from anametheus
The good life is a correct balance between know-that and know-how. Knowing in an intellectual way is simply not enough for a full understanding and embodiment of wisdom. In fact, a good definition of wisdom is embodied valuable knowledge. Or, in vernacular: (valuable) knowledge in action. On the other hand, wise action is impossible with ignorance in theory.
That doesn’t mean that a man cannot swim in life unless he knows the laws of hydrodynamics. But someone proficient in hydrodynamics can do things no Olympic swimmer ever could. That however, is irrelevant when it comes to the good life, broadly conceived. When it comes to that, it is more important to know how to swim well than to know hydrodynamics. The problem we have today is that people know hydrodynamics and have forgotten how to swim – if they had ever learnt to do so.
You can’t swim in life unless you get in the water. Contemporary philosophers are professors of hydrodynamics. That is why they cannot teach anybody how to swim well in the oceans of life. Poor students of philosophy, they enroll in philosophy hoping they will learn to swim and they are made to believe that hydrodynamics is all one needs to know. That is why contemporary philosophers can even seem incompetent when it comes to everyday life, whereas they should have been its graceful artists.
“Critics are to painters what ornithologists are to birds” Birds fly, painters paint. Critics criticize and ornithologists analyse and observe. Contemporary philosophy is in the same predicament. Instead of living life, they analyse and observe it. They cannot dance like the philosophers of the past. While true philosophy is learning how to fly, contemporary philosophy merely analyses what flight is.
Source anametheus
Reblogged from anametheus
“He who has little communication with people is seldom a misanthrope. True misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world. This is because it is practical experience of life, and certainly not philosophy, that makes people hate their fellows. And if someone who is a misanthrope withdraws from society, in his seclusion he loses his misanthropy.”
Source anametheus
Reblogged from anametheus
Philosophy is not boring. It talks about the most important issues in life – and it doesn’t tell you which those are. It is not an order, it is a question. You are supposed to find the answer.
Philosophers who are boring are failing in life. A boring life cannot be a good one. “So what if a philosopher is boring? He may still be a good philosopher.” Yes – only if you subtract one of the main aims of philosophy: Living the good life. That contemporary philosophy is filled with boring professors of philosophy only accentuates Thoreau’s remark in Walden:
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.
Someone who has been a philosopher for years should be discernibly different in the things that matter from most people. He has supposedly made it his life’s task to live the good life. If he isn’t living better than most who haven’t set such a conscious goal for themselves, he is evidently not a good philosopher. Philosophy is not just another profession. It is a calling. You cannot be a philosopher from 9 to 5 and be a layman at night. Being a philosopher means being an example of your own philosophy. Walking the talk and talking the walk.
Of course, being a philosopher is a process, as most things are. If someone has just created the ideal to which he wants to strive, it is unfair to expect that he’s going to match it overnight. The ideals of philosophy entail your whole way of life. Changing your whole way of life overnight is highly improbable if not completely impossible. But being only a shadow of the ideal you still believe yet have sketched 20 years ago, should raise doubts about your sincerity or strength of will. Doubts that you should at least have personally raised and examined. That is why philosophies have been called confessions. They are the sublimated confessions of personal struggles to live out ideals; the triumphs and tragedies of human actualization.
To restrict yourself to offering a little nugget of truth (which seems to be the rule among philosophers these days) while living alone in an ivory tower of inauthenticity can hardly be called noble. Let us not let “noble” remain an honorific term for people who don’t deserve it. Let us not cower from aspirations to greatness. Let us not always equate the will to greatness with arrogance and conceitedness. It is time to believe that there is something more than nihilistic humility. Sapere Aude!
Source anametheus
Reblogged from anametheus
