Rethinking

The line and the book that made me take philosophy and kept me there.

I'm re-reading Sophie's World and have been seeing things with fresh eyes, although these lines still share my sentiments. These are value statements, though, and I can't help wonder if we have the right to claim universality. But then again, these are indeed age old questions that have transcended time and culture. Although. . . are they the only ones?

Jostein Gaarder does admit that these questions appear after we have satisfied our basic needs. So then, maybe that's why it's so difficult to get absorbed in them. Most of the world is still struggling with these basic needs (yet, circles that have attained theirs, do not automatically go philosophical, but that is another matter). But... well, maybe the book never claimed this, maybe I have formulated this impression on my own... but... can we really say philosophical questions are more important than concerns about making a living? Or than social and economic issues? Or than current events and politics?

In my 4 years in the discipline, I kinda thought so. And I believe those in the department did so, too, most of them. Which explains the apathy and isolation, the nonparticipation. We took pride in being so... up there, so distant from what the worldly others thought important, so aloof and esoteric in our tower of abstractions, in the end, turning useless. All thought without action. All theory without application. Irrelevant and, eventually, mistaken. Because ultimately, thoughts, ideas, theories, beliefs, severely detached from reality and the world end up as hallucinations, delusions, illusions... mere speculation grounded on nothing. In the end, we become what we accuse of others. We become what we believe we least are... and not realize it.