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Hating Outside The Box
2004-09-21
Ah Tuesdays, the day where my mind gets a work out starting at 9:30 a.m. That's the time my Philosophy class begins and that's about the time when I become hostile toward the world. I took the course because it's one of the few that the college offers that doesn't fall into the regular math, science, history and english categories. When Christina took the class at her college last year, she confessed to me that it drove her absolutely nuts and that she would often storm out of the classroom. What is it about the subject that makes people so angry?I'll tell you what it is. It's because the minute you come in and sit down you are instantly told that all your ideas and your way of thinking are wrong. You must admit that instantly and thank the philosopher for saving you from your ignorance. The next step is to realize that you are not really smart, that you posses no knowledge. You see, what you do posses is facts, which although they scientifically repeat themselves to be true there are instances when they often fail. You store those facts in your head, basically just exercising your memory but you have no real knowledge. Only philosophers posses that knowledge.
I now know why Christina was often so angry. She hates being told she's wrong, and I'm now realizing I hate it too. I think I'm the poster child of all that's evil in philosophy. To them I might be ignorant and stubborn. I refuse to see the world through a different paradigm. If everything I know is wrong then what makes philosophy right?
Today we learned about absolute being and absolute beauty. The teacher, although an admirable woman, tells us we are rotting creatures who do not live to our full potential. We must see the whole picture of beauty in order to live in bliss. With this in mind, I picture philosophers like Plato and Socrates running through grassy fields in their white robes, picking up dirt and admiring it with awe. Is that their vision of absolute beauty? And if they're living to their full potential then they must be missing something because it seems to me that if you call every little detail in this world beautiful, you're missing out on the other end of the spectrum. You must see and accept the bad in some objects. If you don't, do you not live in ignorance?
With all of that said, I do admit that this is one of my favorite subjects because unlike the others, I stand up and argue the ideas being fed to me. It will be however a long time before I go running through a grassy field in a white robe, admiring the beauty of dirt.