The Philosophic Quest
And my productive Saturday begins now: posting a new blog article. What shall I touch on today? I've ranted about the education system last week; this week I'm going to discuss something else: my general philosophy on life.
Anyone who has read some blog posts of mine would know that I'm kind of a Stoic. I value equanimity--which is also a Buddhist attitude towards life, even though I wouldn't officially call myself a Buddhist. I don't get overboard when Fortune grants me its blessings, nor do I get dejected whenever things do not go my way. I would also admit that I'm a bit of an existentialist because I believe in defining my own purpose in life and living authentically based on what I define as meaningful.
Fate has given us different initial or starting conditions which either encourage or inhibit certain aspects of our genetic dispositions. I do believe that big part of our character is due to Nature; nurture merely sets up the environment which determine which characteristics of ours flourish or languish.
Our hardwired tendencies make certain outcomes more likely in the trajectory of our lives. Certain characteristics are self-reenforcing--if you are attracted towards a certain subject or object, you will move towards it, acquiring new information, skills and company that make you dwell deeper into those domains.
I find almost everything interesting and I believe in sampling the wisdom of every culture and tradition, appreciating both their similarities and differences. It is true that I often criticise practitioners of institutionalised religions for being dogmatic, superstitious and blindly ritualistic but at the same time I also understand why they are so appealing to great masses of humanity. I am unsympathetic towards religious supremacists who think that they are ones who are privy to divine truths, but I am also an ardent student of all the religions of the world, because I think they all contain some kernel of wisdom within.
Being an explorer of different religions has enabled me to gain insights into mankind's collective psyche: the primal instincts that drive our actions and the spiritual yearnings that lift us up to greatness. I am driven by the impulse of life to self-preserve this bodily existence and at the same time attempt to transcend it.
Throughout the ages, humanity has tried to express these complex drives through art, religion, science and technology. I am a student of all these diverse areas because they constitute life as we know it and being able to grasp and appreciate them makes a fulfilling life.
Being able to catch of glimpse, in my very limited way, of all the fruits of human civilisation is a great blessing which I am extremely grateful of. I never cease to marvel at the fact that all the good things in life are so cheaply available and it is our good fortune (and if you are reading this, you can count yourself among the blessed) that we are given the privilege to access them.
The fact that I could write these sentences and immediately anyone in the world with access to internet could read them, is a miracle of technology and we are only on the cusp of this great transformation, which, if we conduct ourselves with wisdom and foresight, can only transform lives for the better.
Philosophy is the greatest gift of life. If we are religious, it is because we are driven by a philosophical urge to make sense of our lives. By studying philosophy, we are exploring ourselves as individuals and societies, and our place in the universe. We might not be able to find answers that fully satisfy us, but it is the philosophic quest itself that imbues our lives with joy and meaning.
