In Jim Gresham’s morality class in my junior year at St. Xavier High School, one of the first things we were told was the definition of morality. “Morality is the Search for Truth. It is the decision Making process that …’ and I don’t remember the rest.
I feel like I’m searching for the truth, and in that sense I am a wannabe philosopher. I don’t deign to call myself a philosopher for two reasons; the first is that you sound like an arrogant jerk if you call yourself a philosopher. The second actually has substance to it – a philosopher is someone who loves knowledge. I don’t think I have any knowledge – I’m an agnostic in the literal sense of the world. The more I learn, the more I read, the more I experience, the more I feel like I don’t really know anything.
When I was in second grade I knew more about politics than most adults I conversed with. I agrued with passion and conviction. Now I feel like i don’t know a damn thing, even though I have a lot more experience and understanding than I did when i was 7. When I was in grade school I knew there was a God and Right and Wrong and what you should and should not do. Now, I really have no idea what people mean when they use the word ’should.’ I use it myself but when I catch myself and try to understand what I really mean, it’s hard for me to know. I’m not even sure what it means to know something. As for what is ‘true’ or not, that’s even further beyond me. In fact, i’m pretty sure that truth doesn’t exist. I know what “decidability” means, in the context of a formal logical system, but I don’t think that’s the same as truth.
I just watched an episode of the Penn and Teller show ‘Bullshit!’ claiming to ‘debunk the myth’ of the nuclear family and its importance. Watching the episode, as well as some recent thoughts of mine on the lack of a common culturally accepted ‘courtship’ system in our modern society, inspired me to want to go do a bunch of research. What is research other than reading what a bunch of other guys wrote, with all the biases, inaccuracies, errors, shortsighted predictions and misjudgements entomed on the paper?
Ideally, nobody would care about anything and we could all have passionless discussions the way mathematicians do. The thing is, if nobody cared about anything the world would be one crappy place. It is our proclivity to care for things, to love them and to want to protect them, that causes us to be passionate and defend what we see as noble. The very tendencies that destroy our ability to perform logical analysis of our world are the tendencies that make it all worthwhile.
mmmmm.
I do so love a good paradox.