Philosophy
By JIRARA
© JIRARA, October/November 2020
Published by JIRARA on matrubharti.com
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Disclaimer: This is the work of fiction as far as all the characters, their names and the names of all the events are concerned and all these are imaginary and hence any resemblance to the persons (and their lives) dead or alive, and any places are coincidental. Even if a few events might look realistic/’real’, these are fictionalised and the associated names are changed in order to maintain their privacy, honour, and security. No intention whatsoever is meant to hurt any feelings of whosoever, irrespective of their personal/cultural beliefs, social or political inclinations, religion-orientations/practicing/philosophy, life styles, and work/business. The ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’ (if any used) do not necessarily mean the author of this book, and these and other such pronouns: her, hers, his, he, she, him, you, your, yours, ours, theirs…; are used for effective personification and dramatization, and the readers should not take these on their ‘own persons’. The readers should take these stories/verses/thoughts with/in good spirit. The presented ideas and material are based, where feasible, on readings and (thought-) analyses of scientific/other open literature (which seemed most profound and trustworthy), with as much care as possibly taken. The readers are requested to verify these notions on their own, and use their own discretion. However, these stories/verses/thoughts/ideas (mostly original) are expressed here with an intention of increasing awareness of the readers with a hope that in an overall sense, their (and ours) consciousness would be heightened (in all and multiple directions), so that we all can live our lives on this planet with true happiness, ever-lasting peace and real joy (irrespective of our orientations). The author and the publisher will not be responsible for any negative effects/situations arising as a result of reading these stories/verses and/or following the suggestions if any. No discussions/dispute of any kind will be entertained at any time and in any way, manner, and/or forum. JIRARA.
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Philosophy
In my opinion any philosophy invented by some learned humans, is fundamentally a psychological rescue mechanism to explain everything on this Earth, and may be beyond too!; it is immaterial whether these people have really and fully understood the truth or not behind the philosophy.
It explains science and its hidden principles (basically of the events and phenomena happening); we call it Doctor of Philosophy – Ph.D., when something is profoundly done and there some fundamental truth is revealed, perhaps of long lasting nature; what I mean is that the philosophy of the truth unearthed remains for a longer time; till it is confronted and proved false or untenable by some other researchers.
It explains difficult tenets of religions: explains behaviour of people, explains the ‘life’ and its principles. It tries to explain everything and speculates into predictions and these are called prophesies; ironically some of these come true, even if they were not founded on solid footing of science or its scientific methods.
We are often entangled (and more so wrongly) with:
i) my profound thought and my philosophy,
ii) your de-rated philosophy and conservative thoughts,
iii) everything mine, my, me is better than yours everything.
In this way, we are in a way conservative: we are not and we do not want to be in somebody’s philosophy: since we have our own possessed philosophy, domain of our own thoughts, and thought-beliefs’ domains; often we might be correct and logical in this belief, but not always so.
Most of us think, we are beyond all the philosophies of the world, this is a non-common sense declaration of our egoistic nature.
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Once, I was so angry on my professor (who is now no more), who gave some jobs to some of my contemporary colleagues (they were not in any way much better than I was/am); and not to me, and I screamed ‘I am also a Professor’, to my friends; I hope, I do not scream in future ‘I am also a philosopher’.
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Philosophy of a half-empty glass
If the glass is half-full, the optimist will say – the glass is half full; whereas the pessimist will say – the glass is half empty: one suggests satisfaction, the other the hope.
The half-filled glass, itself a ‘philosopher’ – a philosophy (my musings!), it accommodates both the views: the optimism and the pessimism. The pessimism, the negative philosophy is itself a philosophy of a kind (my own perception); which is useful at times but not always.
The pessimist also is a great philosopher: s/he beacons emptiness in the glass, in the cosmos and the human mind; s/he points to nothingness - the sum total of the universal non-existence; s/he feels that the glass what is filled is filled anyway, and suggests to ‘feel’ the emptiness, and if possible fill it.
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How to grasp this emptiness and how to live with it?, can we live with full–emptiness, sans any wants and desires?, can we live in the emptiness itself?, can we drink the top half of the glass?, can we ‘drink’ the emptiness?; these are very difficult questions, requiring lot of thinking and analysis of human minds, the quest and the search are perennial.
Often to philosophise on many things is easy, but to really justify it, is not so easy at all.
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Philosophy; in Greek phílosophía, meaning ‘the love of wisdom’; is the study of knowledge, or ‘thinking’ and about ‘thinking’, and encompasses one or more of the following (based on some open sources, and greatly modified here):
i) It is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (a good life with ethics); what kinds of things exist around us and what is their essential nature (e.g. of material objects, and people; metaphysics); what is a genuine/authentic knowledge (yet, the real truth is far away from our perceptions, epistemology); and what are the correct principles (of course in the first analysis not really known correctly, only educated guess work done) of reasoning/logic.
ii) investigation and study of the nature, causes, or principles of reality (nobody really yet knows what is this real reality, it is my musing that it will never be possible to decipher it with 100% surety, and accuracy!), knowledge, and/or values, based on logical reasoning (a process performed by our intelligence, and wisdom), rather than empirical methods; the latter will work only for a short time.
iii) the study of the ultimate nature of existence (of everything in this Universe), reality (what is the origin of all these things?), knowledge and goodness, as discoverable by human reasoning; the latter performed at the mind, intelligence, and wisdom levels; in most cases done at once, but not always, because each of these faculties might not be excited at once, because of lack of our training; like lack of practice of contemplation, and meditation.
iv) the search for knowledge/truth, especially about the nature of humans and their behaviour and beliefs; the most difficult aspect of any study, either in sociology, or human psychology; even if you study one individual for several decades, only a small percentage of information/data can be reliably acquired! The study of thousands of persons for thousands of years has still not provided complete behavioural knowledge of the human nature, because in its nature it is always vacillating, fluctuating, adaptive, changing, and mutating; so only certain parameters have been ascertained. This is an enigma of the nature, and infinite possibilities of complex and yet sophisticated interactions of mind, intellect, and wisdom. Hence, understanding the human nature is a gigantic task like probing and trying to understand the depths of the cosmos; one is the outer realm of the human existence, and the other is the inner cosmos of the human’s life.
I have some feeling and notion that these both tasks should be either equally damn easy or the most difficult, much more so the latter one, because then only the life on this planet would be exciting and really challenging; otherwise the life would have been dull, docile, and pale.
If it were to be so damn easier, then there was no real need of such an awesome and bizarre drama of the cosmos and the colossal human life!
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