street intelligence

4/5/2008

toward a new ecological awareness

At some point a certain sort of presence and attitude, knowledge of the relationship between plants and animals (we are also animals) to one another and their environment, was necessary to exist and be successful in the world. We need to adopt a similar sort of awareness within our contemporary context. That's not to say we need to live how we once lived but that we need to become aware again of what's going on around us with the old sentiment of necessity and urgency.

Perhaps what Thoreau was looking for when he decided to go into the woods was a method towards gaining this new ability through experiencing the more ancient one.

When I walked out of the theater after watching Into the Wild, I overheard a number of people saying "what a waste of a life". They may be masking quality of life with quantity of life. Chris McCandless died young but not before learning to live at least once. His life serves as a warning, he wasn't adequately prepared. More importantly though, his life and his responses can show us things about ourselves and our societies that need to be reformed. We all take risks every day. The waste is when we lose our lives in car accidents and early heart attacks -- deaths that are merely a product of the ordinary overindulgences. He chose a different form of expression, the wisdom of youth.

Many find neither the wisdom of youth nor the wisdom of age.

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on the uses and abuses of the word "philosopher"

The contemporary usage of the word "philosopher" has pulled it into disrepute.

On the one side we have philosophy as a profession which is really only practiced in universities so implies the forms of scholar, teacher and perhaps schoolmaster. The analytic tradition especially focuses on clarity (which usually also implies complexity) of thought. Philosophy as a discipline may or may not be making progress but it is as valuable a profession as any other. Some of these philosophers focus on contemporary translations, elucidating complex thought and bringing past thoughts to bear on the present. Others are focused on the limitations of language and science. Philosophers like Will Durant attempt to survey the sciences and bring the most important results to the attention of the public in as clear a form as possible. In the best cases, the philosopher-scholar gives us a full serving of intellectual honesty and the associated honesty to oneself -- this is no small task.

On the other side we have everyday people who, when confronted with the phrase "I'm a philosopher" express bafflement or worse, conjure an image of a high brow sedentary lifestyle. The main thing to note here is not what people see in the term but what they don't see. Namely, the life form of the sage. No one goes to the "philosopher" for wisdom.

Why is this the case?

I doubt Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi could be considered good philosophers in the narrow academic sense. They were still the ones best willing and able to do what was necessary for their time.

At first I considered resuscitation of the term but how could that make me a better person? It's like Sarah says, "people go back to other people for advice when the advice works."