Philosophies for Living

Practical Wisdom

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 00:14:46 -0700

If you look up the word wisdom you will find that its definition is ‘knowledge’, and that to be wise is to ‘have and to use knowledge.’ Aristotle described two types of wisdom, the first being what we would now call scientific knowledge, and the second he called Practical Wisdom. This is the knowledge you need to have to live your life well.

Human history is full of people who have been called wise because they seemed to understand the answers to the problems of life. It has long been acknowledged that wisdom increases with age, as people learn from their own, and other’s mistakes, and sort out what works and what doesn’t. Most of these wise people were not scholars and historians, but some were, and because they wrote down what they discovered about how to live life well, they passed on that knowledge, their wisdom. Over the many centuries this knowledge has been added to and built on, as scholars, priests and thoughtful people have confronted the inevitable questions of what it is to live life well.

So wisdom is knowing how to think about life problems in a way that taps into the knowledge that we as humans have collected over our history, and then using it in a way that takes the unique circumstances of the here and now into account. Since wisdom is knowledge, it is not opinion. Knowledge is backed up by evidence.

Wisdom is also about what is right and true. When we speak about living well it is within the framework of ethics, of universal principles of what is the right way to act. The idea of living your life well, is firmly grounded in the reality that humans live their lives in families and communities. We are social and relational and do not flourish alone. Practical Wisdom addresses the problems of those relationships, of competing demands and desires, distribution of time and resources and how to treat each other so all have a chance to live good lives.

Like all knowledge Practical Wisdom is something we need to...Read More

Competitive Parenting: The message it sends to our children.

Sat, 03 Aug 2019 23:15:29 -0700

I just read an article 'The Dark Side of Parenting' written by Angela Mollard in 'perthenow'.

The article was an excellent challenge to the way in which so many mothers of young children are turning themselves inside out to be just like someone they follow on social media. The Influencers.

But as I was reading her common sense approach to the way in which these influencers and their self promoted lifestyle choices negatively impact on other women, I was struck by the two things. Firstly that it isn't just the mother who is influenced. And secondly, that this competitive attitude towards ourselves and others is dangerous. To us as individuals and to our communities.

The world of literature is full of the lessons we should have learned about 'keeping up with the Jones'. This is nothing new. What is new is the reach of the Jone's. There have always been those amongst us who believe they have the answers, not just for themselves and their own families but for everyone else. There have always been those amongst us who think the the way we appear, our image, is more important than substance. And there have always been those amongst us who had no idea that families are, first and foremost, about love and acceptance. But now they are all over this new phenomena, social media. They are called Influencers because they are influencing others with their ideas about how to live. The problem is that there is no credentialing system that gives you any idea of just how sensible, safe or appropriate their ideas are.

That means it is up to us to take responsibility for assessing the worth of the information we are being inundated with all day, every day. And it is up to us to teach our children to be discerning about who they believe, and what they believe. This not only provides them protection from the crazier ideas that are circulated on social media, but it also protects them from internalising messages about themselves that are damaging and painful....Read More

Reason and Morality.

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 01:10:42 -0700

Reason and Morality.

How do we know Right from Wrong?

This is at the core of all questions about morality and ethics. How do we determine the answers to what we should do, or how we should act, when faced with a moral dilemma.

Recently I heard a story from someone who was brought up outside of any religion. Both her parents were Atheists and she did not attend any form of religious education. She was asked how she had learnt right from wrong since she hadn't been involved in a church. At the time she was so surprised by the question, that now looking back, she feels that she did not respond eloquently enough. She felt that her explanation that her parents taught her to be moral, was not sufficient to explain why she was able to be a moral person without the influence of religion.

In a Secular Democracy like Australia where many people do not hold any religious beliefs and are not affiliated to any form of religious institution, many of us can find ourselves in a similar position. Unless they have had the opportunity to study philosophy or history, many people do not know how to answer this assumption, that it is only through religion that we can understand morality. It is one to the positions of authority that religions have claimed ownership of throughout most of human history. Religious morality was based in a sacred belief system that could not be challenged.

This is exactly what influenced some ancient Greeks to rethink the concept of morality, basing it on rationality rather than religion. With multiple religions all claiming unchallengeable beliefs that were contradictory, both between each belief system and internally within those systems, these innovative thinkers created what we now call Western Philosophy. The rational pursuit of knowledge based on evidence and the lived experience of humans. This was also the beginning of the scientific approach that we take for...Read More

The Problem with Thinking Things are Either/Or.

Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:17:28 -0800

I read an article today that briefly explored the idea that men and women are different. It was as if the writer, Claire Thurstans, had just had an epiphany [Sydney Morning Herald, 10/02/2018]. That the very idea that men and women may have some inherent differences is such a remarkable notion that she felt it was important that she alert us to that fact.

She provided scientific evidence in the form of a study of one month old infants, that had found that there are biological differences in the brains of boys and girls: That ‘sexual dimorphism is present at birth”. Then, having googled further she found that there are many studies from all over the world that demonstrate biological difference between the sexes, and despite the probability that the reader of her article might find this idea ‘primitive and outdated’, she quite rightly advised us to embrace this difference.

My first reaction was that she must be very young. Since the very concept of Gender, a social construct, that has dictated the lives of humans since Neolithic times [at least], is based on the biological differences between the sexes, how could she think that this is news to anyone? This led me to thinking about the background to this sort of disconnection from reality. Yes, there was a momentary, and quickly disputed push to believe that the only reason men and women experienced their lives differently was because of they were socialised differently. The concept of androgyny that briefly held sway in the 1980’s, and was responsible for those awful shoulder pads in shapeless jackets that were fashionable for a couple of years. But I find it hard to believe that this idea had enough influence to find a place in this young journalists thinking.

Then I realised what the problem may be. She mentioned the Nature / Nurture dyad, only she couched it as an opposition. This is where she has made her most fundamental intellectual mistake. She has been interpreting the idea of...Read More

The Ethical Importance of Courtesy.

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 23:14:04 -0800

As you are aware if you have read my profile I am a reasonable age. I have therefore been around to watch the ongoing de construction of civil behaviour in our society.

Over the last few days I have again been confronted with the reality of just how poorly behaved we have become as a community. Being a health professional I am at the front line of a lot of abusive behaviour from the general public. Most of us give some leeway to people who are suffering or worried about those they love who are suffering, but it is still unconscionable to be abusive and threatening to those who are trying to care for you. Most of you would be surprised to hear that along with Emergency Departments, it is in the areas of Maternity Services and Paediatrics that the worst of this abuse takes place.

But what about in ordinary life where you or your loved ones are not frightened by a health crisis?

Why is it that we think it is OK to abuse, intimidate and threaten retail assistants and those whose job it is to provide us with a service? When did it become acceptable to go to a Beautician, have a facial and then inform that person that you can’t afford to pay for it? Because this week I was told by a young woman that this sort of behaviour had undermined her attempt to run her business. This goes beyond being rude. It is fraud which is a criminal act.

Then today I read in the Sydney Morning Herald that Retail workers are campaigning against abuse by their customers. Anna Patty in her report on the ‘No One Deserves a Serve’ campaign detailed the statistics uncovered in a recent survey, that shows that eighty five percent [85%] of retail workers have been abused in the course of their working day. Fourteen percent have been physically attacked!

As the young Beautician I spoke to quite rightly pointed out, this is an issue of morals. She had no doubt in her mind that the people who had abused the social contract between the provider of services, and the...Read More

Moral Reasoning - Why it's important

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 01:15:09 -0700

Moral Reasoning - Why it’s Important.

There are many problems and issues that people face in their normal lives that can be put into the category of ‘life problems’. They are the sorts of experiences and events that occur in everybody’s life and that have always been a part of human experience. Then there are the big things that happen to people. Tragedies that alter their lives on a personal level and traumatise them. Then of course there are disaster’s such as war, or environmental catastrophes such as hurricanes, or the recent Wildfires in Northern California. These also have always been a part of human existence. The problems of life leave us with questions about how we should respond to them. Not just what we think about them, but what actions we should take.

One response is to connect with a religious viewpoint, and for most of our history, human communities were tied to that world view. This provided us with the answers to why things happened, what we should think about these problems, and how we should respond to them. Philosophy and Moral Reasoning are another response to our need to make sense of the problems of life, and how we should deal with them. However, where a belief system such as a religion will give you the answers, a Philosophical approach requires that you use reason as a basis for determining not just the answers, but also the questions.

Over the last few decades this has been interpreted to mean that each of us has our own set of personal values that we use to guide our actions. This idea is accompanied by the idea that all of these different individual value systems are of equal worth. But this is based on a misunderstanding of what morality actually is. Morality is a universalising concept. If it is right morally for me to be honest, it is right for everyone to be honest. Otherwise it is just a matter of personal taste and not a matter of morality

Since moral...Read More

Eudaimonia

Sat, 29 Apr 2017 21:11:20 -0700

In my last blog I suggested that we need to start to think imaginatively as individual’s, and as a community, about what we think a ‘good life’ in the twenty first century might look like. This was in response to the idea the only valuable endeavour that we can pursue is that of employed work, and that in the words of the OECD to take time out from employed work was to ‘be a drain on the economy’.

This raises the question of the role of paid work and the value we place on that work in our lives. It is in fact a very complex issue. Apart from basic survival, having the resources to pay for food and shelter, work can provide an enormous amount of pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of belonging. It can also be dangerous, monotonous, demeaning and boring. But irrespective of whether you are one of the lucky people who do something that they love or not, work is only a part of our lives.

This leads to the more important question. What value do we place on the various different aspects of our lives? How we can have the advantages of working and still have time for the other important aspects of our lives such as our families, friends, personal development, physical well being and creativity? Eudaimonia is the Greek word for ‘flourishing’ and two and half thousand years ago Aristotle and other philosophers argued that the purpose of philosophy was to determine the best way to enhance human flourishing.

In this context it is heartening to see that at least some of our politicians are not locked into the idea that the only value we have as members of the community is to be part of the workforce. Recently the leader of the Australian Greens Party, Richard Di Natalie chose his address at the Press Club to raise the issue of the current work day week. He has opened up a discussion we need to have, pointing out the fact that ‘nearly half of the Australian workforce has trouble flourishing because they cannot work the hours they would like’. This includes...Read More

Does the primacy of economics help to achieve a good life?

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 00:22:29 -0800

One of the core areas of philosophy is the examination of the beliefs and values that we as individuals and as societies hold to be true. One of the twentieth centuries great philosophers of logic, Gottlob Frege said that ‘engaging in philosophy means you take the responsibility of always trying to think deeply and with integrity. Thinking deeply must involve imaginative new ways of thinking and this will place severe demands on intellectual integrity.’

Today, in the twenty first century we are confronted by many conflicting ideas of what is valuable and true, all fervently supported by different intellectuals, politicians, and sections of the media. So how do we, as individuals, navigate these ideas and make sense out of them? This is where philosophy demands more than a superficial nod of the head, either in the negative or the affirmative, when we are told how we should live our lives. It takes critical analysis to unpack some of the ideas we have been inundated with lately, and it appears to many of us that there is a need to focus on bigger picture ideas and do that work, no matter how busy we are.

The announcement of the OECD today, that women who stay at home to raise their children or who work part time because of caring responsibilities are a drain on the economy is one of those ideas that we need to really unpick. There are several inherent philosophical issues in this claim that need to be addressed.

The first is that human beings are simply a resource or tool to be used by the entity called the ‘economy’. That human well being is only served by increasing productivity, and that the only valuable tasks are those that are paid for in the context of employment. The OECD used the notion that women are happier and more fulfilled if they have a job, to justify their position.

Secondly it demonstrates that the OECD believe that psychological and emotional tasks of parenthood and family relationships, that include caring...Read More

Socrates in the Playground

Thu, 21 Jul 2016 15:24:12 -0700

A new school term has commenced, and the odds are that in the playground, in the hallways or over the internet, another child will become the victim of a bully. Parents, teachers, and the other children who witness this behaviour are left feeling angry, frightened, and sometimes confused about how they should deal with this. And we have to deal with this because bullying harms people. So how can Philosophy help us navigate our way to a useful and wise response when we are put into the position of having to address this issue in our lives?

Bullying is not new. All of us have either witnessed or experienced this form of abuse and aggression, not only amongst children, but in the workplace, on the sports field, and in public discussion. Domestic Violence most often takes the form of one partner bullying the other, and in the wider context of communities, bullying behaviour is often used to control and intimidate, to silence those whose opinion differs from that of the bullies. Human history is full of the evidence of where this can lead us, the Brown Shirts of the Nazi Party are a well-known example.

From a moral point of view harm to others is wrong. This belief is shared by all of the world’s Wisdom Traditions. The differences lay in how those traditions understand harm, and whether they apply their standards to all persons, or only to particular groups of persons. The UN has articulated the similarities amongst us in a paper called Crossing the Divide - a Dialogue among Civilisations, resulting in the Global Ethic. There are two principles, of this Global Ethic; our shared humanity, and reciprocity.

Our shared humanity is at the very core of Philosophical arguments for equality that has, in many nations of this world, emancipated slaves, women, and different groups amongst our communities, from the imposition of dominance and control. The idea of reciprocity is...Read More