Francis Williams' Philosophy Blog

 both the eastern scholar alan watts and german philosopher friedrich nietzsche viewed the contemporary attitude to work as destructive.  in their view work should be a matter of pleasure. in watts' case, it was in the form of an enlightened engagement with work, a kind of lightness and dance, whereas nietzsche saw the struggle involved in work as "the reward of all rewards" and as the goal in itself, not as a means for making profit. according to nietzsche, the fear of boredom is what drives people to work. they would rather shun boredom through repetitive, monotonous tasks than be idle. in this case he distinguishes those who have the capacity to suffer boredom, who consider it a prequel to (what i can only assume he means) is a period of productivity: "For the thinker and for all inventive spirits boredom is the unpleasant "calm" of the soul which precedes the happy voyage and the dancing breezes; he must endure it, he must await the effect it has on him...

 in todays world, where tradition and morality are slowly being eroded by liberal movements, the individual is expected to be tolerant towards everything and anything. he will be afraid to criticize something which he sees as a change for the worse, something which goes against his upbringing or education. as a result of this forced tolerance he will have no use for any previously held moral values and will cease to practice them. this will cause him to lose his bearings in the world under which the general effect is a form of passiveness towards everything -a kind of passive nihilism. this will be the case in most people who are easily molded into society. in more extreme individuals however the result could be more dangerous to society: it could result in extremism, fundamentalism or fascism. this is the double edged sword of liberalism and the inevitable price that we have to pay for being tolerant.

 public intellectuals, thinktanks, universities and people at the forefront of progressive movements all have the same agenda: to make sure progress goes on unimpeded. even though they act on certain moral values, and will pose as philanthropists or defenders of such and such a cause, they all generally believe that the most important thing is that humanity survives and progresses, that at all costs civilization does not collapse. the question we have to ask however is really: is it really progress? another related question is: would it be too irrational and unthinkable to want to halt this so called progress? to prevent progress from happening? what if we are not meant to become an interplanetary civilization, what if we are not supposed to colonize mars. maybe we shouldn't assume that we are going to reach a singularity or that we will hand ourselves over to machines. moreover, what if society is on the brink of inevitable collapse and all we have left to do is to reboot the comp...

 merely the fact that there is a huge discrepancy between egoism and altruism means we should strive towards altruism. supposing psychological egoism to be true. as i have discussed elsewhere, we lack sufficient knowledge of the mind to make universal generalizations about our motives, they are simply too complex to fathom. but let us grant it as true for the sake of argument that humans are innately selfish and that is only a facade we put up when we are nice, and that egoism is an inescapable fact. precisely for this reason we should strive for altruism. because it raises us up from our animal nature in which we only look out for ourselves, to something sublime. that's why humans will never abolish altruism or any of its associated emotions like empathy, sympathy, compassion etc. maybe it is our ability to care for each other (no matter how false it may seem to us at the time) that makes us closer to divine beings. that's why nietzsche's project ails, because people look ...

 what use is moral philosophy or philosophy in general to the average person? not much. all this high falutin talk about virtue and vice, and discussion of simple concepts in terms of technical jargon is just the plaything of pseudointellectuals. no one needs to be that precise about their moral values, nobody is that obsessed with moralizing that they will need categories of values or complex arguments to support their actions. only the fewest people, mainly intellectuals, read moral philosophy, and most of them rarely enact what they have read or practice what they read. most people treat philosophy, like religion nowadays as a trivial accompaniment to their lives, like a pleasant bedside story that they read to themselves so they can sleep better. who is going to read all of kant's metaphysics of morals, and base his daily actions on the the strict observance of these principles? nobody. if you tell the average person on the street that you are a deontologist or a utilitarian, t...

 we have given ourselves the impression that we can arrest time, that we can control the forces of nature. museums keep artifacts preserved as long as possible, they store them in dry cool cabinets for as long as possible. we believe we can create immutable things, language has given us the concepts, the illusion that we can arrest time. as a result we believe there is nothing left to control anymore, except ourselves, we have turned inwards because in our consciousness is still the remains of some mysterious force that cannot be controlled. but soon we will have that under control as well. we used to be much more in awe of the forces of nature, we read into them something divine,  we spoke to them through our prayers, like we supplicated our gods. everything around us reminded us of change of the inevitability of death, of the cycles, of mutability. now everything reminds us of staticness, of inertia,,and whatever change there is it is controlled measurable calculable by man....

 the whirling dervishes gathered in the courtyard, whose perimeter was filled with spectating guests. they bowed to each other as a gesture of respect and honor. as they entered they wore black cloaks the removal of which symbolized the spiritual rebirth, their arms clasped around their upper bodies represented the number one, god's unity. they slowly begin to spin or whirl on a central axis, from right to left, around the heart, once he  starts  to whirl faster his arms open with the right arm pointed at the sky to receive god's beneficence and his left hand, where his eyes are staring, pointed down towards earth. the process of spinning in circles is a  from of active mediation in which one dissolves the ego and personal desires and focuses on god. the spinning dervishes are representative of the planets orbiting the sun. greater spiritual perfection is achieved the faster one spins , calling out the name allah, and abandoning personal identity and ego. with head t...

 don't dress for the job you have but for the job you want. by that i mean. what kind of philosophy do you have and what kind of philosophy do you want? is your philosophy a reflection of who you are or who you want to be? philosophy is usually a form of commands, precepts, tenets, that have a normative tone, they instruct you to do something. if i am a lazy person and i feel guilty about it, then my philosophy might be "carpe diem, seize the day": that would be a productive philosophy because it means that i am aspiring towards something which i am lacking in. on the other hand the opposite would be the self justifying philosophy which is "do not strive for more than you can achieve" or "know thy limitations"- that would be a philosophy of resignation. because it means that you have already accepted that you are lazy and the way you try to overcome the guilt of being lazy - the feelings of inadequacy - is by justifying it , by saying "look there ...

 he looked upon everything with disgust, he looked down upon the world and its creations. he frowned upon the world. everything therein is rotten, it is sick. he could not be moved by spectacle, or any human achievement of significance. for him it was all just matter piled up. what happened to the olden days when congregations used to be awe inspired by the organ, now it was just a whining windbag. it is better that it all just ceased to be, that we stop trying to produce great works of art, that instead we just focus inwards in tranquility and calm and peace, and strive to escape the world. we should all be working on our sand mandalas in order to pour them away on the beach. what are all these projects, but a tribute to mans vanity, but an expression of mans vanity. he builds a great monument but to please himself, then he sits down and eats a hotdog, out of disgust. he had already concluded that there was nothing to explain. that every explanation required its own explanation, a...

 having spent a life crafting other worlds he now no longer seemed able to dwell within his own. his training was that of hypotheticals and counterfactuals - his pedigree was in the unfulfilled, it was in the unmade. it was in the cavernous, convoluted worlds of the merely imaginable, the permissive, the promiscuous. so when he touched down back on earth he was unable to breath the air that i breathe. we have to understand the position of this eleventeenth century monk, who was reclusified in his own prism. he crafted worlds of his own fabrication, he moulded shapes from his own whimsy, he built edifices of his own flights of fancy- yes but was he capable of settling with the real? no. what did he do in his spendtrhift pages, he stormed and railed against the world. he wrote the passage that were best remembered as peerless entries into the vaults of time. after all that was the highest form of meditation, meditation upon the unthinkable. for him timelines extended, they extrapolat...

 The majority of social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, set the minimum age restriction for users at 13. This age limit was established in a 1998 legislation that prevented online webservices from collecting children's data without parental consent. Since then 13 has become the standard for companies like Facebook to adhere to when setting minimum age restrictions. It has also become the default age for parents to assume it is safe for their children to use social media. The internet has evolved significantly since then. The rise of smartphones in the 2010s and the simultaneous boom in social media platforms means children are spending a large part of their time online, potentially exposed to harmful content, cyberbullying, and applications that distract them from school work or everyday tasks. Although there are a variety of factors at play - such as maturity, social competence, and intellect - many have argued that 13 is too young, and I would arg...

   The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines nihilism as: “ [] the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.” It can generally be divided into several forms, including: existential nihilism, moral nihilism, political nihilism, and cosmic nihilism to name a few. The first of those -existential nihilism- is the most commonly known form of nihilism, often expressed in the statement: 'life is meaningless.' It is also the form I will be discussing in this essay. Most people associate nihilism with apathy: 'Life is meaningless and there is no point in doing anything'. People who hold this view believe that everything you attempt is futile and even if you do end up with some level of success it is insignificant on a grand scale (so you might a well not doing anything in the first place). This attitude might be summed up best by the statement from the character 'Mr Peanut Butter' from the TV series Bojack horseman: “The uni...

"But, in fact, they are one and all united in thorough and instinctive hostility towards all forms of society besides that of the autonomous herd (even to the point of rejecting the concepts of “master” and “slave” – ni dieu ni maˆıtre reads a socialist formula –); they are united in their dogged opposition to any special claims, special rights, or privileges (which means, in the last analysis, that they are opposed to any rights: since when everyone is equal, no one will need “rights” anymore –); they are united in their mistrust of punitive justice (as if it were a violation of those who are weaker, a wrong against the necessary  Neither God nor master.  On the natural history of morals result of all earlier societies –); but they are likewise united in the religion of pity, in sympathy for whatever feels, lives, suffers (down to the animal and up to “God”: – the excessive notion of “pity for God” belongs in a democratic age –); they are all united in the cries and the impat...