I wish that I were about to and able to write something worthy of the title of this blog.<\/p>\n
I start with an excerpt from the blog of the Maverick Philosopher<\/a>: “There is a discrepancy between the seriousness<\/strong><\/em> with which we take our projects and the indifference<\/strong><\/em> with which we view them from ‘on high’ under the aspect of eternity<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 This discrepancy is inescapable since both the subjective and objective viewpoints are essential to being human and they necessarily conflict<\/strong><\/em>.”\u00a0 (Typeface emphasis is mine.)<\/p>\n On this point, I totally agree.\u00a0 I spent in excess of an hour today replacing the pump on our birdbath fountain — no further evidence is needed to demonstrate to me that I (like other humans) willingly undertake trivial efforts to achieve (from the perspective of eternity) objectively insignificant results.\u00a0 Question is, why<\/strong><\/em>?\u00a0 Don’t I have something better to do?\u00a0 Yes, of course I do, and yet I rarely do it, or I do very little of it.<\/p>\n The problem is, everything<\/strong><\/em> is insignificant when viewed “under the aspect of eternity.”\u00a0 You and I have no idea how the future will unfold.\u00a0 There is an endless expanse of future, but all we have access to is an ever-vanishing present and only as much past as we have managed to stuff into our brains.\u00a0 We are disadvantaged when it comes to viewing life with an eye on eternity.\u00a0 Not just disadvantaged but clueless.<\/p>\n We have limited ways to influence the future and sketchy internal models as to how our actions might or might not shape the future or benefit others.\u00a0 Yet we act boldly, blind to outcomes.\u00a0 In our culture, failure to act is tantamount to abdication.\u00a0 For us it is better to act insignificantly than not at all.<\/p>\n And so we act, knowing that we occupy an insignificant slice of eternity.\u00a0 It just so happens that this slice is the most significant parcel of time we can imagine, because we happen to occupy it<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 But why should such meager lifespans as our own be held up against the aspect of eternity<\/em><\/strong>?\u00a0 What denizen of the future time-traveled to our century and sold us this bill of goods, that our acts should benefit the future<\/em><\/strong> more than our present?<\/p>\n My answer to the question posed in the title of this blog: no, philosophy does not matter.\u00a0 Philosophy tries to answer things with words that evolution already answered with DNA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wish that I were about to and able to write something worthy of the title of this blog. I start with an excerpt from the blog of the Maverick Philosopher: “There is a discrepancy between the seriousness with which … Continue reading