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The questions we ask are not ones we can ponder in our free time and easily set aside when there’s life to do. What am I? Am I free? What is the purpose of my existence? Why should I strive to act morally? Is the reconstructed ship still the Ship of Theseus? (Ok, perhaps we can make it without settling that last one).
It’s often nearly impossible to return to the daily grind of school or work (or both) after exploring these problems. It seems like a failure to not study these questions continuously, but is the solution (devoting our entire lives to it) realistic?
As it always is with cases like these, finding the proper balance seems to be the key. Surviving in today’s world requires a significant amount of work (Walden aside), and it is almost inevitable that we fall into the routine of a full-time job. We are eventually faced with a life-or-death struggle for either our physical or intellectual/spiritual existence. The lines are obviously not always so clean cut, one can strive for the intermediate courses where our jobs incorporate intellectual activities (and are therefore more rewarding), but the fact remains that time spent on essentially surviving is time lost. This concern does not relate to the finer things in life: family, friends and fun which are always welcome (even as “distractions”), but to the other stuff, the stuff we have to do.
Even if one was able to somehow disregard the pull of society and ignore (or at least subordinate) one’s physical needs, there are no guarantees that the time for contemplation would produce any answers.
Neither extreme seems at all desirable, and the middle ground is far from satisfying. How do you balance your life?
Archive
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260.
The Phenomen- ology of Freedom
Are we truly free? Are the paths of our lives charted beforehand, or is every moment an opportunity to break new ground? The answer isn’t easily found, the determinate physical world seems to hit a...
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260.
An Open Letter to God.
So here’s the deal, we’ve been here a while doing great things and…eh things, but there’s always been that trickling or gushing concern about why. We’re amazing, when you stop to think...
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260.
Nietzsche: The Fast Track
The darkly dressed student made yet another existentially pessimistic remark and the professor unleashed one of the harsher insults I’ve heard: “Every student goes: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer,...
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260.
Computers and God
I came across an interesting presentation on digg (and surprisingly, it wasn’t a kitten with horrifying spelling/grammar) recently that compared – albeit often fallaciously – our...
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260.
Surviving Life
The questions we ask are not ones we can ponder in our free time and easily set aside when there’s life to do. What am I? Am I free? What is the purpose of my existence? Why should I strive to...
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260.
The New Erratic Wisdom
Another semester, another redesign (give it a solid refresh to clear your cache). This one’s been brewing for quite some time now, with the notched grid motif coming around a few months ago,...
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260.
Imperfect Art
Plato’s metaphysics and his Doctrine of Forms describes a general division of our universe into forms and particulars. Forms are instantiated by contingent particulars. That is, particulars are...
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260.
Identity and Time
A classic example in the metaphysics of identity is the “Ship of Theseus” story which introduces an interesting worry in the way we identify objects over time and change. First, a brief...
