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Philosophy Matters

I think it is important that people carve out head space in their mental lives to ponder questions of existence and meaning beyond the mechanics of how it is discussed. It’s what gives us depth and puts us in touch with a reserve of somethingness/nothingness that can be very powerful.

Some people use religion to tap into that energy, some people are the victims of religion as they are shielded from the ability to tap into it, and some people just stay the hell away from religiosity to venture out on their own.

In practice, Philosophers tend to climb into their barely-reachable towers and get silly as they argue the finer points and semantics, examining how something is described sometimes more than examining the something that is being described. With this approach, people can get hung up on being able to identify whether an idea came from Kant or Descartes rather than paying attention or reflecting on the meaning of what these men said. While this can lead to understanding for some, this attention to the semantics puts people in danger of reducing the words to mere strings of letters, devoid of deeper meaning. It has become an intellectual exercise.

I consider myself at least a bit philosophically evolved, yet I don’t know Kant from an itch on my left elbow and I think god is an elaborate fiction. I don’t care who said what — I just care about what it makes me think and feel. (Read about my application of philosophical thinking in the realm of modern art.)

At the end of the day, I can just echo the Tao te Ching to answer many philosophical questions: “The Tao is that which cannot be spoken,” or, as the great philosopher Frank N Furter said: “Don’t dream it, Be it.”

[By the way, you can buy this awesome Frank N Furter poster here.]