Your philosophy in life

I'm not sure I have a philosophy in life. I believe certain things. I do what needs to be done. I enjoy life even though it's not always easy. Is that a philosophy? Maybe I'm an aphilosophist.

Lets not get anal about the ontology of philosophy. I'm interested in what certain creeds people live by, in other words, their philosophies. Speaking of which, sometimes I don't have a philosophy but then sometimes I do, so I can relate with the certain ambiguity of the word philosophy in the question.

The Fido philosophy is quite simple really, though it may not do all that Nietzsche said a philosophy should do...

Simply: Everything is a form, with forms and ideas being the way we organize our thoughts and make sense of the world as phenomena...

Everything is a form of relationship; that we relate through our forms and when we cease relating through a form it is because it is dead, or we are...

Forms may be roughly catagorized as physical forms or moral forms with the physical forms representing finite material objects having being and meaning, and the moral forms representing spiritual qualities of which there are infinite number with infinite variation having meaning without being...

Forms are the key to understanding humanity and human behavior because all forms as forms of relationship give us two windows into the life of human kind, and because all progress requires a change of forms which is a painful, and often abrupt process suffered under acute need, and this is because change is the devil to humanity and we will suffer almost any illness, and sometimes death rather than change, and my guess is that we fear death as the ultimate expression of change...

Social forms like government or religion or economies are built out of moral forms like equity, or justice, or liberty, or life, and they are meant to resist change, to recognize a certain good situation, and to maintain that situation indefinitely; but very often social forms are changed in subtle ways to defeat their own purpose or simply fail to account for or defend against external or internal changes, and so fail..

To have a formal understanding of life and human history one need only know what a form is, and that social forms are created out of moral forms, that progress requires the supplanting of one better form for one that is failing, and that all social forms may be understood by way of the relationships within them, and all relationships may be understood by way of the form those people in the relationship give their lives to...

A simple relationship like marriage has the element of form in common with complex relationships like nationality, and each has in common the fact that the form is no better than the relationship, and the relationship is only seldom better than the form... People form relationships to organize themselves, and the organization is supposed to make them easier to manage than informal relationships which are usually the most difficult because they are devoid of rules, but inevitably, the people within old forms make their own rules and agreements if the form society offers them does not serve their needs...

It is out of needs that people form relationships; primarily, the need for recognition and realization... This means that forms both keep us alive in a real sense, and make us feel alive when we are recognized... The most certain evidence that a form is dead or dying is when it makes people feel meaningless, or taken for granted, and kills them capriciously -when its true object should be to give them meaning and return the life they invest into the form to them with interest...

The relationships between physical forms is much easier to express than the relationships between people in social forms... This is because the moral forms out of which are made social forms are themselves impossible to define or relate exactly to other forms, and behind all social conflict is a conflict of moral forms over their meanings, and what reality we should give to them in their social expression...

The confusion over moral forms or their meanings comes from the ability given, through social forms for a few to show a commercial gain in trading on the meaning of moral forms, so that where liberty to one makes slaves of another, and one mans justice becomes injustice to many, or the death of one people means life for another, a word that is a virtue one day will in time seem only a vice... To presume that good will flow from words dripping with virtue is to deny the ability of the base to profit from dealing in spiritual values...

That is the Fido Philosophy in a nutshell...

I do not live by any particular creed.
I enjoy thinking and learning.
I enjoy music and art.
I think materialism and today's consumerism is criminal.
I am spiritual but not religious.
I want to be happy and I want others to be happy.

Just a few things off the top of my head, but I don't think in terms of any particular philosophy that sums up my goals and beliefs.

Well, you should think in those terms because it is hard to actually think without such terms, and if we go after our survival in an organized fashion, our success is much more likely than it would be pursued in a haphazzard fashion...

I know it is hard when governments and religions in having their dear ideologies and their principals -seem so dead set against reason, but it is for the very fact that they reject reason that they will fail, and we must do better as individuals if we will survive their fall... Civilizations have come and as often gone, and ours is making the most common and pronounce mistakes of the past revealed... Why should we let it in dying take us with it???

I utterly fail at it unfortunately, due to my being less gregarious than I might sometimes like, but I've always admired people the most, whose presence and spirit uplifted those around them. So roughly, it's to be the space through which others can realise themselves. Perhaps a bit corny or whatever but it's relevant to me as a much needed counter-balance to self-oriented and excessively introspective habitual tendencies.

Not really. I don't need a religious doctrine to guide me, and I am not so presumptuous that I believe I can come up with a comprehensive philosophy that fully accounts for human existence, let alone my personal existence. Greater men have tried and failed.

There is a Norwegian children's book called "When the robbers came to Cardamom Town". There is only one law in Cardamom Town, which is called the Cardamom Law, and it goes like this:
"You should not bother others,
you should be nice and kind,
otherwise you can do as you please."
In Norwegian it even rhymes.
As good a life philosophy as any I guess.

I am certain that now you misunderstand me... I mean, without forms and concepts, the way we organize and catagorize knowledge, it is about impossible to think...As far as philosophy goes I pretty well stop at morals, what is usually called Ethics; only because one does not need to know everything in order to act with a measure of goodness less than the absolute...

I thought you said your philosophy was simple

I feel I'm in the same boat as you Ashers, I find Im excessively introspective. It is usually when I'm in a group am I different. I do try to play the fool every now and then...

That's a good law, but I've always had trouble with the idea of people doing as they pleased. A guy named Aleister Crowely, who is a well known satanist, quoted that 'Do what thou wilt.' Ever since then it has bothered me to realise people are running around doing whatever they like. It just doesn't sit well with me that some people have no moral compass, while the studious of us respect one another to have one.

I'm not touching this one.

Why? I'm assuming you have a perspective on what I wrote.

So to digress on what I was saying, it's not about free will but the delusion some people have that they can do whatever they like without any repurcussions. I'm not saying that we should be imposed or feel we need to follow or abide the most stringent of laws, but to be at least thoughtful of actions. And I don't think it's a problem of morality being relative. My assertion is that certain people just don't think or examine things with clarity.

What I remember most from being raised in a Christian home by Christian parents is to love your neighbor as yourself and do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.
That's pretty much what I took from my years of church and have adopted as my philosophy of life.
I also think kindness is very important.
And taking responsibility - I think it was Mahatma Ghandi who said, 'Be the change you want to see in the world.'
Joan Baez said, 'Action is the antidote to despair.'
I really like that.

I also love the following quotes because they sum up very succinctly my philosphy for my own life


















URL: http://able2know.org/reply/topic-181536

Thank you aidan for those beautiful quotes.

I am the other way. I've always had trouble with others dictating what I can and cannot do. It ignites something in the that makes me want to rebel.
I'm not allowed to have a couple of beers and then at the end of the night get into my car and drive home, because the law here says that driving with alcohol in your blood is strictly forbidden.

What I think is outrageous about this is that the law has removed my option to be make a responsible choice, because people think making the wrong one can cost too much.
I am perhaps an asshole since I do it anyway. Sometimes, if I've been at a friend's place and had a few beers, I take the car home. Other times, if I had more than a few, I leave the car and either walk or take a cab.
My point is that I have a lot of experience with alcohol and how my body reacts to it, and I have a lot of experience with driving. I am qualified to make a judgment of my own ability to safely handle a car. If I doubt my own ability, because of alcohol or the flu or for any reason, I don't get into the car.

The argument against this is that not all people are qualified to make that judgment, so the law has to be zero tolerance for alcohol and driving. That's taking it in the wrong direction. How can you create responsible adults when you remove the need to make responsible judgments in all areas of life where it matters? It is a practice that comes from people's inability to trust in others, and I think it's a damn shame.

If there are road signs pointing the direction to everywhere you want to go, you never learn to use a compass. This is as true for moral "navigation" as it is for travelling.

Simple if not exactly obvious...Compared to Hegel's for example, it is simplicity, so though I may call it mine it is too simple to have escaped the attention of others, and there are hints of it elsewhere... I would recommend that you perk up your ears every time you hear the word form, even as it seems to appear in morpheme, or ephemeral... Information, reformation, form of government, and etc. are all words hinting at a formal understanding... Jefferson talked of forms in the Declaration of Independence and pointed out what I have agreed with, that people resist the changing of their forms, and yet he was formally conscious and knew that human progress is tied to a change of forms... It is equally obvious that most people are formally unconscious, and they can live in oppression attacking the branches of evil while unable to get at the roots... One can barely catagorize knowledge in a rational manor without it, nor can we make rational sense of the conflicts humanity has so long endured...I very much believe that Jefferson and his mates were successful because they were able to talk and act in a rational manor in respect to the problems they found and the solutions they offered...

I guess that it may not exactly obvious since I wrestled with the understanding of it long before I got it, and owe my understanding to my wife who simply asked the question: was I in some form of relationship with some person I was in heated dispute with on the internet.. I could neither agree, or disagree because to name three, we shared the forms of humanity, nationality, and party... Of the forms that united us, only humanity excluded no one that did not self exclude... So forms are about common causes we make with others, and what destroys them is that smaller groups within the group, while maintaining formal associations actually make common cause with others against the group they are formally members with... We have seen from the beginning of this form of society that many people reject democracy and equality and universal justice as goals and work to subvert the meaning of this nation, and for the defeat of this people, and yet they wave the flag and demand the rights others die to defend... They are parasites...

In my opinion, your philosophy is a bit problematical. You have made for yourself a rather rigid system where everything has to conform to your notion of forms. Some pretty brilliant people have tried that over the years, and it invariably flares at the seams as reality, and particularly the aspects of reality relating to human emotional and intellectual life, are not so easily quantifiable.

You say that "Social forms like government or religion or economies are built out of moral forms like equity, or justice, or liberty, or life", and that seems to be a simplification at best.
Social structure, or social forms, as you call them, are negotiated between all members of a society.
Your idea of moral forms implies an underlying, unchangeable constant to which all things conform. Take 'justice' for instance. There are no absolute definitions of justice. What constitutes justice is also a matter of social negotiation, and often what some see as justice will not be seen so by others. What, then, is the value of the moral form 'justice'?

It is easy enough to deny that Jesus was God since he did not much make the claim...It is impossible to deny that he was a philosopher, and even a humorist savant... That advice that if some one should sue you for your tunic, to give them your pants too is a classic... But that is where those people were, with all the wealth going to the temple and the priests, and all the rest of the people dirt poor... And we are getting there again... It is not difficult to see that when one group holds and controls all the wealth, that the people have to give wealth less meaning, and find some meaning in each other, because they are what they are left with...

Religion is a form of relationship... Wealth is a form of relationship... When these forms grow so powerful as things in themselves that they destroy the relationship they lose their meaning because people cannot value highly what is killing them... Religion is one of the things killing this people, and our economy is another, and our form of government is another thing destroying the relationship upon which its meaning depends... Some times people follow their forms into oblivion... If the people will live it is because they reject the forms leading them to failure and death... No one would marry a mad person or stay long married to one, but many people for old time's sake will stay in forms of relationship that chew them up, and spit them out, and we do not have to look long or hard to see many such examples of people destroyed, and cast in the dumpster of history, who are little aware of the cruelty gnawing at them like a dog on a bone...