If you don't know the answer that is the correct answer - philosophy of prescriptions
- Magical Mindful Living
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Problems of Life
Life is an amazing phenomena. When I observe it from a chair, on a Saturday morning I see the way we used to think about life have changed over the years. Throughout my school years and even during Higher education we were taught about problem solving. As an example consider long division. A simple mathematical concept. When we learn how to do in steps, we can apply this over and over again to come at answer to specific problem of division. This is a common way of solving problems.
Our whole system of knowlege is build up on these kind of problems. However this pattern is not just specific to mathematics. Imagine you want to change break pads of your car. You look at a youtube video which gives you sequential steps of doing this, even if it is not your model of the car, given enough time and practise you will eventually will be able to change it on your own. After that you can apply this knowledge as long as necessary.
Baking a Banana Cake
Consider a banana cake. If you want to make a banana cake for your kids, you can download a recipe with a list of steps. If you are not an idiot atleast you will be able to bake a reasonably ok banana cake. As you can see this is how we solve most of our problems. Sometimes these are not easily solvable. Yet most of them need thousands of steps. This brings us to the philospy of Prescriptions. Consider following list.
How to become a pilot, or a train operator.
How to use a backhoe to dig up a bunker in your backyard.
How to scare away a Greasley Bear.
How to treat prostate cancer
How to write an article for a news paper.
How to be a rich person.
How to spend all your money in one week
How to draw an apple
How to solve 3n+1 question
How to meditate
How to be mindful
Philosophy of prescriptions
Some problems in life have no specific answers, nobody can give you sequential steps. Consider the problem of becoming rich. I can write a book about this, starting from human values ending with How to build a skyscraper. Yet when it comes to applying, individual have to figure it out themselves. As we are stuck in different times, different places in different realities. Even if you succeed and then try to give advice to another person, most likely they will not be able to do it themselves, as the world is very dynamic.
Big questions
Now, there are specific questions that philosophy student is interested in. In my opinion everyone should be interested in these questions as these are at heart of our existance. Questions like "who am I?"
"What is my purpose in life?" "What is the meaning of life?" "What is living?" "What happens after death?"
If you look at philosophical literature, there are countless people who have written and tackled these questions. And written prescriptions how they arrived at answers. Consider any religious leader, philosopher. When we read and learn their teachings we tend to think that it is true. And we agree with them even before we try their paths. But for these big questions, what we need to do is figure out ourselves. Unless we do that we would never be able to reach eternal happiness and peace.
Let's go back to our Banana cake. Let's say you want a banana cake. (Eternal peace @ heven) . You download the prescription from God and think. Ah this is true. Banana cake made from this recipe is tasty. But you never even bake a banana cake.
Imagine you started making the cake. And find out you cake was too sugary for your taste. Do you blame the recipe? No because the same cake is perfect for some other person. You adjust and learn yourself and understand what is wrong with the recipe. Maybe you are better off with an apple pie. As you can see the problem is not with the prescription. It is coming to conclusions even before you start following it. This is why, if you don't know answers that becomes the correct answer for progress. Anyone who behave like they have arrived are only fooled by their own ego.
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