The Philosopher's Cloud

A long time ago, on a website far far away, there was something called The Philosopher's Cloud, which has now all but evaporated...

...but, there is a new Philosopher's Cloud, a place where one and all can come to contemplate life, the universe, and everything else with like and un-like minded people. Even if you who are reading this are not familiar with the first Cloud, you are invited to join in the adventure. You just have to have a facebook account.

The Philosopher's Cloud

Dude, where's my ἔρως?

Just a thought I had the other day...

The more I try to find philosophy in small, everyday places and events, the more disappointed I become. But this disappointment is most apparent when I am browsing the internet.

It really shouldn't be this way.

Plato described a form of love which he called Eros (ἔρως). It describes something like 'intellectual beauty'; a passionate, spiritual feeling one gets when one does philosophy. I don't use the word spiritual lightly (it being a very easy word to misuse, I think), but I think there is something to this idea of Eros; of a certain beauty in the love and pursuit of wisdom.

I used to think that there was a little philosophy to be had everywhere. I suppose that I still do think this, in a way. But lately I've been finding that the one place where real philosophy should be happening, on the world wide web, is almost devoid of real philosophy. There is a lot of 'armchair philosophy', which can be very good sometimes, but very bad other times. Even worse, there is pseudophilosophy; philosophy of the angsty teenager who smokes too much pot and doesn't go to school, or philosophy of the Deepak Chopra kind.

I suppose this can't be helped. Unless you have a little formal training in philosophy, or you are an autodidact, you probably don't know much about philosophy. You might not really know what philosophy is or what it's supposed to be for. I suppose this is a consequence of the internet, which is a shame because the internet is precisely the right kind of tool society needs for spreading real science and philosophy. Instead, pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy are rampant. Note: I say that society needs such a tool because I believe strongly that a good understanding of science and philosophy can help all of us live much happier lives.

So when I read these PHP message boards and facebook.com discussion topics, I'm often disappointed. Granted, these are usually not philosophy message boards, but message boards for other things which just happen to have a philosophy forum - I would think that philosophy messageboards do not have this problem. But still, should I be dissapointed? Should I expect average Joe to have a true passion for the pursuit of of wisdom and scientific truth? I hope I have not been naive in my expectation that average Joe would indeed possess something like Plato's Eros when it came to the pursuit of science or philosophy...but given the abundance of pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy on the internet, as well as what I perceive as a definite lack in this Eros, sometimes I just have to wonder...

...Although, I was once fortunate enough to moderate a philosophy forum which was part of another website, long before I was seriously studying philosophy in school. To my delight, it was an exception to this whole problem; plenty of Eros, and lots of good philosophy (and philosophers!).

I would love to see this problem (I think it is an important problem) go away. To make this so, I think we will need more popularizers of philosophy. I could illustrate this issue to a layperson thusly; "Sir or ma'am, are you able to name 10 living philosophers?" Chances are the answer will be "No."

What we need are more philosophers who make their ideas public and interesting. We need a Carl Sagan of philosophy, that is, someone both good at philosophy and good at presenting the findings of philosophers to the public in order to show their importance. There have been many philosophers like this before, Bertrand Russel and Jean Paul Sartre in the early to mid 20th Century, and others like Robert Solomon in the late 20th Century. Richard Carrier is an excellent example of a contemporary philosopher who does excellent philosophy, and who is very good at communicating it to other non-philosophers.

If we begin to see more people like these, I think we will see a sense of Plato's Eros beginning to grow once again within the public audience.

What Is Happiness?

Over the last few months I've been thinking a lot about happiness. What is happiness? Am I happy? Might I be happy but not know it? Might it be that I am not happy; rather I just think I am? This is one of the things I've been thinking about recently which I thought I would blog about. This issue seems to come to me in two parts:

First, this is something that I've been prompted to think about on and off all of my life up until now, simply because I am an atheist. Let me explain; over the years (yet recently, much more often), I've encountered people who, upon learning that I am a non-believer, feel sorry for me. Usually these are not moderate believers but very dedicated Christians. They must get a tremendous amount of happiness out of their faith (...or do they?), because they seem to think that because I have no faith, I must be sad; the atheist doesn't see the world in colour, only shades of gray (apparently).

To me this is very telling about how misunderstood atheism (and happiness) is.
I do not see a dull, gray world. I see a cosmos so huge and so fascinating, that when I go outside and look up at the stars at night, I feel content just to drop to the ground and stare up in wondrous contemplation over the fact that I am a part of this mystery, most grand.

Maybe this is simply a matter of personal incredulity, or maybe I really do understand the Christian worldview; I could not imagine being happy as a Christian, or as a member of any other religion for that matter (I simply use Christianity because that's what I'm most familiar with). How is it possible? How can someone really claim to be happy to believe in something that they not only don't understand, but categorically cannot understand? How can someone be happy by believing in a God who made a blood sacrifice of his own son; who lets his flock stray from the true path so easily (out of about six billion humans, only around one sixth of them are Christians...and how many of them are actually practicing Christians who've been 'born again'?); who allows war, poverty and disease to run rampant on his own creation (actually, those things are his own creation too!); and who, being God and all, could simply appear and put the whole issue to rest, yet does not?

I accept that there are things that I cannot understand and never will understand. But the happiness I receive comes not from having faith in something that is categorically impossible to understand, but in trying to understand that which is not immediately apparent; that which is difficult to understand yet can still be discovered, if not by me or humans today then by humans in the future. Figuring things out is satisfying and thus makes me happy. But a religious person lives with the belief that the are not only things which aren't figured out, but that there are things which will never be figured out. How unsatisfying!

Things brings me to the second part of the happiness question. What if I'm wrong about what it means to be happy? Being an atheist leaves me satisfied and full of wonder and content. Does this constitute happiness? A few months ago I would have said yes, but now I'm not sure. Let me explain what I think happiness is.

If you asked me a few months ago what happiness for me is, I might have mentioned playing guitar, being with my friends or my family, etc. Sure, these are things that make me happy, but what about happiness itself? What is it? This is where the Christian and I seem at first glance to be in the same boat; we can both name things that make us happy (faith/wonder, reading the Bible/reading a Carl Sagan book), but do we know what happiness itself is?

I've been thinking about this particular part of the happiness question only recently, after I listened to the philosopher Robert C. Solomon being interviewed on Philosophy Talk Radio. You can listen to the show here.
Although I am still not quite certain, I am starting to come to a new and concise definition of happiness. In fact, this is the only real definition of happiness I've ever had, since as I wrote before, I've only ever been able to describe what makes me happy, not happiness itself.

Going beyond the neurological aspect of happiness, beyond the chemicals in my brain that tell me when I'm happy, I now have a metaphysical sense of happiness (or at least, I'm starting to get one). I now think that happiness comes from fulfillment; happiness, you might say, is fulfillment. I set myself a task or a goal, it could be anything really, and when I have satisfied myself in completing it I am fulfilled, and thus happy.

So, perhaps the Christian and I are not in the same boat after all. I am happy because, as I just wrote, "I feel content just to drop to the ground and stare up in wondrous contemplation" at the cosmos; thus, I am happy. If happiness amounts to satisfaction and fulfillment, could a Christian ever be happy in the sense that I'm describing? This, I think, would be an interesting topic to bring up the next time a Christian makes the mistake of assuming that I'm unhappy simply because I'm an atheist.