Category: philosophy

The Meaning of Life is the first lecture series I’ve listened to from The Great Courses and it’s fantastic. The name is maybe a little too lofty, I’d have called it “How to Live,” but don’t let that dissuade you. The lecturer, Jay Garfield, is a professor at Smith College and Harvard Divinity School and has written extensively on Eastern religions. His presentation style is efficient, engaging, and approachable. His course roams the world touching on many of the major philosophical and religious traditions in a way that gives a brief overview of each but also, more importantly, examples of where they differ in their philosophies on how to live.

In my own study, I’ve found it’s easy to find and focus on the similarities between philosophical traditions because they are what I’m drawn to naturally. I’d be hard pressed to say “this is what a taoist would do in this situation while a stoic would instead do this.” Garfield excels at giving a sort of WWJD for each of the traditions he covers. It’s in the contrasts between them that I feel the real character of each philosophy comes out.

For example, where Aristotle would say you can learn to cultivate anger, Seneca would say anger is never good and we should learn to avoid it completely. Where Confucianists would say we should focus on ritual and virtue, taoists would say that ritual marks the waning of belief and the onset of confusion.

Garfield also strikes a great balance between academic and practical. He doesn’t skimp on reading directly from source texts and doesn’t shy away from the complexities of distilling hundreds or thousands of years of wisdom into 30 minute chunks. But where condensing is necessary, he leans to the side of actionable information. It’s a symmetry that’s hard to find elsewhere.

If you’re looking for something good to listen to on your commute, and want more depth that most podcasts can offer while still getting the same casual feel, check it out. It’s well worth it.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a few very different outdoor experiences in similar settings that have me thinking about the role of aesthetics in everyday life.

Experience 1: Our family backpacked a short distance to the coast and spent a couple nights on the beach. On the second day we met up with friends from work and camped they camped a night with us. We spent time hiking, looking at sea creatures, sitting around the fire talking, playing games, and cooking simple meals.

Experience 2: I met up with couple long-time friends and another guy I just met. We did another, longer hike through the forest and camped on the beach. We spent time sitting around the fire discussing our various philosophies of life, our kids and families, and the turns that life had given us and how we dealt with them. Being a group of guys, there was a fair amount of body humor but it was far outweighed by substantive conversation.

Experience 3: A friend invited me to stay at a cabin on the coast then spend the next day fishing with a group of guys that I hadn’t met. Being out on the ocean was amazing. We caught salmon and saw humpback whales frolicking in the rainy, overcast Pacific waters. This time the mood of the trip was more macho. Life and feelings weren’t discussed, the focus was on the “hunt” for the fish and on the equipment and techniques to best carry it out.

I came back from the first two experiences feeling refreshed and invigorated. The third wasn’t bad by any means, but it left me feeling relatively empty. As far as I can tell, the third experience was marred by a lack of what would traditionally be considered feminine characteristics. The physical environment was very similar for all three but the texture or aesthetics of each couldn’t have been more different.

For experience 1, there were children present. This naturally kept the tone of the trip more chill. A lot of time was spent nurturing them—teaching them about the environment they were in and talking to them about their lives. It was great to see my friends who don’t have kids taking such an active interest in my children.

Experience 2 had no women or children present but the group was composed entirely of family men. There was little in the way of posturing or machismo. It enriching to swap stories of our ups and downs in the role of providers. We talked about our other outdoor experiences, made plans for the future, talked about books and tv shows we’d all read or seen, and swapped tips for living the good life. We kept our gear and meals simple and rather than spending time focused on “doing,” we optimized for enjoyment of the natural beauty of the area. I think the best word to describe the trip would be “edifying.”

The last experience had its share of camaraderie. We celebrated each other’s accomplishments—in this case catching fish. Plenty of inside jokes were born and died. It wasn’t a physically challenging activity but there was a big disparity in terms of technical ability. I’m a fishing newbie and appreciated the guidance from the more experienced members of the group. Upon reflection though, what was lacking was any philosophical discussion of what we were doing. There were comments on the beauty of the ocean, the fish, and the whales. There wasn’t much though in terms of deeper discussion of what it means to live.

The contrast between the three trips makes me think about how to apply their different aesthetics to my non-camping life. I appreciated:

• Slow enjoyment of natural surroundings
• Conversations free of posturing that go deeper than surface level observations
• Base humor in small doses
• Minimalism with regards to food and equipment

I feel like I still have some processing to do before I’ve distilled the experiences down to anything actionable, but the contrast between them was an unexpected lesson in how to live.

Becoming Wise by Krista Tippet is quickly becoming one of my favorite books this year. Her interview with Rachel Naomi Remen was, for me, one of those eye and heart opening moments where I feel connected with humanity in an empowering way. This is the story Remen shared:

In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. In the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. The wholeness of the world, the light of the world, was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light. And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It’s a very important story for our times. This task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It’s the restoration of the world.
And this is, of course, a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world. That story opens a sense of possibility. It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It’s about healing the world that touches you, that’s around you.

When questioned about the reality of “healing the world,” she said:

I think that we all feel that we’re not enough to make a difference, that we need to be more somehow, wealthier or more educated or otherwise different than the people we are. And according to this story, we are exactly what’s needed. And to just wonder about that a little: what if we were exactly what’s needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what’s needed to heal the world?

To me, this ties together some of the most poignant aspects of the world’s great philosophies. The idea that we are okay now—there is no need to wait for anything to begin to do good. That global change comes person by person as we become enlightened to our role in humanity.