Trinbago Come Good

Learning the links between everything alive starts with deep thought

IF PHILOSOPHY were a question, it would sound like: “To be or not to be?” That would be according to Shakespeare. However, according to one pop singer, it’s more a case of “… talk on a cereal box.”

Which is it? Well, which is it not? Philosophy looks at existence – said to be “odd” by the likes of author George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) – and asks … it simply asks. Philosophy, then, isn’t a question, but a questioning, and a questing: a seeking of answers, of understanding, of a sense of purpose.

Yet, like the Buddhist tenet, “Everything matters. Nothing matters,” Philosophy is a contrast and seeming contradiction. This, while coming across as exceedingly clever many a time, can just as readily result in full-on frustration.

There is only one cure for such frustration, and it is the opposite of what very average people insist is the cure for all frustration. That same real cure is also what philosophy just is. That cure is thinking.

“You think too much.” “Don’t think so much.” “Stop thinking, period!” Hogwash!

Great philosophers have always been great thinkers, because you cannot be a philosopher otherwise. You can’t have philosophy without thinking.

Strength a thought away

In Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s young adult novel, Zahrah, the Windseeker, a wise elder proclaims, “The habit of thinking is the habit of gaining strength!”

To gain strength from philosophy means to commit to being a thinker.

We can all think. To get by in life, to succeed, to thrive, to seek happiness and fulfillment, we must think – a lot and big. It is this basic human ability/activity that should open us all to the purpose, the meaning, the birthright of philosophy.

Imagination fired

Even if, according to some theories, we were not originally created to be philosophers, we certainly evolved into the art.

When the human brain began to develop and grow; when imagination fired, fused and focused our thoughts beyond the immediacy of meat and shelter; when we looked up at sister-moon and first started to feel there was something more to life than the here and the now, well that my friends was the beginning, the burgeoning of the philosophical brain.

It belongs to all of us, hence why philosophy can serve greatly to unite all of us.

Making philosophy matter is a mission every modern human who wants to live a life of wakefulness and wholeness must engage in. Without philosophy, conscious or otherwise, the human will falters.

Picture Michelangelo’s sculpture, David: smooth perfection, a soundless symphony of balance and grace. If, however, it were cracked in several places, it would be a different thing altogether. Now imagine that every month a new crack is added. After a year, what would David look like? What would David be?

Eventually, all those cracks would do more than make the sculpture look flawed. Eventually, all those cracks would so weaken the sculpture it would be very easy to shatter it completely.

Without thinking, without philosophy, we humans are like that: easily cracked, easily shattered, left without will, left without life.

Think about it.

The Blend’s contributing writer for this post is L. Ric Vidale: a member of the four-writers author collective Society of United Literature (nom de plume: Four of SoUL), creating CarAVal -- Caribbean Avant-garde Literature. SoUL’s novels will soon be available for purchase on Amazon.com.

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Strength a thought away

Imagination fired