I was thinking about preparing
this blog a couple of days ago and I had a really nice intro prepared in my
head and do you think I can remember any of it?
The summation was, however, that philosophy is important in our lives. How I came to that conclusion was roundabout
(as always) but it was making sense in my head.
That was at 2 a.m. so perhaps that is why I am not recalling any
brilliance of mind this morning.
Whether a person reads or is merely an observer of people
and life, philosophy does come in to play even though you may not think that
you are being philosophical. But when
you make a statement such as “people are funny” you are observing the nature of
people. If you say “life isn’t fair” or “the
rich get richer and the poor get poorer” they may sound like clichés but they
are also an observation about the nature of things. People have pondered the world since time
immemorial and eventually it boils down to a subject they have named “philosophy”.
I only took one course of philosophy in university but it
was a full year course. From the first
day I noticed a kind of pretension in the language that was used and how
quickly students parroted the vocabulary of the professor. But what did it really mean? I had a similar experience with Russian
history as I found a certain idiom was used in that class and yet it all came
down to something very vague. It worked
out very well for me because I could write in vague terms also and ended up
with an A but I was very unsatisfied with my Russian class. I quite enjoyed my philosophy class and I did
learn a lot despite poking fun (in my mind) at the language.
The point of this is that I am reading Walden and I see the
same roundabout language coming through.
At the same time I also see a sense of humour that reminds a little of
Mark Twain and John Steinbeck. But what
I seem to get out of Thoreau is that he doesn’t like control, particularly
governmental control. I certainly
sympathize with him there. I see this
conflicted attitude in America; where on one hand they want to feel free as
individuals but at the same time they are cramped in their thinking. It’s a curious state of being.
January stretches ahead of me and I think tomorrow will
be an anecdote kind of day. Stay tuned!
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