Finding a Philosophy

How do you name your blog? Does there have to be a theme? Should I be continually discussing politics, bikes, beers, or bars (that's for you Lenny)? hmmm...

Someone once told me that the problem with today is that there are no more philosophers. This is surely not true, but I see his point. Too many people are unaware of their own philosophies and how they came to be. This tends to impede the evolution of ideas, a focal point of my own negligible world.

I rememer a specific day-- a specific moment when it clicked in my mind that it was absolutely ridiculous for me, or anyone, to claim to know the truth about anything. This was one of the most liberating realizations, and my life has been more enjoyable ever since. The concept is so simple, so obvious, that it should have occurred to me on my own, but I admit it did not. Rather it was Dr. Mark Johnson who illustrated the concept for me while I was studying at the University of Oregon. He did this by comparing my experience with a blade of grass to that of a snail (bear with me). ''For you,'' he said, ''the grass has a specific set of characteristics. You look down upon it, walk on it, can pick it if you like. To describe the blade of grass as small, something you walk over or cut is, for you, truth. But the snail can never see the grass in this way; for him the grass possesses an entirely different set of characteristics, such as climb-up ability.''

Yes, he actually said climb-up ability. Apparently one of the perks to being a professor is that you get to make up words. Nonetheless, Johnson's very elemetary story was so illuminating for me.''Huh,'' I thought to myself, ''a snail never will understand the grass the way I do.'' In fact, my description would be entirely false as he and I experience the grass differently.

Obviously Johnson was not preparing me for a debate with a snail. He had effectively illustrated the idea of conceptual relativity, to which I have since been wedded. This is not to say that the earth was, in fact, flat 3000 years ago because that is how people experienced it. Rather it is to say that personal experience creates specific realities. And from these we derive our philosophies. I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that I will never know anything for certain, as long as I know why I believe the things I do. And so the following will be the building of a philosophy that I have yet to discover.