Just about every philosophy is like a swivel chair. With our basic thoughts we can stay in the same place while we take different positions. Take a typical stand on protecting the very nature of the places where we live as an example.
We want clean water, clean air, and clean land. But then there’s that troubling stuff we call garbage, the excess of what we acquire, and the old worn out stuff, the once-useful-but-now-useless material that clutters our lives. We just can’t keep it around. It gets in the way of the new stuff we acquire. Also, there’s that stuff we need to produce energy for travel. We burn it, but in doing so, we produce something else for which we have little personal use, the particles and gases released during combustion. Even if we think that driving an electric car makes this “stuff” a personal nonissue, we have to face two basic questions: Where does the electricity come from? Where do the old batteries go? We can argue that we want to get around, that super-mobility is the mark of modern civilization. The pollutants are just a necessary evil. Take, too, our position on what it means to be a “civilized people”: We pride ourselves on personal hygiene. Cleanliness is next to… well, it might not be next to godliness, but it certainly allows us to be next to one another. What should we do with that water we used? We want clean water, but, except for a few who go through great expense and effort, we don’t really know how to use water and clean it within the confines of our properties. Our philosophy of a “sustainable environment” runs up against the necessities or the practices in our daily lives. Entropy tells us that we can't use something and still have it, but our philosophy of place is that complete sustainability is a reasonable and achievable goal.
Yes, we swivel. We stay in the same place intellectually, but change positions with regard to our own actions. Let someone else solve the problem, someone on a fixed chair. Trouble with that reasoning: Everyone is on some kind of swivel chair with regard to a philosophy of any kind: Environmental, educational, or axiological.
Swiveling isn’t necessarily bad, of course. It might be the only way we can philosophize about anything. No system is perfect, and, as others before me have noted, many philosophies are contradictory if they are carried out to their logical end. But even if we believe we have a great philosophy to sit on, one that is as substantial as the steps of the Parthenon, we find that putting our beliefs into action, into behavior, suddenly changes our position in some way.
Swiveling might even be a necessary aspect of human intelligence that ensures survival on an ever-changing planet. We might, quite by accident, turn the chair to a perspective we never had, one that seems to make sense until we swivel again.
We want clean water, clean air, and clean land. But then there’s that troubling stuff we call garbage, the excess of what we acquire, and the old worn out stuff, the once-useful-but-now-useless material that clutters our lives. We just can’t keep it around. It gets in the way of the new stuff we acquire. Also, there’s that stuff we need to produce energy for travel. We burn it, but in doing so, we produce something else for which we have little personal use, the particles and gases released during combustion. Even if we think that driving an electric car makes this “stuff” a personal nonissue, we have to face two basic questions: Where does the electricity come from? Where do the old batteries go? We can argue that we want to get around, that super-mobility is the mark of modern civilization. The pollutants are just a necessary evil. Take, too, our position on what it means to be a “civilized people”: We pride ourselves on personal hygiene. Cleanliness is next to… well, it might not be next to godliness, but it certainly allows us to be next to one another. What should we do with that water we used? We want clean water, but, except for a few who go through great expense and effort, we don’t really know how to use water and clean it within the confines of our properties. Our philosophy of a “sustainable environment” runs up against the necessities or the practices in our daily lives. Entropy tells us that we can't use something and still have it, but our philosophy of place is that complete sustainability is a reasonable and achievable goal.
Yes, we swivel. We stay in the same place intellectually, but change positions with regard to our own actions. Let someone else solve the problem, someone on a fixed chair. Trouble with that reasoning: Everyone is on some kind of swivel chair with regard to a philosophy of any kind: Environmental, educational, or axiological.
Swiveling isn’t necessarily bad, of course. It might be the only way we can philosophize about anything. No system is perfect, and, as others before me have noted, many philosophies are contradictory if they are carried out to their logical end. But even if we believe we have a great philosophy to sit on, one that is as substantial as the steps of the Parthenon, we find that putting our beliefs into action, into behavior, suddenly changes our position in some way.
Swiveling might even be a necessary aspect of human intelligence that ensures survival on an ever-changing planet. We might, quite by accident, turn the chair to a perspective we never had, one that seems to make sense until we swivel again.
RSS Feed