If you were thrust onto a deserted desert isle with nothing but your physical self, how could you expect to survive against the instincts, strength, and weapons of the island's predators? Indeed, what can each of us rely on for our survival? We are at once both the weakest of animals and the most fearsome. Only the power of our minds and our wills makes us the most adaptable of all of earth's creatures. But what informs and shapes our minds and our wills? I believe that it's our personal philosophy.
Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum), the great 21st-century thinker, once said "
"Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that ecologists envision, i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears. In that sense, man is the weakest of animals: he was born naked and unarmed, without fangs, claws, horns, or instinctual knowledge. Physically, he would fall an easy prey, not only to the higher animals but also to the lowest bacteria: he is the most complex organism and, in a contest of brute force, extremely fragile and vulnerable. His only weapon, his basic means of survival, is his `mind."
Ayn Rand developed the philosophical system known as "Objectivism: the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and REASON as his only absolute."
Contemporary writer Vasko Kohlmayer recently wrote, "The great battle of our time is a battle about the very nature of reason and reality. More precisely, what the contemporary war is over on the most fundamental level is what constitutes truth and how it should be determined."
Is it possible for there to be multiple truths? It is often said that "you should speak your own truth." So which is it: an absolute truth or a relative one?
This conflict is as old as time. Monimus the Cynic, 4th century BC philosopher, once said, "Everything is as you take it to be." This is synonymous with speaking your own truth. In some respects, Nihilism as a philosophy is aligned with this. The Stoic philosophers countered this by turning these words back on themselves.: if everything is only as an individual takes it to be, then his assertion applies only to himself, not to others.
Our minds are what separates us from other creatures. Our minds can rationalize and reason so that we can all agree on what is real—rejection of these absolute truths conflicts with human nature. To be in conflict is to be out of alignment and incongruent. These are timeless philosophies that have weathered challenges. It's why you've never heard of Monimus the Cynic, and you have heard of Socrates. The timelessness of the Socratic Method (asking questions, always) is evident everywhere there is reasoned thinking.
The Socratic method (i.e., rigorous questioning technique)
- Designed to "sting" people into realizing their own ignorance
- Provoke genuine intellectual curiosity
- True knowledge is gained only by constantly questioning assumptions that underlie all we do
- To achieve truth is to engage in a permanent state of critical thinking
Our mind's most incredible tool then is philosophy. What you align yourself to, philosophically, is at the core of your every motivation and action. Understanding and refining your personal philosophy is a lifelong endeavor. It is one which high-performers are consistently exercising and testing throughout their lives. Using the Socratic Method, we continually question and test our underlying assumptions and motivations. Then, to develop the courage to realize our ignorance, well, this is at times the most challenging thing to do, particularly if it challenges the philosophy we've created.
We all have a philosophy. Some of us can point to it and name it. Mine has been informed by the Stoics, Socrates, Jesus, Milton Friedman, John Locke, Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Judith Sargent Murray, and others. I like to think of this greatest tool of our minds as a blade. We can hone the edge of our philosophy by studying other philosophers and other people. What are you doing to sharpen your blade?
Marcus Aurelius said:
"What, then, can escort us safely on our way? Only one thing: philosophy. This consists in keeping the guardian spirit within us safe from assault and harm, never swayed by pleasure or pain, purposeful when it acts, free from dishonesty or dissemblance, and never dependent on action or inaction from anyone else. It also consists in accepting what happens, the lot one has been assigned, as coming from the same source as oneself, and in always awaiting death with a serene mind, understanding that it's no more than the disintegration of the elements of which every living creature is a compound. If there's nothing unusual in the elements themselves changing moment by moment one into another, why should the alteration and disintegration of them all be a cause for anxiety? It's in accord with nature, and nothing that's in accord with nature is bad."
Be well, dear Reader.
