Philosophers are the creators and the destroyers of worlds! For words lead to worlds. It is they who have created the concepts and the ideas which comprise the Reality and the realities by which we live and act. It is they who will destroy the present ones and provide the new. It is they who have, do and will continue to provide the modus operandi for the various segments of the human race, namely language and language systems. For there is no escape from Reality for human beings, being born with intellect (Sin in ancient language) and both enjoying and suffering its machinations and its impact on Actuality.
It must be noted however that "philosophers" does not mean "professional philosophers" or "academic philosophers" or "credentialed philosophers" with training, paper records and documents to prove, against all actual evidence, that they ARE philosophers. These documents and guarantees refer only to the "concept of philosopher" and intimidate or even coerce a society to recognize them as REAL philosophers, philosophers in REALITY, due compensation for their work. These have been more accurately referred to as the philosophologists. They usually read, study and comment upon the philosophies of others, creating little other than extended logics on their own.
No! By the term "philosopher" I mean ACTUAL PHILOSOPHERS, people who actually philosophize. These are characterized by what they do, not what they conceptually ARE. These are people who, by the nature of their being and the evolved or developed nature of their mentation, philosophize. They attempt to use language to describe or explain the non-physical world of experience. That is, they are natural metaphysicians, psychoanalysts and phenomenologists. They actually try to make experience intelligible by interpreting and translating it into conception and symbolic language. And there is no way to true philosophy other than through the study of the phenomena of one's own mind. For there is no other available for study.
These phenomena, the entire spectrum of mental, psychic, and experiential phenomena, will provide the ground of all subsequent phenomena such as being, knowledge, existence, understanding, perception, apprehension, realization, conception and symbolic language. For these too are phenomena, but extended, derivative and composite phenomena, dependent on earlier and more primary, fundamental phenomena. Hopefully, these lead to what we call comprehension and wisdom. And while the sciences have proved that the physical world, the world of physical sensations interpreted "as matter", "as material" and "as objects in motion", are most readily amenable to description and explanation via intellectual conception and symbolic language, the question remains: to what extent are metaphysical phenomena amenable to being expressed, understood, described and explained by this intellectual language?
In my opinion, the greatest of all philosophers are the Theologians. These create ideas and concepts "about" THE GREATER POWER. These establish our attitudes and these attitudes evolve into our philosophies which determine our relationships with the very world around us. These ideas develop our sense of respect toward the world and our sense of place in the universe. These, of course, also create some of the most beautiful and, at the same time, some of the most of the nonsensical concepts about the nature of THE GREATER POWER. No one says that all philosophers are good or correct or that philosophologists cannot be good or correct. A sheepherder or cowboy are as likely to have insight into profound truths and to couch them well or attractively into analogy, conception or simple but profound symbolic language as a documented philosopher or trained theologian.. In fact, they are more likely to do so simply, clearly and well, being unconfused by overintellectualization and too much language training. They have more love for the truth of experience and less love for language than the habituated intellectuals of the world. Buddha, Moses and Jesus are, of course, the greatest examples of this phenomenon.
The expedient philosophers, called the Secular Philosophers, are those who create the language systems, the concepts and metaphors by means of which we deal with the material world about us. For matter and material, which derive from the word 'mater', are the mother of all experience. These secular philosophers do so expediently, for purposes of understanding, survival, gain, pleasure, dream-fulfillment etc. These are the scientists, physicians, engineers and others of their ilk dedicated to making actual life on this earth more according to OUR desires. These help us on our natural quest for a painless, easy existence devoid of conflict and fear where every need and every whimsical desire is easily satisfied by a simple phone call, command or gesture. These assist nature in its drive for the conservation of energy, for efficiency. These are "for progress" where every man has everything that one can even think of, right while sitting in his TV chair, his motion restricted to eyeball muscles and a finger which pushes a button ordering up the latest 'need'. These secular philosophers created the concept of 'money' and 'money in the bank' to grease the slides of efficiency and expediency.
These philosophers create the products and tools of existence which make life easier and happier. These create the conceptual corporations which carry out the actions necessary to achieve the satisfaction of all needs in addition to all whimsical desires. And these create the concepts which lead to their own destruction. Their linear thoughts extend only to the moment when the happy consumer tears open the package anticipating the use of the new product with that little smile on his face and satisfaction of purchase in his heart. These do not think beyond that lovely moment to the environmental impact of industries which bring us desired and fascinating but ultimately worthless products. These linear thinkers terminate their thought at the moment of success and do not see beyond to the ultimate results of their 'thinking'. These are the naively educated (in fact, only trained), scientists who lovingly bring us Frankensteins with pig's hearts beating in their chests and baboon livers producing their body chemistries. And no doubt, they would replace you with improved monkey brains if they could do it, all to assist you in your cowardly urge to "live forever", to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever like God. These SECULAR PHILOSOPHERS, our lovely scientists, the heartless lovers of mankind, consciously plan the steel machines, the rubber tubes and the plastic lines which will be jammed into your every orifice at the last moments of life. And if there is no orifice, one will be created through some pointed barb or other, all to help you - and to justify billing, of course! Certainly, none of us would do away with them even if we could, would we? For most of us are the same by nature and we encourage their actions by our own foolishness. Truly, who ever 'needed' electric lights which brought us all of the horrors associated with 'nightlife'? Who truly 'needed' telephones which now remove our privacy, peace and silence and make us available to all others at any hourt at their whimsical impulses, whether to sell or to chat? Who truly 'needed' the automobile which gave us this uncanny mobility and resulted in a nation of alienated milling strangers without community or soul? Who 'needed' TV, radio, movies which has made every farmer's daughter subject to the allure and immorality of big cities and our sons crazy with violence, craving for excitement and thrill.
We should not be too harsh on them. After all, the trap is all too easy to understand after one is snared by it and then has the time to study it from within. They are only human, ALL TOO HUMAN, in fact. Or not human enough! And here explodes another profound CORRECTNESS. Truth buried in paradox, that we are both ALL TOO HUMAN AND NOT HUMAN ENOUGH, at once.
Needless to point out, the paradox is dependent upon the ambiguous use of the term "human". The paradoxical statement means that we are all too human IN THAT WE ARE BORN WITH INTELLECT AND NATURALLY USE IT IN THE WAY SECULAR AND PROFESSIONAL PHILOSOPHERS DO USE IT. And, at the same time, we are not human enough IN THAT WE HAVE BECOME CREATURES OF LOGOS MENTATION, CREATURES OF CONCEPTUAL THOUGHT AND SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE AND ARE NO LONGER CREATURES OF THE HEART, OF HUMAN FEELING, OF HUMANITY. We have now become intellectualized creatures of conception, graphs, charts and prose rather than creatures of imagination, myth, metaphor and poetry.
For the most part, the true philosophers themselves do not know who they are. They probably do not think of themselves "as" philosophers. They perhaps have never much used the term, asked what it means, or related it to themselves, or studied philosophical writings etc. But by doing what they do, they inadvertenly stir the world, create the words and the worlds, and provide the work. It is they who will give us our new understanding of the Universe, which is to say of What-Man-Calls-God. For this is the cornerstone of our attitude and of all subsequent knowledge, understanding, perception, conception and behavior towards the entire world. And we must begin with the attitudes of AWE, WONDER, REVERANCE, HONESTY, HUMILITY AND RESPECTFULNESS. From the right attitudes, the world of 'heaven' is created.
A. Iosue
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