Every morning you see them beating the footpaths with the modern mantra, “fit body equals higher quality of life ”. They are also to be seen on the courts like long grass swaying in unison as they practise tai chi or glistening brows and sweaty muscles pounding iron in some gym or other. While this is all well and good if not somewhat disturbing for the couch potato what has happened to the art of healthy meditation?
Fit Bodies Fat Minds is a book written by Os Guinness to stimulate us out of our torpid thinking habits. Aeons ago the wise man Socrates wrote: The unexamined life is not worth living. What did he mean? Is quality of life going to be measured merely in terms of what sort of a trace we leave on a heart monitor? Or will it rather be measured by the impact our life has left on others? Will we be men with great cardio-vascular statistics or as C.S. Lewis wrote: Men without chests?
There is according to William Clifford an obligation, a duty to examine what we believe and why we believe it, a duty to reason: He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it; he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action. (From the book Truth by Simon Blackburn.)
W. E. Sangster reiterates Clifford in this piece: Whatever has been is. Past thought and feeling sink into the subconscious, not to lie forever dormant, but to colour future thought and feeling, and sometimes to rush up with terrible power to effect the will.
Another way of looking at this is to ask- how do we make everyday decisions about everyday matters? Whether we realize it or not each of us has a worldview. A worldview could be described as the sum total of all that we hold both consciously and in the sub-conscious- our total paradigm and from this we draw or rely on to make all our decisions. It is true to say that the closer our worldview is to reality- of how things really are- the more real or authentic our lives will be since all decisions are a reflection of the sum total of our true beliefs. Like it or not a worldview is part of our makeup, everyone has one irrespective of whether it is a view of your own making- through conscious effort- or just something imbibed without thought from the culture we live in.
Of course the trouble is wherever we go we take our baggage with us. How do we minimize subjectivity and maximize objectivity? How do we avoid seeing the world through rose tinted glasses? Or indeed how do we avoid creating a world, which is worse than it actually is? Margaret Wheatley and Kellner Rogers are referring to this problem when they came up with this statement:
'We each create our world by what we choose to notice; creating a world of distinction that makes sense to us. We then 'see' the world through the self we have created.'
Is there really no hope of being objective? What about maths? Surely 2 plus 2 equals 4 in any place at any time and in any language? Is there any hope that not all things are necessarily relative? We live in an age that has all but abandoned the idea of absolutes, truth is what you make it but is only true for you; and what I make to be true for me is equally valued as true, but how can both views be true when they are diametrically opposed? What about language? If you can understand what I am saying (even if it isn’t a perfect understanding) then isn’t there some hope of objective truth. If all things were truly relative (according to each individuals perception of reality) then wouldn’t any real communication be impossible?
According to Peter Berger Sociologist there is hope- and it lies in examining what we believe and if necessary modifying any beliefs that don’t measure up-
Unlike puppets we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first steps towards freedom.
In this he echoes Clifford also, in that we owe it to ourselves, we have a duty to examine our beliefs in the light of reason and thus become freer people.
Stopping in our movements is sometimes the last thing people want to do, especially when it entails some serious introspection- we live in the age of busyness, as some wit once said we have evolved from human beings into human doings! We are a driven generation.
Are there objective standards against which we may measure what we believe? Are there tests against which we may prove our ideas? Is this the realm and aim of philosophy?
How do we come to have our beliefs? Are we hard wired or do our beliefs merely reflect our circumstances and environment? Why do we have beliefs at all, can we not live adequately within the bounds of known facts?
Because life is what it is and we are constituted how we are, we all have beliefs. Life is not always forthcoming with facts but it is always demanding our decisions, consequently many of our decisions are based on our best guess and this is where our beliefs come in. But where do we find the truth? Someone once said,
“ What you believe is determined by why you believe it”
That is to say the things you have chosen to believe are somewhat predetermined by where you choose to look for answers, your pre-existing beliefs have determined what sources of truth you are going to pursue and therefore have a direct influence on what you will come to believe. For example a prejudice against religion will mean you will not look to the Bible or the Q’uran for answers. It also means a prejudice against bias will ensure that you do not acknowledge your preconcieved assumptions and unproven metaphysical claims that are basic to your worldview.
Fit Bodies Fat Minds is a book written by Os Guinness to stimulate us out of our torpid thinking habits. Aeons ago the wise man Socrates wrote: The unexamined life is not worth living. What did he mean? Is quality of life going to be measured merely in terms of what sort of a trace we leave on a heart monitor? Or will it rather be measured by the impact our life has left on others? Will we be men with great cardio-vascular statistics or as C.S. Lewis wrote: Men without chests?
There is according to William Clifford an obligation, a duty to examine what we believe and why we believe it, a duty to reason: He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it; he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action. (From the book Truth by Simon Blackburn.)
W. E. Sangster reiterates Clifford in this piece: Whatever has been is. Past thought and feeling sink into the subconscious, not to lie forever dormant, but to colour future thought and feeling, and sometimes to rush up with terrible power to effect the will.
Another way of looking at this is to ask- how do we make everyday decisions about everyday matters? Whether we realize it or not each of us has a worldview. A worldview could be described as the sum total of all that we hold both consciously and in the sub-conscious- our total paradigm and from this we draw or rely on to make all our decisions. It is true to say that the closer our worldview is to reality- of how things really are- the more real or authentic our lives will be since all decisions are a reflection of the sum total of our true beliefs. Like it or not a worldview is part of our makeup, everyone has one irrespective of whether it is a view of your own making- through conscious effort- or just something imbibed without thought from the culture we live in.
Of course the trouble is wherever we go we take our baggage with us. How do we minimize subjectivity and maximize objectivity? How do we avoid seeing the world through rose tinted glasses? Or indeed how do we avoid creating a world, which is worse than it actually is? Margaret Wheatley and Kellner Rogers are referring to this problem when they came up with this statement:
'We each create our world by what we choose to notice; creating a world of distinction that makes sense to us. We then 'see' the world through the self we have created.'
Is there really no hope of being objective? What about maths? Surely 2 plus 2 equals 4 in any place at any time and in any language? Is there any hope that not all things are necessarily relative? We live in an age that has all but abandoned the idea of absolutes, truth is what you make it but is only true for you; and what I make to be true for me is equally valued as true, but how can both views be true when they are diametrically opposed? What about language? If you can understand what I am saying (even if it isn’t a perfect understanding) then isn’t there some hope of objective truth. If all things were truly relative (according to each individuals perception of reality) then wouldn’t any real communication be impossible?
According to Peter Berger Sociologist there is hope- and it lies in examining what we believe and if necessary modifying any beliefs that don’t measure up-
Unlike puppets we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first steps towards freedom.
In this he echoes Clifford also, in that we owe it to ourselves, we have a duty to examine our beliefs in the light of reason and thus become freer people.
Stopping in our movements is sometimes the last thing people want to do, especially when it entails some serious introspection- we live in the age of busyness, as some wit once said we have evolved from human beings into human doings! We are a driven generation.
Are there objective standards against which we may measure what we believe? Are there tests against which we may prove our ideas? Is this the realm and aim of philosophy?
How do we come to have our beliefs? Are we hard wired or do our beliefs merely reflect our circumstances and environment? Why do we have beliefs at all, can we not live adequately within the bounds of known facts?
Because life is what it is and we are constituted how we are, we all have beliefs. Life is not always forthcoming with facts but it is always demanding our decisions, consequently many of our decisions are based on our best guess and this is where our beliefs come in. But where do we find the truth? Someone once said,
“ What you believe is determined by why you believe it”
That is to say the things you have chosen to believe are somewhat predetermined by where you choose to look for answers, your pre-existing beliefs have determined what sources of truth you are going to pursue and therefore have a direct influence on what you will come to believe. For example a prejudice against religion will mean you will not look to the Bible or the Q’uran for answers. It also means a prejudice against bias will ensure that you do not acknowledge your preconcieved assumptions and unproven metaphysical claims that are basic to your worldview.
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