I’m reflecting today.

I’m always trying to sift through the universe and try to understand things. But, generally, just when I think I’ve gotten close to grasping onto a Thing that makes absolute sense, it tends to slip through my fingers. Like sand.

I wonder why this is so difficult. I look to other people, people who speak in absolutes, people who present themselves with confidence, and I wonder what makes them different from me.

Have they figured something out that I haven’t, yet? Or am I just brave enough to admit that I don’t understand, where most people see cluelessness as a weakness that must be concealed?

I feel like it’s never just one reason.

In the very earliest days of philosophy, great thinkers were often spectacularly incorrect about the nature of the universe. This did not stop them from spending a great deal of time trying to get nearer to the truth.

Since nobody actually knew what was going on, there was this whole mess of different ideas about how the world worked, where it came from, what it was made of. Everybody had a slightly different perspective.

Often, thinkers influenced one another’s thoughts. They could either adopt pieces of other perspectives, or they could be critical of other viewpoints and reject the pieces that didn’t make sense in favor of their own propositions. Usually, both of these things happened.

Sometimes you had thinkers who lived far away, on other continents. You had thinkers who were isolated on islands and surrounded by lots of other people who didn’t enjoy philosophy very much.

The isolated philosopher would invent new ideas, untouched by the influence of others.

When many different ideas formed in far away places came together for the first time, there was often quite a lot of bickering about who was right.

Wars have been fought over this shit.

But sometimes, rarely, people who believe different things and have different cultures learn how to live side by side and respect one another’s existence. They learn a little, from each other, too.

Wish this would happen more often than it does.

Even in the midst of all of the bickering, there were some people who stuck with one of the basic tenants of philosophy, which is an odd mix of critical thinking and compromise.

Here is something a philsopher might say:

“Even as I recognize the excellent elements of an idea, it’s also up to me to look at it critically and work out what doesn’t make sense. It’s up to me to either consider alternative perspectives or come up with my own alternatives. And then it’s up to me, informed as I am by two or more perspectives, to decide what I think is approximately true.”

We’re probably never going to be able to grasp the truth in its entirely because we’re fundamentally limited, and we don’t an infinite amount of time.

But this shouldn’t stop us from trying.

It shouldn’t stop me from trying.

I don’t want to devote my entire life to thinking like this, because it is exhausting. I don’t want to fill up my head with the purpose of life or the nature of the gods.

But also… knowing how to think this way has value. It’s applicable in every aspect of my life. Whereever there is discomfort, whereever two apparently opposing things are trying to coexist, knowing how to think like this is useful.

Right now I’m trying to apply this way of thinking to my own political perspectives. I’m trying to decide if I can call myself an activist in good faith. I see so much value in the insights from the left, but there’s also – cult thinking, and narrow-mindedness, and pressure to respond to everything in a very specific way.

And I need to figure out how to adopt the things I belive to be really quite excellent without absorbing the things that feel toxic and wrong.

I believe there is a way to do this. Thinking for myself, trusting myself, not giving too much of my power away feels like a good place to start. I am also borrowing open-ended question asking, from my experience as a tutor, and adding that the list of things that might help me in this process.

The world is unfinished, still raw and rough and a bit wobbly, and there are deep scars in so many places. It needs work. It needs healing. Even in my lowest moments, when I feel sooo far away from being good enough, I still want to help.

And I want to help in a way that doesn’t completely flatten me. I’m still afraid of being uncomfortable. While I’m willing to stretch, I need to make sure I don’t break.

I have some of the tools that I need in order to do this work in my pockets. And it’s comforting.

I hope it’s an excellent Friday.

🖤