The Purpose

Smart students always ask, What's the point of it all?

And if you believe figuring out fundamentals precedes figuring out anything else, this is a good question.

To which I have learned to say, Solving problems. It's really that concise if not that simple. If you think about it, life itself is a problem. Nothing is made FOR you. Ask your religious friends, Why isn't the world good or fair? To which they will make things up and roll their eyes at you because of how dumb you are.

Food does not automatically make it into your stomach.

Think about it, life takes work. Why? Isn't it possible to at least imagine a scenario where things are automatic? I can. What if I woke up everyday and things were given to me, food, exercise, immortality and happiness? Just to put it into concrete terms: Life and happiness require problem-solving to maintain.The result for us is that everything we do in the course of a day is about solving some sort of problem whether we know it or not. So the ability to solve these problems and be successful at it is what we do - that's the point. It's not as simple as it sound when you're doing it, I get that, but when someone asks you, What's the point? You answer, Solving problems. One after the other.

In this context philosophy or "thinking training" is about making you better at solving problems. The first and more primary problem is whether or not there is a problem in general and then a specific problem. If the work of being happy is seen as a task, a problem, then one needs to admit its importance and then diagnose its absence. Do you know any happy people? I don't. I know content people and I know delusional people who say all kinds of inane things, but really, I don't know people who successfully solve life's problems.

The first problem then is, Why don't people admit these are problems? And the answer is simply, If they did, they'd have to fix them. The work of being alive successfully and of being happy is a job. This job, in most people's muddles brains comes automatically, when in fact it requires serious committment. So it makes sense that nobody admits it.

A philosophy teacher has to get this minions to admit that what they are really doing is striving toward something. They are trying to solve things like "free will," "social behavior," and "death." These things are literally a part of everyday life. Without thinking, without addressing these things, the automatic, herd-mentality existence takes over. That's why you seem dumb to everyone. That's why they all roll their car window down and shout, "You're all idiots." Everyone is dumb, including the people calling everyone dumb. It's confusing.