I want to find the answers, but answers to what?
some like Descartes believe that philosophy is about finding
certainty and if I follow Descartes in searching for certainty, I miss
the other stuff that is just as important as the search for certainty like
searching for meaning and if I am searching for certainty and searching
for meaning, I miss other stuff that is just as important which is how am I
to live my life, ethics,
in other words, if I search for the parts, I miss the whole and if
I search for the whole, I miss the parts…I can never
satisfactorily approach either the parts of philosophy or
approach the whole of philosophy…
by necessity, I must narrow my search in such a way, that I
get the answers I am looking for but, and this is a big but,
I will never be able to understand or comprehend either the whole
or the parts… I will understand small slices of philosophy but
I will never reach either a big understanding or a number of small understandings
of philosophy…
so, how do I solve this problem?
I don’t because I can’t…
I must on some level accept or know or understand that
I will never find all the answers I am looking for…
as it were, I must leave some truths on the table and walk away…
I cannot ever learn all the truths I want to learn…
and that is a shame… the best I can ever do is connects some small dots
on a very large puzzle and hope someone later uses that connection to
connect even more dots and someone after that builds upon our work
and connects even more dots…and in time, more and more of the puzzle we
call life will become clearer and clearer… larger and larger aspects of the puzzle
will become understandable and someday, far into the future, it will become clear
to someone who will finally connects all the dots and this puzzle of life will become
understandable…
what is your contribution to the solution of the puzzle of life?
Kropotkin