we have the Coronavirus, hereby called CV and we
have to create some sort of response to this CV…
what responses are possible for us?
my last post was about Philosophy and so that is where
I shall start… Philosophy and CV…
how do we create a philosophical response to CV?
we first of all, explore the traditional areas of philosophy…
the 5 main fields of philosophy…
Epistemology: the study of knowledge, how can we know what we know…
Metaphysics: the study of “reality” that is beyond the scientific or mathematical
realms…
Ethics: the study of moral values…
Logic: the study of right reasoning…
Aesthetics: the study of art and beauty…
There is no obvious point of contact between philosophy and
CV in any of these area’s of study…
perhaps let us try this, what are the various schools/branches in philosophy?
we have, in the 20th century, various schools of thought, such as phenomenology,
existentialism, logical positivism, pragmatism and linguistic turn for examples…
can we find some sort of connection between CV and these branches/schools of
thought?
right off the bat, we can eliminate certain schools, logical positivism
and linguistic turn for example doesn’t apply to our question of what is
our approach to CV……
and we can reject phenomenology as well…
so we are left with pragmatism and existentialism…
pragmatism considers words and thought as tool and instruments
for prediction, problem solving and action and rejects the idea that
the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.
existentialism is the tradition of philosophical enquiry which takes
as its starting point the experience of the human subject, not merely
the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human being……
it seems to me that we could combine the two… we can be
practical and problem solve with some thought about
what we need to do to be safe during this crisis…
but we can also work out the acting, feeling, living human beings
that we are…
The Buddha began with the notion of suffering… we all suffer with
sickness, old age and death… but I say unto you, I don’t see sickness,
old age and death as suffering… I see them as part of the human experience
and necessary parts of the human experience…
we are biology beings… and as such, we are subject to the
trials and tribulations of biology beings… we get sick, we grow old
and we die… that is not suffering, that is existence…part of what
and who we are…
one such response to CV is simple, it is part of existence…
we get sick and it is part of our experiences…that doesn’t mean
we go out and get ourselves sick to experience, no, but it does mean
we don’t have to become fearful or frighten by sickness………
we have forgotten that sickness is a fundamental aspect
of existence. We will get sick in our lives… and there is no
getting around that
the act or our being is about an equation…one of the basic definitions of
life is this: homeostasis which is the tendency toward a relatively stable
equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by
physiological processes…our bodies balance out… that is one working definition
of good health…out bodies have balance, balance in eating and exercise
and weight and work and play and activity and resting and intellectual thought
and physical action…the path to good health is through having balance
in our lives…being sick throws our balance out of whack… we are now
unbalanced… that is being sick…and to return to balance, we
must overcome our illness… we rest, we drink plenty of fluids,
we don’t exert ourselves…we take whatever pills or medicine the
doctor orders and we follow their orders…
now at no point have we gone outside of the human experience…
part of human existence is to maintain balance and failing that,
we become sick… this is not rocket science people…
the seven characteristics of life includes:
responsiveness to the environment;
growth and change;
have a metabolism and breathe;
maintain homeostasis;
being made of cells; and
passing traits onto offspring;
we simply accept the fact that we human beings will get sick…
we simply understand that getting sick is part of the gig of
being human and biological…
we don’t have to go out of our way to become sick although
some people do in fact, go out of their way to become sick…
our current and present response to CV is simply this…
we try to avoid it as best we can
and that being sick is a part of life… an unhappy but also
unavoidable part of life… so what is our philosophical response to
CV?
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Kropotkin