I went to a philosophy club the other evening. While I have
read or engaged in philosophy discussions on the internet over the years, I’ve
never physically gone to a group. The
topic was on “After-birth abortion". I
will not go into any detail regarding the various positions in this blog post.
This is more of a descriptive account of my experience and a couple thoughts that have emerged from it.
I went in, thinking that I was sufficiently aware of both
sides of the issue: the nebulous concept of personhood and the sanctity of life
endorsed by the pro-life side, and the mother’s rights as well as the
arbitrary, slippery-slope nature of when an abortion was permissible wielded by
those in the pro-choice camp. This was
my superficial thinking anyhow. I was pleasantly amused by the gaping holes in my knowledge
as I listened, transfixed, by quite possibly some of the most scintillating
minds I think I have ever been around.
The room seemed to be pulsing with thought and ideas.
Concepts and thought experiments volleyed back and fourth between participants
with undue ease. I didn’t know that discussions like these were almost akin to
watching a sports event. There was this kind of intense competition between
ideas going on.
For once in my life I felt “at home with my mind”. I really
felt comfortable in this group even though their brightness of mind was orders
of magnitude beyond my own. No one was disparaging or condescending but very
interested in making the points clear and resolving misunderstandings. The
discussion went on smoothly enough for me to follow. There was always a response that clarified a
previous point or teased it out further or one that examined a hidden
assumption in an argument that an individual didn’t know they had.
Over the years I’ve heard plenty of people say, “Discussing
abstract ideas does nothing to help or change society”—but I think this is
where the battle is being fought. What
is going on right now is a war of ideas.
People who choose to simply follow ideas that they haven’t examined—or
worse, people who are apathetic of them—haven’t participated in one of life’s
most valuable experiences—the application of one’s mind. Cue in the famous Socrates quote: “The
unexamined life is not worth living”
The universe is intelligible and that is remarkable
quality. We should make extraordinary
use of this. Furthermore, your time to examine the world that surrounds you is
very short.
Sure, most of us are pathetically ignorant as we consider
all the knowledge that currently exists, but no one person can tackle all ideas
or download all knowledge. It is going to take a lot of us who are interested
in learning or who want to devote our time to some area of research that might
be fundamental to society’s progression.
Couldn’t we suggest that sitting around talking about our
comical drinking binges or the events on a reality television show are LESS
valuable than pursuing a deeper, more nuanced understanding of concepts? I can’t wait to attend more philosophy
discussions.
