I’ve decided to go ahead and share the 11k primer I wrote. You know, the one I said I’ll never share in the previous post? Yeah that one. You can read it on the Philosophy page. I’ll explain why this change of heart in this post.

But first, let me point out what I think was the biggest flaw in this first version of my philosophy. I’ve been trying to build a system of philosophy that allows a person to rationally align their worldview as close as they can to reality. Then they can figure out how to live and rest assured that they’re living their best life.

In practice, though, one could argue that what I’ve built is a system for rationalizing one’s worldview so that one can start living according to it. Assuming that this is what I’ve done, I don’t think it’s such a big issue at an individual level. For individuals like me, who can’t have faith in anything, using philosophy to talk ourselves into believing our existing views is also an important tool.

The problem arises when the philosophy is applied at the group level. A group can easily say that we’ve got the most rational worldview and therefore we’re right and you’re wrong and if you won’t go along with us, then we’ll have to use our power and violence to persuade you or defeat you, whichever comes first.

This is the postmodern critique of enlightenment thinking and it applies to my enlightenment 2.0 project as well, which probably is just the enlightenment project which I’m rehashing. I’m just not aware of it because I’m not academically trained.

I kept insisting that I’m not preaching anything and everyone is free to follow their own worldview and live how they like but if I keep saying that my way is rationally closest to reality, then the superiority of my view becomes inherent no matter how much I try to plead otherwise.

Instead, what I realized after writing this primer and sitting with it for a while was that perhaps this task that philosophy is supposed to accomplish; to figure out the truth about things that science can’t study; is perhaps impossible.

The reason this issue occurs is because when you try to build logical arguments, you’re not really discovering the truth as much as you’re fortifying your existing views. The part of philosophy that was good at discovering truth, became science. The part that remains is not as capable of discovering truth but might perhaps be able to discover wisdom.

Wisdom might just be the practice of making decisions when we don’t know the truth. So it’s not about sharing my worldview and proving why it’s closest to reality. Instead it should be about figuring out a way to make wise decisions in areas where we don’t know what the truth is.

Wisdom isn’t fixed like truth. You can’t have a database of wisdom and just pick and choose what to do. It’s an active process which everyone has to do on their own and make their own fresh decisions each time. Whether that’s as individuals or as groups.

And wisdom can be achieved from many sources. Simple life experience can make people wise. Meditation, spirituality, religious traditions can all help people make wise decisions.

I even recant my objection against spiritual gurus. When it’s so tough to figure out what the wise decision is, it only makes sense that people opt to consult someone who seems to be wise. That’s at least better than those who don’t bother with trying to be wise at all and just do whatever they want to do in the moment.

I’d only warn people about relying too much on social proof as to who is truly a wise guru because social proof can be unreliable. Once you hit a critical mass of followers, you can take off and everyone thinks that so many people can’t be wrong about this person.

But as far as using philosophy to learn wisdom goes, being rational and trying to build maps of reality that align closely with reality is still an important first step. The problem arises when you start using it as justification for all your actions and try to enforce your worldview on others.

Instead, the wise thing to do might be to see the truth about the world and act accordingly, but let others act according to the map they want to use. Because of my personality, this is the method that best suits me but others can have other methods and there’s nothing wrong with that.

What this means is that the world can never be “saved”. There’ll always be conflict and people being stupid and short-sighted. Humanity’s progress will continue, like it always has, in violent spurts and bursts in between ages of stagnation and drifting.

So that delusional part of my project is over for good. What we can hope for at best is to see the truth about how different groups and individuals are making decisions, both good and bad, (and leave them to it) and how the world is flowing in and out of order and chaos, (and accept our powerlessness regarding it) and then try our best to ride the wave using the method that speaks the most to us.

This is what the version 2 of my philosophy is going to be. I have three main pursuits now:

• Live my life according to version 1 and apply it in my life and see how well, or not, it works.
• Develop version 2 of my philosophy more diligently and slowly as a side project.
• Use my philosophy in my storytelling and use that as my main value creation work as an illustrated storyteller.

And so, I’ve decided to share the version 1 here on the blog while I build the second one. I think it still has value for a new reader to see where I’m coming from. And since I’ll be applying it in my life, for now version 1 is good enough, even though some of its grander visions might be deluded. Eventually though, I hope to replace it with a much better version 2.

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