“Yowza” could be the first impression I had when encountering the subject of Philosophy again. It is a mandatory subject that any post-graduate students are supposed to learn in Vietnam before completing the program. To be honest, Philosophy has never been my favorite subject at school since I found it hard to understand its insights. Also, there are so many schools of thought that I couldn’t absorb and distinguish which one was which one. The obsession that I had been carrying from my university life scared me when I found the subject on the list for this semester. That I have no choices first appeared in my mind and having a sigh came then.
Playing one-by-one video clips and watching them hopelessly can best describe how I looked then. However, the content did not seem much more difficult to understand than the one I learned at university. I listened carefully to each word coming from the lecturer and my excitement gradually formed inside me. I noticed his explanations more and more; I could imagine and link all the stuff I have experienced in life to draw the big picture of the mechanism of the universe around me. “Holy Cow” was shouted from my mouth at the end. My mind changed completely and what has been left in my mind up to now is all around “phenomenon” and “nature”.
I am not an expert in this field, therefore, I am not planning to explain anything further related to the subject. On the contrary, I divert my sharing into my self-reflection session to feel and contemplate the philosophies I have learned from the great men from the East to the West. I will open with the saying of Linus Pauling – “I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific rules.”
Everything is operating with its own mechanism. They have their own rules. The rules that we, humans, should learn to acquire expected knowledge!
What I have learned in this subject is a branch of philosophy called Ontology which consists of Materialism, Idealism, Dualism, and Rationalism. With the concept, the nature of existence is well explained through many famous philosophies. I do not mind much about the arguments that philosophers have been fighting against each other. I just highly pay attention to what excites me and means to me.
As I mentioned above, I do not mean to give any detailed explanations. In contrast, I plan to bring some focal points that I learned into the spotlight in this post.
- I love the core idea of Confucius which is named “Legitimacy“, revolving around the five virtues: Benevolence, Ritual, Righteousness, Wisdom, and Trustworthy. The active engagement of humans is highly focused. (to be moral)
- I love the core idea of Daoism which is called “Wu Wei” or Non-action, emphasizing spontaneity, freedom from rigid conventions, and the importance of adapting to change. In other words, the non-interference of human beings is mainly concentrated. (to be natural)
- I love the core idea of Rationalism which focuses on “reason” as the primary source of knowledge and relies on deductive reasoning. (to be logical)
As far as I am concerned, the rule to acquire wisdom is to be moral, be natural, and be logical as one!
HOW CAN A PERSON BE MORAL, NATURAL, AND LOGICAL AS ONE?
To be honest, I do not believe that there will be accurate ways to do it. It varies from one to one since every single entity in life is not the same. However, you can try the course of action below to acquire wisdom.
- Make yourself well-educated all the time,
- Observe more and Be well aware of Phenomena and Nature of things, and
- Opt for the Logical instead of depending on your sensory derivation.
OPINION 1: Conflicts or Harmony
When you observe things and people around you, you might easily find many conflicts existing and appearing every single day. Anger, hatred, and disorder dominate the harmony at which you are aiming. Why? According to observations, you cannot deny the fact that conflicts come from disagreements on actions to take and/or beliefs. What will come will come. Relevant parties are likely to fight against each other to protect their arguments. What would you do if you were in this context? Be moral, be natural, or be logical?
I used to be told to take 3 steps below to solve any conflicts:
- Ease the anger by accepting the reasoning of the two parties,
- Set up a temporary mechanism to collaborate,
- Forgive and keep moving on for the good.
In my opinion, the suggested steps reflect the virtues that the conciliator has and then apply to bring harmony to life. Firstly, that person must have the ability to understand situations and make sound judgments. Secondly, that person uses his empathy for the reasons given by both sides. Proper manners can promote harmony and conduct the situation in the right way where respect and understanding are highly focused. Obviously, things will be morally right and it becomes the foundation to build trust and maintain the relationship in the coming time.
The virtues will help you well order everything if you can see the true meaning of “RIGHT”.
OPINION 2: Do Nothing or Not Do Anything
There are a lot of arguments about the concepts above “Do Nothing” or “Not do anything”. It is said that they are the same. Actually, they are not the same. If you use your physical eyes to judge what is happening, you might say something similar to the statement above. However, if you can find out the ulterior motive beyond what you can see, you will change your mind. “Do Nothing” means that you are not taking action at the moment, you just let everything go with its natural flow. You respect nature and do not want to interfere since any interference can cause worse damage. By its nature, “Doing Nothing” is an action you choose to take to generate the desired results. To do it, you are supposed to well and deeply understand it from features, phenomena, nature, to mechanisms. On the contrary, “Not Do Anything” means that you do not know what to do properly in the situation. It is definitely different from “Do Nothing”. In other words, “Do Nothing” is a kind of intellect; whereas, “Not Do Anything” symbolizes the shortage of knowledge and understanding.
OPINION 3: Believe the Logic or your Empiricism
I bet that when you grow up and become successful, you will dignify the role of experiences and experience. However, experiences and experience you have had must be influenced by your senses. The sensory derivation might be right or wrong to some extent. Sometimes, you have to deal with dilemmas. What will you do with them? The answer is to believe the logic. Keep calm and find the logic you might have in the situation to help you unravel the mysteries. It doesn’t matter how complicated things are, everything will be revealed with its logic. When you have a splitting headache, stick to the logic because things that are mesmerizing you are just phenomena, not the nature you want.
As you can see, to live happily or to drown yourself in misery is mostly from your wisdom. Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that Fate shuffles the cards and we play!
Hello my friend! I want to say that this post is awesome, great written and come with almost all significant infos. I would like to look more posts like this.
It’s in point of fact a nice and helpful piece of information. I am glad that you shared this useful information with us. Please stay us up to date like this. Thank you for sharing.