Mighty Minds

It's weird, when you've been awake for a long time, past that "auto-pilot" period, everything starts to feel fake. Everything feels synthetic here...well, almost everything. It's almost like just because everything else feels like a lie my thoughts (which I know are the only undeniable truth, thanks Descartes) feel potent, organic, and saturated with knowledge. Maybe that's just me. I walk through life most days without a single audible thought going through my head. When I say audible I don't mean out loud, I mean a thought in my head that I can hear. There's no inner monologue, unless I try to either have an inner monologue or try not to. Generally I have a quiet mind. It's not because I'm dense or slow, actually I'm not really sure why it is...this is all I really know. One thing I like about this is the absence of all the noise that so many people seem to deal with. If I want to have a thought I fucking have it man, no screwing around. It's there, and my attention is on it. I think that's why I love philosophy. I love asking questions with infinite answers; I love asking questions with no answers. (Sometimes those are the same question). It's frustrating and exciting. I've been doing this for as far back as I can remember. I honestly remember sitting in a car seat in the backseat of my mom's car looking out the window deep in thought. I'm talking deep. Just watching the tall light posts float by. They seemed so tall back then. Racing over overpasses, billboards whizzing by, some 90's alternative band (probably Collective Soul or something like that) playing on the radio. The thoughts are obscure and hard to remember, but they were heavy, ya know, those cliche philosophy questions: "Why am I here?" "Where did I come from?" "What am I?". That's why I feel so drawn to philosophy. I get so lost in it, and for a few moments only my thoughts exist. I love it.
This is my last blog entry for my honors philosophy class. I will probably keep up with my blog after this, but honestly, knowing me, I might not. This being my final entry I want to reflect on the class, because it was such a joy. The great thing about the honors program is the fact that the classes are small, personal, and discussion based. This class basically locked a bunch of completely different people up in a room for a few hours per week and let there minds run the with topics given (within the bounded discourse defined by our fearless leader of course). It is seriously like no experience I have ever had. I have lost more sleep over this class than any other class I have taken, spent more time reading, actually did homework for once in my life, why? Because I wanted to dammit!
My professor calls us her "mighty minds". I remember the first few classes I left with my head spinning. My once quiet mind was flowing and flooded with new thoughts, I started buying books, Aristotle's Metaphysics, The Republic of Plato, The Critique of Pure Reason by Kant, Tao Te Ching. And here's the amazing thing: I have actually applied what I learned to my life.
I have intelligent discussions with friends outside class over a cup of coffee or in between jam sessions. Big discussions on God, the universe, fate, ethics, karma, music, reality. Why? Because this class opened up my mind and made me question everything. Literally. Descartes posed the idea that the only thing unquestionable is our actual minds! That was one of our first reading assignments and I'm still hung up on that!
I must admit, at times I feel the discussions in class turned more towards arguments, sometimes heated, sometimes judgmental, and often times I thought these arguments were trivial. I thought people lost sight of the big picture. So many ideas were flowing at once, bouncing off each other in that small room, but eventually making it onto the whiteboard (as long as Professor McKinney could keep up). Honestly though, I realize now that's what it's all about. We're young. We won't really get a chance like this again. How many people get to sit in a room and just discuss things, interesting and constantly relevant things, for a few hours a week? After this we'll just graduate, hopefully get a job, have families, and just sit and reflect while driving through rush hour traffic on the thoughts that are still flowing through our heads from a class discussion that happened years ago.

Aristotle, Plato, Mill, Kant, and Descartes would all be stoked about this class. Not because people are still talking about their crazy ramblings, but because we are making new points, reflecting on our own thoughts. Aristotle and Plato would love this because it's a quest for enlightenment. We're searching for the good in the world. We're striving to broaden our subjective views and get out of the cave. Mill would find joy in this because as an individual we find happiness through this discussion. We're posing new ideas with their roots in helping the whole, giving the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of people. If this blog entry gets read by 5, 10, 15 people, and they reflect on the ideas, and find joy then we did something right. Kant would just be down with the fact that we're searching for answers, questioning the way things are done, and looking at the big picture many times, for philosophy truly is universal. Descartes would just be excited that all this thought is surging around, that these minds are humming, although he might just question it all and blame it on some malevolent demon.

All I can say now is thank you, sincerely. Thank you for reading. Thank you for thinking. Thank you for being.