Tag: philosophy

You – the New Monarch

~ Rick Bolstler ~ 1 Comment

In previous posts, I’ve explored the topic of politics, the governing of a society. Politics is one of the major branches of philosophy, one in which few of us are properly educated. Looking at politics and government as its basic purpose, it’s all about deciding the rules by which our society is governed and who enforces the rules. In one of my earliest posts,  A Code of Obedience I put forward the idea of ending the bullying derived from following such a code. Before I get in to elaborating on that, let’s review our current system of governing as seen through the metaphor of The Game of Thrones, the one depicted in the TV series of that title. Early in the series, there’s a scene in which two of the rulers, Cersei Lannister and Eddard Stark, are engaging in a conversation about their world. “When you play the game of thrones you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

For the rulers, it’s win or lose, but for the rest of us, it’s lose or lose. Meekly obey or die. As we live our lives, we seldom see this side of our society. More accurately, we seldom look at what’s going on. We engage in the day-to-day activities that make up our lives; we get up each morning, make breakfast, go to work, talk with our workmates, have lunch, come home, eat dinner, watch some tv. Where’s the obedience in all that? We’re doing what we want – right?

But what if we look at what we do and don’t do through the rules imposed upon us by our rulers? Suddenly we find a collection of mind-boggling arbitrary set of things we’re permitted to do and things we are not, and the possible consequences of defying that. Let’s look at one story, that of Eric Garner, approached by New York policemen for selling single cigarettes. Eric didn’t meekly obey. You can take in the details of his story with this link from the Sydney Morning Herald or this link to the video of the gang of cops beating up on him. Why was he confronted in the first place? Possibly selling cigarettes illegally.

Or this one of Walter Scott being shot in the back as he runs away. His crime was driving with a defective brake light. Here is wiki on the incident.

Or one closer to home, this Melbourne story of police shooting at a curfew breacher. This scofflaw was lucky and lived to break another law another day.

Selling single cigarettes, driving with a defective brake light, disobeying curfew. The list of silly and arbitrary laws is endless. What we don’t stop to consider is that each one comes with a possible death penalty for disobedience. From this point of view, who would want to play the game of life in a society such as that? Not I.

Now let’s imagine the game of life played in A World of Honour – A Game of Honour. A Game of Honour is represented best as a playing field, like that of a soccer, baseball or cricket field. It’s level and equal for all players. It’s got one rule – do no harm, and every player in the game has agreed to it. I don’t think that most of us think of life as a game. A game is for fun. Most games we play we try to win, but most of us don’t take losing too seriously. Does it take much to look at life as a game, playing to win but not taking losing too serious? Isn’t most of each day spent in just such a game? Don’t we go through each day as a player making up the target we’re striving for on our own, without a policeman looking over our shoulder each moment? Perhaps we’re already playing A Game of Honour but not aware of it?

Think for a minute. Some of the common games that all of us play in life could be simply career, friends, hobbies, home, special someone, family and so on. Don’t each of us play these games now calling the shots, already being the monarch of those calls, not looking over our shoulder for some bossy meddler telling us how to live?

If I look back over my life I can see that I’ve chosen my major decisions without the need to submit a form to some overseer for approval. When I was 21 I chose to work for IBM and agreed to move to Ottawa where the job was. Later I moved to Toronto, then quit my job with IBM and moved to Vancouver, met and married Heather, had two children, left Canada and moved to Australia. Except for the move to Australia, all the decisions were made with only the approval and consent of those involved in the decisions. I didn’t go to Mum or Dad to ask permission to work for IBM. That was a decision for only IBM and me to make. Isn’t that how you play your life, how most people everywhere, even those living under a harsh dictator, live their lives?

Yes there were moments when one of the rulers of my country interfered with my choices. Each of my paycheques had a withholding tax included, money taken from me without my consent. I’m forbidden from having a glass of wine or bottle of beer while on a picnic in a public park, and sometimes it’s ok, but it’s never up to me. When I go back and forth between Canada and Australia, I can’t freely take numerous products without declaring them to some official. I’ve had numerous moments similar to that of Walter Scott mentioned before, but wisely chose to go along with the demands of the officer rather than go to war. It wasn’t until 1971 in Toronto when conversations with fellow IBMer, Reg Jacklin, lead me to begin questioning the necessity to have a ruler. I had never thought of the prime minister of Canada as being my ruler. After all, we lived in a democracy and we are all equal. Sure we are. But as I discovered over the years since, we are not. Those in positions of power have different rules as to how they are to be treated. See this for what’s going on in the U.S. re the president being immune from civil liabilities.

For me it begs the question, who would ever play a game in which some of the players had an advantage, not because of being better at the game, but because the rules dictated it? Yet that’s what we have with every and any system of government ever. And think about it, why would you or anyone want a monarch? A king? A czar? A president? A master?

For over 50 years I have lived knowing that I am my own ruler, that I call the shots in my life. I’m aware that I live in a society in which governments think that governing means telling me what to do with my life and should I attempt to contradict their rulings, they will use whatever force is necessary to demand my compliance. I choose to avoid dealing with such people as much as I can.

If you haven’t already done so, I invite you to take on the position of monarch in your life. Live your life as King Charles of England does today, without a ruler. Dare I say it, as an anarchist, someone without a ruler. It’s your life, isn’t it?

Just Three Things

~ Rick Bolstler ~ Leave a comment

I may have opened up a can of worms in an earlier post, Artificial Intelligence. I linked adulthood with mastery of the fundamentals of philosophy. I doubt that many of us could even give a reasonable definition of metaphysics or epistemology, let alone elaborate on their personal practices in those disciplines. Something I adopted a long time ago to address being able to manage complex subjects was reducing the topic to three things, what I call a triad. Maybe I was inspired to take this approach from childhood when seeing the warning sign on 76th avenue at the railroad tracks: Stop  Look Listen.

That one’s pretty close to the one I grew up with..

When coming up with A World of Honour, I could see a need for using such an approach to a complicated topic. I put forth A Code of Honour: do no harm, everything by agreement, and be your word as something simple and easy to understand. Now I can see another simple triad to allow access to a deep study of the branches of philosophy that I mentioned. Try this on:

  1. Be self-governing – Politics
  2. Be your own boss – Economics
  3. Be knowledgeable – Epistemology

But before continuing with this theme, I want to refresh our memories as to the why behind all this. I’m proposing this new triad to combat a problem we face, a problem that I previously called The Biggest Problem Facing Mankind: the biggest problem facing mankind is resolving conflicts between one’s feelings and one’s thinking.

I submit that this biggest problem exists for each of us. I’ve been facing this biggest problem since I wrote that post over a year ago. And still I struggle. As I’m writing these words, 2023 is coming to an end. Looking back on this year, I notice that I wrote six posts, one every two months. I could put forth a few scathing adjectives about my progress, but I’ll use a simple one: inadequate. In 2024 I intend to do better. I’ll begin by committing to two posts per month, one by the 15th and one by the end of the month.

So back to this post. Philosophy and the three branches of it that I’m addressing are not part of any rite of passage that I went through. While I think that I have a reasonable grasp of those branches, the grasp lives for me as a abstraction, impractical for me in day-to-day living. I created this new triad to assist me in being my word, in walking my talk. I’ll be using my life and my challenges to demonstrate how I’ll intend to use this triad to resolve the conflict between my feelings and my thinking.

Be self-governing – Politics

This is the domain in which my feelings seem to rule my thinking. Like writing my blog posts. You would think this should be easy. I mean all there is to do is to sit at a computer or a pad of paper and write. Anyone can do it. What’s the problem? Well for me the problem is this little niggle in the background, leaving me with a feeling if put into words that might be, “I’m not up to this! It’s too hard. I can’t do it”, and then I’d go and play a game of Sudoku. Feelings 1 – thinking 0. Wherever in my life I have something to do that I said I should do but I’m not doing it, I can always find a feeling that gets in my way. I keep forgetting that I’m the Pope and that I govern my life.

Be your own boss – Economics

This is similar to Who’s the Pope but I’ll keep this domain to earning money. I always thought that being my own boss meant going into business for myself, but what if it’s more than that? What if it’s more of an attitude you take into going out into the world, something like how do I earn my way in the world? Be your own boss would then include any method you take on to pay your way in the world. It would certainly include working for someone and being an employee. You and your employer set up an agreement. You work together. You do something to fulfill your agreement. Your employer pays you to fulfill on the other side of the agreement. Both sides simply keep their word. Do we ever think of it that way? I never did until thinking of this post. I always saw this as an either/or situation. I either work for myself or I work for someone else. I doubt if that thinking was unique to me.

Be knowledgeable – Epistemology

I deliberately left this topic for last. I think it’s the most important subject for a human being to master, that this topic, whether we call it epistemology, knowledge or anything else, is what defines us. We are what we know. And it’s much more than just what we know. It includes how we gathered together our knowledge. It includes how we connect our logic to what we know, how we think about what we think. It includes much more than I can ever put into one thousand posts let alone one short paragraph. I know for example that you, dear reader, have adequate knowledge to understand everything that I’ve said. I know that you might agree with me, might disagree with me or might be uncertain about whether you agree or not. I also know that those three options cover all three options not only for this topic but also for any topic that we choose to address. Agreeing with you or not is not really the point. When I think something, I can check: how do I know that? Can I prove that? Am I sure of that? Again, way too much for this short paragraph. Knowledge is critical. We live or die by that.

Which leads me into connecting those grandiose assertions to my earlier triad: do no harm, everything by agreement, and be your word. What do we do when we disagree on something? There’s a spectrum of actions that we can undertake when disagreeing, with go to war on one end and peacefully agree to disagree on the other. What will keep us peacefully agreeing to disagree is taking on do no harm. No matter what the topic [issue], we do our best to do no harm to self or others. Then be our word about that. It’s the glue that holds everything together.

So simple to say, yet so hard to achieve.