My Philosophy

I’ll differentiate here between my political philosophy and general philosophical perspective.

Political: I am a pragmatist independent who distrusts centralized power, be it from government or from big money (business, finance, etc.) That already leaves me outside of both parties as the Democrats usually grab for a governmental solution, while the Republicans think the free market doesn’t need any regulation, embracing big money. Pragmatism comes as well from a view that ideology is bad for politics. It creates secular religions into which people divide themselves and wage a kind of jihad (witness talk radio, and a lot of blogs left and right). For many, political ideology has replaced organized religion as what they look to for meaning, their faith is in their politics. I reject that, and thus find my pragmatism often agrees with each party.  With the GOP I oppose judicial activism, am fiscally conservative, distrust social engineering, hate political correctness, and understand and generally support market economics.  With Democrats I’m civil libertarian, anti-war, do not embrace organized religion, dislike symbolic worship of the state (flag, pledge, etc.), am cosmopolitan in my world view.  What happens to people in the Congo is as important to me as a human as what happens to people in the US.  I think we need to increase immigration and our connections with the rest of the world.  In general, I’m an individualist who, unlike the radical libertarians, understands that the individual also gets essence and meaning from being part off the greater community. This always creates pushes and pulls, apparent contradictions and paradoxes, all of which defies any doctrinal or ideological answer. Pragmatism simply says “let’s try to figure out what works best given our agreed upon goals and interests, and then compromise where we disagree on goals and interests.” No answer key, no political program to create the ‘right’ or ‘best’ system, just creative problem solving and, most importantly, striving to understand perspectives other than our own.

Philosophically I’m an idealist. That means that I believe the essence of reality is not material, but in ideas. That form of philosophy grew from Plato’s thought, and two of my favorite philosophers are Plotinus (the neo-Platonist) and Bishop Berkeley. I tend towards Berkeley’s absolute idealism. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a reality, only that it’s material appearance is a kind of illusion, it’s the ideas that not only form reality, but ARE reality. A current fiction author with a similar approach is Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions, One). I’m also a perspectivist and pragmatist. That means that I reject any “god’s eye” view of the world and thus the western philosophical attempt to figure out “the meaning of life” or “what is ‘the good.’” Such questions are answered differently from different perspectives, and the best we can do is learn to understand a vast variety of perspectives, and then choose for ourselves what seems to work in our own lives. As you can see, this goes along with my anti-ideological view of reality.

Pragmatism borrows a lot from post-modernism (which is really a modern variant of traditional skepticism), and there are real affinities between the two. I see the difference as being that pragmatism doesn’t reject the notion of a universal truth, moral/ethical code, or meaning of life. Rather, it’s just seems to be beyond the grasp of human reason. However, we can communicate, interact, problem solve, and in so doing choose to have ethics as a guiding force in our lives. My blog will show I take ethical issues very seriously, and my philosophy tends to see a kind of unity in reality which means I believe (but cannot prove) that we are in some ways all part of each other. The beauty of pragmatism is that I can believe that, recognize it could well be wrong, accept that others may think that totally silly, and yet not have to oppose those others for fight against them to see who is “right.”

Finally, to the question of why I think like I do. I believe my political philosophy comes from my personality. On one of those personality tests I took I came down very much on the “preceive” side in the issue of whether I simply perceive what others do, or do I judge them. I was radically on the perceive side, which means I’m pre-disposed not to be judgmental. People I know who had the opposite results tend to be much more likely to be very political, fighting for particular causes or issues.  Also, I saw in Russia first hand the impact of massive governmental control on both the economy and on the people.  Second, my idealism comes from two things: a) my thinking about the ‘ultimate question’ — why is there something rather than nothing? I won’t explain it here (though I’ll probably talk about it in my blogs), but I think the “why” question is much easier to get to if one sees reality as being mostly ideas rather than just stuff; b) my experience lucid dreaming, and experimenting in my dreams. That inspired me to write a novelette I’ll probably publish on line at some point. These philosophical issues will make my blog frequently.

I wrote this fast, I’ll update it later, but I wanted to get something about how I think on this blog. Contact: scotterb@maine.edu.