Tag: Bruce Lee

The Book of Five Rings – The Water Book

Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Water from the Book of Five Rings is about the ideas of form-ability, fluidity of water. The way we live and control our lives, the decisions we make, the actions we do are solely based on the behaviors and the routines we follow. It is really an understatement to call this book as a Guide for Sword-Fighters.

Miyamoto Musashi’s philosophy for 21st century

Ancient combat strategies for the modern competitions  

After understanding the Ground Book which builds the foundation of the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, we will deep dive into the next book called the Water Book. The general idea is to understand how water behaves, how it tries to bring in consistency throughout, how it tries to level even in disturbances, how a drop to drop creates an oceanic impact, how it flows and remains unobstructed of the challenges. The Water Book is about the the spirit of the warrior, the attitude, the way of looking at things and handling them, making decisions about them.  

“The principle of strategy is to have one thing, to know ten thousand things.“

In short, know the ocean from single drop. Miyamoto Musashi wants to highlight the effectiveness of his strategy of Water by showing the consistency in these principles. Once a warrior understands a consistent idea, it becomes very easy for him to implement it everywhere effectively. Thus, by learning this consistent way of water if a warrior defeats his single enemy, he thereby also gains the ability to defeat the thousands of enemies singly. That is how effective these ideas from the Water Book are!

“Language does not extend to explaining the Way in detail, but it can be grasped intuitively. Study this book; read a word and then ponder on it. If you interpret the meaning loosely you will mistake the Way.“

This is exactly what has been already established in modern philosophy as the Language Theory of Philosophy by Ludwig Wittgenstein. An ancient, age-old warrior already understood this knowledge way ahead of his time. Miyamoto-san knew that a novice self-learner will take every word literally and hence will fail to actually grasp the depths of the wisdom he has shared. He wants readers to inculcate every word in their own lives. These are not ideas just for battling, killing and fighting. These are the ideas to handle any type of situations, people, systems in your everyday lives.    

“The principles of strategy are written down here in terms of single combat, but you must think broadly so that you attain an understanding for ten-thousand-a-side battles.“

The wisdom is so distilled and ubiquitous that it can be used in any battle, any problem solving.

“If you merely read this book, you will not reach the Way of Strategy.“

Again, this Book of Water rather the Book of Five Rings is not to be taken literally.

Spirituality – The Way of Life

“In strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. Even when your spirit is calm do not let you spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited nor over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let your enemy see your spirit.”

One has to now understand that Miyamoto-san even though explicitly talks about sword fights it is not only about sword fights. He wants readers to understand that the true greatness does not come from following special regime or following some trick or knowing some secrets. Actually, the secret to a great life is that there is no secret!

Miyamoto-san doesn’t want a warrior to force things. He wants everyone to be at their optimum, neither less nor more, neither in excess nor in scarce – just the perfect amount. Once this happens in a person’s daily routine then it becomes part of him, his way of life. Then even an extraordinary situation, a bad event doesn’t affect him. This is what discovering spirituality is!  

“With your spirit open and un-constricted, look at things from a high point of view. You must cultivate your wisdom and spirit. Polish your wisdom: learn public justice, distinguish between good and evil, study the Ways of different arts one by one. When you cannot be deceived by men you will have realized the wisdom of strategy.“

Miyamoto-san though promotes his “Way of Strategy” in the Book of Five Rings, he wants the readers to expand their vision, their perspectives to different arts too. The idea is that when you become aware of many things, many arts it becomes really difficult to fool you, to trick you. That is also a superpower in a way.    

Stance

Please mind that it is not just about how a warrior should stand in a fight. Stance here also means about your attitude in the situations of hardships and challenges. Here it goes:

  1. Adopt a stance with head erect, neither hanging down, nor looking up, nor twisted – Don’t project yourself as too proud or too peasant and helpless. Be at peace with yourself.
  2. Your forehead and the space between your eyes should not be wrinkled – Control and hide your anger and project it effectively when and where required
  3. Do not roll your eyes nor allow them to blink – Don’t fiddle, observe your surrounding with a calm and focused mind
  4. With your features composed, keep the line of your nose straight with a feeling of slightly flaring your nostrils – Be in the moment. Breath.
  5. Hold the line of the rare of the neck straight: instill your vigor into your hairline, and in the same way from the shoulders down through your entire body – Concentrate all your energy to your torso, your vital organs in order to handle what is to come next
  6. Lower both shoulders and, without the buttocks jutting out, put strength into your legs from the knees to the tips of your toes. Brace your abdomen so that you do not bend at the hips – Don’t tighten your body, don’t be stressed from the fear of your enemy. Loosen up your body to make it pliable to respond enemy attacks effectively.
  7. Wedge your companion sword in your belt against your abdomen, so that your belt s not slack – this is called “wedging in” – Prepare yourself to attack, tighten your core body, your weapons, your tools/ equipment to face any situation

“In all forms of strategy, it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in everyday life and make your everyday stance your combat stance.“

Here you must understand that these are not the recommendations to warriors only. Miyamoto-san wants these to be the way of life. One has to really appreciate the depths of his wisdoms through these teaching.

Gaze – Don’t just look, have a vision

“In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.“

While doing all of these stances Miyamoto-san suggests to not get fooled by the appearances only. He recommended these mentioned stances in order to project strong warrior in front of his opponent. But what if the enemy also projects the same stances nevertheless, he is strong in reality? At these moments, Miyamoto-san guides to understand the big picture and the details to decide effective strategies based on the enemy’s behavior.  

Holding the Long Sword

Miyamoto-san beautifully explains the role of each finger on the grip of sword. It can only be experienced on personal level of reader and cannot be expressed in words only. But the overall idea is not just grab the sword with all five fingers rather make it an extension of your body which has its own reflexes.

“Fixedness means a dead hand. Pliability is a living hand.“

It is again a reminder to not blindly and mechanically follow the rule, tricks, or techniques. Become agile and formless, shapeless like water (..my friend!)

Be water my friend!
Footwork

“Whether you move fast or slow, with large or small steps, your feet must always move as in normal walking.“

Miyamoto-san here again says that there is nothing like “special technique” to defeat any enemy. When you are not forcing things to be there, you break the patterns, mechanical nature of your moves. Your moves, decisions become natural.   

“You should not move on one foot preferentially.“

If you have preferences, then it becomes easy to defeat you by attacking on your preferences, your preferences will make you more predictable.

“If you try to wield the long sword quickly you will mistake the Way. To wield the long sword well you must wield it calmly.“

Any big responsibility, any big authority, any big decision, any big power should be handled wisely, calmly with a focused mind.

Way of the Long Sword

Miyamoto-san then exactly points out each and every technique to the student. The details with which everything is explained deserves great attention of every reader. The information is clear, concise and just enough.

a. The Five Attitudes

The great thing about a true master is that he is the ultimate simplifier. A true master knows how to teach complicated and intertwined knowledge points in simplified ways without losing the essence of the concept. Miyamoto-san thus incorporates his exact learning into small chunks of wisdom where every word is just enough to grasp the whole concept.

Miyamoto-san at the very beginning makes clear as to where exactly the sword is supposed to be used. The five attitudes he describes seem very simple. The five attitudes are:

  1. The Middle attitude – it is about hitting (and killing) the enemy by striking on torso and vital organs with sword against his face  
  2. The Upper attitude – it is about exactly striking upper blow of sword when enemy attacks and when he escapes this cut Miyamoto-san guides to follow the flow on line and scoop from below
  3. The Lower attitude – it is about hitting the hands of enemy from below, Miyamoto-san also suggests that this is the most encountered stance from enemy
  4. The Left-side attitude – it is about hitting the hands of enemy from below and parrying the same attack to cut from his left side
  5. The Right-side attitude – it is about crossing enemy’s sword attack from below and swinging it further and using upper strike from the right side

These are in simple and no-nonsense words, the five directions in which you can swing a sword to kill your enemy. You really have to understand that the reader of this book especially the pupil learning swordfight are supposed to have that innate natural excitement of learning something special from the great master – his tricks and secrets to become invincible. But the great Sword-master Miyamoto-san delivers his wisdom in the ways of common sense. And believe me it is not sarcasm, rather Miyamoto-san is very serious while discussing the five attitudes here. The whole idea of five attitudes is that, there are mere five vital regions where one has to focus to defeat his enemy. And in those five the Middle Attitude is the most vital. (Logically, the middle region, the torso of human body consists most of the vital organs in human body so it already makes more sense)

“To understand attitude, you must thoroughly understand the middle attitude. The middle attitude is the heart of the attitudes. If we look at strategy on a broad scale, the Middle attitude is the seat of the commander, with the other four attitudes following the commander. You must appreciate this.“

The attitudes are not there only to explain the parts of human body, it also represents the whole organization of the enemy’s battalion. All the vital weaponry, the best of the best soldiers, the best diplomats, the best strategists are the middle part of every commander on battle-field. Miyamoto-san suggests to focus on this middle part while defeating enemies in masses. Such hidden and smart instructions are hidden and scattered all over the Book of the Five Rings.     

b. The “Attitude No-attitude” teaching

Miyamoto-san gives five attitudes to fight at first and then instructs to forget about them here.  Please understand that the five attitudes are not just “A Guide to Basic Human Anatomy” for the sword-fighters. There is deeper meaning in Miyamoto-san’s advice.

“Whatever attitude you are in, do not be conscious of making the attitude; think only of cutting. Your attitude should be large or small according to the situation.“

One can understand it like this – Do not get overwhelmed by the thought of deciding which approach to select to kill the enemy. Actually, if one gets tangled and confused in selecting the right approach, he will immediately loose his life to his opponent as the enemy has already stricken him.

One should only focus on intent to kill the enemy and let the right attitudes come out of those attitudes. Even though five attitudes are defined that does not mean that they are supposed to followed mechanically. This way of mechanistic selection and confusion from it disappears when one does enough practice which is what Miyamoto-san focuses and instructs everywhere.

“Fixed formation is bad“

Again, Miyamoto-san suggests to be fluid, non-fixated, agile, flowable like water.

c. To Hit the Enemy “In One Timing”

The idea is to not hesitate to act on right opportunity with the full intent of killing the enemy

d. The “Abdomen Timing of Two”

Don’t spare your enemy even when you see him retreating, when you see him relaxing follow him up with a cut

e. No Design, No Conception

Go fully “in” when you see enemy going fully “in”. Use everything you have, don’t follow the structuredness and rigidity of some tricks you learned elsewhere. Again, be fluid in nature, respond accordingly.

f. The Flowing Water Cut

When your strike fails, when you fail (in anything in your real life too) widen your perspective, expand your spirit and this time strike your next blow slowly but decisively, thoughtfully. Miyamoto-san understands that when the enemy sees his strike winning, the true warrior must make a conscious effort to not let his enemy’s morale raise high with this small win. Miyamoto-san call it like “Stagnant water”, when you blow fails, pause-think-come back with full intent of focus.

g. Continuous Cut

When you realize that the enemy- opponent is equivalent to you and it is difficult to defeat (kill) him; then you should attack in such way that it will harm the enemy at multiple locations. Try to hit as many birds as possible in single stone when you are fighting an equal opponent. It is about effectiveness and efficiency of your single stroke.

h. The Fire and Stones

When fight goes one-to-one make sure that it hits different parts of the enemy.

i. The Red Leaves Cut

Force the enemy to lose his sword, his vital and important tools, weapons like a falling and dying red leaf of fall. Disable the enemy by capturing his resources.

j. The Body in Place of the Long Sword

Don’t just be too focused on your weapon, your sword, your tools and resources. Use your body to attack the enemy. If you can focus on getting the control of enemy’s sword, he can think of you similarly. So, with sword use your body too.

k. Cut and Slash

Miyamoto-san here clarifies that cutting is about cutting with full intent of killing but slashing is just touching the enemy, injuring him.

Be decisive about your moves before attacking and be ready to accept the consequences.

Miyamoto-san explicitly clarifies additional thing here:

“Even if you slash strongly, and even if the enemy dies instantly, it is slashing.“

I would like to highlight one very important bias that every learner every, student faces in their learning process, especially when they are leaning on their own which is the “Outcome Bias”. Many a times we make some hypothesis on the inner working of the things which we are trying to understand and it eventually happen in the end but in somewhat different ways- in a way we didn’t expect but it happens. Does that mean that we have completely understood everything? The answer is “No”. This is known as the “Outcome Bias” where you decide whether a certain action is right or wrong based on the outcome and the outcome might be just luck. So, it might be a possibility that your hypothesis is wrong.

The outcome bias is dominant in self-learners which Miymoto-san expertly points out here.

l. Chinese Monkey’s Body

Don’t extend yourself partially in enemy’s territory just like Chinese Monkey’s body in Miyamoto-san’s words. If you extend your arms towards the enemy, the enemy will grab you by your arms and pull you in completely.

m. Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body

When you engage with the enemy make sure that you engage fully. As in do not lose the contact with your enemy when you are really in the fight. Otherwise, you will be unable to anticipate and react to your enemy’s next blows.

n. To Strive for Height

Once engaged with enemy in fight, establish dominance in every possible way, don’t let your enemy’s morale rise up and take the high ground. (That’s exactly what Obi-Wan Kenobi did)

o. To Apply Stickiness

When fully engaged, stick with the enemy; don’t lose touch of him and his sword. Reduce the strength of the strike but keep in touch with his blade, that will help you to gauge his moves immediately.

p. The Body Strike

Find the weakness of the armor and directly attack the body through that weakness.

q. Three Ways to Parry His Attack

When enemy blows attack, target his important areas first for counter attack. First way is to attack on his eyes-his vision; second on his neck, the part which connects the mind and the tools of any organization, any battalion; third on his face, on the image and perception of the organization, the battalion.

r. To Stab at the Face

Stabbing at face means to destroy the senses and the mind of the opponent. Face as in head is eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin and mind all in single spot which is another vital region of the body. Once you drive the head, the complete body will follow thereby making enemy predictable to attack and kill effectively.

Try to control enemy’s moves by explicitly targeting his most important parts with full intent.

s. To Stab at the Heart

When you are tired, just blow single and focused strike on the vital part of the enemy.

t. To Scold “Tut-TUT!”  

Make sure that your enemy understands that your counterattack was intended to hurt, kill him. Try to bring down his morale. Don’t let him think that he has won.

u. The Smacking Parry

If you develop a rhythm of attacks in your fight, you can still handle the coming blows from enemy and simultaneously hurt him with counterattacks. It’s about developing a sense of timing.

v. There are Many Enemies

When you are alone and surrounded by many, don’t hesitate and wait; attack with the intent to kill many in single strikes. Don’t attack and strike from front or head on; approach and attack from sides.

“Whatever you do, you must drive the enemy together, as if tying a line of fishes, and when they are seen to be piled up, cut them down strongly without giving them room to move.“

w. The Advantage when Coming to Blows

Go out, practice, and implement your truths, your learnings in reality.

x. One Cut

Become a master in such way that it looks effortless to others. (like Saitama!!!)

While actually reading all these ways to kill the enemy with sword, you will feel like you are actually witnessing these iconic sword strikes in a sword fight or like an intense sword fight in an anime. Miyamoto-san creates a live picture of strokes of sword in his writing while writing all this, which itself is a great experience for readers.

Closing remarks of the Book of Water

In the closing remarks of the Book of Water, Miyamoto-san instructs to make these ideas the way of life. He wants these ideas to become part of your habits. When they will get reflected in your habits the body will react naturally to the challenges as if these techniques are second nature for it. Miyamoto-san expects a flow, a harmony like water in the rhythm, spirit of the readers while handling sword or any situation in their life.

“Step by step walk the thousand-mile road“

Miyamoto-san is aware that the novice will get overwhelmed by the details and the number of the teachings from the Book of Water alone. He wants the student, the warrior, the reader to learn one by one, one at a time and imbibe it in their lives.

“Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.“

It is about practicing, relearning and distilling down the wisdom over the period. This is only possible by discipline. Only discipline will bring out the best version of you from your personality of times gone, once you become something different and greater from your previous version nobody can stop you. Discipline is the way.

“Even if you kill an enemy, if it is not based on what you have learned – it is not the true Way.“

In the end of the Book of Water, Miyamoto-san explains the only way to develop wisdom. Knowledge can be transferred, can be taught from one person to another but wisdom always develops from inside. And as it develops from inside, there is very high possibility that it will be full of biases as these are self-truths. Hence clearing the biases in your learning process by continuously practicing them with reality is the way. One must be always be sure about the hypotheses in their knowledge building process in order to create the real wisdom.

Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Water from the Book of Five Rings is about the ideas of formability, fluidity of water. The way we live and control our lives, the decisions we make, the actions we do are solely based on the behaviors and the routines we follow. The ideas expressed in the Book of Water are can also be connected to Game theory, Corporate Strategies, Principles of War Strategies and Diplomacy, Human psyche, Competitiveness, Lifestyle, Resources and Manpower Management, Spirituality and nonetheless Philosophy of Life and Knowledge. It is really an understatement to call this book as a Guide for Sword-Fighters.

What is special about water? That it is so omnipresent that it is not that special. It is so formless, shapeless that it takes shape of anything. Water has ability to make impact even when it is in drop and even when it in the form of ocean. The specialty of water is that it is not special, or at least no specialty can be assigned to it. It is water’s fluidity, pliability to the situations which enables it to take their forms which is what makes water so special. That is exactly what Miyamoto-san establishes here for the ways to live life thereby with the battles and fights in it.  

Links for further Reading:

  1. The Book of Five Rings – The Ground Book
  2. The Book of Five Rings – The Water Book
  3. The Book of Five Rings – The Fire Book
  4. The Book of Five Rings – The Wind Book
  5. The Book of Five Rings – The Book of the Void

Hometown by French 79 – The song of evolving patterns penetrating through chaos

Patterns and their awareness are one integral part of our daily activities and are deeply rooted in our personality too. Most of the time their influence goes unnoticed. What could be a better example than a good song to highlight the significance of patterns in our life. This is about a special song which may highlight the significance of creating new patterns in every instance of life that we live. This is about a song which embodies the patterns and evolution in them to create meaningful life out of chaos around us.

Music – magic of patterns

Some songs are such a work of art that you don’t want others to discover that treasure for the feelings it creates within you.

They say music is the last magic left in this world. It transcends the boundaries of language, religion, nationality, wealth, cultures and what not. Music, technically speaking is nothing but a harmonious, a systematic pattern of vibrations leading to the formation of difference in the density of the medium like air when sensed by our ear invokes some emotions. In this whole mechanical definition of music there is a part called “emotions” which actually becomes the bridge between the physical world (that can be sensed using our sense) and our mind (which is just there and cannot be sensed by our physical senses). Thus, it is safe to say that music lies as a bridge in a grey area between physical and non-physical (some call it spiritual) world.

The most important thing about “your” favorite music is that “hook” which recalls specific emotions in your mind. Even though the lyrics is also one important aspect of a good music that does not mean that it is everything. Every one of us can list down their favorite music which doesn’t contain any lyrics. In whole and sole, it is this hook or a specific repeating line in a song which connects you to that song and then you have this urge to explore the whole song thereby that becoming your “favorite song”.

I think our association with music has a deep-rooted link with who we are as living things (It is also present in non-living things but as there is no person alive to tell how it feels after death, we will limit our discussion to living beings only!) The only reason we can deeply associate music with living things especially with humans is due to the response generated to this stimulus. We already know that animals, plants and even insects react to music but the changes it can create through human beings are more intense and significant. (It can be loosely explained by the crowd control music in Trance Concerts, Instagram reels music trends)

Today we will discuss a song which can possibly point out what is “that” thing that we actually love about a music or any song. The music and lyrics both possibly point out to the same thing which we will discuss here.

Hometown by French 79

Hometown by French 79

Hometown by French 79 – The lyrics

Every time the lights are turning blue
Then I tried to close my eyes to see my hometown
I don’t wanna change my life
Flying to the back in time
I feel like a child Wearing his golden crown
I don’t need a purified mind

“Hometown” lyrics by Simon Henner (French 79)

Looks like the songwriter- the poet from hereon has a feeling of unhappiness. Whenever he feels sad, he tries to recall the memories from his hometown. Here, hometown in broader sense are his childhood memories, the feeling of nostalgia, the feeling of familiarity. The happiness he gets from these feeling is due to a sense of familiarity.

The poet doesn’t want be become child again but he loves those memories of his childhood. That is what he expresses in the next lines. The poet here, is aware of the reality he lives in. He just wants to make sense of the chaos around him. There is no such pivot from which he can make sense of the things around him right now. That is why the feeling of sadness have kicked in due to the unfamiliar – hostile conditions. The feeling of a child with a golden crown is the feeling of a king who has control over everything. This exactly depicts how things explode in proportions when we transition from our childhood to adulthood, this explosion of everything seeming “simple” in our childhood brings in extra dimensions which are beyond comprehension. This is the reason why adulthood and every new experience thereafter feels more chaotic and unsettling. Maybe this is also the reason why our childhood memories are so precious to us. The childhood is full of innocent and simple feelings which have this sense of predictability, controllability. Important to understand here is that our poet doesn’t want that purified mind, that innocent child from his childhood. This shows his maturity towards the unsettling feelings due to chaos around him. He wants to use the pivot of familiarity of feelings from his childhood to tackle the unsettlement of his mind at this instance. He is searching for a comfort, a familiarity, a pattern in this chaos.    

The future and the past are really confusing
But I keep my feet on the ground to keep trying
I don’t wanna change my life
Flying to the back in time
I feel like a child Wearing his golden crown
I don’t need a purified mind

“Hometown” lyrics by Simon Henner (French 79)

Our poet can be attributed to an adult or an old age person who is unsure about how to handle sad feelings, the unknown situations, the discomfort they bring. The past experiences are not that helpful to make sense of the new challenge he is facing. If the past would be that helpful then the situation would have been already made sense to him and could have been solved already which is not the case; hence it is already confusing to him. If it is not solved properly then the poet also has a worry for his future because of the more unpredictability, more things going out of hands. In short, he is stuck between indecision leading to not acting on things. The next most important thing the poet is thinking is attitude to keep on trying while remaining on the ground. Our poet wants to make sense out of the unsettling chaos by some practical understanding of reality. In simple words, the poet is thinking of not getting overwhelmed by the indecision – analysis paralysis and taking control on things by realistically acting on things in his life. This is his wish to evolve through this chaos while keeping the child in him alive with the wisdom of an adult. What a thought! This is his urge to evolve in the new chaos presented to him.     

The music and the video

The music is the most influential part of the song “Hometown”. Blessed by the talent and legacy of French Electronic music, the song stands out for the evolving pattern – loop of synth which goes on and on throughout the song. The creator of the song is Simon Henner named here as “French 79” (Simon was born in 1979) creates an addictive hook which goes on evolving as the song progresses. The best and the smart thing about the song is that it really resonates with the idea of breaking out of the comforts of repeating patterns to make sense of the new challenges in life, to create new patterns and evolve ahead.

French 79 – Simon Henner

The video is also very interesting and quite open ended which depicts stories of people from different stages, phases in life who come out of the comforts to evolve. You will see that everyone in this story discovers a pattern in a characteristic way in their lives which inspires them to come out of their current situation, chaos and create new evolved pattern, new sense to the surrounding around them just like the lyrics and the music of the song. You will find every character transitioning from the state of rest, comfort, familiarity to the state of acting on things for actually creating something new and rediscovering themselves to a newer version of themselves.   

Simply put, Hometown is the song of our evolution especially our emotional evolution

The patterns and humans

We as human beings and also animals thereby love patterns. Our favorite songs, the Instagram reels songs, the famous dialogues in the movies, the pop culture references, those callbacks in the web series, TV Series, the childhood nostalgia, our close friend circle, our family, our favorite office colleagues, our favorite memories and what not – all these things are prime examples of how much we are obsessed with the patterns in our lives. An important thing to understand about our love to these hooks, these repetitions, these patterns is the feeling of familiarity, feeling of predictability that settles our mind to an environment of known variables. It is also important to understand that a when a pattern gets continuously registered in our brain our brain automates it to save its energy. (that’s how habits are formed) The situation becomes challenging when something out of these patterns emerges; that is where we feel chaotic about our environment, we have no pivot to make sense of the things. That is our moment of evolution, that is where we would also evolve our preexisting patterns.

[Or maybe this is just a song about how the poet loved his childhood in his hometown and the memories which now console him while tackling his adulthood problems]

Image reference:

  1. Featured image – Penrose Tiling from Wikimedia

The Practicality of Philosophy

What is the purpose of Philosophy?
one of my favorite memes (Source: starecat.com)

We live in a competitive and fast-moving world where everything’s success depends on the outcomes and their value delivery. Take any example, if any movie release fails to entertain the major audiences, consider it flopped; if any project is not delivering the expected profits to the company consider it stopped; if any equipment is not working properly for the performance it promised, consider it a market failure; if any start-up is not built upon the actual market requirements, consider it a flop business; an employee fails to reach his targets, consider no promotion or even a pink slip. Whenever you are working on achieving anything and if your actions and thought process behind them are not directing you to the Goal, people will suggest you to change your strategy. In nutshell, everything you do, every thought you have is expected to have a fruitful outcome, value creation, profit, gain, benefit thereby there must be some utility. We now call these things, these thoughts “practical”. General thought process always suggests to have the practical way of life in order to succeed in a way.

I am of the same opinion, that doing certain things, acts, thinking (actually overthinking) about everything you stumble upon is expected to deliver some “practical” benefit in my life. If you studied enough and can’t get the job of specific salary then what good is your education? There must always be some definite value delivery from our actions otherwise we are just wasting time and getting nothing.

The situation worsens when you implement the same logic to the ways you think about anything and everything you stumble upon. It is like day dreaming as you are only thinking about some random things, are engrossed completely in the world of your own and there is no real-life benefit from it. Then, it becomes imperative to “Get Real” in life, sort your things and be practical and use your common sense.          

Now, here comes a short story-

In a fight, the flight attendant finds an elder person going through severe chest pain, she immediately asks for the expert help.
Flight Attendant- Attention all, we have an emergency. Is there any Doctor onboard?
(One person raises his hands)
The person- Yes, I am a doctor.
Flight Attendant- We need medical help.
The person- But, I am a doctor of Philosophy.
Flight Attendant- He is going to die
The person- Aren’t we all anyways?

One can only imagine the awkwardness and impractical response of philosopher to the situation in the flight.

I used to think that the philosophy and it’s ideas yet interesting and intriguing cannot handle the reality of life and solve practical problems.

And, (as usual) I was wrong.

Here it goes…

The question is-

Will thinking about every possible thing you are exposed to (and even about the things you may never get exposed to) and asking “unnecessary questions” about it add value to our life? Will thinking about things irrelevant to your job is going to increase your performance at your workplace? Is thinking about any random thing is going to put food on your table?

In short, what is the worth of the philosophical ideas, questions if they are not going to solve our practical problems? What is the practicality of philosophy?

This was the question I was stuck at; even though philosophical ideas have always intrigued me.

Then I found my answer in Bertrand Russel’s book called “The Problems of Philosophy” with the last essay called “the Value of Philosophy”. The ideas explained by Bertrand Russel in this writings answer the very basic question about the utility of philosophy.

Ends of life

Russel explains the idea of ends of life by distinguishing between the nature of Physical Sciences and the philosophy. The idea is that all the physical sciences that we as a human have established have contributed to the society in some ways. The developments in physics led to inventions of uncountable things like lasers, semiconductors, telescopes, machines and what not hence landing mankind into the modern world. The developments in virology, bio-technology, modern medicines helped us to come out of the global pandemic. The developments in geography helped us to explore the globe, share our trades, cultures, profits, save us from natural calamities. The psychology helped in maintaining the mental well-being, the social well being of the society there by controlling the sanity in the people. The economics helped to efficiently utilize and manage our resources in order strive as a species on a space floating rock. These physical sciences have mastered various ends of life and are continuously contributing ahead

What about philosophy? If we are going to discuss how certain philosophy has solved the world hunger or how a philosophy has cured the incurable diseases in history or how a philosophy has saved people from famine or how a philosophy landed us on another celestial body, then the answer is surely no. There are no practical ends of life which philosophy helps us to achieve.

Uncertainty of philosophy

Bertrand Russel has very beautifully established the difference between the nature of Physical Sciences and philosophy. The Physical Sciences have postulates, theories, formulae, a definite structure which builds the all knowledge they represent. There is a systematic path to be followed in order to answer the posed question. If you ask a physicist why the sky is blue? he will approach the problem from the branch of optics then thereby refraction and scattering and the spectrum of light. If you ask how the eclipses occur? to an astronomer, he will take you through solar system, to planets, their satellites and their rotations, orbits. It can go on and on.

In short, in all the physical sciences the truths established are definitive. There are definite answers to the questions posed. Such is not the case with philosophy. If you pose a philosophical question as in “What is the purpose of life?” every philosopher will have his own versions and there is no surety of definite answer. If you ask questions like, why was the world created?  Why was the universe created? Are we really body with a soul or a soul with a body?

See the pattern we can observe from the philosophical questions is that the truths they are giving are not certain. On contrary, the truths revealed in physical sciences are definite, their truth value is certain based on the truths they are derived from due to structured-ness. Bertrand Russel establishes that all the physical sciences are originated from philosophy. When the definitive-ness, certainties of truth extraction system, knowledge building system of these philosophies became strong, they separated from the philosophy and get independence.

Thus, the only thing certain in philosophy is that there are no certain answers to the questions posed. If the answers are getting definitive, certain then a new physical science gets established thereby separating from philosophy. Philosophy of mind became psychology; philosophy of heavenly bodies became astronomy.

What I found interesting in this idea of “genesis of physical sciences from philosophy” is that though upon certainty of truth/ knowledge physical sciences become free from philosophy, the next unanswered questions in physical sciences immediately start to redirect themselves to philosophy again until the certainty of answers are obtained thereby proving the presence of philosophical inheritance.  Our quest for understanding “the nature of reality” in the world of modern physics is one such strong example.

Richard Feynman in one of his famous lectures discussed about questioning the nature of reality as we understand:

“it’s a very strong tendency of people to say against some idea, if someone comes up with an idea, and says let’s suppose the world is this way.

And you say to him, well, what would you get for the answer for such and such a problem? And he says, I haven’t developed it far enough. And you say, well, we have already developed it much further. We can get the answers very accurately. So, it is a problem, as to whether or not to worry about philosophies behind ideas.”

Richard Feynman

Meaning is it not always compulsory to have structured-ness and definitive nature to any idea. There may be always some indefinitve-ness to the answers in philosophy.

Truth of the answers to the questions of philosophy

Now that it is clear that the answers to the questions in the philosophy are not definite, not certain; it is also important to understand that the answers don’t lose their value due to their indefinite or uncertain nature. Rather they bring us closer to the unrealizable, un-experienceable truth.

According to Russel, the confinement of knowledge is the major point which poses the question on “the practicality” of philosophy in our life.

I think what Russel is trying to say here is that as soon as the nature of the truth of knowledge starts following a pattern/ a trend, it gets confined in the structured-ness of certainty thereby getting its independence, self-reliance. The philosophy hence will always remain as a field (even the word “field” is so confined) rather expanse of uncertainty where there will always be some room for speculation.

In order to ask for value of philosophy, one has to confine it to some ideas and then compare these ideas to other ideas. But the game philosophy plays here is that the you lose the identity of philosophy once you confine it to some set of ideas in knowledge/ physical sciences. Thus, remains incomparable.

Funny thing is that the solution of such problem will start with – What is comparison? How to measure the worth of anything? (Which themselves are good philosophical questions!)

Philosophic Contemplation: the idea of Self and not-Self

Russel suggests that the value of philosophy will be only realized when the ends of the life are not limited to ‘Self’. I think what Russel is trying to convey is that the realization of something greater above ourselves itself is humbling. Understanding that the knowledge will still exist irrespective of our existence is one important part of we becoming free from our own identity.

When there will be search for knowledge for Self, the answers gained will be confined, they will always reflect the nature of the self or the seeker.

But, once one understands that the knowledge, philosophy is above himself i.e., once a person starts seeking questions to the answers not for the betterment of himself only but for the knowledge itself then the knowledge reveals itself. This knowledge will not be definitive, certain. This knowledge will not have concepts of good or bad, pure or impure, left or right, profit or loss, worthy or unworthy. It will be only the knowledge itself where truth is still uncertain, indefinite an innocent. Russel calls the philosophy as the union of Self with not-Self. That is in order to understand something greater than ourselves, we have to lose the idea of ourselves, our being.

The curse on humanity

The question of finding the worth of philosophy itself has its own limitations. The concept of being worthy brings in the ideas of comparison, tradable value, what one gets in return, replacement value, a sense of transaction, gap due to absence, appreciation due to presence. This transactional, tradable, replacement value itself is a very small part of materialistic ideology of our human life.

See, our existence, thereby we being alive is dependent on so many materialistic things/ resources which are inherently important for our existence. You will not find a beggar asking for the explanation of the ideas in stoicism or nihilism. Most of the times he will only think about the ways to get the next meal. (Although, a beggar can also question about nature of him being a beggar

instead of a king if he wants)

In short, what I am trying to establish here is that for us as a human being, we need materialistic objects and our interactions with them through our senses to become aware of our consciousness. To become sure that the materialistic world and the sensations from them are not the only bounds of the life that we live in. The curse to human life here, I would say is that the first step in awareness of “knowledge greater than Self” starts with the awareness of our materialistic nature. Our first dose of true knowledge is only possible from the establishment of truths from the material world and our interactions with them. The material worlds being born from higher level of “uncertain things” reveal these uncertainties, thereby making us question their fundamental nature. This leads us to understand that there are things greater that what we are experiencing but there is no surety of completely true, certain answer.

Lifting the curse

I have a thought that, there is also benediction for this curse, rather anti-curse which is “the Curiosity”. Curiosity itself is the definition of philosophy. The whole purpose of philosophy is not to find the definitive answers, truths to the questions rather it is asking the questions and keep asking the questions.

Satisfaction of the curiosity is I think the boundary of the truths. The extent of satisfaction of the curiosity will be dependent upon how real or practical you want to get (What is the extent of real and practical also needs definition thereby). Here, there is no place for value, worthiness rather it is about satisfying the purpose and truly implementing philosophy to solve some real problems.

Bruce Lee has one famous quote on the same front:

“…here is the natural instincts and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you are another to the extreme, you become, all of a sudden ‘a mechanical man’- no longer a human being. So, it is a successful combination of both, so therefore it’s not pure naturalness, or unnaturalness. The ideal is unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness.”

Bruce Lee

It is about the union of Self and not-Self to find the knowledge as Russel explains. You need not to infuse your boundaries, your prejudices to the questions of philosophy while on the quest of knowledge. You have to again lose your identity to find the real knowledge.

Again, Bruce Lee’s philosophy about being water reflects similar ideas about the nature of true knowledge from philosophy.

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water in cup, it becomes the cup. You put water in bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water my friend”

Bruce Lee

Be water my friend!

– Bruce Lee

This also explains the innocent nature of knowledge. It takes shape of anything that it is in.

(That is the exact reason why we were forced to write the essay in our school on “Science: Curse or Boon”! OK, Jokes apart)

Having answers to the questions ends the quest thereby giving the boundary to the idea; asking the questions creates the possibilities. And creation of possibilities however uncertain they may be is the purpose thereby the worth of philosophy.

So, philosophy is not about finding definitive answers, it is about keeping on asking questions.

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”

– Richard Feynman

 

“Through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of the union with the universe which constitutes its highest good”

– Bertrand Russel, The value of Philosophy from “The Problems of Philosophy”  

      

Further readings and references:

  1. The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russel
  2. Richard Feynman– image from Wikimedia
  3. Bertrand Russel– image from Wikimedia
  4. Bruce Lee– image from Wikimedia
  5. Philosophers meme- Form starecat.com
  6. Clip from the lectures by Richard Feynman from youtube.com
  7. Clip on Bruce Lee’s Philosophy from Bruce Lee “The Lost Interview” from youtube.com