Why Philosophy is Necessary to Create a Better World

Regaining My Childlike Sense of Freedom

At ten years old, I was the girl in the front row of the classroom. My hand shot up as quickly as questions were asked, and my homework was completed to the best of my ability. I was smart…or so I thought. 

I followed the rules because I was told to do so. I learned what was “necessary,” and I regurgitated information as it had been laid out. I was diligent and moldable, the perfect mind for the school system. 

Though I was completely bought in, I remember feeling disappointed when I would read my friends’ papers and realize we had all written identical drafts. 

We had been formed by similar thoughts and given the same narrow set of guidelines, we had each followed the same method to construct our masterpieces.  But no matter how hard we tried our works were never masterpieces, they couldn’t be. Masterpieces are original, and our works were attempted replicas, mired, and watered down by interpretations, paraphrasing, and personal bias.

For years, I existed as the perfect student. Then in high school, I quit trying. It wasn’t that I didn’t value education, rather that I recognized the importance of education. I started to understand how deeply the structure of school cheapens the individual pursuit of intelligence.

Then, I stumbled upon philosophy. 

Philosophy Surprised Me

I’m going to be honest when I say I never intended to care about philosophy. 

When I began my intellectual pursuit my methods were disorganized. In school, I had gotten used to learning with guidelines, textbooks, and predetermined sequences. So much so that I didn’t know how to use the internet’s black hole of information.  I was daunted. Additionally, because I had gotten used to the external punishments and rewards of attendance and grades. I found it difficult to implement the necessary systems and discipline to support my desire to learn. Eventually, everything clicked. 

I learned that the internet was a tool that could only be leveraged if understood and utilized properly. Most people don’t understand this, and are using the internet correctly. 

When people want to learn a topic, they look it up word-for-word, read a couple of blogs, watch a YouTube video, and call it a day. That’s only the beginning. You can’t end there. Through trial-and-error, I realized that as I consume those initial blog posts and YouTube videos, I need to be writing down every concept, vocab word, and question that I have in order to continue my search. Learning online is about pulling on as many threads as possible. There’s so much information, you can’t guess what you need to learn, and instead have to embrace it as a journey of exploration and discovery.

I have always been curious, but this added structure to my curiosity. As I became accustomed to the process of asking questions and digging deeper on the internet, I began to extend that to my everyday life. Enter philosophy. This area of study I never intended to care about found me, and it surprised me. 

Meet Philosophy

On the internet you learn by asking questions, and in philosophy you do the same. Some people believe philosophy is an antique pursuit, reserved for arrogant old men in universities. Others believe that it is unnecessarily theoretical. These are misconceptions. 

Let me impart the information I wish I would have learned sooner…

The word “philosophy” comes from the combination of two Greek words, “philein” and “sophia.” Together, these mean “the love of wisdom.” 

Wisdom is the key here. 

People assume learning about philosophy is the same as learning about biology – you take in as much factual information as possible, memorize what you can, and recall when necessary. I get that understanding. It used to be mine.  But wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge is factual and technical, like the way you would learn about anatomical systems or mathematical equations. Wisdom is not factual and technical, it’s relational. 

Wisdom seeks to understand the relationship between things. It seeks to gain a deep conceptual understanding of the essence of things so it can draw conclusions about what would or would not occur in a given set of potential circumstances. 

People often say wisdom is gained through experience. That should not be the goal. Smart people don’t wait for jarring experiences to learn about cause-and-effect relationships. Smart people observe. They make hypotheses and draw conclusions. 

Wisdom is the love of and dedication to seeing connections. The more connections are made, the more accurately and intentionally a person can interact with the world. Thus, people that seek wisdom attempt to continuously clarify and expand their worldview. 

Philosophy Adds to Science

Hopefully, you are beginning to recognize the value of philosophy. 

Philosophy is not old. It may sound old, but In actuality, philosophy is rather cutting edge. Sometimes people see a philosopher’s use of hundred-year-old information and wonder how it could ever be relevant. Wisdom, though, is not bound by time. Philosophy recognizes this and attempts to bridge the gap between new and old information, taking the wisdom of the past, synthesizing it, and applying it to the unique conditions of the time. 

In this way, philosophy aids progress. 

Today, science is seen as the only thing that can create innovation and progress. This is shortsighted. Before a science could become a science, it was first a concept of philosophical inquiry; someone recognized a relationship between two or more things and began to ask questions about the nature of that relationship. Sciences can be measured and are fact-based whereas philosophy is conceptual and relational. It can’t be measured in the same way science can be measured. 

Scientists work within the bounds of the predetermined rules, which means that they attempt to understand new things inside of a pre-existing scope of truth.  Philosophy always speculates that more may be possible. Philosophy accepts what is scientifically true while wondering and theorizing about what else might exist. 

It says: maybe the truth that we accept is only a part of a bigger truth. 

Philosophy can change the world, one person at a time

When I began my journey, I was not aware I was searching for philosophy. Since then, I have come to believe philosophy is at the heart of human progress. 

My problem had been with the way I was perceiving the world. I had learned to live by my home rules, school rules, religious rules, societal rules, etc, but in binding myself to a set of rules, I bound myself to the reality proposed by those rules. I just hadn’t realized it.

It’s so easy to confine yourself to a certain type of reality when you haven’t been given the proper tools to critically question it and your beliefs.  We see this all the time. People grow up in a certain environment, and they don’t leave it. True, some people choose it, but others don’t know how to choose anything else. 

Through my journey of questioning, I have learned that life is defined by choices, and people’s choices reflect their beliefs. 

This is why philosophy is important for every human. 

In learning how to critically question and in seeking what is most objectively true, we can expand our notion of possibility. I have come to believe that philosophy has the power to change this world because, through it, individuals can learn to question, and in questioning, come to recognize the difference between perception and reality.  An individual’s goal should be to learn to interact with the world as it is, instead of how it may seem.

If the world is going to be changed, we need more individuals that question, observe, and that recognize various relationships between things. We need more wisdom. Hence, we need more philosophy.