What Is The Point?

Recently I am interested in reading. The more I read, the more questions to be answered. Those very basic questions such as why am I here? If my name was not Carolina, would it change myself? What is the purpose of living? Et cetera. Some of my friends told me to be careful because I was thinking too much. One of them even told me to stop.

“It’s a waste of time. Why would you need to know? You’re not going to be a philosopher. Stop it.”

And I did. For a while. Only to realise that I need it. I always have questions and curiosities that need to be fulfilled. Was it a waste of time? Well, I don’t think so. I still ask myself whether do I know what am I actually talking about. Did I say something true? Objectively true or was it only my perspective? To answer that, I need to reflect on my concepts and my beliefs that I used. I understand it as my foundation of life. It’s the scaffolding of my thoughts.

Simon Blackburn in his book "Think", called it a conceptual engineering. For just as the engineer studies the structure of material things, our kind of people can learn the structure of thought. Understanding it involves seeing how some parts, as the scaffolding, functioning and connected to built our minds up. It could mean knowing what would happen for better or worse if changes were made.

I would never say it’s going to be enough, you know, to satisfy my mind or to get answers for my questions. The thinking in question involves attending to basic structure of thought. It made me realised that all of this is a matter of ‘knowing how’, not ‘knowing that’.

I feel like the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues who did not pride himself on how much he knew. On the contrary, he prided himself on being the only one who knew how little he knew. To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, and become aware of alternatives.

“What is the point?”

Yes. That you might ask. You won’t get the business done or the bread baked. Yes, but neither does music, art, law, history, or engineering. It’s just that I want to understand myself, and a little part of the world such as; how does it work? It’s good for my mental health. It's kind of a pleasure for me. You know when your physical health is good, you can do physical exercise. When your mental health is good, I’m sure it’d be a pleasure to do mental exercise.