The development of a philosophy of life is on some levels cyclic.
Computer chip design goes through successive stages of reducing the instruction set and expanding it. Organizational structure goes through a cycle of centralization and decentralization. In like fashion, I think the philosophy of life cycles through the fundamental ideas of cooperation and competition.
I think people who have a life philosophy of "it's us vs. them" usually get there by intellectually transcending the philosophy of "we're all just people."
I think people who have a life philosophy of "we're all just people" usually get there by intellectually transcending the philosophy of "it's us vs. them."
It seems like a lot of the arguments in the world come from . . . cycles like this, if not exactly this. That each side *knows* the other side is being immature and stupid, because they themselves have grown out of the other side's opinion.
The real trick, of course, is to make sure your philosophy gains depth and you learn things each time you run through the cycle. Ideally, every time you wind up back at "it's up vs. them," you've gained a little more empathy and cooperative theory; every time you cycle back to "we're all just people," you've gained a little better sense for the roots and theory of conflict.
This may not be an insight to anyone else. ^_^
Posted by rebecca at October 23, 2004 03:45 AM