I’m undertaking the Coursera Course: Know Thyself: The Value of an UnExamined Life by the University of Edinburgh as something to pass the time in my day and it’s been interesting so far.
Certainly, I’m not doing this for any accreditations but merely, learning for myself…because why not?
(In all honesty, I wanted to do something that challenged my thinking – got me thinking inwardly so I can get better at questioning everything. I’m usually the type of person who just accepts people and things at face value sometimes coming across as naive, overly enthusiastic with ideas, and just says yes to everything. Time to change that as I want to become more of a skeptic for some things – mainly anything related to work, social media, authority, business and government).
Well anyway, here’s what the course is about according to the Coursera Information page:
According to legend, inscribed on walls of the temple on the sacred site of Delphi in Ancient Greece were two premier injunctions: NOTHING IN EXCESS, and KNOW THYSELF.
This course will be an examination of the latter injunction in an effort to discover what self-knowledge is, why it might be valuable, and what, if any, limitations it might face. What is missing from a person lacking in self-knowledge that makes her less wise, virtuous, or competent in certain areas than others who have this capacity, and what if anything might she do to fill that gap? Historical sources as well as recent research in philosophy, experimental social psychology, and neuroscience will inform our investigation, in the course of which we will become students of our own dreams, and cultivate some meditative practices.
Learners will gain familiarity with prominent themes from Western, classical Chinese, and Buddhist approaches to our knowledge of ourselves. In the course of doing so, they will gain an appreciation of the relation of self-knowledge to wisdom, of the value of intellectual humility, as well as of methods of learning about oneself that do not depend on introspection. Learners will also become familiar with contemporary research in experimental social psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience into the emotions, the unconscious, the role of affect in decision making, and self-deception. They will also gain an appreciation of a challenge to the assumption of a coherent, unified self that derives from the Buddhist tradition.
I’m in Week 2 which focuses on Descartes Meditations (I had never heard of these before this course) and while reading these in bed every morning that stretch out to a few hours which make me arise around midday, I am reminded how “I’m doing a Descartes” – and I don’t feel guilty about it at all.
Descartes did his best thinking in bed. Hey, so do I!
Amusingly, I reflected that he too, had decided to take some time out in his life and start thinking about everything. In the same way, I wanted to ‘blow everything I knew up’, I realised I wasn’t alone. He had gone through the same experience.
“Now therefore my mind is free from all cares, and that i have obtained for myself assured leisure in peaceful solitude, I shall apply myself seriously and freely to the destruction of all my former opinions.”
Rene Descartes
I’m going to destroy all my former opinions of work and social media – certainly anything told to us by platform capitalists, I relish now in being a skeptic.
Thanks Descartes!
I think, therefore I am – and no one, or nothing will take my ability to think away from me.
In the same way Decartes wanted to “demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations,” I’m left wondering that maybe in some way, this is what I wanted to do too in recent times and hence quitting work – and quitting social media – quitting toxic people and relationships in my life – and radically rethinking everything that was important (or so I thought) on how organisations manage and develop their people, processes and systems is really…..in the grand scheme of life…. NOT important.
In the same way of Descartes, I have become the utter skeptic, the doubter when it comes to some things – and that’s a good thing.
Well anyway, I don’t profess to be an expert in Descartes. To be fair, some of his meditations need more explorations and there are parts that I don’t agree with him – especially around the proofs and evidence of God and whether that god is good or a ‘deceiver’.
Or the idea that there’s an alternative world we are living/sleeping. Maybe we are. How do you prove that?
The more I think, the more I realise I don’t know.
If there’s a lesson to be learned here is: don’t worry that you don’t know. The mere fact that you know that you don’t know, is alright.
Beware of people who think they do. They’re everywhere – they’re all around us. They’re dangerous.
“I think therefore I am” doesn’t mean what a lot of people assume it does. The “i” that is created by our thinking isn’t the real us. Being aware of the process we can’t be the process, we must be what is aware. Enjoy the Buddhist bits of the course, I’ll be interested to see what you think, or think you think! 😉
Mmm. I’m confused. I took the “I” as being thought itself. Without thought, we do not exist. If I’m able to think, then I exist. From our thoughts, actions and things arise in the physical world that is the evidence that we existed? (Which is why I have issues that when I die, and over time, all my online writing on this blog will come to an “404 Error” which means all evidence of my thinking and ramblings will have disappeared which would seem like I never existed.
It is the story created by thought. But if you can be aware of that process then you have to be something else. That something else is consciousness which is what we really are.
Mmm. So I’m still thinking about it wrong. I can’t wrap my head around this because I’m relating everything to the physical. I need to sit and mull this. It’s my scientific rational brain trying to make sense of it.
You might find this interesting, or you might think I’m mad. This is Brad Warner who is a very smart cookie (though god knows why he subjects us all to his awful guitar playing!)
I have read all of his books (apart from the new one). I have read most of Rupert Spira’s books, and I have the exact same copy of Huang Po’s writing, sitting next to me, so this is the sort of stuff I am deeply into.
I just thought it related to our conversation about materialism.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QGnRhfVn91I
Thanks Euan, I appreciate you for sharing this. No I don’t think you’re mad 🤣. I watched the video but what I came away from it only to realise that I may be thinking of things too literally. When he said, that’s why he follows zen at the very last sentence, I was left hanging. I wanted more. What did he mean by that? (Hence my gap in knowledge of this so I couldn’t make the conclusion he had because I had no prior reference or knowledge about the subject matter).
I agree that time is a construct that we have created. Without it, the world would not function. His story in the book he read out, I took that we all live in the here and now – in this very moment. The slap was a reminder that we are here now, in the moment. We take our minds away from thinking of other stuff and snaps us into that very instant to make us aware of that before we get wrapped up in our thoughts again.
Re the past, and the dinosaurs – I see those as different moments and what we see from our history are physical evidence of those moments.
I’m quickly realising that I need to keep questioning, read more because my skeptical, rational mind can’t fathom the idea that all these are also constructs of what people have come up with. My scientific mind is asking, “so where’s the proof?” “How do you test for this?” Why is one assumption better than another’s assumption when it comes to philosophy? They’re all assumptions so why not accept the fact that we don’t know what we don’t know and that there is (maybe) a “universal truth” that we may never know about or why?
I have to keep reading more into this. These questions are hurting my brain because I’m trying to hook them into something tangible, known, evidential. Maybe I’m approaching it all wrong and should be coming at it through, “what if….?” But I’ve not ever thought this way and it’s messing with my head.
On an aside, what a BLAST FROM THE PAST when he held up the Omni Magazine. I know THAT moment in time was real for me because I was an avid collector of these mags in the 80s. I loved the pictures and the stories. I had completely forgotten about them over the years. Just goes to show how unreliable our memory is!!
Think Again
Beliefs dissembled have no further form. Dissolved by clarity and shift, They float away, No use to those who used to hold them dear, Nor those who never could. They only leave a memory of a me Who used to run in circles, Tangled up by cords of thought Which I’d crocheted into a web, Until a string broke free And pulled apart the meaning and the shape, Leaving behind a chuckle And a newer, lighter structure of belief To be dissembled later.
Marilyn Wendler
Wonderful! I love this. Thank you!
If you’ll pardon the extremely “Bruce” nature of this old sketch, “Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, ‘I drink therefore I am'”… 😉
https://youtu.be/PtgKkifJ0Pw?t=219
Omg. Andrew my husband was playing and singing this (he knows the words off by heart) yesterday. 🤣
Clearly a man of taste and distinction!
If I tell him this, he’ll definitely agree. 🤣