I’m Doing a Descartes

November 2022

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.

Cogito, Ergo Sum

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’m Doing a Descartes

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