Straighten Up & Fly Right
The word "orientation" is widely used today. Do you know what it means?
Orientation describes the relationship between one thing and another. In the world of aviation where I work, orientation is taken pretty seriously. Indeed, a dangerous situation results anytime a pilot misinterprets the information available to them and becomes disoriented to the facts. An example of this is called an unusual-attitude. In this situation, a pilot has become confused about their relationship to their aircraft, and their aircraft's relationship to the rest of the world. In short, they've gotten lost. They're not even sure if they're right-side up anymore. Indeed, a physical chain reaction has begun, and if it's not interrupted, there will be a total loss of control and then a fiery crash. There's only one solution to this pilot's problem. They must become oriented again.
How can this renewed orientation be achieved? Well, as with any recovery program, step-1 is to recognize and admit that there is in fact a problem. After that, the disoriented pilot must gather true information from trustworthy sources about the reality of their position and trajectory. Then they must apply their knowledge and training to act on this information appropriately—because different situations require different control inputs to correct them. If the pilot guesses and is wrong, they will make the situation worse instead of better.
Time is a luxury the disoriented pilot can't afford. Instead of a lifetime to "find themselves," the disoriented pilot may only have a few seconds. To become oriented again, they will have to quickly identify a reliable source of truth and rightly perceive their actual relationship to reality. Only then can they rightly apply their training and skills to restore a safe-attitude. When they do, they won't be lost anymore—they will be saved.
What has saved them?
It's simple! They have succeeded in orienting "their truth" to "the Truth." As a matter of fact, the safety of every pilot and their passengers depends utterly on the pilot's subjective orientation to a shared objective reality. When pilots question their relationships to themselves, their crew, the aircraft around them, and the world as a whole to achieve and maintain this orientation—they are doing philosophy.
Philosophers pursue an accurate orientation to reality by asking good questions of themselves, of others, and of the world around them. So don't go flying with a pilot unless they are first and foremost—a good philosopher.
What is your orientation?
What's Your Orientation to Yourself (Your Identity)?
What exactly are you? Do facts exist about you? Are you free to invent your own facts? Should your facts integrate with the facts of others? What is a fact anyways? Do you care? Should you?
What's Your Orientation to Other Beings (Your Religion)?
What is your relationship to your Creator? What is your relationship to other creatures? Do they have as much value and importance as you do? What exactly makes you special? Have you noticed that you’re different from other persons? None of us are exactly alike, and we each perceive the world in our own unique way. Even so, people come together in communities and share meaning together. How is this possible? What is your role in a functioning community? Do you exist for others? Do they exist for you?
What's Your Orientation to Reality (Your Worldview)?
Are you oriented to reality? What is your relationship to the world? If you speak your truth, do the facts obey you? Are you in total control of your reality? Or are you one person among many, each influencing the lives of all others in big and small ways? Is there a purpose for the world? Are you an important part of that purpose?
What is your source of truth? Is it objectively meaningful? Can it explain the world as it really is, or only as you would like it to be? Do your subjective beliefs integrate with the lives of others in the real world?
Good Philosophy: The Love of Wisdom
Asking the above questions, and then exploring reality, ourselves, and each other for answers is the project of philosophy. The word “philosophy” means " loving wisdom." Of course, this begs yet another question. What is wisdom?
Wisdom is the practical knowledge that we use to successfully orient our lives to reality. Having and gaining wisdom enables us to live our lives with increasing accuracy and skill. Wisdom usually comes to us from one of three important sources: our common-sense, a revelation from a trustworthy source of truth, and our experiences—usually the bad ones we survive.
Consider this: are you afraid of heights, spiders, snakes, or some other thing that gives you the “heebie-jeebies?” That’s your common-sense keeping you safe by helping you avoid potentially dangerous things. Do you drive in the correct lanes and obey traffic signals? If so, it's because a parent or drivers-ed teacher “revealed” that doing so keeps you and others safe on the highway. If you have "unwisely" tested the truth-value of that revelation and lived to tell about it, then you have hopefully gained wisdom by the most popular method—experience.
Philosophy is the project of integrating these sources in an effort to gain as much wisdom as we can. The goal of a good philosopher is to become oriented to reality and live a skillful life. Of course, not everyone is a good philosopher. Those who suppress or abandon their common sense, spurn the instruction of competent authority, or fail to learn from their mistakes are by definition unwise—or foolish.
Fundamentalists, Fanatics, Floaters & Philosophers
The first step to living a Truth-oriented life is to take a sober self-inventory and get honest with yourself about why you believe in the things you do. You have to ask yourself some tough questions. Is "your" subjective-truth oriented to the objective Truth? Are you oriented to the facts? How do you know? Might you take for granted what others have taught you? What if they're disoriented? If they are, doesn't it follow that you are too? If this were the case, would you be able to tell?
Here lies the danger of being a fundamentalist. Are you encouraged (or allowed) to honestly question your assumptions without facing the inquisition of your culture? If you're not, let that be your first clue. Maybe it's time to put some courage on and do it anyways. What's being hidden if you’re not allowed to ask good questions? If they say "it’s too complicated for you to understand"—maybe they don’t understand it either!
Jesus taught that: “everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God” (John 3:20-21). The light of Truth is a great filter for nonsense. It's not afraid of your good questions.
Fundamentalism isn't the only threat to good philosophy. Maybe you want the world to be a certain way so badly that you "just know" that it is. Maybe you ignore, or even attack anyone who objects to your worldview. Perhaps you suppress any and all evidence that doesn't support it. Here lies the danger of being a fanatic.
Or maybe you don't really care, and are content to "hang loose" and go with the flow as you surf the cultural wave. This seems to be the majority attitude—but be careful. You might be like the lemming who has joined an ignorant mob as it plummets headlong into a sea of evil. Here lies the danger of being a floater.
Bad Philosophy: The Inquisition
What happens when good philosophy goes wrong?
Well, like all evils it becomes something else—something fallen, corrupted, and destructive. In the case of philosophy, a healthy spirit of inquiry has always been opposed by a fallen spirit of inquisition. What’s the difference?
Inquiry asks honest questions in a good-natured search for the Truth, while inquisitions ask confronting questions to test one's obedience to authority or to a culture’s expectations. The inquirer is unsatisfied because there is always something more to learn—more wisdom to find and love. The inquisitor's dissatisfaction arises when they ask loaded questions and don't get the answers they want. Too often, the inquisitor looks for a way to "cancel" the source of their dissatisfaction.
For example, Socrates was murdered because of a spirit of inquisition in Greece. Jesus of Nazareth was murdered because of a spirit of inquisition in Jerusalem. Many others have been tortured, killed, and otherwise cancelled because they communicated truth that challenged the accepted views of their cultural authority. Have you ever confronted an uncomfortable truth only to pretend that it didn't exist?
In one of the most famous scandals in history, Galileo Galilei was imprisoned by the Roman inquisition for sharing evidence confirming the Copernican model of the solar system where Earth is rightly seen to orbit the sun once a year—the one we now take for granted. At the time of Galileo's inquisition, it was a matter of church-dogma that Earth sat at the center of the universe where it was orbited by the sun. Since Galileo’s observations directly refuted the doctrines of a presumably impeccable authority, he was accused of heresy and imprisoned.
Of course, science and history eventually confirmed that the Roman authority's “impeccable” doctrines were disoriented to the facts. Galileo was objectively right, and they were objectively wrong. Without honest inquirers like Copernicus and Galileo, this "disorientation" may never have been discovered. Without tremendous moral and intellectual courage—or a sufficient amount of embarrassment arising in the seat of authority—the disorientation may never have been admitted to..
Now, notice carefully that the inquisition isn't a church thing at all. It’s a human thing. 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazi inquisition. At least 40 million Chinese were killed by Mao Zedong's "great leap forward" (a.k.a. the communist-inquisition). There are legions of similar examples polluting not church-history—but human-history. So, get sober and ask yourself if we've really “progressed” beyond such things. Check your social media or the evening news and notice how quickly people “cancel” —that is to say, excommunicate each other from their communities at the first hint of disagreement with a culture's preferred disorientation.
There’s nothing new under the sun after all. There are those who honestly and charitably search for the Truth (good philosophers)—and those who are so sure of themselves that they will do almost anything to prevent a contrary point of view from seeing the light of day (inquisitors).
So, which are you?
Straighten up and fly right! Pursue your own right orientation so that you can share the Truth in good will with others. Become a lover of Wisdom. Be a good philosopher.