An Ideal to live by
What to do with our lives is the biggest question
Have we grown less ambitious as a civilization with time?
The people with which began notions of western epistemology and philosophy were the ancient greeks. All our thinking processes are normally based on the notions concieved and accepted back then (we,the people who have had a western education.No we are not truly indian anymore but thats another issue). The earliest notion of an ideal for man was 'arete': excellence in an all encomapssing way.
According to this school of thought, the purpose of all human life was to strive for excellence, in every sphere of life. Translated into the modern context, a perfect person would then be the best of academicians, the most athletic athlete, excellent musician, the most lucid WRITER, capable of handling all emotions with the greatest maturity and so on. The person would not achieve this to impress anyone else, only for the self.
This ideal was then above all..above thruth, above God(which actually came later in time.
Later schools of philosophers were opposed to this idea, and God, truth etc. took over, we were just supposed to have faith.
Come back to our time and take a look around.The concept of division of labour has taken over, men are small components in the big machine..the SYSTEM. We now have faith in things like money, and fame, let alone God and truth. Most people you talk to today would be happy to settle for just that..a settled life. Some money, some work and some funtime. This is ofcourse about the people who have thought about the question. Others have a hazy concept of money/fame/sex as the ideal. Chase that till you have it.After that? Thats too far away to attract attention.
what happened then, to the human spirit? is is realism that has taken over through a natural process of evolution. Have we become tired and lazy? Do we need stimulation?A revolution maybe??? I have no answers.
What we do need is an ideal to live by.
POST SCRIPT:I must complement Ishita Vohra's thought provokng article,which stimulated me into writing this
What stayed with you?
A line that lingered, a feeling, a disagreement. Great comments are as valuable as the original piece.