What's Your Philosophy of Life?

Ayn Rand often stated that all of us have, and behave in accordance with, a personal philosophy of life. Yet most of us are more-or-less unconscious of our very own philosophy, and have paid little attention to its development. So we are actually run by something we have little or no awareness of. Most of us have a hodge-podge of philosophical pieces randomly accumulated over the years — since birth — that runs us according to who-knows-what.

A short example of a philosophy of life is: The world is a bad place. Or its opposite, the world is a good place.

The more you believe one over the other, the more your thinking and behavior will reflect that bias. The less you know what you believe, the more your thoughts and actions will be a mystery or a problem to you. The less conscious you are of them the more they run you toward behavior that can be difficult or impossible to explain.
Few of us have taken the time to observe, reflect on, evaluate, retain or discard, and otherwise manage our philosophical foundations. Most have never even thought about it.

This is like a computer programmer who writes software by randomly taking pieces of computer code out of other people's software and sticking in their own. How efficient, effective or useful could that be?

Here in America, many people are adapting Eastern philosophical and religious principles by which to live. They are mostly unaware of the Western Philosophical traditions, nor the social principles that grew out of those traditions. Or they have taken a look at popular culture and mistaken that for a philosophy.

If our current popular culture was truly indicative of our foundational traditions, we would still be living in a primitive state.

Truth is, much, if not most, of the true Western Philosophical Traditions have been buried in time, and require a LOT of work to recover them from the very deep memory-hole. Much of it is polar opposite to the Eastern traditions, but some is surprisingly similar or at least compatible.

In my quest to make yoga more relevant to Americans, I have looked far and wide into that nearly lost material, as well as that from the East, which is, amazingly (but not surprising), far more accessible. (I started studying Buddhism, for example, when I was 14 years old. It did not last long, for reasons I'll share as we go along.)

In this Category of Inquiry, we'll be looking at various aspects of both ends of the spectrum, and see where we can construct a more conscious and wholistic philosophy of life.

I will state up front, however, that my personal bias is that since we live in the West, I will be coming primarily from the Western perspective, yet informed by essential insights from the East.

Take Care, David Scott Lynn