Charting a New Course: From Boat Parts to First Principles

     Its occurred to me that I've never set down on this blog exactly why I decided to pursue a career in philosophy, rather than keep up gainful work in a factory as I've been doing the last 15 or so years so Id like to make this my origin story of sorts.

    As many people that know me know, I have been a philosophic thinker most of my life, if not all. Starting with my parents who started me off with a solid grounding in Christian ethics and, though they may not have thought of it in such a way, Existentialism, especially my father.

    Growing up I was always encouraged to ask questions, even hard ones to my parents, whether it be about simple things like fairness in arguing with my sister or with more complex things like how you can't always trust everyone you meet and how, even if you mostly agree with someone, that doesn't always make that someone right. 

    I was raised with the Existentialist ideals of radical individualism (don't just "go with the crowd, make your own choices") and the Christian doctrine of compassion, forgiveness and love and it has grounded me in a way I don't see in much of today's society and lament, but I owe it all to my parents.

    That's not to say that my taste in media didn't affect my world-view. Be it Optimus Prime declaring that "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" or the solipsism of certain experimental anime (I'm looking at you Evangelion) I was inundated from childhood with wild world questioning ideas like "what does it mean to be human?" and the good old fashioned Cartesian idea of "How can we trust any of our senses under the assumption that our brain can and may hallucinate such things at any time?" and, weird as I cam out at the end of that tunnel, I think I am all the better for it.

     But, again as many of my friends and family know, my interest with a formal education was cut short after a certain fifth grade class that ruined my love of reading and learning because the teacher didn't like what I was reading or learning and that followed for the next half decade at the very least until, in my junior year in High School I enrolled in a humanities class, not really knowing what a humanities class was beyond my consular's description of "Its kind of like a philosophy class but also an English class" and it was in this class I was assigned the book "Brave new World" by Aldous Huxley. 

    A Sci-fi alternate future novel set in an arguably dystopian future where every human being is manipulated to fit into a larger societal system, I was hooked from the first chapter and I think I read the whole book in something like a week. I would go to look up the author and find out he was a moderately influential Philosopher who wrote on things like drug experience and common philosophical ideas in different cultures. It was around this time that I would find one of my favorite movies ever, Blade Runner, and read the book it was based off of, "Do androids dream of electric sheep?", from where I discovered my favorite author, Philip K Dick, another philosopher of a kind, which inspired me to dip my toes into the wide world of philosophy, even if not seriously for the better part of two decades to come.

     After High School I decided to take a pragmatic approach to a career, ignoring my burgeoning passion for philosophy in favor of working towards being a police officer. This, obviously, did not pan out for many reasons and I would attempt college three more times after in an attempt to further a career.

    This went off and on for something like 15 years where I worked in factories, eking out a living but never really passionate about the work. That is, until something like two or three years ago when I decided to go back to school "for fun" and pursue a degree in philosophy thanks to the Michigan Reconnect scholarship which pays for community college almost completely if you haven't earned a degree yet.

    It was around this time, before the semester had started but after I had decided to take my first philosophy class, that I stumbled upon an article that described Karl Marx's concept of alienated labor.

    Alienated labor, essentially, is a concept developed by Marx in which a laborer in a capitalist workforce is under no real way devoted to the product of his or her labor, or alienated from its product. His Idea is that for a person to realize his actualized potential, one who labors must have some kind of meaningful attachment to the product of that labor or lose something inherently meaningful in their human existence and in this alienated laborer I saw myself for these last 15 years, not really invested in anything I did beyond the paycheck it would produce and was inspired to seriously pursue what I was passionate about instead.   

    Looking back at things through a different lens, I suppose it was an obvious choice and one I should have made years ago, but I suppose it would have changed who I am as a person and where I am in life so I cant say I would have made that change given the option. Many of my friends and family dont quite understand what I'm on about all the time, but the general consensus seems to be a positive one and I am quite happy with how things are progressing.

Plus, it's just plain fun!