“I believe that, like the worthless unexamined life, the unexamined idea is not worth having”
BY DAVID PECK
Editor's note: David Peck is a master's student in the Department of Philosophy and is president of the Philosophy Graduate Students Association.
Why did I choose to study philosophy? Why, after 18 years of working in the “real” world, would I choose to leave the comfort of my complacent and often predictable lifestyle? A way of life that consisted of 90 minutes to two hours a day caught in traffic, 45 to 75 phone calls a day, a rushed Rolaids-inducing business lunch, an overflowing inbox of poorly written e-mails, imaginary corporate fires, and enough inane and idle chitchat to make living on the ninth level of Dante's Hell feel merely like enduring a bad comedian on amateur night at Yuk Yuks. And oh, yes, at least 10 parking tickets a year. All this and a steady paycheque I left behind to pursue a professional career in the academic world. Some called it foolhardy. I called it liberation.
Voltaire said: “We use ideas merely to justify our evil and speech merely to conceal our ideas.” It seems like a good thing to say. Techniques of persuasion, rhetoric and beautiful metaphors become the tools of modern-day sophists as they attempt to tweak and twist hearts, minds and imaginations. Political figures, writers, entertainers, ministers, artists, the media and the like offer up ideas about life and how to see the world as if we were all eating at some kind of disinterested all-you-can-eat philosophical buffet of detached thoughts and ideas. Today's main course is rhetoric. In the same way, lifestyle advertising spouts its own mediated ilk and should, at best, be seen as a muddy mixture of conflicting messages, assumed premises and shoddy conclusions. Global village? Indeed.
The other day, I found out the hard way what Sartre meant when he said: “Hell is other people.” Someone said to me, in a rather cold and condescending tone, after hearing I was pursuing a post-graduate degree in philosophy: “That and a quarter will get you a phone call.” Not having the sharp sense of discernment required to realize that this person had just trampled on my passion for the past 12 years and offended every sensibility I've ever entertained, and as demeaning as the word “that” was, I still sheepishly grinned and responded with: “Yep, that's what a lot of folks have to say.”
I left the room with the conversation ringing in my ears and wondered what that phone call might actually be like and who I might find myself talking to on the other end of the line. What if I could make one all-important phone call? What if I had only a quarter to spend? Who would it be? Christ, Plato, Descartes, Pascal, Gandhi? Or maybe Elvis? He might have a lot to say. I hear he was kind of chatty.
Yes, I'm a philosopher and I am proud of it. I spend my time reading, thinking and considering ideas — ideas of other philosophers, theologians and political thinkers. I flavour their ideas with a less sophisticated material of my own deliberation, but I do examine, I do think, I do reflect. I get wound up when things are said that indicate a lack of reflection or consideration for the other. I believe that, like the worthless unexamined life, the unexamined idea is not worth having.
We're all philosophers on some level. We all have ideas about religion and politics. We all have some version of the afterlife or perhaps no version at all. We all speak from a point of view, share a not-so-common perspective and will wax poetic on any number of issues if motivated by enough pain, passion, alcohol or anger. We find ourselves both liberated and free through the vehicle of choice or, as Rousseau proclaimed, we are bound, determined and chained to our circumstance whenever and wherever we go.
Ideas are important. In some respects, they're a given. Some might say they are as accessible and plentiful as the grains of sand on the gritty seashore of the imagination. That may be true. It may be an experiential fact. Is it true, however, that popular ideas are readily put under the critical and philosophical microscope? Are the ideas of others challenged, criticized and reflected on? Can we say that, as active participants in a democratic society (whatever that means), we are willing and freely able to examine the ideas of others?
Last year, I spent four weeks in Southeast Asia, primarily in Cambodia — a country that is beautiful, mysterious and tragic. Over the past four years, I have spent much time reading and thinking about the history of Cambodia and the plight of its people. Often referred to as the “sideshow” of the Vietnam War, this is a country that has been largely forgotten by the international community. Thousands dead from mindless, disinterested, video-game-like bombing, seven to 10 million land mines still lying active and dormant like a raw and lethal tumour. These pernicious little anti-personnel mines almost outnumber the current population of the country. Designed to maim and not kill, they have inflicted a horrific degree of physical and psychological pain on small rural communities throughout the country. Genocide. Thirty years of civil war, a war crimes trial still pending and one in three dead as a result of an idea. An idea about Marxism that went horribly wrong — a hyper-communistic, intellectual, academic idea. Some sideshow.
It is precisely for this reason that I chose to study philosophy. I wanted to be able to stand on the other side of an idea and say with a great deal of historical and philosophical confidence that the idea must be examined and that it may be wrong. I had a deep desire to sharpen my skills as a critical thinker. I was and am still in search of first things. I am honing a keen interest in knowing exactly why it was I thought this was this and that was that. Roland Joffe, director of The Killing Fields, has said about the human condition: “We're a strange animal, so often destroying what we love for selfish ends and yet tantalized by the sense that there are other choices if only we had the strength to make them. In the politics of 400 years ago, we find the same questions we battle with today.” I agree.
Fifty years ago, a man by the name of Saloth Sar and a small group of Cambodian academics, many of them former schoolteachers, went to France on scholarships to study. They found themselves drawn to a radical form of Communism and quickly joined arms in a metaphorical and nationalistic embrace. They were a small group of thinkers with extreme, desperate ideas about their country and the way things ought to be. They attended lectures, wrote papers and smoked French cigarettes. Twenty-five years after graduation, Pol Pot and the other members of this group were responsible for the deaths of millions of Cambodians. Appalling, severe and reprehensible. They saw it as their duty to punish, indoctrinate, detain and transform their friends and family. Obedience was demanded; questions were ignored and brushed carelessly aside. Hatred and fear were the weapons of this ideological regime. Death and destruction were the results. Thirty-three per cent of the country was wiped out. Disturbing numbers and frightening statistics merely approximate the violence and pain these sovereign tyrants rained down on their country.
As detailed in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, we can cry with the lives of those who survived and with the spirits of those who died: “The horror. The horror.”
The Khmer Rouge were captured by an idea — a pernicious notion with brutal consequences. They were fascinated with power, infused with racism and bankrupt of any moral restraint. It has been noted that years before the regime was ruling Cambodia with lies, deception and the farmer's hoe, Pol Pot had spent much time secluded in Angkor Wat reading and studying Mein Kampf. Hitler's evil and inhumane doctrine influenced the lives of millions of others years later and miles away. One maniacal madman nurturing the other.
Ideas must be examined. They must be challenged and sometimes they must be subverted. I will continue to examine, think and reflect. I encourage everyone to do the same because I believe a degree in philosophy and a quarter will get you a whole lot more than just a phone call. Philosophy cultivates an inquisitive spirit. It encourages the formulation of relevant, important and key questions. It enables one to choose and to choose with informed conviction. And it fosters an analytical and pensive heart.
I am, however, open to the possibility that I may be wrong. If I am, perhaps you might find it useful to consider the existential implications the next time you drop a 25-cent coin into a pay phone and imagine this is it — your last conversation.
