I watched Adam Curtis' "Can't get you out of my head" during the
past couple of days. I don't know if I am ready to say anything
about it yet, except that it seems extremely relevant. It
focuses on the loss of individuality in the West, China,
Russia and the Middle East during the past century.
What it seems to have brought up in my mind is the marginalized
space of philosophy. I have only had one course in philosophy
during my education. That was in high school. Towards the end.
What the hell? Philosophy is the basis of logic, math, science
and so on. It should be the first thing that you teach to the
next generation.
"It's too hard". No it isn't. Focus on the stuff that has to do
with reality. If you have to build a fantasy world before you
start working, you are doing it wrong.
That is another thing that they completely failed in my high
school philosophy. They put stuff in there in sort of a
chronological order, but kept only the important people in.
What this gets you is a strange collection of stuff that doesn't
really make sense anymore. I suppose they were doing it so that
you could get the sense of what is possible.
I remember reading Spinoza at some point. It's fine, I didn't
really understand it most of the time, but it seemed to be onto
something. Then he pulls god out of the hat, pretty much randomly.
"Since there always has to be someone to perceive the world,
there has to be god" No, you have built a fantasy world. There
doesn't have to be anyone to perceive it. Or maybe the microbes
are doing the perceiving when mammals aren't looking.
Just skip this stuff! Build the curriculum to reflect where the
actual real world philosophy is at this moment! There is a huge
amount of philosophy being reignited by what is happening in the
AI scene. You should be pointing these out, instead of treating
phisolophy as something between history and theology.
I think what it is, it's that they are afraid of philosophy.
If you look at the long timeline, it seems that it came to an end
with cynicism and endless angst in the twentieth century. I think
they are afraid to put that into the curriculum. There is a hump
you have to get over when you get to the end of it. I think the
educators didn't get over it, and stopped trying. It's fine to
just keep trying. When you give up is when you start lying.
