Jameson R Willts’ Column
Philosophy Phonies, purely Priggish?
Jameson Willts, Orthodox Vegetarian, Lepidopterist, Winner of the 2003 Fielding Chemistry Award and proud sponsor of the Toughborough Cricket Club, invites you the bright and sprightly reader to browse his editorial…
…This time he celebrates its second anniversary.
Ding Dong! And, if I may be so bold, a Dong Ding to you too!
Thank you and welcome, honorary fellow, to this crisp edition of Jameson Willts’ visual outlet, otherwise known as an editorial! But before we may start our voyage into the labyrinths and backwaters of uncommon wisdom, I’d like to present to you a little quote:
“The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value”
Now that, dear friend, was a quote by the great Oscar Wilde, first published in the Saturday review 1894. Please note that I shall be trying hard not to quote from him again; lest I become one of those disgustingly grainy fellows, who feel that to write intellectually its quite necessary to quote from everyone and everything else in-between. But considering that short passage for a brief nanosecond, one may find themselves conjuring up the phrase Philosophy! (Or Philo Sophia, to use the Greek root).
Now hold on one moment. Complain as you might, that after 2000 years we should still discuss a strange group of bearded fellows scantly clad in togas, it is an inescapability that their ancient philosophies have ultimately sown the seeds of our western culture, thoughts, even our ethics. I have studied Philosophy for many years and hold it in the highest regard. Unfortunately, as Mr Wilde spotted some time ago, Philosophers have a rather nasty habit! One that really needs to be kicked. They tend to get it into their heads that it’s okay to take their Philosophies, their ideas and speculative reasoning, out into the world and flog it off as fact. This, good reader, is a dangerous situation.
After all, sometimes in Philosophy there are truly ridiculous people. People who believe that life is just a wondrous computer game, or in fact similar to the maze at Hampton Court Palace. So reader, by this logic simply stick to the left, enter square circle circle and the correct Bio-dron Omnicron 2000 will be at hand to fight all those little fuzzy little aliens who keep stealing your socks.
Sadly, sticking to the left probably won’t show you any solutions and neither can the Bio-dron Omni-magi-thingy save your linens… try mothballs! The truth is that as important as philosophy can be, there are those out there that believe the smartest collection of words, the most intelligent-sounding phrase, will hold the key to the correct way of life and the question of everything!
The point I am driving at is that everybody gets it wrong! Even greats such as Aristotle. Hell, he believed that flies had only four legs, whilst as we all know they in fact they have six… pure insanity! He even thought that mucus was brain matter (well now I just feel stupid). The problem was that for 200 years nobody checked. Which gets me to my final point, oh valiant reader. Philosophers have been searching for an answer for years, but as the years pass, it is only through people’s questioning that we actually get anywhere. And although the answer may not be, as Douglas Adams posed 42, every time we question our beliefs we are surely getting closer.
Perhaps the real problem lies more in the attitude of the people who spread these philosophies. After all, just as a man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked but opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push, so too will a man be trapped within his own beliefs if it does not occur to him to simply try something different.
So, to take the quote we began with, we must strive to not degrade “truths” into “facts”. Because nothing destroys the potential for discussion, evolution and freedom more then forcing your belief (and I stress, it is a belief) into a science, into a law.
So to finish, fellow students of intellectual hocus-pocus, in the timeless words of the father of thought: my advice to you is to get married! If you find a good wife, then you’ll be happy. If not, then you’ll become a philosopher! (Beard sold separately)
Alas, it is the end. Only enough time for this week’s nutritional factoid. Last week we had the rather flatulent puzzle… the answer being a palindrome, a paragraph, sentence or word the same backwards as it is forwards.
Therefore I must recover with this, a deliciously sumptuous food-based riddle:
“A pot full of all kinds of flowers”
Eating this, some say takes hours
As ever your suggestions, answers and questions are gravely in danger, so send them by e-message immediately, please!
Yours, TTFN,
Jameson
A.C
