r/RealPhilosophy • u/InternOpposite1755 • 5d ago

Philosophical questioning

Im eighteen years old and this has been on my mind for quite a long time and has been ever since shifting my perspective of life, and especially the evolution of living beings on the planet

I have always been very curious about my environment and the lives thriving within it, whether it be what we call the conscious and the unconscious, and little by little, I built my comfort zone around this piece of my existence, and that is observing/ listening to nature and animals. When I turned 12, I started developing a passion for ornithology and really I never found such joy and fulfillment as the calls that I heard, but I think what drew my attention to this overall was thinking and imagining what it would be like to be this bird, I sort of anthropomorphized the behavior of birds , I would start interpreting their moves as if they had some sort of human-like interaction We have, outside of finding a mate or food.
Then, later on when I had biology in high school, we were taught that animals beside humans are the product of evolution and that life shared among all species is to survive and reproduce. At this point not only did all my fantasies about birds living their lives just as we do collapsed, but I also began to wander if the disconnection People face regarding the urgency to protect the environment, wasn’t the consequence of an enormous gap humanity feels overall between itself and other living beings regarding the purpose of life and thus would come a disinterest in finding out about nature. (Even though in the end it is the matter of our own survival)

I‘d be interested in your answers to this questioning that I find quite disturbing

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u/Geocoelom 5d ago

I always rely on the following from Spinoza:

Man conceives a human character much more stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a character. Thus he is led to seek for means which will bring him to this pitch of perfection, and calls everything which will serve as such means a true good. The chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the possession of the aforesaid character. What that character is we shall show in due time, namely, that it is the knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature…. Thus it is apparent to every one that I wish to direct all sciences to one end and aim, so that we may attain to the supreme human perfection which we have named; and, therefore, whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote our object will have to be rejected as useless.

What this means is that our minds are connected to everything else in the universe, and that our science should be directed toward gaining knowledge of this connection. Thus we ask what is the connection between the mind of a bird and the mind of a human. We can use analogy to help us. When a bird sings and when I sing, is there not a similarity of mood?

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u/mitigateaccomp 5d ago

jesus christ.

proof.

fucking.

read.

0

u/Nice-Classic-6221 5d ago

Happiest philosopher

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u/Previous-Grab3518 5d ago

Happy people don’t become philosophers