Just like it’s important to have a strategy when investing, it is important to have a philosophy while living life. For those that are religious you have a ready made set of rules and values to live your life by. For those that are not, like me, we don’t have any set path to walk and need to find one for ourselves.
I will try to describe my own personal philosophy that I try to follow in my life. I have decided to call it onionism.
Firstly I believe in the three basic rules. The golden rule, the silver rule and the bronze rule. The golden rule comes from Christianity and basically states that you should do unto others as you wish done onto you. This makes sense. Do good to others and you will get the same back. The silver rule comes from Confucius and is sort of the inverse. It states that you should not do to others that which you don’t want done to you. I think these two rules are great compliments to each other. The bronze rule which I made up is to not expect from others what you don’t expect from yourself. The idea behind this rule is the person you should have the greatest expectations of is yourself. You need to be critical of your own behaviour first before you blame others for their actions.
I think the above rules make a great starting position for anyone’s personal life philosophy and are universally applicable.
The second part of my life philosophy is about where to focus your time and efforts in life. In your life you have limited time but an infinite number of possible actions you can take so you need to prioritize. For this I try to imagine the world as an onion with me at the center of it and everything else as a layer of the onion. You are the most important thing to you and you are the only person you truly have control over. If you die that is it as far as I can tell and so nothing really matters more than that. If you progress in life to have a family and children then they join you as well in the center of the onion. You may even place them closer to the center than yourself and so should the need ever arise you may need to sacrifice yourself for them. In the next layer of the onion are your still close, but non-nuclear family. Your parents or siblings or nieces / nephews if you have them. After you take care of your immediate family you should try and take care of them. Spend time with them, lend and hand and offer what advice you can. In the next layer of the onion depending on your priorities are your further out family and/or your close friends. On and on the layers go with your further out family and friends and out until you reach your community then society and then all of humanity.
The onion does not stop at just humanity though. All of life is connected and humanity cannot live without the rest of nature. Any extra time and effort you have available you should spend taking care of nature. That nature which is most close to you being the most important but all of it ultimately mattering.
For the last part of my life philosophy is how I feel about life in general. For this I pose the following question: what is the purpose of life? To answer this I start with the following assumptions and observations. First is that the theory of evolution is true and so life is ever changing. From the theory of evolution we can conclude that there was a time before humans existed. There was a time when there were multiple species of humans. Then using the theory we can look into the future and determine there will again be a time when there are multiple species of humans or there will be no humans at all. Given all of this I think we can say that if there is any purpose to life that the answer does not contain humanity as part of it’s answer. As humanity is fundamentally a temporary phenomena and life is such a larger system that has been around for much longer and hopefully will be around well after we all are.
So to answer the question of what is the purpose of life the answer will have to be something that is universal and applies to all life. To me there is only one such answer that fits this criteria. The purpose of life is life itself and it’s own perpetuation. Any observation of biology will show this to be true. The primary goals of all lifeforms is it’s own survival and to create the next generation. This may seem overly simple, but there is no requirement that the truth is complex. Sometimes the simplest of answers are the ones that are true. Others may say that the purpose of life must come from some outside force to be imposed on life, but I don’t see this as necessary either. Life is fully capable of giving itself it’s own meaning. There is no need for any outside force to do this.
Though humans are not special there is one way in which we are unique. We are the only species (currently known) that is conscious in a way that no other species is. No other species can contemplate itself, the universe and it’s place within it. I think consciousness is a truly amazing thing made even more amazing by how rare it is. This gift though is also a burden as it means humans are tasked with the ability and I believe responsibility to be stewards of life in the universe. Earth is the only place currently known to contain life and it could very well be the only place in the universe to do so. Our duty is to maintain the life that exists on earth and maybe to even ensure it makes it off earth for it’s long-term survival.
In summary my personal philosophy is to live by the golden, silver and bronze rules. Focus your time on the people that are the closest to you and then try to reach other to help others further away when you can. Take care of nature. Life is it’s own purpose and is the ultimate good in the universe. Keep yourself and your family going. Have kids or help your extended family to have them to make your family survive into the future. Take on the burden of being a steward of life on earth and maybe one day beyond. Lastly just enjoy life. You may only get one shot at it.
The above is not meant to be any strict set of rules to follow dogmatically. They are meant to be guidelines to consider on your path through life.
Cold and Rich 