Nerve Endings Firing Away

I know I must be really getting old when I have started enjoying books on philosophy. It started out with an innocent mandatory course in Logic of Policy Inquiry at school but that must have kindled a latent affinity. Apart from reading those voluminous academic tomes, I squeezed in little time every day to browse through Sophie’s World; a virtual philosophical textbook weaved into a story of a part-fantasy of a Norwegian girl.

This book was highly recommended by a friend and rightly so as it journeyed through the ancient Greek philosophy before delving into the impact of religions on modern thought. The casual attributes of Darwin and Freud on modern philosophical thought also cannot be undermined.

But unfortunately Sophie’s World does not dwell much on latter half of the twentieth century’s contribution to philosophy. Simon’s bounded rationality or Frank Popper’s theory of Falsification or Lakatos’ Sophisticated Falsification or are almost as important contributions as any other. Kuhn’s “paradigms” have had the greatest impact on modern day management studies.

But if you love pure application of philosophy, you might want to check out the pithy The Alchemist. It’s an extremely short read and uses pretty simple language to get across a powerful message. I am quoting some of the lines from the book which even without the context conveys the essence of the book:

Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
At a certain point in our lives we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.
The Soul of the World us nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one.
I am like everyone else — I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.
Learn to recognize the omens and follow them. Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.
Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it is all written there.
Because I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man.
Love — the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time.
“The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes. That’s the way it will be with our love for each other” (mushy but with loads of underlying meaning)
Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.
Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you.
When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.
Your eyes show the strength of your soul.

I could go on and on but at the risk of sounding laborious and boring. Trust me the book is worth a read. I can doubt the everyday applicability of such gems but then again I would render the basic truth of the book “Let us, be the maker of our destiny” redundant.