Actionable Philosophy

One of the most captivating conversations I had recently was about the translation of philosophy into objective actionable entities in our daily lives. For all my reading, and only a certain portion of them have been what could be called philosophy, I really did not have any ready answer to that. I talked it over with a friend of mine later in the day.

As a first, I feel that this world we dwell in is not completely explained within the paradigm of logic, rationality and reason. If this were so, given all the problems we face today and the underlying 'facts', we would have solved a lot many problems than we have. Versions of truth are coloured by our own perception of it. I feel that philosophy can influence this perception of the world around us & from this changed perception will flow more granular, actionable items in our daily lives. So, essentially, I am trying to establish 'philosophy' as an entity differentiated from our daily lives, spent engaged in a lot of 'operational' details, which on the average are managed without a 'differentiated' point of view. And inculcating a perspective that does incarnate as things we do, is a process that is more gradual than sudden, and requires assimililation more than picking. So 'getting it to work' is a two fold process including 'getting the idea' for a start and then 'living the idea', each of which, I feel, is a time consuming process and also a very personal one. A process that necessitates a certain amount of unlearning, a lot of sensitivity & openness, & does not guarantee any tangible manifestations after all. And all successes or failure in doing so, are perhaps more manifestations of the person & than that of the philosophy.

Also, in addition to changing the actionable entities, a change in perspective can potentially colour the goals we seek. Given this holistic nature of change, we are therefore limited to pursuing ends which still retain their significance in this 'changed' world. So we can face a contradiction of sorts if we do not re-examine our whole world in this new light.