Our theme for the month of March is “How to.”
Growing up, I was one of those obnoxious children who incessantly asked “why” about everything. It’s truly the first step in one’s journey to becoming a philosopher. Why do we multiply fractions this way, why is it right to share my toys, why are girls in pink and boys in blue, why does Jesus let us suffer despite being told he loves us, why can’t I pay for something in sticks if sticks have more value to me than green slips of paper… As you can probably imagine, my teachers loved me.
My understanding of the world was constantly being pulled around and dominated by this vicious curiosity, something like a small child trying to take a wolf for a walk on a leash. It seemed that the more I learned about the world, the less I understood about it, and the more questions I ultimately had. I wish I could say that this wild nature of questioning diminished upon the threshold of adulthood and was laid to rest in the rosy fields of youth as I embraced a new life of internal death in the corporate workplace—but alas, as a young professional woman living in one of the country’s biggest cities in twenty-first-century America, I find myself still unable to tame that savage “why.” Even in a sea of self-help books, therapists, sermons, TED talks, Instagram lifestyle influencers, and life coaches, the available tools to help one responsibly manage their inner chaos are bountiful—and yet the modern answers I search for seem somehow even more confusing and evasive than ever. Thus, my return to classical philosophy.
You don’t have to be a philosophy major to have at least a basic understanding of some of the more famous Greek, Roman, or Indian philosophical ideologies. For example, most plebeians are familiar with Plato and his shadows in the cave, the Socratic method, at least a few stoics, Gnosticism, Aristotle, “I think therefore I am,” various “meditations”—plus, if you went to a liberal arts college, then you know some of the more famous theologians, novelists, or poets who doubled as philosophers themselves. Even today, our global libraries are bursting with the writings, interpretations, ideas, and analyses from these brilliant minds—theories of consciousness, God (or “the gods”), natural science, virtue ethics, the “self,” structures and systematizations for society and politics… We have a lot to thank them for. And yet, as a young professional woman living in one of the country’s biggest cities in twenty-first century-America, I found ancient and classical philosophy to be severely lacking in helping me navigate some of the very present problems my peers and I face today.
In all my research, combing through the philosophy of aesthetics—studying Kant, Hume, Hegel, and Burke, among others—not one of them had anything to say about the ethical implications of a BBL. Plato wrote nothing on the societal ramifications of normalizing nose jobs, Botox, or face-lifts. While clothing trends, slavery, and foreign affairs have existed throughout all of history, Hobbes never touched on the moral obligations concerning fast fashion in a capitalist society. Dare I even mention the lack of attention given to the geopolitical influence of TikTok dances? I would argue that nothing about these ancient philosophers’ times could have prepared them for Snapchat filters and furries.
Obviously, I’m being sarcastic—classical philosophy doesn’t touch any of these specific problems because they are new. They are largely unique to those of us living in the twenty-first century, navigating this rapidly-growing age of technology, information overload, and social media, among many other things. I hardly know how to think or feel when faced with some of these modern questions.
For example, a couple years ago, I didn’t know what to do as I watched my fourth-grade students set up their iPhones at recess and record a video of themselves dancing and lip-syncing to “WAP.” The research around the effects of children with smart phones is growing, but not nearly as fast as the problems we’re facing.
Now let me ask, have you seen reels of “BBLs gone wrong?”
Don’t look it up.
One of my best friends spends most of her income on upkeeping her eyelash extensions and lip filler and trying new laser-treatments for her skin and cellulite. Is this right or wrong, or neutral? Is society to blame? Is the individual? Do we have moral obligations with our finances, or do we have the rights as individuals to spend however we like without consideration of how we may be exacerbating harmful trends?
What about easy accessibility and early addictions to pornography, constant spikes of dopamine, feelings of self-worth being based on social media, celebrity worship, increased depression and anxiety, “doom scrolling,” DraftKings, filters and Facetune and AI and deepfake…
The small child in me sometimes wishes I still had a teacher to run to and harass: why can’t our country with all its wealth support the needs of third-world-country migrants, why have we allowed monopolies to grow and its corporations to dictate our politics which don’t represent the needs of the common person, why do we allow chemicals, preservatives, and other artificial elements in our food that are banned in other countries, why do I feel like needlessly shopping at “alo” because all the girls in my neighborhood started wearing that brand, why do I find myself scrolling through who’s viewed my Instagram story…
All this to say: there is an overwhelming and rising abundance of questions in our modern society that require thought and consideration. I don’t pretend to have the answers, and to be honest, I sometimes don’t even know how to approach thinking about these things. For those of you with a wolf on a leash, just like me, not only asking the questions of why the world is like this, but also what can we do—I’m wondering, what do you think about how to be a philosopher in the twenty-first century?
Sophia (‘19) double-majored in theatre and religion and insists that her life is a “storybook.” She lives in an apartment above a flower shop in downtown Chicago and has multiple roles working across the arts in comedy, music, theatre, film, and visual art—though her greatest passion is writing. Her work includes stage plays, screenplays, and articles, focusing mostly on cultural trends, comedy, reviews, and religious satire. She loves road trips, visiting her family in Grand Rapids, hunting for the perfect latte, and rescuing plants from the flower shop’s dumpster.
