Philosophy is a rare condition, and a symbol of intellectual privilege/prestige. While it's evident that intelligence expresses itself in countless ways across humanity, an intelligent individual does not presume wisdom along with it. People can be intelligent but not wise. And so the application of intelligence, to wisdom, is required to be wise. In other words, you must learn about 'right' and 'wrong' with respect to intelligence. It is possible for people to be intelligent, yet wrong, in very fundamental ways. People can rationalize wrong positions. They can focus on conclusions and endings, rather than premises and beginnings. People can attempt to focus all their intelligence on ends justifying means. People can ignore premises, and foundations for beliefs. Furthermore, morally, intelligent individuals can justify evil in many ways. People can promote double-standards, that laws do not apply to yourself, but for others. And there are many ranges in which double-standards are fair, or, unfair.
Thus philosophy is heavily tied into the trait of wisdom, implying experience in life, along with Empiricism, methods of testing and applying theory, attempting to turn what is 'Ideal' into what is 'Real'. Because if ideals cannot be made real then what worth do they have, versus the (realistic) ideals that can become real? Pragmatism is the ideology of focusing on realistic-ideals, rather than living in delusions and impossibilities. Thinkers can spend too much time on ideals, without facing and confronting reality, which ends up in a waste of time, or wastes of entire lives.
Philosophy involves a strong sense of (self) consciousness. Humanity involves ranges of consciousness along with ranges of intelligence. Some people are very low consciousness, others very high. With philosophy you are required to expand consciousness very wide, and wider beyond the limits and walls of humanity. While the large majority of humanity live within the walls of civilization, as a philosopher, you will travel outside these walls. What is impossible to 'humans' will not be impossible to you. The limits of humanity will not apply to you. The human-world, "The World", will not be your world. Your eyes, mind, and senses will look to the horizon, the beyond, the future, and trespass into many areas unknown, dark, void, which humanity will take centuries, or millenniums, to "catch-up" to. In these ways, the philosopher's mind, your mind is very unique.
To be effective you'll need to define 'what is philosophy' first before proceeding to other aspects of general philosophy.
Philosophy is very much the greatest journey that you can hope for. Because you begin with the most powerful, relevant, and important questions in life. By examining these questions, no matter which answers you come to, or forever lack, your pursuit from the onset is noble, a noble beginning. The common people, humanity, does not yearn for such answers and questions, as philosophers do. They lack passion. And if they have passion, then they lack the intellect required to journey far. Or if they lack intellect, then they may lack courage to go even further than the ancient predecessors. Philosophy has a long line of such individuals, who have advanced deep into the unknown, outside the boundaries of common knowledge, outside 'humanity'.
Because of all this, perhaps the most pertinent and relevant division in life you can come to know, is between the 'human' realm and the outside realm. What people call "the world" is not the world. What people call their reality, is not Real. This is because the points of view and perspectives of average people, of humanity, is self-centered and inward looking. Philosophy requires an Extroverted mind, in the sense, that your primary inquiry at many points in life, will be directed outside the realm of human interests. Today the outside realm is known somewhat, as 'Science'. Science is a primary method of investigated an "objective" world. But even science has limits and has become infected by 'humanism', moral and cultural secularism. So the objective-subjective dichotomy is not concise enough.
Traditionally the division has been made between the "real" world and ideals, the realm of ideas. The proposition is that there is a realer-reality, "out there", somewhere. This is partially true. But rather the "realer-reality" is not "out there" at all. Rather it is within humanity, a common, vulgar, throbbing ignorance. Because humanity, at different points in time and history, have betrayed values of truth and virtue, by exchanging any pursuit for "realer-reality" with whatever is easier to accept, believe, and place trust. In this way, philosophy turned religious at many points in history. People were, and are, misled by truth-seeking and settle for second-best, "lesser" realities than what they could have known, had they pushed forward.
People settle upon the mundane, average, and common, and because they do, this defines the mediocrity of any commonwealth. Thus this Mediocrity, called "Modernity", is the lesser-reality that all has come to know. It is common within modernity to invert 'real' with ideal, and 'ideal' with real as well, to blur the lines such that people cannot tell apart what is, versus what is wished to be. People delude themselves, to various degrees. And Modernity feeds into these instinctive and reflexive compulsions. Commercialism and sensationalism feeds into base, pathological needs.
Navigating through all these systems of civil life will be required, so that you can finally arrive at the wall that separates humanity with "beyond", to traverse outside, and to learn about all the differences about what can exist, what does exist, and what must exist. "Realer-reality", "Objective reality", "The Truth", whatever you want to call it, represents the universe and all things as a whole, added/summed together.
Yes, the movie Prometheus – which is about aliens– has a person that gets infected, and then mutates into something vaguely resembling a werewolf!! At least that’s what I thought when I watched the movie!
About half-way through the movie! Setup: The crew members land on an alien planet, and one of the crew members gets infected by an alien lifeform and is left for dead. Then: The survivors make their way to the spaceship, and the attack begins! All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the crew member that was infected by an alien, makes an appearance and jumps into the screen to attack! The guick glimpse that the camera offers gives you an image of what appears to be hair growth on the chin and someone that almost has a wolf-man appearance, he also has a very werewolf-like pounce.
In reality, the alien infected person is not meant to be a “werewolf”, but in the few seconds you get, it sure resembles one! It’s hard to say if the movie-makers knew what resemblances they were making…I doubt it. But still, I think it looks like the Wolf Man.. 🙂 What do you think?
3 mouths and everytime I eat something that involes meat like ribs I sometimes eat a little bit of the rib bone itself and I’m worried I might be a werewolf.