by Jishi Santos

Created on: May 01, 2009

ACT BEFORE YOU THINK OR THINK BEFORE YOU ACT?

The importance of philosophy in every day thinking and decision making. "Pursuit of wisdom and knowledge of things and their cause", is the meaning of philosophy from the dictionary. I guess there are two ways of looking at this . First, the notion of philosophy as a theoretical subject comes to mind. Secondly, inbuilt knowledge and wisdom which have grown out of experience influence our actions and thoughts every day. So the question arises what sort of every day thinking and decision making are we referring to. This is bound to be different between a professor of philosophy and a crane driver, whose skill and expertise sometimes calls for split second decisions born out of practical experience, rather than any philosophical notions .

It brings back memories of studying at university and teacher's college for me and two examples which have stuck in my mind, now that I am reaching the age of wisdom and writing about it from the years of life experience. Firstly, I visited Papua-New Guinea in 1964 and brought back many artifacts which I lent to Monash University in Melbourne Australia. They displayed them in their glass cases and looked at many new items not seen before. I knew the exact moments I got these items and could recall the history behind each and the story of it's making. In fact my knowledge was extensive and new and almost ground breaking. Actions and a good memory had achieved all this, yet they failed me as I had lost my exam technique and could not write on the theoretical anthropological knowledge in books written to date . I left university thinking that all their books meant nothing by comparison with my first hand experience. Also, at teachers college, despite all the philosophical, educational concepts we had learned of, in the end it was active, practical common sense of the moment that made us the teachers that we were. I can very rarely recall thinking back to the educational philosophies I had studied and applying them . It was a matter of adapting to the present moment and time and reacting according to experience, not so much my knowledge of things passed on sometimes in another age altogether.

So my point is, that I think we all act on the moment we are in, according to our adaptive processes, rather than attributing too much importance to the philosophical side of immediate actions.
There are all sorts of different cultures and races around the world, all adapting to the climatic and passed

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