Phase 3: How to Build a Sturdy Life Philosophy

"Big Questions" lead to "Big Answers."

Big Answers become the foundation of our belief systems.

The modern world floods us with "Answers." Movies, television shows, books, music, social media, podcasts, advertising,  and so on, all convey ideas.

We often experience those ideas as incompatible, contradictory, or inconsistent.

They don't fit together.

This can easily steer us toward a state where we're constantly walking around with our heads brimming with incompatible elements. This can lead to a chronic state of unresolved friction, conflict, and dissonance, as if we're driving with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. (More likely, there are dozens of different gas and brake pedals.)

How to we sort through the avalanche?

Is there a way to get everything aligned, pointed in the same direction, and working smoothly?

Yes. We can clarify, simplify, and bring order to chaos through our life philosophy.

(Call it "worldview," "belief system," "paradigm," the "map of the world" we carry around in our heads, etc.)

A sturdy life philosophy can help us navigate the modern world with our sanity intact.

Life philosophies can be fragile.

Or they can be sturdy.

Fragile life philosophies (belief systems, worldviews, etc.) make us vulnerable.

Vulnerable to what? To the existential monsters (or Big Questions) every one of us faces. "Bad" answers put us more at risk of collapsing into an existential crisis or eventually soft nihilism.)

Sturdy life philosophies help us withstand the slings and arrows of life. They provide an accurate map and compass to navigate by.

A sturdy and well-functioning life philosophy provides a method or system for clarifying, simplifying, and sorting through the conflicting answers we often find ourselves swimming through today. It can strengthen our immune system against angst, confusion, and fatigue, and serve as an antidote to the mental vertigo the modern world often inflicts on us.

The task is to build (or keep building) a sturdy life philosophy.

Objective: Build a sturdy life philosophy.

"Why build a sturdy life philosophy?"

The problem today isn't that there are no answers to the Big Questions of life; it's that there are tons of answers, and they often seem incompatible.

This torrent of conflicting ideas can make the Big Questions seem endlessly complicated and ultimately unanswerable.

But a clear life philosophy allows us to clarify and organize them.

The approach here narrows the range of possible answers.

They boil down to seven.

All answers, using this model, fit into seven broad categories.

Those categories are the seven basic life philosophies or "worldviews."

This approach parallels the evolution of chemistry. Years ago, our efforts to make sense of the basic elements in the universe seemed chaotic, erratic, and haphazard. There was widespread disagreement all around - multiple conflicting takes from multiple conflicting authorities. But then Mendeleev created the periodic table of elements. That brought a clarity, precision, and degree of order to the situation. It provided a consistent method to analyze and classify elements according to clear criteria (such as how many electrons an element has, etc). And from that point, things fell into place.

With the clarity of a good life philosophy, it's possible to see the Big Questions with fresh eyes, and notice how each answer generally falls into one of those seven categories.

"How do you build a sturdy life philosophy?"

A thorough 7-Step process that walks through each step, one at a time, is here.

A app to explore a simplified version of this process is here.

A basic summary of the 7 worldviews is here.

The heart of the process is this:

What yardsticks are used to measure a life philosophy? 

And what do those yardsticks reveal about which life philosophies are more sturdy or fragile?

Additional Articles

The exercise above has broad and far-reaching implications. Some of these are explored below.

Start with these:

(Again, for clarity) How to Build a Sturdy Life Philosophy
Why Everyone is a Philosopher
What Are Your Basic Assumptions About Life?
The 7 Basic Worldviews

Then, for a deeper dive:

Untangle Yourself From Postmodern Confusion
What "Game of Life" is Worth Playing?
Groundwork for a Life Philosophy (the book)
Why Soft Nihilism is So Popular These Days

After the Sturdy Life Philosophy - What's Next?

Having a sturdy life philosophy in place is a critical step.

But there's still another key element.

"Life makes no sense" is the general mood (and philosophy/worldview) of agnosticism.

But agnosticism ("I don't know") can still leave the door open to the possibility of knowledge. "I might not know right now, but I might know in the future."

It's one thing to say "I don't know" ("soft agnosticism") and another to say "I'm absolutely sure that I'll never know, and that no one will ever know" ("hard agnosticism").

The statement "I don't know, I'll never know, and nobody else knows anything, either, and never will," is essentially a worldview of nihilism.

Nihilism is a fragile worldview.

It fails several tests that a strong life philosophy would pass.

(For example, it's inconsistent, incoherent, and unlivable, etc.)

Nihilism also contradicts several other worldviews. (It's incompatible with theism, for example.)

But all worldviews ultimately rest on our fundamental assumptions about life.

These are "axioms," "premises," "givens," "basic beliefs," or our foundational starting points that sit at the base of our belief systems. (And we might be conscious of these, or not.)

Another way to describe this could be "things we take by 'faith.'" (This could include the idea, for example, having faith in the idea that "we shouldn't take anything on faith," or the assumption that "we shouldn't have any assumptions.")

This brings us to a point that might sound surprising to some.

If we want a sturdy life philosophy, then, we soon find ourselves facing the topic of religion.

For some, religion is a difficult, troubling, even embarrassing topic.

At least for some, arriving at the topic of "religion" doesn't settle things. It unsettles them. "The religion thing" can sometimes raise more questions than it answers.

This brings us to "reluctant spirituality."

NEXT: RELUCTANT SPIRITUALITY >

Course Home | Phase One | Phase Two | Phase Four | Phase Five