On the Malaise of Monetary Gain

When I first began to read The Best Things in Life by Peter Kreeft, my parents could not have known that stuffing me full with Socratic dialogue was about the worst possible thing they could have allowed, for both themselves and anyone exposed to my shouting range. On the other hand, I can't and don't blame them for the intellectual chaos that ensured-- Nope, that was definitely all me.

The Best Things in Life is a piece of contemporary philosophical literature, written in the form of a script, that can be best described either by smashing together the concepts of "moral justification" and "conjecture of the truth of others to be fallible while determining the truth of oneself to be undoubtedly accurate" OR by a general outline of the topics discussed and conclusions reached. I find the latter to better depict the underlying message of the book.

1. An introduction to the the flaws in the educational and occupational systems, dispelling both hedonism and labor futile in meaning.
1. Introduction to Socratic philosophy
1. Assume no truth
2. Say what is
3. Ask the great question of "Why" -- obtaining all of the answers and none of the questions is a useless pursuit
4. There is no such thing as a last question. "The unexamined life is not worth living". When we sit in complacency, we forfeit our meaning. 
2. As a society, the vast majority go to college and study that duration of their lives away to get a degree, to get a good job, to earn respectable wages, to buy things and raise a family, to send children to college.
1. When a trajectory is circular without reason, it is devoid of meaning. Why waste our time on this useless pursuit? 
2. There is a general attitude of self-indulgence in our culture clashing violently with the concept of delayed gratification. People desire immediate leisure, but give up everything to misery in the present to obtain it in an uncertain future. 
1. The hope of pleasure is in and of itself no sufficient reason to deny gratification now
3. The most valuable lesson is that which inspires you to become your own teacher.
2. It is a better and more fulfilling practice to serve the true design and meaning in our lives than to comply with societal standards of what should and should not be done.
1. The world's most practical decision-maker is logic, though philosophy can often impede philosophizing. 
1. Questions are more important than their answers. "They are the road, and only those of us who use the road find their way home"
2. We choose everything as a means to happiness, the ultimate goal. Even enlightenment serves us to happiness. Our choices should depend on what best leads us to those ends, not just in the present, but in the future.
1. Philosophy is useful because it helps us to identify what is good and true. Without knowledge of these concepts, nothing can be discerned as true or untrue, good or bad (countless numbers of synonyms could have been supplemented, as these four words are at the cornerstones of our lexicographical language.)
3. Money is good for nothing unless it is assigned meaning. Take the dollar bill, for instance. Without the government to assert that it has economic value, it's just paper.
1. The value of money, then, is what we choose it to purchase; but none of these things-- houses, cars, yachts-- is an end in and of itself. This acquisitions do not guarantee us any amount of happiness.
4. Is there a common and universal end sought by everyone?
1. Happiness, pleasure, and joy
1. Preservation of life-- health, food, drink
2. Connection-- love, companionship, loss of loneliness
3. Self-actualization and meaning
5. Is the value of serving humanity in the pursuit of truth?
1. Our time doesn't often think of truth as a close means to the ends of happiness. We instead desire monetary gain or the acquisition of  power, but power is as futile a purpose as money.
2. Making the world a better place to live in should come second to the more intimate improving of the self, which directly concerns life, more so than the outside world. 
1. There are practical sciences and productive sciences. Practical improves practices, productive improves products. 
3. We should seek knowledge for its own sake. While we can improve our practice and the world around us, philosophy improves our self. Our true being.
1. No matter what our career or path in life, we are called first and foremost to be ourselves, as human beings, serving the pursuit of knowledge. 
1. Know thyself.

And these are just the first two sections of the book! In order to avoid strangling you, dear readers, with an overly gratuitous amount of points, I'll say this-- To learn more, check out this book at your local library.
When faced with this looming wall of text, it seems a daunting task to carve through and begin to delve into the real meaning-- the purpose and implementation of Socratic dialogue. This work of philosophy, and Socrates himself, are not purposed to teach us what to thing. Rather, how. That grand and bold teaching, the golden lesson, is this:

Ask an infinite number of questions.

Better yet, discard your concept of numbers and build it up again, for that is in itself an assumption. Socrates instructed us to think like children, brazenly open to the impossible, daring to explore every crevice of a question, pointing out flaws in theories as boldly as any objective statement. With this in mind, let's examine Peter Kreeft.

Though I much appreciate the deviation from the usual societal standard of learn to work, work to earn, die; I disagree with Kreeft on one solid point that he did not address: Sometimes there is value in serving humanity not only for the pursuit of truth, but to help others to obtain that same happiness, pleasure, and joy, whether by guiding them to the philosophy of pursuing truth or tending to the needs of connection and preservation of life. The same follows for his point against the practical and productive sciences, or the goal of serving humanity; I argue that self-actualization can be better served not by constant pursuit of introspection, but upon the reflection of those around us. As we serve others, place their needs before our own (by pure altruism, not by some concept of gain or duty), we gain more a wisdom of our psyche than we do by the refusal to sacrifice the self. The pursuit of knowledge, of self-actualization and the happiness it ensures, is still inherent in this philosophy. However, rather than gaining it by theory, it is gleaned through the shared experiences of others. Kreeft states that we are called first and foremost to be human beings. Perhaps a more crucial distinction of philosophy is that we are called to be human beings together.

The major flaw I find in the Socratic method is that it can be used, by the right, deliberate, and tangling misconstruction of words, to conclusively prove anything. The dialogue becomes circular, and in the right form, it invariably supports itself no matter the weight of evidence against its cause.

It is this very flaw that makes the Socratic method, warped, ideal for an angsty seventh grader. At the time, I gleaned the process but not the philosophy. I learned to question to an end, not as an end. It is more important, I realize now (after those past months of haggarding my parents with unwinnable, pre-scripted debates), to appreciate the wisdom of others while leaning not on our own assumed understanding. There is an endless wealth of questions to be explored within the universe and within ourselves-- perhaps they are the same.

Socrates asserted, Know Thyself, and only this can I know for certain-- For every question that I may answer, I will come upon a thousand more. And, for the sake of my soul, may I never cease to ask them.