Gnobo, thanks for your great insights. I definitely agree on the philosophical fronts insofar as I understand them. Allow me to expand on them a bit.
I have always argued that pragmatism is limited in that it reduces to materialism – i.e. the pragmatic question is for what?. ‘For’ implies utility, where efficiency is the ultimate value, and ‘what’ implies matter – at best, bodies that our souls inhabit which give us a perceptual delusion that we are somehow different from one another, and where survival becomes the ultimate goal since we are burdened to take care of them. So, we could say that “efficiency of survival” is the target of pragmatism, and that explains the cultural lean toward just that, with layer upon layer of convenience crippling us from activity.
I appreciate your respect for ancient tradition and your opposition to New Age thought (or lack thereof). The former is the foundation of all meaningful knowledge which is not only lost, but actively rejected in favor of the aforementioned convenience by the latter in its “fast-food” packaging, as you say. I have heard that term before! My lady is a very traditional yoga instructor and has the same frustration with the New Age approach to her work as we do with ours. As someone whose background is in philosophy (and much psychology as well), I do have an intuitive sense of duty to excavate genuine astrology from the landscape of pop astrology perpetuated by Cosmopolitan Magazine, who use it to validate young women’s bad behavior, and scientistic atheists & Christians alike who reject it on purely dogmatic grounds.
I tell my private clients the same thing, interestingly enough, that I am simply guiding them through patterns. I neither tell them what to do nor make outlandish predictions. At the very least, I’ll empower them to own what they choose to do. I’m glad to hear that you’ve made a living through your work for so long under the same approach. I’ve only been accepting pay for readings for about two years, so perhaps I’m on track to do the same given our seemingly similar philosophies.
I also understand the creative’s dilemma of knowledge retention. I’m a musician myself and have learned that I personally work best when I stick to mastering what I’m interested in, and outsource what I’m not. Collaboration is something I’m working on, and teaching is a good outlet for expanding that.
Finally, I have to comment on your algebra remark as I’ve had similar thoughts. Logic is the backbone of academic analytical philosophy, and I found that algebra came much easier to me after I took a couple courses in formal logic, especially since it was paired with other philosophy courses that focused more on the right brain question ‘why’. We have two hemispheres for a reason, and, while we’re at it, why not require one or two philosophy classes for every curriculum? I could go on!
Overthought Consulting 