Online Encyclopedia of the Good

This is an experiment. One I would like you, the reader, to participate in.

I love philosophy, and have been participating in real life philosophy groups for the past serveral years but I recently quit. Perhaps here on the internet there will be a chance to discuss the things that really matter, and bring into our discussion the thoughts and writings of the famous thinkers that have gone before us. Actually, I would like to figure out what really matters. For me, that means figuring out how to live, or what is good.

This experiment was inspired by reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, written by Robert Pirsig and published in 1974. When I first read it, 10 years later, I had a computer but there was no internet to speak of, and the anti-technological views of the couple Sylvia and John described in the book as proto-hippies were laughable to me. These days I am increasingly resistant to the flood of information and technologically assisted connection with others via the internet. I'm not sure what it is I'm afraid of, but I sense that something important, perhaps meaning or caring or the "Quality" that Pirsig describes in his book, is rapidly dissipating in this virtual or semi-virtual world that we have created. It's definitely not all bad. The philosophy group in which I passionately participated for all those years could not have existed without the internet, and there was a constant flux of members finding us online and taking part in our discussions sometimes once, sometimes more regularly. Wikipedia is a great example of human minds coming together collaboratively online to create a repository of common knowledge that we all draw on to inform decisions from politics and investments to our personal health. But then, there are also the hours spent on Facebook, the emails to people who are perhaps not even really my friends, the fruitless exchanges of 20 text messages leading up to a brief encounter, getting caught in a tide of meaningless banter on forums, the endless discussion of gossip and ephemera which is really only shortchanging a desire to express oneself and be heard. Where and when in the world of all this clutter and clamor is there a time and a place to think and make meaningful choices?

One statement in particular stood out to me from Pirsig's book. "Phaedrus [the narrator's philosophical protagonist] comes to the view that Plato's hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than the other." This phrase was the inspiration for the Online Encyclopedia of the Good. What if we put this statement to the test, to see whether and how collectively we might come up with a Wikipedia whose enterprise is to hone in on what we know to be Good, rather than True? It would look very different from Wikipedia. The Ancient Greek philosophers went on to discuss The Good in the context of knowledge, virtue, and happiness. What I'm talking about would not be anchored by logical construction and valid references. It would be anchored by its tug on the heartstrings, like the myths that preceded Western philosophy, or like certain works of Eastern philosophy. I envision it practically as characterized by rich narrative, moving personal stories, multiple readings of the stories and ideas of others (with hyperlinks, if possible) and how they influenced our choices.

So, if you have read this far, here is what I would like from you, if you are willing to contribute. One or more of the following contributions are welcome:

1. What is your philosophy of life, and how did you arrive at it? (I'll add mine somewhere). More than a couple of sentences, please... With links, if possible.
   
2. Discussion of the Online Encyclopedia of the Good, or other ideas expressed here. No ranting and raving attacks, and no cheerleading either.
   
3. Suggestions as to the form of this encyclopedia and the modes of discussion or storytelling. Eventually I might move things off the Google blogger to a dedicated website. Perhaps a wiki format? Or some other format?
4. Volunteer as a writer or an editor.
5. Suggest topics for discussion. Back this up with your own thoughts and views.
6. Stories and examples of people who in your view led a good life, including a discussion of what made it good, and links to more detailed text, movies, artworks, etc.
7. Examples of the Good, whatever that means to you.
   

From the perspective of infinity, it matters not in what order I eat my ritual breakfast, only that it has these things: a priobiotic supplement, a glass of cranberry juice, a cup of kefir, a couple of soft-boiled eggs and an espresso.

The probiotic is to digest any wheat that I might consume. The cranberry juice is to control undesired bacteria in my digestive and urinary tracts and on my skin. The kefir is to build my constitution, both adding flora and digesting the milk it is in, which like the eggs is good for protein. The yolks, in particular, taste good, but they add to the buildup in my gall bladder which is cleared by the espresso. The espresso brings awakening, focus, clarity of thought, and bowel movements.

It all gets mixed up in my stomach anyway.

From the perspective of infinity, the order of most things doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I had children first, and a loving relationship after. It doesn't matter that my younger brother died first. Sometimes I see a young man walking down the street who looks like him and then I remember that he would have been in his mid thirties by now. Before long, my sons will be the age he was when he died.

Certain things, you would think, have to be built from the bottom up. Like houses. But then you see the Americans hoisting up a house from its foundations and adding a first story down below, and it makes you wonder about all the other normal-looking two-story homes on the street.

Samuel Johnson said that it matters not how you die but how you live, because the act of dying lasts so short a time.

I was with my brother when he died, and I'm not sure if dying is an act. He had been intubated and tranquilized. I was holding his hand. The machine indicated that his heart had stopped pumping but the nurse had to come in and turn off the ventilator.

We were surprised by all the young people who came to his funeral.

My father used to say that those who eat alone die alone. I don't know if he was alone when he died. He too had been on a life support machine, but when I last saw him he was breathing naturally, while remaining in a vegetative state. This is not to say there weren't bouts of self-propelled movement, almost like a fugue state, including vocalizations and tearing of the eyes. But when I left him he looked somewhere between life and death. The word "goses" came into my mind, a Hebrew word for this limbo state that has no equivalent in English. It could be either a verb or a noun, like the Hebrew word "met" meaning "a corpse" or "he died". He died about a week later.

I had a chance to remediate those experiences by being at my grandmother’s deathbed. She was always a difficult woman, but she had lost the ability to speak, and in many ways this made things easier for her caregivers. We knew it was serious and came when we heard she had punched the orderly in the face who was trying to feed her. I took turns with my mother, sitting by her bedside, as my grandmother, like my brother, was dying of pneumonia. This time, thankfully, there was no talk of adding a ventilator or heroic measures to keep her alive. After two weeks, it was a Sunday when she was evidently about to pass away. The nurse had ordered morphine, but in the UK a doctor had to be called from another hospital to sign for it. My grandmother was evidently in a lot of pain, although she was unable to use her voice to communicate it, doubly silenced by pain and brain injury.

Finally, the doctor arrived, and I went to my grandmother, holding her hand and making eye-contact to comfort her, and said, “The doctor is here, he can give you something to help with the pain.” I tucked her blanket and went to close the door, so she would not overhear the doctor and my mother talking in the corridor outside. By the time I got back to the bed, my grandmother had lost consciousness and never regained it. The doctor examined her and the morphine was added to her drip while my mother and I continued to sit with her, prayer book ready. But it was the gentleness of that last caring communication with my grandmother which I felt transcended my ordinary experiences, in a way that informs my work with patients in pain.

Is the moment of death itself of any significance? A patient once said she did not wish to die alone, and when asked she explained that what she meant was she wanted family and familiars to care for her in her final illness.

Proverbs enrich the meaning of life notwithstanding their contradictions. We are what we eat, and we are not what we eat. The clothes make the man, and not the clothes make the man. It matters only that you love. Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead. But when you're dead, who are you? Are you the same person as before you were born? Is there even a you outside the boundary moments of birth and death? And what about the periods of time near those edges, when the I is forming or falling apart? Or even between those times? I like the way T. S. Eliot expressed this in The Four Quartets: "You are not the same people who left the station, or who will arrive at any terminus".

From the perspective of infinity it matters not if I lived at all. But some things do matter, and I would like to figure out and tell others what they are.