Personal File: Philosophy

The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency, it seems, to over complicate our lives and forget what's important and what's not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. And as the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what's going on outside. - Robert Stuberg

The word philosophy comes to us from the Greek philosophia or "love of wisdom". That definition pretty much embodies the meaning of life for me which is why I like to study [link].

The formal definition of philosophy is the study of the theoretical basis of knowledge, experience or existence, or the study of the nature thereof. This is as abstract or as practical as you care to make it.

My practical philosophy is to simplify concepts to first principles. If you want to find the essential, true nature of anything, disassemble it and find the smallest parts that make up the whole. This applies to business, technology, art, religion, people or whatever.

Disassembling things is very telling. Sometimes it reveals unnecessary parts. Sometimes it reveals ulterior motives (sinister or otherwise). Sometimes you tear it apart to find..... nothing: a useless end with a forgotten means!

Some people would call me an iconoclast but that is a generalisation. Whatever my dissection reveals (or fails to reveal), good or bad, I report on it. If the report is bad then I come off looking like an iconoclast, but that ignores all the beauty and elegance I have found. These things have enriched my life.

The natural course of taking things apart is to re-conceive them from scratch. This is the obsessive inventor in me at work. There isn't a job or project I've done where I haven't invented some tool or device to make the job easier/simpler or whatever.