''All men and women are philosophers''

Hello friends,

today I'm going to write a few lines about my passion in life , that is to philosophize and ponder, sometimes in awe, sometimes in near despair ( lol ) but almost always with an innate curiosity about the miracle of life and other things. I'll also share a little story about my first philosophical endeavors and how a silly question 23 years ago taught me a great lesson today always thanks to my teacher, my grandfather ( and Karl Popper )!

The school of Athens, Raphael

As long as I remember myself I was asking questions about pretty much everything and when I was a kid I could hold an entire conversation consisting only from questions ( like any other kid )...

I still remember those days clearly...

For example, every morning my grandfather held me by the hand and took me to the kindergarten. On the road there ( a 10 minute walk from my house) I was constantly asking him questions about everything!

-''How is wine made?''
-''How do they build roads?''
-''Were you ever a child grandpa?''
-''Why can't we move to your village and stay there, why are we living in the city?''
-''Who build the city?''

My grandfather always smiled...
-''Wine is made from grapes... I'll show you when we go to the village one day..''
-''Roads.. huh... Well big machines operated by men cover the ground with tar and then some other machines smooth the tar out..''
-''Haha, of course I was a child once, one day you will also be a grandapa''
-''Well, your parents have their work here, and they need their work to bring food to the house and buy you all those shiny toys that you like to play with..''
-''The city is just built by lots of men.. Nothing special about it!''

He really enjoyed answering my questions and I really enjoyed asking them! It was our daily ''peripatos''! ( check below)

One day though my grandfather had enough. Of course, it was one of my questions that triggered him. As we were walking towards the school I saw a yellow car. I turned to my grandfather and asked:

''Grandpa, why do we call yellow, yellow?''

This time he didn't laugh. Instead he turned towards me with a serious look and told me...
-''Because we have agreed upon calling it that way.''
-''Yes, but why have we agreed on calling it yellow and not red?''
-''I don't know Theodore, yellow is yellow and red is red. Please, stop asking silly things... now let's move on..''

I instantly regretted asking him that. Of course I didn't know what I did wrong or why he gave me that look. Why was my question silly? Why did grandpa get annoyed by my question? My silly thought led me to other questions... Soon I was swamped by them! I decided though not to ask anything silly again and from then on I tried to think twice on what I was asking. Maybe some things I could also answer to myself without the need to ask anyone. At least then I could say to myself '' Now I am asking silly things... Perhaps I should try a different question..''

Fast forward to today I still remember my silly little question... That day I took a great lesson, one that would need almost two decades to sink into my mind and finally give me an answer to my pondering.

That lesson is that while there are almost infinite questions regarding the ''whys'' and the ''hows'' sometimes those questions don't have a straightforward answer. Not necessarily because there is no answer but because that answer does not have any meaning, or because the answer is simply unknowable. Simply, some things are just the way they are and there is no need or reason to ponder about them. Yellow is yellow and red is red. That's how they are :)

The last few years I found this great philosopher of the 20th century, Karl Popper. One of his quotes in a book of him completely captured me. I suddenly remembered my little silly question again. That made me realize another thing, that all men and women are philosophers.

“All men and all woman are philosophers. If they are not conscious of having philosophical problems, they have, at any rate, philosophical prejudices. Most of these are theories which they take for granted: they have absorbed them from their intellectual environment or from tradition. Since few of these theories are consciously held, they are prejudices in the sense that they are held without critical examination, even though they may be of great importance for the practical actions of people, and for their whole life.
--Karl Popper, 'In Search of a Better World'.

Karl Popper

PS: The actual translation of the word ''peripatos'' is ''a walk''. Check the wikipedia article the Peripatic School if you want to learn more about this philosophical school.