He was a child prodigy, a mathematical genius and one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. A frail reed, he died slowly, painfully, at 39. Today, when everyone walks around with a cellphone, he is chiefly remembered for this: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” That is, in a self-selected state of drastic under-stimulation.
The word philosophy comes from the Greek for ‘love of wisdom’. The question upon which all of philosophy sits is, Who am I? Jesus answered this question directly. He said, “You are the light of the world.”
And I thought I was a body.
Tell a guy that his ontology includes an unexplored feminine aspect. Watch his eyes roll. Women know the look. It’s bad patrimony, is all. The mythopoetic traditions, including Christianity (see Proverbs 8), describe wisdom, Philo-Sophia, as a feminine faculty, as the sublimity of space.
Joseph Campbell and Vivekananda were big picture guys. In their view, we are not merely individuals who are born and die, who work and socialize. No. We’re the planet and everyone on it.
Marshall McLuan was the Phil Olsen of philosophers. “Affluence creates poverty.” What an arc! And, “The medium is the message.” Which brings me to this. Hasn’t the best and most clear-eyed communication about the global challenge been coming from women? Aren’t wolf packs matriarchies? Weren’t we ourselves matriarchal millennia ago? And isn’t it a fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same?
Men's Work 