Mid Term Ammar Idris

    Three men walked into a cafe on a cold morning . The first was wearing a black turtleneck and black trousers as well. The second was wearing a brown wool jacket that goes past the kneecap and immediately walks in after the first man. Lastly the third follows behind wearing a black long sleeve shirt and white pants. I walked up to them and asked, "what i can i get you fine gentlemen?"They looked at each other and ordered black coffee. I went to the back to get them their drinks, then i overheard them speaking about a very fascinating topic; it was the purpose of life. Now me being very curious I quickly served them their drinks and followed up with a question. I asked the gentlemen, " Do you think philosophy can help people learn to respect truth, facts, reality, and one another, and to reject falsehood, superstition, selfishness, polarization, partisanship, and mutual hostility based on differences of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, belief, etc? If so, how? If not, why not?"

    The man in the turtleneck-Nigel- replied immediately with, "of course no doubt about it! It showed Aristotle how to find true happiness and to reject the things that would cause a human to fall into despair. He showed us that being materialistic will never bring you true happiness only temporary joy. He even gave us an outline of how we should live our lives, and if you combine some of his teachings with other philosophers it will answer your question."11

    Me: Interesting, so do you believe every philosophers teachings lead us to understand those issues?

Nigel: No, I believe that although many philosophers have shared great knowledge with us we should only apply what seems reasonable into our lives. You wouldn't want to indulge too much in Pyyrho's 

philosophy thats for sure" he joked.

    The man in the brown wool jacket- Kurt- spoke up and broke the silence and stated that, "Yes philosophy can help one to understand the truth and accept reality; however, if you look at the early philosophers such as Joseph Smith he was blinded by his own fake reality and was claiming he was sent by god and that he was holy. There were many people called madmen, but thus was something that could not be prove. Thus, when one is not trusted by his people his words become empty even if they were in fact correct."10

    Me: So, you believe that the philosopher must be considered sane for his philosophy to be accepted by his peers and community or else they mean nothing. In my head that changed the perspective of how i view philosophy.

Lastly Julian lifted up his sleeves and took a sip from his coffee and said, "Philosophy can change a person for the better. However, people hate to accept knowledge if it is not holy or brought from the heavens; many people fail to realize that religion contains many things that philosophers have pondered over for centuries. They will accept anything in their holy scripture but not from a wise man." 41

Me: So you are saying that people will benefit from philosophy but they hate indulge in it because it is not holy.

Me:Then gentleman I present ti you another topic, which is " What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?"

Kurt: This world is changing into a world of entertainment and luxury, and  I believe in the next 100 years there will be only a handful of people that will question everything around them such as death, reality, and etc. In a world such as that there will be bond to be chaos and confusion unless we change the narrative." 211

Everyone nodded in agreement and eventually Julian spoke up.

Julian: The world will continue to develop and better itself through technology and science. However, the basis of science is philosophy; thus, we cannot forget the origin of science. Science is merely a stamp on a claim to prove if it is correct or not. Science will eventually overshadow philosophy, but philosophy will live on through science and creativity."167

 We all took a moment to soak that in and then shifted our attention to Nigel to hear his thoughts. Nigel finished the last of his coffee and then spoke.

Nigel: Humans have always been greedy and never satisfied with what they have. This will be a hopeless cycle that will inevitably be our doom. The 1st world countries will fight over land, oil, and the number one spot and that will cause the human race to go extinct. There has been tension between the U.S and North Korea and this is just the beginning. There is so much injustice in the world due to people's own selfishness. I too believe that this illness needs to be cured in order to save the generations to come. 132

    The three men continued to chat and i took their empty cups to the kitchen. When i returned they had already left the cafe and each left a 10 dollar tip with a letter that read, " Thank you for the delicious drinks and for the conversation, we will definitely coming back!" I smiled and put the letter and cash in my back pocket.