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A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
It's a cold evening on December 7th 2020. There is a conference at the Opryland Hotel featuring philosophers and blog posters. There were only fifty people invited due to the pandemic and everyone is safely social distanced. The people hosting this conference are Miranda Groom, Susan Neiman, John Kaag and Julian Baggini.
Miranda: Hello all and thank you all for coming! Susan, John, Julian and myself are going to talk about what it means to grow up and why you should grow up. Another question we will answer is what makes life worth living. I will start us off...I think everyone has to grow up eventually because it shows class, maturity, responsibility, being independent and it shows you can be mature. However life doesn't always have to be serious which adults make it out to be a lot of times. Everyone has to grow up in their own way. For example you can't always act like a kid and just do whatever you want. You have to be mature to hold a job and support yourself with your own money. I think you can be adult with also having fun. For example, the movie that comes to my mind when I am talking about this topic is the movie Grown Ups.
This movie is a movie of successful adults going on vacation to let go of everything and act like a kid. This is how I think life should be. You should be an adult when needed and you should have fun and act like a kid when its appropriate. The next question and last question I would like to talk about is, what makes life worth living? I think no matter what life you live all people should be living for them and no one else. Life is very important and you only live one life. Everyone should do what they want to do and what makes them happy. I am now going to hand the mic over to Susan Neiman.
Susan: Hello all and thank you Miranda for sharing your thoughts and ideas on this topic. I wrote a book called "Why Grow Up" so i definitely have a lot of thoughts regarding these questions. The first question I am going to start out with is what it means to grow up and why you should grow up. I think of life as a downhill process meaning we focus so much on big things and let go of the small things. When growing up you need a sense of maturity and understanding about life. When growing up you need to find your place in the world and find courage in doing that. You should grow up because you need to know what this life is so it doesn't take you for a full surprise when it gets thrown at you. The last question I am going to talk about and answer is, what makes life worth living. Life is worth living because this what you should be striving for. I mean you should be striving to live your best life. I have done enough talking however I have spoken much deeply on this topic with the "Art Institute of Ideas" and I will pass around the link if you would like to access it later. Thank you for having me tonight and I look forward to hearing what the others say on this topic.
John Kagg: Thank you Susan for sharing your thoughts and I will definitely watch your video on why we need to grow up. Hello everyone and thank you for coming out tonight on hearing us talking about growing up. I wrote a book called "Sick,Souls, Healthy Minds" and it is about how a boy named William James can save your life. William James is a father who contemplated suicide throughout his life. I wanted to write this book on everything he went through and how he now looks at the world. It is a great book for this topic. Now getting on to the questions. The first questions I will answer is what it means to grow up and why you should grow up. Growing up in life you deal with two types of people the sick and healthy minds. The sick minds look at life very carefully and healthy minds look at life by overlooking everything. Everyone is different on how they look at things especially life. Everyone needs to grow up in their own way and how they want to do it. You should grow up because you want too not because you have too. I am going to wrap it up by answering the question, what makes life worth living. You need to live life instead of thinking about taking yourself out of life like William thought of doing. Everyone should life in this life. Thank you all for having me and please welcome Julian Baggini.
Julian Baggini: Hello everyone! I am sure everyone is tired and ready to go look at the beautiful christmas lights Opryland has to offer so I will make this short and sweet. I want to start out by telling everyone I have a book called, "How the World Thinks". I wrote this book about studying and exploring different parts of the world and showing insights on how these countries live their life. These questions of what it means to grow up and why you should grow up are my favorite! Everyone grows up at a different time frame of their life. Everyone also grows up very differently. It's important to grow up but you can grow up on your own time. It's fun to be a grown up if you make it fun and it can be boring if you make it boring. The more you grow up the more knowledge you will have about people and this world. The last thing I want to talk about is what makes life worth living. Live is worth living for so many reasons but the number one I think and talk about is meeting new people and seeing new sights of this world. I have loved living in this world to go see and explore new places and along with seeing new places I can see how those people life and I like to incorporate that in my life style. Traveling can teach you so many things about living and why it's important to live for yourself. Thank you all for coming. I will let Miranda finish this night off.
Miranda: Thank you all for coming out tonight. We all really appreciate it. Susan, John and Julian will have tables in the back if you would like to meet them and or buy their book. I highly recommended buying all of their books because it shows the different ways of living in this crazy world. I want to leave everyone with this quote:
I hope this quote teachings you to have fun with life and don't take it too seriously. Have a safe drive home and goodnight everyone. Stay safe!
"a boy" -- ? But maybe you're referencing the Kaag quote from James's biographer R.B. Perry, indicating that he'd still shown no signs of firmly attaining adulthood in his late 20s. I'd say his decision to give free will a try marks his passage from boyhood.
"a boy" -- ? But maybe you're referencing the Kaag quote from James's biographer R.B. Perry, indicating that he'd still shown no signs of firmly attaining adulthood in his late 20s. I'd say his decision to give free will a try marks his passage from boyhood.
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