Stepping in It

        Of the 20 core classes we were supposed to take at Canisius College, a whopping five of them had to be philosophy! Three of them were required – Intro to Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Ethics, and two of them were electives.

        My best friend, Laura, was a philosophy major – so she took a lot more philosophy classes, and she loved them. One day LR came up with her own philosophy – one of the ancients had said you can’t step into the same river twice – well Laura said you can’t step into the same river once – and that is the philosophy I abide by to this day! She is also the friend I have mentioned before who had the fantasy of getting a phone call some day at a bar – on the bar’s landline phone, while she was a customer! Alas, that river is no more – we all have cell phones for getting calls wherever we are!

        You could always tell who was taking Intro to Philosophy – they were the kids in my other classes all lit up from excitement about what they had just heard in philosophy! It was like they were high on ideas that they were being exposed to for the first time. What is reality? Awesome question – why would anyone ever question reality? But now I see it – the question, that is, the answer will never be apparent again! My own Intro to Philosophy class was not that exciting – but it was good to get the basics. A flower is a different reality to a botanist than it is to a florist – wouldn’t it be nice, though, if each could see the flower both ways?

        Metaphysics was painful. Our teacher was a guy we called Jumping Jonathan because he was so excited when he talked metaphysics to us that he literally jumped around – and his first name was Jonathan. One day he was writing on the chalkboard, and he was writing so fast – and when he turned to face the class, he was still writing and talking and jumping and the chalk flew across the room and kids ducked out of the way! It is wonderful that he was so passionate about the material. But oh gosh, it just never sank in to my pea brain.

        Someone mentioned Plato’s cave recently, and I could not believe all the memories that came flooding in – mostly I was surprised that the cave had ebbed so far from my thoughts in all these years – how could Plato’s reality/non-reality have drifted so far away when I thought in college it would haunt me forever? And then I realized that my life is just fine without having that cave in it – I don’t really have to think about it ever again.

        The Ethics class was much more to my liking. The teacher, sadly, was the opposite of Jumping Jonathan. He sat at his desk and spoke expressionlessly from his notes. But the ethics lessons have remained in the forefront of my life – the examples in the textbook have been repeated in Star Trek episodes and MASH and so many more books and movies. I came to appreciate through this class and the scenarios witnessed since then, that decisions in the real, not just fictional, world need to be thought through situationally and not always yes or always no. And that is important on this crazy earth where people are screaming for war, when understanding of where each side is coming from might make a literal world of difference!

        One of the philosophy electives I took is a class I have already written a blog about – Philosophy of Psychoanalysis – taught by a Jesuit priest. This was Father Roth. He loved Freud as much as Charlie God did – from my Intro to Religion class of a couple of posts ago. Father Roth was the one who did exorcisms in the Sears parking lot which admittedly is not Freud, but was totally Father Roth. Yeah, there might not be much to remember academically from his class all these years later, but I have to admit, a Jesuit priest performing exorcisms in a Sears parking ramp between college campus buildings makes for great memoir material!

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