My Philosophy

When I look back, three years out from earning my Bachelors degree in Anthropology, to all that I learned in 17 years of schooling, I could write a whole book. However, I will stick to what I can fit in this article.

As a child, I was so excited to learn and even more: to do.

The earliest memory I have is from the first grade when we would write stories; whether they were about our best friend in class or about something totally made up. I one time settled for the latter and created my first ever fictional story about a pencil that mysteriously went missing from my desk.

If you created 10 stories you got to "publish" one in a piece of construction paper and decorate the cover to go along with what was written inside.

Around the same time I was writing and learning how to add and subtract, my brother was in the second grade; learning how to recite the names of all of the presidents of the United States. He taught me this before I arrived to the second grade and it was something they did not teach my class but to this day I can still name all of them.

Every year throughout school they would teach us about early American History and each year it grew more complex and added on to what we already knew. Every other year, like clockwork, we would again learn about the first thanksgiving, but one thing they never taught us about were the horrors of what the first settlers did to the Native American populations at that time.

Hmm, really makes you wonder and question the narrative of what we were taught.

Something else that stuck with me from my younger years was when I was 11 years old, in the sixth grade. Our science teacher that year wrote a quote on the chalk board and told us we would never forget this quote:

"Chance Favors Only the Prepared Mind," -Louis Pasteur

Again, because I have an older brother who had the same teachers as I did, I was able to reminisce over the years with my brother about quotes or memories such as this and it truly has stuck with me.

To me this meant that opportunity will present itself to those who educate themselves and gain the knowledge needed to succeed in the various walks of life they so choose.

In High School, I never prepared myself for my future educational endeavors but instead went through the motions of turning things in for "credit." To me that was all it was. They would tell us we needed to work hard and would prepare us with workloads that would drown us in order to get us ready for college. The same college classes that I would find myself in a couple years later where the professor would walk in late, talk for an hour and then tell us to go enjoy the rest of our day.

However, high school did grow my love for the social sciences. I was able to take a sociology/psychology hybrid class that led me to an advanced placement psychology class the following year, where I earned college credit as a senior.

Something I have always remembered was Max Wertheimer's Gestalt Theory: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

At the time it was something that just made sense. If you break anything apart its going to still be a part of the whole. If you take a person with their own ideas and beliefs and take apart the various attributes that make them who they are and then add them up, they will lead you right back to who someone is.

This led me to want to study people, interactions, cultures, and belief systems. I wanted to be a healer, helper and to be able to understand the often misunderstood.

This led me to Anthropology and earned me a college degree.

Some of my absolute favorite subjects, with a professors that completely changed my life, were Philosophy, Mythology and Cultural Anthropology.

One of the first things we learned in Philosophy was Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave"

The gist of this story was that Plato believed our minds and worldviews to be that of prisoners chained to a wall inside of a cave. They had a bonfire up above them shining a dim light that created shadows from the world outside; down onto the wall of the cave for them to see. This was their reality, their life revolved around the shadows they could see and they did not believe anything else to exist. When they become unchained (how we can become educated and unchain ourselves from past beliefs) and walked up out of the cave and out into the outside light they first became blinded (or enlightened) and then saw the world for what it really was.

Another takeaway from my early days in Anthropology was being tasked with reading Horace Miner's "The Body Ritual of the Nacirema."

I never like giving away the contents of this story and encourage everyone to read it and have their eyes completely opened the way mine was the first time I read it.

Completely a life changer.

All in all, all of these experiences and the things that stuck with me and sparked an interest inside of me have turned me into the person that I am today and gave me the tools needed to make my life a fulfilled one. I will always continue to find different interests and continue to learn all I can about them, often times remembering back to the things I have learned along the way.