My Philosophical Ideal

There was a time of the Enlightenment, the time of Reason, and many a time of revolutionary change. There are certain ideals that will remain unaltered or alive, not because of the scholar’s acknowledgment of their flaws, but rather of society’s tendency to change slowly and unpunctuated towards certain maturity. The ideas I shall put forth, I think, are revolutionary in that I believe it will revolutionize the way people tend to think. Though some may seem too unrealistic, I believe it can be the foundations of a newer, even greater, enlightenment. Remember, I am only advocating a new perspective to be undertaken.


The first point I would like to make is that freedom has its limits. Freedom can only go so far in giving society a complete democracy. Indeed, a full democracy gives social chaos, while a total lack of it creates a tyrannical and oppressive government. To some, the midline is hard to define. My revolutionary idea, though I think it to be very obvious to most thinking individuals, will make the dilemma of finding this midline very much easier. First, freedom cannot be solely based on religion. This is not due to a historical or non-religious bias on my part, but instead to the fact that religion has always failed to precisely define what actually constitutes as moral, ethical, and thus what freedoms should be given to the people. Instead of religion, let the types and levels of freedom be granted based on socio-economical principles and scientific fact. Some important examples are to be presented here to parallel my viewpoint with the favored morals of contemporary society:

1. Sexual Equality

Women should have the same economical, political, and social rights as men simply because their contributions to the economy are almost the same as men’s, or that at least the contributions are significant enough to be acknowledged. Their intellectual capacity – revealed only recently in the last decades due to a prevalence of past sexual discrimination – is significantly comparable to male’s, to the point that they do not seem, crudely put, any more stupid or intelligent than men are.

2. Intellectual Freedom

People have the freedom to voice their comments, as long as their arguments have not been already debunked beyond a reasonable doubt through scientific observation, analysis, and experimentation. This not only promotes rapid development in academia, but also in fields of medicine and technology. Fresh ideas are advocated, while old and debunked arguments are ignored and forsaken for the sake of intellectual and social maturity.

3. Racial Equality

Each race of the human being, through various scientific findings (and not by social dogma), has not shown any significant difference in intellectual, economic, or political inferiority or supremacy. As in history, every human race rose and fell due, generally, to the same reasons, such as limited resources, economic or environmental unsustainability, governmental corruption etc. Once the gaps among races are closed, political and business transactions can be sustained.

These are just a few examples of freedoms that can exist based on scientific, socio-economical models and research. While these perspectives are based on actual empirical evidence (which is being constantly peer-reviewed and verified), religious dogma is not - it never gives an actual rational reason as to why something is moral – typical answers of theirs include “God said so, therefore it must be”, or “The Bible says so, contrary to past interpretations of the same bible itself”. Other questionable systems of belief include pseudoscience, metaphysics etc. Freedoms, therefore, should be guided by an informed economy type of reasoning, rather than superfluous ideals and fantasies.


The second point would be that the validity of a law should not be controlled by the masses, but rather by the importance of its empirical pros and cons. This is simply because the majority of the masses do not actually understand the inner mechanics of the new law and its likely consequences – whether that be positive or negative. Only academic scholars of fields relevant to the to-be-established rules understand the inner workings of the causes and effects of the policy of interest. There shall be a central establishment that ‘judges’ the significance of each piece of evidence, wherein their judgment is based not on their biases, but on the foundations laid down by the scholars themselves. Consider an analogy. Two people, A and B, create a new game. The new game has rules and regulations, and contains steps and levels. Each time a player reaches a level, the points are to be accumulated to determine who the winner is at that frame of time. However, the one who does the counting is a third party, who uses the rules established by both parties, A and B, to calculate the points accumulated by both parties. The judge, essentially, has no power over what goes and what does not. A fourth party, the so-called higher power, re-checks the analyses for errors (again based on the rules established by the initial two parties) and certifies them if they were correct. Imagine the initial two parties as scholars of the relevant fields, the third party as a ‘judge’, and the fourth party as ‘presidential seats’. In addition, substitute “create a game” with “create a new platform” The scholars who have the authority to decide these rules are those considered to have more experienced and knowledgeable, and who have made exceptional contributions to the respective field(s). These scholars will be democratically decided by their peers and others who are of the same field as they are. Their reasons must be openly debated, and none of which must contain anything to do with an opinion that is out of their own respective field(s). Then, similarly, their reasons will be accumulated, and a ‘judge’ will decide which will be elected, based on the rules determined by the complete community of scholars of the respective field(s). I would like to add on the side that if this view be taken seriously and acted upon, that individuals would be keener to become scholars so as to become more involved in the policies of interest is guaranteed likely to occur. I wonder if this were to lead to a intellectual utopian world…


The third issue would have to do with the educational system. It has become apparent that the whole educational system is designed to create individuals who are not entirely interested in searching for the facts and proofs of a theory or, from the student’s point of view, a hypothesis. Assuming mathematics to be fundamental to Chemistry, Physics and Biology, the educational system has very much advocated students to not have strong desires to search for mathematical proofs for an equation of interest. Instead, they are told to religiously believe that the equation works nevertheless, in the absence of complete proof for the question or equation at hand. Such a delirious system must be stopped. The system should alter its entire structure in the ways in which it teaches students. Fundamentals must first be established, before going into complex mathematical algorithms. It is the same as saying, for example, that one must first study human psychology before both ancient and contemporary literature. Essentially, before studying any subject, one must first study logic – as in a Philosophy course. Ideally, individuals coming out of such a system will not simply be sheep-like creatures, following the ways of a shepherd – even if the shepherd were utterly wrong. Instead, they will be the shepherd of themselves, serving society to benefit themselves, desiring to seek answers, and then asking more daring, controversial questions.


The entire ideal is simply led by one goal – the need for relevant and valid proofs. Though a simple idea, that the implications of integrating such a elementary principle into an already corrupted yet complex system is acknowledged. But this is, in fact, a state of enlightenment that will drastically change all aspects of human civilization – a revolution for humankind.