"Life lessons both old and new" ?
If we go back to the oldest western Philosophers and ask such a question to the ancient Greek citizens, what would they think ?
I'm guessing much like we would do so now, complain about our politicians and of course the PARTY who went before them
- who were in place before the present ones.
Most of the stalwarts here align themselves with either some well known philosophers or their compatriots. That's the size-of-it
and if you are to take a philosophy college course obviously you may have decided beforehand who takes your vote.
I was lucky I got to read about some old philosopher hiking up a mountain with a group of scholar, with one an expert
on the then ultra new science method called "induction".
As they climbed higher and higher the science expert climbed higher and higher into the psychological reasons why we should all revere and admire this "induction".
My philosopher took a different tack.
A tack which implies that a successful and inductive psychological method that some elite scientists think MUST be correct...
this method is almost foolhardily likely to become an "advanced talking point" and later to become an "institutionalised tool" which a group of teachers can use effectively upon their classroom students.
Of course not all of those students will pass that particular exam. So be it.
Philosophers like the old Ancient Greeks were never to be understood as social soothsayers, as social teachers whose
thoughts and experience could account for each-and-every wrong or wrongful past occurrence that had happened in
the countless years before Ancient Greece...
And that is still true today - some here give some smatterings of good everyday advice and some do not.
What I mean is that some philosophers here (or there in western colleges everywhere) and some philosophers there are usually right on the most mundane things, ordinary things which we may even have guessed though taking some basic history lessons so to speak.
And considering the specialised stuff which they have better understood then this too may have been made better understood by the average person given that they might have been interested enough to read a standard book-or-three on that specialised subject.
And so count me in on that quasi-critical group ; for at least THEY HAD A GO and are continuing to be somewhat more Critical and somewhat more rational than before (now). and that is what and more importantly how we can look back upon life-lessons that have happened in the past - I mean of course a past that has fast become one which is trying and trying to be more and more critical of what we have learned. Learnt about "life lessons" that violence is to hardly useful but that ones (good) defence
is a necessary thing.
That the almost bullying exhortations of one's teachers is only matched by the same exhortations from friends and family...
When such "bullying" turns inward because we mistakenly think that we haven't grasped those modern "life lessons" like the ones that should put us prominently ahead of our fellows !
Fot that can only be done by introspection and a lot of work of one's own, considering alternatives like the one above about what modern substitute so-call..."scientific logical method" is the best we might know...will it apply to all situations and will it really tell us why people are "turned off of" science at an early age, or turned off maths too.
We shouldn't believe that it applies-to-all-situations, is the life lesson that I have learned and one which I recommend.