Dglas "Inquest"

Some folks seem to like personal posts, and I was asked to describe my "worldview."

Who the hell is Dglas anyway?

Some of this is already in the snippets and soundbites you can find along the periphery of the Inquest, but perhaps a more structured approach is in order. Now, please understand that this is a particularly difficult exercise for me. It's like trying to nail down that which I deliberately keeps nails away from. It's like saying "This I believe" without using the word "believe."

Nevertheless, here goes...

I am fallible. We are fallible. This is not a thing that is easily internalized. Philosophies are tools, not truths. The instant we think we have the truth, we stop. Never stop. Inquiry is a journey, not an end. I see dogma and ideology as self-imposed hobblings of our minds and inquiry. This is why I combat religion - not just a particular religion - but all of them, and on the same basis.

My views are forward-looking, human-centered, life-affirming, freedom-loving, and reality-based. I sing the song of reason, free inquiry, and science, and of inclusive mindsets and cooperative mentalities. I am a philosophical skeptic, promoting unlimited scope of inquiry. No subject matter was ever advanced by bobbleheading.

I am a humanist, but I realize that is a choice, not a truth. My humanism is human centered - it is of humans, by humans and for humans, not a consequence of something else. I value humans for their own sake, not as mere cogs in a dogmatic meat grinder, not because some fantasy figure commands me to, but of my own choice. I don't advocate honour killings or savage retributivistic mentalities.

I do not "believe in" - that is a mindset I do not engage in. I "believe that" and those beliefs are contingent on reality. Based on, corrected by, and about reality. Subject to change if reality requires it. Really, I posit, rather than believe.

Every new thing gets an "Oh. Cool!" from me. I critique the philosophies that are exclusion machines and conflict engines. I inquire. I explore. And I revel in that. I have come to posit that explorers are what we are, from our first breath. My greatest fear is hardening of the grey matter and ideological stances that cause grey matter to harden.

No one is going to save us. It's us, only us, we may rely upon. Even if I am wrong about that, it is still a practical starting point.

I advocate for honest negotiation of our social constructs, morality being one of them, with continuing negotiation being key - again, a journey, not an end. Dogmas and ideologies are dishonest negotiation. I recognize the difference between words and violence, and I see the difference between fantasy and reality. I understand the difference between the purely analytic and the synthetic. We can't find out about reality by building massive webworks of purely analytical structures, divorced from reality.

I am a philosophical skeptic, with a practical streak. This is not a contradiction. Doubt is not denial.

Of course, I am a work in progress, just like this description is, subject to revision... because that's really the defining characteristic of who I am, and that includes not just my empirical positings, but my non-empirical ones as well.