In some respects it is perhaps reasonable to say that the whole of Western philosophy has returned to Socrates, to knowing nothing.
Our universities, in the Humanities, do not speak of Truth any more. They don’t even really speak of Beauty. They speak of these as constructs, not as something real. Nothing is real in the realm of ideas, we are told, no moralities are true, no life paths are better than others.
This is, of course, a dual communication. They say these things with their mouths. With their feet, the submit vigorously to rote conformity to mutable political agendas, ones in most cases created by others, but which sweep daily, hourly, through all the halls of academia.
We are infants. We were not ready for all this. Just as we were not ready for our technology, for all the ways we can destroy ourselves.
It is true there is no Truth. But there are countless truths. All of us are true. Our selves are true. Who we are, in space and time, is true. It is a task of feeling our way forward, of allowing growth to happen without stopping it by asking too many questions once the train leaves the station.
I seem to be OK with the place I am at. This surprises me. Like everyone else–or nearly everyone, as I cannot know with certainty what I am seeing around me–I have always craved a cage. With a cage, you can see and feel the walls. You know where you are. Everything is fixed and familiar.
When you walk out the door, you can smell the air, and it smells good. There are both flowers and the stench of decay. There is life and there is death. And you can’t know where you are going.
It is, I think, our task for a long time, in this life and in what comes, to travel, and to make the road our home, and every chance meeting an act of beauty, every friendship a richly crafted artwork, and to see the love which underlies it all.
This is, of course, an ideal, and I am far from ideal. I will continue to share my thoughts, though, as I evolve.