Discovering Myself

By Richard Luhring

Is philosophy just the thoughts of a few men who lived long ago? Not really. Each of us develops our own opinions about life, and this is philosophy. Most of us don’t take the time to write down these thoughts. Some people find it interesting to read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, an emperor of ancient Rome. This book provides the thoughts of a citizen in twentieth century United States of America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796059892

Richard Luhring

The United States of America provided me with an excellent education – a BS in Engineering Mathematics at UC Berkeley and a MS in Industrial Engineering at Stanford. This was followed by ten years of work as an Industrial Engineer for half a dozen different employers who did not appreciate my independence. Thereafter I paid my rent by doing legal process serving. Eventually I was able to reclaim some utility from my educational degrees by teaching mathematics at community colleges. A couple of years ago I retired. Obviously this is not the expected background for an author of philosophical essays.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Richard Luhring.

Library of Congress Control Number:               2019915239

ISBN:                  Hardcover                     978-1-7960-5991-5

                             Softcover                      978-1-7960-5990-8

                             eBook                            978-1-7960-5989-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/04/2019

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

789602

CONTENTS

WHY?

Why Write This Book?

Why Publish This Book?

THE WORLD WITHIN

Consciousness

Emotions & Intellect

Knowledge & Values

Ethics

THE WORLD OUTSIDE

The Individual And Society

Government

People

History

Religion & Faith

Art

Nature

Death

Last Words

WHY?

WHY WRITE THIS BOOK?

After graduating with honors from the University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Mathematics, I served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer at the University of Cartagena in Colombia, South America. I returned to Stanford University with full fellowships for the next two years, and by the summer of 1970 I received a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering. Before the end of that year I was working for a management consulting firm with a contract to reduce operating costs at a major governmental facility. The study lasted fifteen months, and one of my projects found a half million dollars per year potential saving; this was half the total savings projected by the study. Naturally I was looking forward to my next assignment when I visited the company’s headquarter, but due to a communication misunderstanding that discussion never occurred.

I returned to the city where our consulting study had occurred and began working in a partnership with one of the other engineers from the previous study who had become a friend. At mid-year some events occurred that made me question my own sanity. I was experiencing an acute emotional disturbance, and it seemed as if my relationship with the external world had radically changed. The most logical explanation was that I was experiencing some form of nervous breakdown. I had worked hard and been under considerable stress to find legitimate cost savings for the previous study, so my experiences could have been just a delayed response to that stress.

If this had been a nervous breakdown, how confident could I be in my own mental capabilities? This was a moot point since I had nothing else to work with. It seemed reasonable to say that either my experiences had resulted from some aberration within my own mind, or there was some form of interference from the world around me.

One way to respond to the first option would have been to surrender myself to psychiatric care. However, several times during my childhood my mother experienced severe depressions which could only be improved by electro-shock treatments. I’m sure her experiences contributed to my refusal to pursue that option. On a few occasions I did talk with psychologists to accommodate friends who were concerned about my welfare. My closest friend from college, Clark Blasdell, provided the most psychological support by enduring endless hours of listening to me talk about the situation.

If there had been some form of interference from the external world, what might it have been? I did some library research and found a report from a committee chaired by Senator Frank Church which showed that at the time I was hired for the previous consulting study a CIA agent had been working in that governmental organization to recruit highly trained technical personnel. Had the consulting firm that hired me been associated with that effort? This same Church Committee also reported that the CIA had harassed some people of interest to the point where one person was killed. I made a couple of attempts, including a Freedom of Information search through an attorney, to determine whether there was evidence that this consulting firm had been associated with the CIA. These efforts did not produce any evidence that could be used in a legal prosecution. The most that can be said about these efforts is that they allowed me to create a life raft which enabled me to survive the storm that had shipwrecked my life.

Neither of these two options provided an adequate response to the possibility (probability) that I had suffered a nervous breakdown. To address that deficiency I began writing a few of the essays contained in this book. The initial essays were Consciousness and the Individual & Society. With the passage of time this writing helped me realize that all I really wanted was to maintain control over my own life. Once I had reached these calmer waters, my writing expanded into what might be best described as four essays on psychological philosophy and eight essays on social philosophy. This writing had become my hobby – my personal work of art.

WHY PUBLISH THIS BOOK?

My initial objective, answering questions about my own sanity, had been achieved, so why publish? Artistic pride? Of course, any artist who is satisfied with his or her work wants to show off in public. However, I realize some aspects of my writing will be considered controversial and perhaps offensive. I have always enjoyed political and philosophical discussions, but today’s social commentary emphasizes partisan bickering to such an extreme extent that it becomes questionable whether publishing would be worth the effort.

Money? Sure, royalties would be nice, but I’m not sure whether sales will be able to cover the costs of production.

There is one reason for publishing this book to which I can find no counterargument. That is to say Thank You to all the authors who have written and published books that I have read, enjoyed, and from which I have benefited.

THE WORLD WITHIN

CONSCIOUSNESS

Before we can determine who we are, we should become familiar with the environments in which we live. I am not referring to our physical habitats, but rather to our mental environments. We only become acquainted with ourselves in the realm of our consciousness, and therefore, we should begin by examining what this consciousness is. It comes to us as we wake in the morning and later fades away into sleep at night. We are so intimately familiar with our own consciousness that we have probably absorbed it into our lives without any special notice of it. However, because it is such an essential part of our existence, it deserves special attention. We may never fully understand anyone’s consciousness except our own, but even if we are limited to achieving only this, gaining that understanding of ourselves justifies the effort.

What is consciousness? It is awareness. Awareness of the world existing external to our bodies through the sensory experiences of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and balance. It also is awareness of an internal existence which expresses itself through feelings and emotions, as well as the conceptual experiences of thought and memory. We use this awareness to coordinate and control the conscious activities of our lives.

Before any further discussion about the concept of consciousness, I would like to acknowledge the possibility of another form of awareness – extrasensory perception, or ESP. It may be that human brains – or even more generally, animal nervous systems – are capable of interacting with each other in a manner similar to radio transmitters and receivers; that, at least, would be my simple description of ESP. There is sufficient scientific research to make such a hypothesis appear feasible, but at this time with my limited personal research into the subject, I certainly would not claim such a hypothesis is scientific fact. Whether such communication would be limited to simply emotional exchanges or might also include verbal content is currently beyond my personal ability to determine. One problem associated with determining whether ESP actually exists is the difficulty in distinguishing between ESP and those