Sunday, February 24, 2019

How to make dialectical life choices that are Bigglesworthy

Earlier today I was musing about consciousness, the meaning of life and such matters. This led me to dig up a post I wrote in one of my other blogs way back in November 2005, see What are the "basic questions" of life and the universe?

I made a quote from the frontispiece of one of the James Bigglesworth a.k.a. Biggles books, see http://www.biggles.info/ and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biggles for an introduction to this fictional WW1 and WW2 pilot adventurer.

Here's the publication order of Biggles books -- I read many of them, they were very popular at that time. (See this)

In that blog post I quoted Biggles' philosophy -- from the front matter for the novel Spitfire Parade -- and suggested that perhaps Biggles' dialectical approach might the way to go in general (not just to piloting an aircraft):
When you are flying, everything is all right or it is not all right.

If it is all right there is no need to worry.

If it is not all right one of two things will happen.
Either you will crash or you will not crash.

If you do not crash there is no need to worry.


If you do crash one of two things is certain.
Either you will be injured or you will not be injured.

If you are not injured there is no need to worry.


If you are injured one of two things is certain
Either you will recover or you will not recover.

If you recover there is no need to worry.
If you don't recover you can't worry.
Perhaps you could use it to decide who to vote for in the next election, or to decide between an Android or Apple smartphone, or whether you'd like to be buried versus being cremated …  if you get my drift.

I can certainly see that his way of thinking would solve some problems or clarify some murky issues being debated.

Nobody ever commented on that 2005 blog post. Here's your chance!