"If you have to tell a lie to tell the truth, it isn't the truth."

~Myself

Philosophy

Philo is Greek for beloved and sophia is wisdom or knowledge.  The philosopher loves not only wisdom and knowledge but the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge by intellectual means and moral self-discipline. Rational investigation of the nature and causes or principles of reality, knowledge, and values is the beloved labor of the philosopher's mind.

"Lack of a historical sense is the original error of all philosophers ..."

~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human

According to The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary, the brain "is the primary center for the regulation and control of bodily activities, receiving and interpreting sensory impulses, and transmitting information to the muscles and body organs. It is also the seat of consciousness, thought, memory, and emotion." 

It would be the most common error to believe that the brain was designed with an infinite capacity for "receiving and interpreting sensory impulses".  It would be more correct to understand that the brain expends more energy filtering out information than it does receiving and interpreting information.

Just as most Homo sapiens barely notice the sensory impulses associated with the wearing of clothes, the hum of the refrigerator or jets streaking across the sky, they have an innate capacity to reject information that is emotionally or intellectually inconvenient or uncomfortable.  The philosopher must discipline the intellectual self if they are to obtain true wisdom and knowledge.

"... because man, out of need or boredom, wants to exist socially, herd-fashion, he requires a peace pact and he endeavors to banish at least the very crudest bellum omnium contra omnes (War of all against all) from his world.  This peace pact looks something like the first step toward the attainment of this enigmatic urge for "truth"; that is, a regularly valid and obligatory designation of things is invented, and this linguistic legislation also furnishes the first laws of truth: for it is here that the contrast between truth and lie first originates.  The liar uses the valid designations, the words, to make the unreal appear real ... He abuses the fixed conventions by arbitrary changes or even reversals of the names.  ...

"... men do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception ... he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths. ..."

"Only through forgetfulness can man ever achieve the illusion of possessing a "truth" ... If he does not wish to be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology - that is, with empty shells - then he will forever buy illusions for truths.  ... what matters with words is never the truth ... One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors. ..."

"What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms - in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."

"... to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory to all. ..."

~Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie

The most extreme forms of both conservatism and liberalism are accompanied by the the immorality of intellectual dishonesty.  Conservatives cling to traditional views and values with a zealous disregard for anything resembling truth and liberals reject traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas with the same thoughtless disregard for a knowledge of the truth.

The human quest for knowledge is limited to that knowledge which would reinforce our current paradigm.  Tremendous intellectual self-discipline is required to discover knowledge beyond that which reinforces our current paradigm.

My philosophy takes in many subjects including: individualism, collectivism, naturalism, existentialism, economics, law, environmental concerns, health and science information and institutional issues such as money, education, marriage, religion, etc, etc, etc.

Because the true meaning of  words is often the first victim of any philosophical disagreement, I have provided definitions of words in the context which I typically use them.  The definitions are from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition and I did not make them up, although I have chosen the contextually correct definitions as I typically use the words.

 
The Philosophy of Liberty

Enjoy a this 10-minute animated introduction to the philosophy of liberty produced by Lux Lucre and Ken Schoolland and hosted by the International Society for Individual Liberty.

Definitions

conservative (adj.) Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.

liberal (adj.) Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas.

nature (n.) The material world and its phenomenon or the forces and processes that produce and control all the phenomena of the material world.

naturalism (n.) The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.

theo(s) (n.) Greek for god (gods).
a- (pref.) Without. Greek.
-ist (suff.) One that is characterized by a specific trait of quality. Greek for agent.
-ism (suff.) Characteristic behavior or quality.  Greek, -ismos.

theism (n.) Belief in the existence of a god or gods.
atheism (n.) Disbelief in the existence of a god or gods.

believe (v.) To accept as true or real.

gnosis (n.) Intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths, an esoteric form of knowledge sought by Gnostics.  Greek for knowledge.

Gnosticism (n.) The doctrines of certain pre-Christian pagan, Jewish, and early Christian sects that valued the revealed knowledge of God and of the origin and end of the human race as a means to attain redemption for the spiritual element in humans and that distinguished the Demiurge from the unknowable Divine Being.

Demiurge (n.) A deity in Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and other religions who creates the material world and is often viewed as the originator of evil.

agnosticism (n.) The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge or the belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist.

In simplified form, gnosticism is belief in knowledge (of God) obtained by supernatural means and agnosticism is disbelief in knowledge (of God) obtained by supernatural means; a gnostic is one with knowledge (of God), and an agnostic is one without knowledge (of God).

paradigm (n.) A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition