PHIL 3160 – Philosophy of Happiness

What is it, how can we best pursue it, why should we? Supporting the study of these and related questions at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond. "Examining the concept of human happiness and its application in everyday living as discussed since antiquity by philosophers, psychologists, writers, spiritual leaders, and contributors to pop culture."

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Radical Honesty: A Brief Overview and How it Changed my Life

 Nate Belmont:

Summary: Radical Honesty is a book written in Brad Blanton PhD. He his a crude man who uses more profanity than any other professional writer I have ever read about. Yet, in my opinion, his work is equally profound. The book itself is broken up into four parts which are the following: The being, The mind, Liberation of the being from it's mind, and Things learned from the war between the being and mind. This book is pretty dense to say the least so I will be focusing on some of the highlights from the book as well as it's effects on me personally. This book as taught me a lot about what it means to be human as well as what I can do to make things easier on myself. Radical Honesty has helped me to see some things more clearly that I couldn't quite put my finger on before reading. I hope one day each person who watches my presentation reads this book at one point or another. It is a combination of a lot of different styles of writing and doesn't make a lot of sense from a literature standpoint.  But, in my opinion, Radical Honesty is just as important to our daily lifes as any religious faith could possibly be. Brad Blanton is a therapist who has been practicing for more than thirty years in that time he has had a lot of cases he shares throughout the book and they serve as a good examples of what he is talking about. I learned a lot about life in general and I can't wait to share it with you!

Ted Talk with Blanton

https://youtu.be/V_Fp93OtaHE

Pod Cast with Blanton

https://youtu.be/NwM2HfaXHgk

Questions:

1. How important is honesty to you?

2. Is morality a good thing?

2 comments:

  1. 2. This question assumes some sort of morality by asking if morality is good. There is an objective morality, but we can talk about this more in-depth in person.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. How important is honesty to you?

    Honesty is above all… in most cases. However, I believe we would all agree that there are such cases where honesty is not always the best policy. For instance, would you sell out an oppressed or targeted individual who you are hiding in your basement if said oppression or targeting of individual is only predicated on an immutable characteristic? Or, would you lie to an inquiring investigator in hopes of saving the refugee’s life or freedom?

    For a less grim example that more of us can relate to, take a surprise birthday party that you are helping to set up. So, the birthday person is then invited to some designated location for no discernible purpose. Now, if the birthday person were to directly ask you if you know why they’ve been invited to this location, would you then reveal that information? I think we would all keep quiet, at least I hope.

    So, I think these examples are ample proof for showing that honesty cannot always be relied upon. In many circumstances, lying is often necessary for the best possible outcome.

    ReplyDelete

You don’t need a pill: Neo

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