Some of answers to this question are covered in my book “Relativity Theory of Beings” available at amazon.com you might be interested in checking it out. What I think relates to this question that is in my book are “levels of beings”. Like the development of the mind I think beings (people) exist at different levels and can develop or move from one level to another. The lowest levels of beings are plants and animals and people are a higher level of being. (This might not make much sense since I have my own definition of being defined in my book). Among people lower level beings are focused on animal needs and higher level people are concerned with intellectual things, such as reason, logic, knowledge …and philosophy. Some people get to different levels of being at different times in their lives and for different reasons and other people never get past the level of animals or some other intermediate level.
I have met with success in what most animal type people would be concerned with. I have a good income, nice home, loving wife and grown children I’m proud of.
Climbing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I’ve satisfied my social and esteem needs, I’ve climbed solo 14,000 foot mountains, completed many marathons and ultra marathons, traveled extensively, I have an advanced degree, received more than enough awards throughout my career to cover a whole wall of my office.
I’ve achieved self actualization by overcoming many obstacles and accomplishing just about everything I’ve set my mind to.
For many people all the things I’ve described might be enough to lead to or develop into an interest in philosophy just by following all that with what’s next?
I’ve also had experiences that have pushed me toward philosophy and make me ask questions about why? And what’s next? These experiences have been with life (the birth of my kids) and death (I was raised on a farm and have seen the death and killing of livestock, I’ve hunted wild animals and killed more than a few) and more poignantly dealing with the death of friends and loved ones. I also experienced a medical emergency which I survived but could have died. Any one of these experiences could turn a person down the path of philosophy.
For me the turning point getting me thinking about “why, and what’s next?” was the completion of my first book about Unified Field Theory. Unified Field Theory deals with science and a method of unifying the forces of nature into a cohesive whole. This I thought (and still do) I achieved, but couldn’t generate any interest by other people in it. The failure to get others interested in my theory lead to research into how ideas spread, how scientific theory’s come into being, how they overcome opposition and gain a life of their own (a good book about this is “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn.
From this backdrop I developed my own philosophy. I didn’t study philosophy but put together the essence of the “Relativity Theory of Beings” but never published it. It satisfied my hunger for an answer to “Why and what’s next?” so I was content. “Relativity Theory of Beings” became something I’d describe to people just about whenever the subject of conversation went philosophical; it was almost always well received. Much later I documented it while in a college course and related it to leadership, the documentation process got me researching ”Relativity Theory of Beings” as a philosophical concept and I discovered how unique it was. It was then I decided to publish it and since then I’ve been an explorer of philosophy, except I look at the body of philosophical knowledge that covers the last thousands of years not as something to build upon, but to use it to build upon and support my own philosophy.
I’m different from most philosophers in that I already had a well developed philosophy before I came to study the philosophy that exists in academia today. This filters through in my writing so much so that I generally get more positive feedback from people that have read my book that don’t have any formal instruction in philosophy than from those people that have studied philosophy in an academic environment.
There you have it.
