So you know my view that comics are smart and that animated superhero movies like The Incredibles can be used to teach philosophy.  Well it seems I’m in good company.  For a change.

William Irwin, a philosophy professor at King’s College in Pennsylvania, edits the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, which includes titles such as Batman and Philosophy, and X-Men and Philosophy.

The article gives examples of how he and other teachers like him do this.  For instance, what can Batman’s refusal to kill the Joker illustrate about complex ethical dilemmas?  Or what can Dr Manhattan’s musing on physics add to the free will debate?

And in case any of you are aghast at this example of university-level dumbing down, be careful to let the man speak for himself.

“We are not saying that the canon of Superman comic books is equivalent to Homer and Dante and you can study them for their own sake. We’re not suggesting that comic books replace Plato and Descartes – not at all. The goal is always to get people interested in philosophy by speaking first in terms that people are familiar with.”

Comics are a recruiting tool to get people interested in life’s deeper problems.  They can also serve to illustrate those problems as a kind of artistic thought-experiment.  But they neither solve them, nor replace the study those thinkers who have tried.   They aren’t supposed to.

Comics or graphic novels have their greatest educational potency as portals for higher thought.  Especially for young males – like me – who hated everything to do with school.  I would also want to argue that some graphic novels – Watchmen for instance – contain more depth and complexity than 90% of the trash in your average second-hand bookshop.  Heck, you can even use them to teach career guidance.

That’s one comic book every high school kid should read.

PS  This year in the Queen’s University Open Learning Programme there is a course I’m thinking of attending called Investigate and Create: Comic Book Illustration by Duncan Ross.  I’m no artist but Duncan has assured me that this isn’t encessary.  See you there?

Image credit: audiinsperation.

What I would particularly recommend you take a peek at are the Wellbeing Guides.  These are an assortment of videos, tracks, and fact sheets on a whole range of interesting and relevant topics.  They are presented by an array of people, from the formerly-irritating Ruby Wax to a variety of less-known – but highly respected – health experts.

I dare you to try out some of the tracts from the guided Meditation or Relaxation and not feel the benefits!

And in case anyone thinks that all this talk of well-being is incurably low-brow, I urge them to read Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance by J Griffin for starters.  Or The Morality of Happiness by Julia Annas.  I’m glad to say that these topics are receiving a lot more attention in the field of philosophy now than they have for many years, as with psychology.

Who knows, maybe, in some far-off, bright-and-glorious day, we’ll even design an education that combines academic wellbeing with our physical and moral condition.  Hang on, didn’t the ancient Greeks do this thousands of years ago?  Yes – they called it paideia, in case you’re interested.

But I’ll leave that for another blog…

The course was on the meaning of life, and how to find it for yourself.  It’s interesting to me that this sort of topic is becoming more in demand not only for personal development but also in organizational growth.  A framework of meaning connecting individual and corporate purpose provides the ultimate in occupational motivation!

I’ve already mentioned the direction of the course in the enigmatically-named blog called 42.  Instead, what I want to do here is share a few insights that I’ve gleaned during the course of my research and the delivery of my course.

• Don’t look for a single sentence answer.  To use some metaphors – don’t think in terms of a shooting a silver-bullet so much as a weaving a web.
• Better to ask,  ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ than ‘What is the meaning of life-in-general?’.  There is no ‘life-in-general’ so  make your answer concrete and specific.  Focus your mind towards people or activities or experiences.
• Try to balance the comic with the tragic.  Too much either way will led to depression.  In fact, I would suggest that a third element is necessary to round off your life-narrative – the fantasy or ‘fairy-tale’.  This leaves space for the magic of creativity and change.
• Everyone has a meaning to life, a personal philosophy.  It may be implicit or explicit, coherent or contradictory.  Best if you become aware of it and then make it what you want.  Otherwise, you are under the power of the imposed meaning of others.
• No-one is a total relativist.  Everyone believes in some standard or follows a way. The issue is how you hold to it.
• Some of the ‘big issues’ of philosophy can have real, everyday implications for how you live and think and feel about yourself.  Freedom versus fate.  The individual versus the collective.  The body versus the mind.  There are some of the issues that drive your engine.  Better pick the ones that help you run the most efficiently.
• Reality is not objective.  All seeing is ‘seeing-as’.  Your perspective on the world becomes your world.  As you construct your worldview, you construct your world.  Your world is the place that you inhabit.  Take responsibility for it!
• Worldviews are detected by the language people use to describe their lives and the stories they tell each other about themselves.  But it works the other way around too.  Language and stories are not just indicators or expressions; they are also the tools you can use to alter your world.  They work from the outside in as well as the inside out.
• Try this image.  Don’t think of yourself looking out at the universe, asking it the question, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’  Think of you, standing at the center, with the universe asking the question to you, ‘What is the meaning of your life?’  What will you say?  The universe waits to see.  (Or for advances students, what if you universe whispered to you, ‘You are the meaning of the universe, you are the answer to the question.’)

In writing these points I’ve used a mixture of metaphors and questions.  They are some of the most powerful tools in the making of meaning.  But, first of all, know yourself! Self-awareness is not only the beginning of Emotional Intelligence; it is the beginning of all personal meaning.  Use whatever means you can to achieve this goal: self-assessment instruments (Briggs-Myers Type Indicator, Enneagram of Personality, Character Strengths and Virtues, learning styles), journaling, meditation and mindfulness training, whatever.

Then, take responsibility! Be pro-active!  This ain’t just for philosophers.  Or rather, since we’re all philosophers, seekers after wisdom, it’s up to all of us.  For the making of meaning is a task that makes us human.

Thankfully, only humans attended my course.