Self-Knowledge
Bill Nicholson
Nicholson Bill
Self-Knowledge
Bill Nicholson
SELF-KNOWLEDGE
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
This book tells the story of how I, a young man, became a philosopher.
I was born in Toronto in 1950, a year before American troops withdrew from Vietnam. I was educated in Toledo, Cardiff and New York, then went to college. I didn’t actually graduate from any college, as I don’t have that right, but I did go to psychology, a field of study called the humanities sciences. After I got out of college I got the opportunity to do journalism, which I did.
For the past four years I have taught high school in Fort Worth, Texas, where I am one of five teachers (there are five others besides me) who have taken a six-month course in pedagogy and psychology, which corresponded to two years of college-level courses in the respective disciplines.
All of us-teachers and students alike-are very vulnerable to the so-called problems of parenting. There is a degree of neuroticism in what we bring to this life, and even obsessing over problems like obsessing over life causes one to feel completely devastated.
Yes, parents give us certain opportunities, but if we don’t take advantage of them, it doesn’t make us better, it only makes us worse. We all represent a certain « game. »
In my life, this kind of « game » happened all the time. I was becoming a fanatic, and it made me very uncomfortable. To tell the truth, there was nothing of a believer left in me at all, everything was dead and frozen. I could no longer remember my childhood, I could no longer love my brother and sister, and I had no idea of the existence that begins after one leaves this place of sorrow.
At first I thought that all these troubles came from thinking too much. That is true, but only half true, because the problems I encountered were the result of my own thinking. I don’t need to worry about my « parenting problems, » since I don’t believe in karma, but I do need to solve one problem–the inability of a person to manage his life.