Orientationism

Abstract;
Every philosophical system starts with the core question of “what is human?”.
All other ideas sprout out of this core concept. From Plato’s idealist concept
(Greek ancient civilization) to Ayn Rand’s objectivism (modern philosophy),
different philosophical views of human were coined and influenced human
thinking and behaviors. Nietzsche’s overman (superman) proved the strongest
one, as it influenced Nazi movement and caused WWII, the deadliest war in
human history. Allama Muhammad Iqbal influenced by Nietzsche’s superman
concept of human, presented the concept of “Khudi” for Muslims in order to
uplift the spirits of Muslims to regain their glory. Sartre pictured the depressed
human of WWII period in the form of “existentialist concept of human”.
Existentialism become very popular in industrialized nations as it was appealing
to men and women who were exhausted of increasing race. Looking back to
tranquil periods of Buddhism, we find that desires were considered as parasites
or aliens who feed on human happiness. Tranquil man is the original man.
Contemporary with Buddhists concept of human, were the idealist
philosophers who were obsessed by order in nature and were considering the
chaos in human life as earthly. Metaphysical men were imprisoned in the
earthly body and needed an artist to carve it out just as beautiful sculptures are
carved out of massive rocks. Morality was the artistic hands that could carve out
the majestic metaphysical men out of earthly men. Chinese duality philosophy
of yin-yang tried to solve the multiple aspects of human personality and nature.
Natural man is the original man and it is the composite man.

A cartoonic expression of different philosophies of human

Besides philosophy, Science has also presented its concepts of human.
Evolutionists (not necessarily only evolutionary biologists) look human as a
product of evolution and try to explain every aspect of human life from
behaviors, cultures, religions, economy, sociology, politics and history in light
of evolution. Psychologists look men more from behavioral perspectives and
traces behaviors to psychological experiences through developmental stages.
Sociologists look men as a product of the society that they live in and look men
as social animal. By advent of multiple generations of computers and creation
of digital world by network of computers the concept of matrix or digital men
are increasingly becoming popular. Digital world are biting on bigger parts of
human life as compared to physical world as new digital devices are coming.

Classical logic; Mountain could be at your east or west...south or north depending on your orientation. Facts remain same but we always have the choice to reorient ourselves, relative to facts...this is the most powerful tool to overcome our limits and shortcomings... Reorientation is difficult but most rewarding ;)

In above two paragraphs, I provided a very brief and quick overview of concepts
of human. One thing that I wanted to stress was that, your concept of human
depends where you are in world and at what time in human history do you live.
Even if you believe in a particular philosophy of human, still you will have
different version of it, from others depending on your position in society. A
man in military uniform has very different concept of human than a man who
are in surgeon’s get up. An insurance agent has very different concept of men
than a clergy even if both of them belong to the same faith and live under the
same roof. Time, place, position and personality are the central agents in
shaping our concepts of human. As we can express the time, place, position and
personality by a single term of “Orientation”, I call it “Orientationism”.
This was an introductory article about Orientationism… In coming days (may be
years…whenever I get leisure time) I will explain it in perspectives of other
philosophies and relevancy to our digital time……