Behind the Author: Mostly Philosophy

Hello again friends, bloggers and muses,

Welcome back to Behind the Author, the interview series aimed to bring us all a little something special in our lives, whether it’s advice, life lessons, or just an intimate peak at the lives of one of our favorite bloggers. This is what we do. 🙂

Today’s Guest: Maylynno of Mostly Philosophy

Maylynno is a blogger, philosophy teacher with a PhD and a soon to be author with a published thesis. Besides all of this she can write in multiple languages and she’s likely slaying super-villains by the light of the moon… I assume…

The Interview

Mathew: Hey May, I’m so happy to be able to have this interview with you! Philosophy has always been one of my favorite topics of discussion and now in University, I have the pleasure of enjoying it more than ever. When did you first discover that Philosophy was a passion for you?

Maylynno: Hi, thank you for having me in your interview. I was in high school and we had philosophy as a main class. I fell in love immediately because it was different from other disciplines. It opened my eyes on the human condition and made me question the world and myself. It was a class about freedom of thinking and discussing. So I knew I wanted to major in it. But it took me another 2 to 3 years to finally do it. I studied Law for 2 years. It was boring lol

Mathew: You must really like philosophy to not only Major in it and teach it full-time but to also blog about it in your free-time! Personally, I think it’s wonderful. Here in Canada, we’re not usually taught philosophy in high school, but it exposes a mind to a different type of rational thinking which is important. What made you to want to start a blog on philosophy on top of all of your other philosophy related commitments?

Maylynno: When you do something you love it is priceless! You don’t work anymore, it doesn’t feel like it is a job! Anyway, I wanted, through my blog, to make philosophy simple and accessible to people, to democratize it. Why? Because, the world we live in today, with all its troubles and issues, needs to be questioned. I want people to question themselves and to question values they believe in, because all this is not working. The world is only governed by money making thrives. And making money is so noisy that we don’t hear ourselves talking anymore. I’m not criticizing money, but the one track money making mentality.

Mathew: Who is one of your favorite philosophers and why?

Maylynno: As for my favourite one if I have to name only one, it would definitely be Friedrich Nietzsche! He is a dynamite like he used to call himself, the heavy metal of philosophy. And the most honest philosopher ever, trust me on this. Plus he broke the philosophy writing model that is quite difficult and sometimes unpleasant to read and replaced by poetic aphorisms… which didn’t make him an easy philosopher (to follow) though lol

Mathew: Would you mind expanding on Nietzche’s philosophies little bit?

Maylynno: Basically, we are the result of our instincts or desires and they are of 2 types: the active and the reactive. The active desires are what makes us creative, life lovers, joyful, free.. The reactive ones are all the opposite: they make us envious, resentful, guilty… So the master is the person whose active desires won over the reactive ones. The slave is the mentality of resentment. To him, all leaders come from a place of resentment! Lastly, the superhuman, is the one whose will of power expresses itself the best, meaning the will of power in expressing active desires. People usually think that Nietzsche, with his concept of will of power, encouraged dictatorships. But no lol

Mathew: What’s your philosophy on finding happiness and meaning in life? Loaded question for you. 😉

Maylynno: I learned to he happy the hard way. You know we are told in culture and fiction that one can’t be happy without a significant other, or without being rich or without this or that. But no! One must learn to be happy on their own, to build a structure for their life made of they love to do. Happiness is a discipline that you must do every day.

Mathew: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview May, it’s been nice getting to know you better. Now, since you’re a master philosopher, I need to ask you a difficult philosophical question for the grand finale. If two clairvoyants read each other’s minds, whose mind are they really reading?

Maylynno: This is tricky lol. It is like a double faced mirror! Each one is reading their own mind!

The After-Thought

There you have it folks, another week and another interview. Thanks so much to Maylynno for joining me for this interview and hopefully each of you learned something. Check out her blog if you too are interested by philosophy and would like to learn more! There’s really great content there, educate yourselves for free. 🙂

Thanks for joining on this week’s, Behind the Author!

If you haven’t checked out May’s blog yet, you may do so here

Questions? Comments? Leave them down below!