My Philosophy

DEV CONCEPT: My Philosophy is the member’s private workspace for discovering, developing, documenting, and optionally sharing their personal philosophy. It should feel like a living workshop rather than a test with a final answer. The conceptual foundation comes directly from 30 Philosophers. Throughout the book, readers are encouraged to examine their worldview, learn from multiple traditions, mix and match useful ideas, and develop a life view that resonates with who they want to be. A philosophy can be extremely simple or elaborate. The book identifies several useful ways philosophies express themselves: a guiding statement or mantra, sayings or aphorisms, practical principles, and longer explanatory or wisdom literature.

Core Philosophy Areas

• My Guiding Idea / Mantra Help the member identify a central theme and distill it into a short guiding statement. This can optionally be displayed on the member profile and My TST header.
• My Pillars Allow members to organize important values or principles into broad themes. Shuruppakism in 30 Philosophers provides a useful model: Relationships, Honor, Humility, Duty, and Wisdom. Members should create their own rather than being forced into predefined categories.
• My Aphorisms A collection of short sayings expressing the member’s philosophy. Think Shuruppak, Laozi, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, etc. Aphorisms can optionally be associated with one of the member’s pillars.
• My Wisdom Literature Longer personal writings explaining ideas, beliefs, principles, observations, lessons learned, or philosophical reflections. These can range from a paragraph to essays or larger documents.
• My Worldview Optional guided questions that help members examine their current knowledge, beliefs, values, assumptions, and view of reality. The worldview should always be treated as evolving rather than fixed.
• My Influences Optional list of philosophers, traditions, books, people, ideas, or experiences that have influenced the member’s philosophy. Encourage mixing and matching rather than forcing philosophical labels.
• My Philosophy Library Allow members to save supporting material and eventually upload PDFs or other documents related to their philosophy.

Relationship to My Worldview

DEV CONCEPT: My Philosophy is the conscious, constructive layer of the member’s broader worldview. My Worldview helps the member uncover and examine what they currently think and believe. My Philosophy helps them deliberately decide what ideas, principles, values, and wisdom they want to live by.

The two modules should interact without duplicating each other. A worldview discovery may lead to a philosophical principle, pillar, mantra, or aphorism. When appropriate, allow the member to intentionally promote an insight from My Worldview into My Philosophy.

Simple distinction:
My Worldview: What do I think, believe, and value—and why?
My Philosophy: Given that, how do I want to live?

Design Philosophy

• Private by default.
• Allow profile visibility at the item or section level rather than requiring the entire philosophy to be public.
• Do not force the user into a philosophical school or label. The goal is discovery and articulation, not classification.
• Encourage ideas to change over time. Consider preserving revision history later so members can see how their philosophy evolves.
• Keep the first experience simple. A member should be able to begin with nothing more than one sentence or one aphorism.
• Advanced structure such as pillars, worldview questions, documents, and longer writings should emerge gradually.
• My TST may occasionally surface prompts such as “Continue your mantra” or “Add an idea to My Philosophy,” but the full module should remain an intentional destination.

Possible Guided Flow

1. What ideas matter most to you?
2. What kind of person do you want to be?
3. What principles guide how you treat other people?
4. What principles guide how you handle difficulty?
5. What do you believe makes a life well lived?
6. Can you summarize your current philosophy in one sentence?
7. Can you turn some of your ideas into short aphorisms?
8. Would you like to organize those ideas into a few larger pillars?

These should be prompts, not required fields. Users should be able to skip around and build their philosophy organically.

30 Philosophers Integration

Build contextual links back into 30 Philosophers and TouchstoneTruth material while the member works.

• Components of a Philosophy — examples of guiding statements, ethics, practical advice, sayings, and wisdom literature.
• Shuruppak — example of organizing sayings into philosophical pillars.
• Laozi — example of expressing a philosophy through concise, memorable wisdom.
• Confucius — example of an applied philosophy centered on conduct and relationships.
• Heraclitus / Worldview — reminder that a worldview changes with knowledge and experience.
• Other philosophers can eventually provide prompts around virtue, skepticism, happiness, ethics, truth, meaning, spirituality, freedom, and other philosophical dimensions.

Dev Comments

COMMENT: Avoid making this feel like personality testing. “You are 42% Stoic and 28% Buddhist” might be entertaining someday, but it should not define the member’s philosophy. COMMENT: The most interesting long-term feature may be the evolution of the member’s philosophy. A mantra, pillar, or aphorism could have a history showing how their thinking changed over years. COMMENT: User-created philosophy content could eventually interact with TST Practice. For example, a member’s mantra, aphorisms, or selected wisdom could occasionally be surfaced back to them during Practice. COMMENT: Uploaded source material should remain distinct from the member’s authored philosophy. PDFs, books, and references are influences or supporting material; they are not automatically statements of belief.

DEV TO DO

• DEV: Create My Philosophy page and navigation item.
• DEV: Restrict module to signed-in member and developer during initial build.
• DEV: Decide data architecture before building Elementor forms.
• DEV: Create member-level philosophy record with optional title, central theme, and guiding statement/mantra.
• DEV: Create flexible item structure for pillars, aphorisms, and wisdom writings rather than storing everything in user meta.
• DEV: Add ordering/reordering for pillars and aphorisms.
• DEV: Add draft/private/public-profile visibility controls.
• DEV: Connect profile mantra to My TST personalized header.
• DEV: Build simple mantra editor first.
• DEV: Add links/prompts for creating a personal mantra.
• DEV: Build My Pillars.
• DEV: Build My Aphorisms and optional pillar assignment.
• DEV: Build Wisdom Literature editor.
• DEV: Develop optional worldview questionnaire/prompts.
• DEV: Add My Influences / favorite philosophers and traditions.
• DEV: Add appropriate links into 30 Philosophers and TST reference material.
• DEV: Research secure private PDF/document upload architecture.
• DEV: Add selected My Philosophy elements to member profile.
• DEV: Later consider revision history so users can view the evolution of their philosophy.
• DEV: Later consider surfacing relevant My Philosophy items inside My TST and TST Practice.

COMMENT: Do not turn My Philosophy into a duplicate inventory of beliefs. Belief discovery and worldview analysis belong primarily in My Worldview. My Philosophy should emphasize intentional principles, guidance, aphorisms, pillars, mantra, and wisdom literature.

COMMENT: My Philosophy will generally contain more material appropriate for optional profile sharing. My Worldview should lean more heavily toward privacy because it may contain beliefs, doubts, uncertainties, and unfinished thinking.

DEV: Before finalizing data architecture, design My Worldview and My Philosophy together so shared concepts such as revisions, visibility, influences, and member-created ideas do not require duplicate systems.

DEV: Allow selected worldview discoveries to be intentionally promoted into My Philosophy rather than automatically copying them.