Today I want to share a speech by Leonard Cohen which he gave in 1964.

Cohen is speaking to Jews about Jewish identity, but his message is worth hearing by anyone with any kind of spiritual instinct. So while Jewish listeners will find Cohen’s message particularly pointed, I believe the most important aspects are accessible to non-Jews as well. It’s a testimony to God in a godless time, equally opposed to ‘psychiatric atheism’ as to uninspired religious orthodoxy.

I found this 7-minute speech very moving, and it clicks dangerously well with how I think about spirituality, and some of the topics I’ve tried to cover in this eclectic newsletter.

So here it is.

The audio is attached, but can also be accessed on YouTube. I’ve also uploaded the full text below - many thanks to @hormeze for sharing the video as well as for his help with transcription.

Leonard Cohen speaks about G-d consciousness and Judaism (1964)

Judaism is the secretion with which an Eastern tribe surrounded a divine irritation; a direct confrontation with the absolute. That happened once in history, and we still feel the warmth of that confrontation - divorced as we are from the terms of it.

That happened a long time ago. Today we covet the pearl, but we are unwilling to support the irritation, the burning nucleus.

Our spiritual life today has the exact consistency of an unclean oyster, and it stinks to heaven. We cannot face heaven. We have lost our genius for the vertical. Jewish novelists are sociologists - horizontalists - and the residue of energy left from that great vertical seizure we had 4000 years ago, that we turned toward ourselves. We knock on our own doors and wonder that no one answers. We create this insane Talmud of identity that must end in psychiatry or Zionism, but never in a prayer of praise. 

Perhaps our taste for the absolute was too intense. We could not bear the light. We could not support the annihilation of the world inherent in the light. Perhaps we lost the land because we no longer wished to possess it; the light made the cities and the temples irrelevant.

There is an awful truth which no Jewish writer investigates today, which no Jewish poet articulates. It is a truth that the synagogues and the cultural establishment cannot efface, and it is this truth: we no longer believe we are holy. This is the declaration that I wait to hear going out from synagogues and from the lips of cultural Jews and ethical Jews. This is the confession without which we cannot begin to raise our eyes to the absence of God in our midst.

And it's interesting that in the two symposia that I have been to in within the Jewish community in the past few months, no one has mentioned the word God! And I am laboring under the misapprehension that the Jewish people represents that testimony on the earth, and that without that testimony informing its actions, Jewish survival is nominal and no more important to me than Armenian survival or Greek survival. 

The absence of God in our midst is a deep rotten cavity that has killed the nerve of the people. We are ready to accept psychiatric solutions for our suffering. We are ready to accept ethics instead of sanctity. Each generation of men must continue the ancient and holy dialog between the material/secular/artificial/ethnocentric on the one hand, and on the other the spiritual/ascetic/natural/experiential. Certainly, we have built too much on the other side - the balance has hit the ground.

Let us refuse the title ‘Jew’ to any man who is not obsessed by God. Let that become the sole qualification of Jewish identity. Let us encourage young men to go into the deserts of their heart and burn the praise of perfection. Let us do it with drugs or whips or sex or blasphemy or fasting; but let men begin to feel the perfection of the universe. Let us declare a moratorium on all religious services until someone reports a vision or breaks his mind on the infinite. 

Jews without God are lilies that fester. Let us discard the mentality of the minyan. The danger which it was meant to shield us from - lonely self-annihilation in the spirit, is unfortunately no longer a danger. Let us make it a danger! Let us see Jewish monasteries; our families are strong enough to support the dialectic. We need our dirty saints, and our monstrous hermits; let us create a tradition for them, for they light the world.

<applause>

Look, 4000 years ago the world was idolatrous and a small Eastern tribe repudiated the experience of the world to develop a difficult idea that has burnt a people for 4000 years. That is what I mean by variety - of course, the world is idolatrous today, that's why the Jews have a particular vocation! That's why we're here tonight examining a special unspoken kind of anguish about our identity, because we're not fulfilling it.

There was a time when all Israel, when all Judah’s neighbors were idolators and some madman decided to smash the images and turn himself into light! Now that is the challenge for Jews in every generation, whether it's a ghetto or whether it's a metropolis is: whether they are burnt, or whether they are citizens.

Question from audience: Are you saying the Jews have a special duty to save the world?

Leonard: The Jews have a special duty to save God, in the world.

[Question from the audience] Can you explore a little further the differences that are innate in the Jew?

Leonard: I couldn't do that while standing on one foot. It's a matter of... the knowledge that each person in this room has. There is a time, you know, when we must start discarding definitions, start discarding the problem which we create for ourselves. We know what God means, we know what the word means - we don't need a definition. We know what the word Jew means - we don't need a definition.

There comes a time when the definition only obscures the human reality. Now let us return to the human reality we know how we feel in the world. Jews know how they feel in the world! All I ask is for some allegiance to that feeling. Let us refuse to clarify; let us only follow the allegiance that we know we owe.

In this ~28 min audio episode I discuss selections from a book I’ve read an unreasonable number of times: The Hagakure, by Yamamoto Tsunetomo.

It’s intense, it’s violent, and it gives a particularly clear glimpse of a culture completely different from our own.

I uploaded it to YouTube as well, in case you want to look at a cool equalizer graphic while you listen:

Enjoy! 👹

It has been three months! In the recording above, I recap the last 12 weeks and describe where I want to go next. [5 min]

The main points:

* I’ve fulfilled my 12-week commitment! 🎉

* CURZIISM will continue for at least another 3 months, at which point I’ll reassess again.

* Newsletters will now arrive every 2-3 weeks, rather than weekly, as I try to increase content quality.

* I might add more audio?

* Thank you for reading! Seriously, I appreciate it.

And now, our essay for the week…

Grim optimism, nihilistic pleasure

Do you wrestle with dreams?Do you contend with shadows?Do you move in a kind of sleep?Time has slipped away.Your life is stolen.You tarried with trifles.Victim of your folly.

- Frank Herbert, Dune

Pessimism vs nihilism

We’ve all heard the phrase: “Winter is Coming”. In That Damnable Fantasy Series it literally refers to, you know, winter. But the saying is not just literal; it’s an ethos. It says: “difficulty lies ahead.” Or perhaps: “There will be a reckoning.”

It’s grim. But how grim it? On some reads, “Winter is Coming” is positively doomer-ish. It says the future will be bad. It might seem depressive.

But in times as troublesome as our own, it can be useful to remember that pessimism and doomsaying are not the same thing. If you expect difficulty, you might prepare. That’s not nihilistic, it’s just practical. I’m not sure practicality can be hopeless.

And while the Starks like telling you winter is on its way, they’ll probably stop saying it once you’re hip-deep in snow. One doesn’t imagine them proclaiming: “see, we’re totally screwed! I told you so!” That’s not the point. They’re more likely to say “let’s go gather some wood.”

In other words, “Winter is Coming” isn’t the same as saying “we’re fucked”. It’s not the same as “the End is Nigh”. If “The End is Nigh” is the ghost chili pepper of nihilism, “Winter is Coming” is a gentle habanero.

Who should heed the Starks?

Let’s suppose, arguendo, that ‘Winter is Coming’ is something that needs saying. If it needs saying, who needs to hear it?

I’m not the biggest fan of Game of Thrones, but I’m told that in that universe, the grim Starks can be contrasted with a clan of Flower Knights and all-around Summer People, who spend their days in delight with wine and gardens and scantily clad women. (I’m probably butchering the lore here, but you’re going to have to forgive me. This is to pay Mr. R. R. Martin back for making me sit through three seasons of that show.)

What a delightful way to live! It seems more fun than being a Stark. Why bother yourself with all that Winter, when you could have this?

While ‘Winter is Coming’ is pessimistic, this gathering says: “Things are great! They’ll be fine! Let’s enjoy what we have - and you should have a lemon bar, cutie.”

But I’m not ready call this ‘cheerfulness’ deeply optimistic. The appearance of hope can be thin and insincere. While their neighbors prepare for Winter, our fauns and cupids bury their worries under pleasures and distraction; this is not hopeful, it’s a terrified way to live. When pressured to comment on the prospect of darkness - surely a party foul, at such a soiree - our guests might admit that they really just want to shutter their eyes with pleasantries, and not think about. Their survival instinct has withered, crowded out by the hunger for cheer.

So if we were to make the case for Winter is Coming, we might say that the Starkish gospel holds the grim conviction that hardness and grit pay off in the long run. It aims to counteract the feverish, hedonistic insanity that suggests, hopelessly and dishonestly, that there’s no point preparing for difficulty.

Enter the Happy Gas

Tanks of Happy Gas™ are carried in a stylish backpack. At the first sign of danger, all you need to do is press a little button and inhale through the included gas mask. It makes a satisfying kshhhhh sound. It has a euphoric, anesthetic, and soporific effect. 

You’ve just come out of a bubble bath, and are making your way to pilates, when Bob Stark rounds the corner: “Winter Is Coming,” he says. “WHOA there Bob! You startled me!” You don’t really want to think about the Winter.

*kshhhhhhhh* Ahhhh. That’s so much better. “Bob, you’re such a Stark, lol! I’ll see you at billiards tonight.” <Bob stalks off, grimly>

Happy Gas, of course, is a thinly veiled analogy for a certain approach to hedonism. My criteria for Happy Gas are something like:

* Things which are physically unnecessary

* Which produce ‘experiential goodness’ (complexly understood) without corresponding life progress

* Which are accessed with great ease

* Which help us to become distracted

You know, the usual suspects: food, porn, fiction, alcohol, drugs, Pinterest, video games.

And stranger things. My own view, which I’ve rarely heard expressed, is that hedonism isn’t all about positivity; it’s about feeling. We can distract ourselves from worldly cares with ‘unpleasant’ things, as long as those things are engaging: indulgent misery, self-harm, the frenzy of politics, wrath, victimhood. Among Lovecraft’s protagonists are a pair addicted to the ecstasy of horror: “with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled an universe of terror and decay to excite our jaded sensibilities.” I find this psychologically realistic. 

What truly counts as Happy Gas will vary by the person. If you’re not sure if something counts, check how you’d feel about going without it for a while.

Fiction is a great example. How would you feel about cutting out all books, TV shows, movies, or games for a month?

I’m not saying you have to do it. I’m just saying that the miniature panic attack is a little odd.

Hedonism as self-management

Without our precious Gas, our thoughts are drawn to darker things:

But we all obfuscate our problems, with mantras and Cinnabons and psychological sleight-of-hand. This conveniently interrupts our understanding of what ails us:

Grim folk like the Starks encourage cutting back on hedonistic distraction, in order to expose our problems more. The Stoics have this ethos, for example:

On the other hand, there’s a type of person who hides as much badness they can, chasing buoyant optimism like a drug, no matter the cost:

I’m not pure enough to condemn Happy Gas; that would make me a hypocrite. But on occasion, I do notice a sense of being trapped by it. Little doubts appear, in a corner of my mind yet-unconquered by the pink glowing haze. Has bliss caused me to forget about something else, something I really should go and handle? I notice the creeping shadows by the door.

Maybe I should cut the habit. Or at least take a week off. Erm, even a day would be good. But that thought makes me a little anxious. *kshhhhhh*

Whither asceticism?

This model provides a way to understand asceticism. The ascetic sees Happy Gas cluttering their senses, and wants to unroot the habit in its entirety. To come clean, they cut out not only the worst contaminants (e.g. porn or lemon bars), but also the little corruptions normal people consider harmless, like sugar in our tea.

You might be inclined to an intense approach if you think you’re at a severe risk of self-delusion. I’ve witnessed the demon myself: the frenetic hunger for shallow experiential positivity, hacking the pleasure centers, numbing and dulling our instincts for reality. We’re two-faced; one face insists it’s only fair that we make things a little easier on ourselves, while the other is hard at work with a shovel, burying our still-living problems and obligations and concerns.

The account I’m giving rhymes with religious traditional worldviews around ‘sins of the flesh’, the corruption of the world, the rabidness of sin and self-delusion, etc. Now, I’m not saying it’s time to declare the Curziist Theocratic State. But I’ll admit I find it interesting.

The ascetic breaks the cycle of addiction by living the Cold Turkiest of lifestyles. His turkey is ice cold. This approach is bitterly difficult and painful. But on the bright side, once addiction is shattered, once illusion dies its spasmodic and rapturous death, a much better life is possible.

Because in theory we have a chance to, you know, act better. Instead of numbing ourselves, while blistering our hands on burning coals. We have a chance to feel the chilly wind, coming through the window - and start preparing for the winter ahead.

It’s been a hell of a week. I hope everyone is keeping as healthy, safe, and sane as possible.

CURZIISM #2 shares my reflections on the last week’s chaos. My approach is, unsurprisingly, a bit philosophical.

Let’s get into it.

Disorientation and reorientation

I. On Whether to Give a S**t: Two Metapolitical Voices from Ancient Rome [Audio, 34 min]

As dominant narratives crumble and reconsolidate, society demands new thoughts and actions in response to the events of the day. But why care in the first place? On what basis might we choose or reject this civic responsibility?

I give my thoughts on the question, followed by brief readings from Seneca’s De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life) and Cicero’s De Re Publica (The Republic).

II: The Hazards of the Eye

Perhaps the news media, when it’s working, can be thought of as a public-access epistemic instrument. When it’s not, it produces hazards for our vision-oriented species.

I. On Whether to Give a S**t: Two Metapolitical Voices from Ancient Rome

The audio piece, located above, is sort of experimental. It’s meant to be consumed as a whole, but if you want to navigate more selectively, it is divided up as follows:

* 0:00-8:06 - My reflections on civic engagement.

* 8:06-21:22 - A reading from Seneca’s On The Shortness of Life.

* 21:22-33:59 - A reading from Cicero’s Republic.

The Seneca translation can be found here, and the Cicero here. I enjoyed these translations. Buy the books! I will make no money on your purchase.

Image by Bradley Weber.

II. The Hazards of the Eye

Who in their right mind wants to comment on the events of the last week? Plenty of people, I guess - though who knows what states their minds are in. I can barely get a sentence out that I don’t hate. I opened an earlier draft of this post with the banal “Watching these events has been wild.” Eesh - dead in the water. Even were my glibness forgiven, there’s still an honesty problem, because it doesn’t feel quite right to say I watched these events unfold.

I tried to get access, to achieve some clarity, but though I looked, did I really see a thing?

I certainly engaged. I watched the news, scrolled through my Twitter timeline, ran a Twitch OSINT livestream in the background. I watched via chopper feed as people looted the shopping center where I buy pants. And I got an even more personal view when fires broke out in sight of my apartment window:

In this ugly information landscape, I tried to cross-reference sources, to account for damning evidence on this side and apologistic reinterpretation on the other. For once, my interest was practical, not just intellectual: I wanted to know, for example, if I’d have to bug out, or defend myself from people trying to grab my stuff.

But for all this sound and fury, I did not find clarity. And if anyone else thinks their explanations are clean, I hope they can back that up. On the societal level, I certainly expect a coherent narrative to emerge at some point, some socially acceptable simplification as We the People memory-hole loose threads and inconvenient contradictions. But social reinterpretation is not the same thing as an answer.

 So I feel weird saying that I saw the events unfold. While I witnessed something from some angle, the aim of sight is knowledge, and knowledge is not what I received.

It’s not indirectness of access that I take issue with. Epistemic instruments - tools for knowledge - can be both indirect and veridical. Bring me a telescope, point it at the right chunk of sky, and I’ll happily agree that I saw Jupiter on the other side. The telescope’s causality is nice and clear: light bounces off Jupiter, makes its way to California, is magnified and focused by mirrors and lenses, and speeds down the eyepiece into my eye. I feel pretty good about this.

Should we think of the news media as a kind of public-access epistemic instrument? A big telescope, that we gaze into from separate viewing stations, to see the affairs of society unfold?

Like in the case of the telescope, the news media’s physical technology is advanced and precise. But if the overall instrument malfunctions, a technician will have no luck looking for gunk in the tubes or scratches in the lens. No, the Rube Goldberg machine of public truth contains not only physical implements, but social ones as well. The problems that assail it are people problems.

And yet this pernicious illusion of direct knowledge remains. It feels like we’ve really seen it. Perhaps the central conceit of our video-powered technological media apparatus is that what we’re seeing is what’s plainly going on. The full picture. The guy did the thing, the camera caught the light, the file flew through the internet, and here it appears on-screen; it is real, and that’s that! But as all liars know, a sliver of truth can be an instrument of deception, if the true picture depends on absent context. One rarely knows who’s holding the camera, what’s going on off camera, or why. For everything seen is some corresponding unseen.

This is a problem for mankind, the animal. The eye is our oldest and most powerful epistemic tool, so primordial that it can symbolize knowledge itself. Mystical insight is granted by a third eye, not a third ear or a second nose. The ear and the nose are sensing instruments in their own right, but the eye is far superior. The all-seeing eye is also all-knowing; we associate it with the Illuminati, but its original allusion is the all-seeing eye of God. 

Given honest parts of an incomplete picture, we can see what we want to see. Looking through the same telescope, one man’s morning star is another man’s evening star, and our wise men and astrologers are all up in arms. Debates descend into a mess of dubious conjecture, personal preference, and ideological flourish.

And so ultimately, though there is truth to what is shown on screen, it gives rise to a sense of epistemic isolation. We see a part of the whole, and are offered no path to the right conclusions. There’s no paucity of data, but a contaminated sea of it, ugly quantity making up for absent quality. The roiling waves add little in the way of coherence or dependable orientation. 

What is to be done?

They say that in his quest for wisdom, Odin traveled to the roots of the World Tree in search of Mímir’s Well, whose waters contained great wisdom. When Odin arrived, he was asked for a sacrifice, and so cut his own eye out and dropped it into the water. In exchange, he drank deep, and found another kind of sight. 

Perhaps the old Norsemen are reminding us of this: the path to wisdom is indeed costly. For knowledge, we must abandon the path of ease. We must abandon the hope that quick glances at complex things will yield real understanding. Because while our eyes are powerful, they can’t tell us everything we need to know.

Sight itself, the most penetrating kind, is more an act of mind than an act of eye.

Hope everyone had a great week. I added a brief audio intro above, but the real content starts here.

Our last post was a beginning of sorts. But it was not our first newsletter. It never went out by email, and an un-mailed letter doesn’t count. A finicky formality? Perhaps. But should we act like barbarians, leaving our civilizing structures to crumble in the wind?

Never! So this, I insist, is Post Number One.

The baneful provenance of Post #1

Post #1 was supposed to be a lot of things. My plans were grand. They were so grand that I coughed out 4,000 words in the anguished effort to manifest them. That writing even sounds like it might be good: the implicit cosmology of the business world, Musashi’s Void, the ultimate ends of mankind. But a list of keywords does nary a blog post make, and however I struggled, the final product was just too crappy to share.

But the orphaned chunks weren’t all bad. So they shall compose this letter. 

Our content, therefore:

I. A micro-case study on the social media careers of ProZD and Joji.

* What is it? A first-pass analysis of two interesting social media careers, which I interpret as capitalizing on low material and high spiritual/emotional barriers to entry.

* Who should read it? People who are modeling the career opportunity landscape. Startup people, people trying to hustle, maybe sociology people.

II. A dialogue on implicit philosophy.

* What is it? A dialogue with brief commentary, suggesting that the ‘non-philosophical’ do plenty of philosophy.

* Who should read it? Anyone who hasn’t heard this idea before, or who might want to dissolve pretenses around intellectual identity.

Let’s begin.

I. Micro-case study: ProZD and Joji

I think I’ve identified a new(-to-me) type of career arc. I found two clear examples of it, which is enough to characterize a category.

ProZD

The first is ProZD. He’s a YouTuber with 2.35 million subscribers, at the time of this writing. He makes ultra-short and hilarious videos, kind of like Vines I guess. Here’s an example [6 seconds]:

It seems like he got started by cranking out a metric fuckton of these videos, and spun this into a whole career. Now he does voice acting for shows that go on Cartoon Network. For the kind of stuff he seems into (anime, video games) this seems like a great gig. Also, he’s pretty young, and probably well-placed to get much more involved with games, movies & TV if he wants to.

How hard was this to do? These short videos cost f**k-all in terms of production cost. He didn’t even have to buy a decent camera. Though that’s not the whole of it; the guy is also funny, clearly enjoys performing, and he has a great voice.

What I love about this case is that the cost of launch is almost nothing. I guess there’s video editing to do and ideas to think of, but it doesn’t even seem like ProZD had camera lights early on. Though of course, there’s also the ‘hidden’ up front investment in becoming a hilarious person. Not to mention the challenge of consistently putting yourself out there for years at a time.

Imagine yourself in his shoes. Maybe your friends think you’re funny, but you have no idea if the internet will like your stuff. How do you feel about putting dozens of videos of yourself online, screeching and yelling and doing dumb impressions of anime characters or whatever? ‘Haha it’s just stupid internet videos?’ I call b******t. There’s a real boldness here, and an absence of shame. Really performative people seem to figure out how to eat that fear and convert it into fuel.

Joji

The second example is arguably even more impressive, and definitely more bizarre. Check out this guy [30 seconds]:

His name is Filthy Frank. What? His old videos have titles like ‘vomit cake’, ‘hair cake’, and ‘human cake’. Disgusting! Apparently he started that Harlem Shake meme.

It goes without saying that this guy is completely unafraid. Just look at that pink suit. Like ProZD, he’s incredibly performative, and whether or not you like his content, it was funny (or horrifying) enough to become extremely popular.

So what did this Filthy Frank monstrosity blossom into? Enter Joji:

Brooding, sensitive, emotional. Not Filthy at all. His music is pretty great too:

I’m no scholar of the works of Filthy Frank, but the shift in production quality and social respectability is diametrical. You can barely tell he’s the same guy - though if you squint, you can perhaps detect a nihilistic throughline.

What’s cool to me about this case is that, once again, we have a career path which, while emotionally challenging, is insanely easy to get into in a material sense. I don’t want to downplay the effort involved; video editing takes time, and popularity generates its own tasks. As with ProZD, there’s the work of finding and developing something people want to engage with. In Joji’s case that talent has a musical character, which takes years of work as well.

These paths aren’t necessarily low-effort. For an entertainer, apparent effortlessness is part of the product, which belies backbreaking labor done in private. Much of this labor is of the emotional/spiritual variety. It might be that this psychic difficulty is the main barrier to entering the space.

One thing that helps is that these guys clearly love their work. It’s quite hard to produce great content without loving what you’re doing - though as all lovers know, love is pain as least as often as it’s fun.

Analysis

How reproducible is this route to success? Should bold, funny, and pain-tolerant people seek social media careers?

Perhaps not. One might compare social media to something like Hollywood, with its notoriously brutal funnel, in which bajillions of hopefuls migrate to LA just to spend decades working at coffee shops. Someone in that cohort may ‘make it’ every now and then, but it ain’t gonna be you.

But it’s not a perfect analogy. The key difference is in up front cost. Hollywood hopefuls might spend years in acting or singing classes, get four-year degrees at top acting schools, pay agents, or sacrifice opportunities for other types of knowledge, work experience, and credentialing.

But ProZD and Joji-types, insofar as they represent a real category, rise through decidedly non-institutional means. (Of course it’s possible that these specific people had rich and powerful relatives or something like that - I haven’t researched in enough depth to know for sure. Hasn’t seemed like it from a quick check.) Early on they were probably just funny people who sharpened their craft by f*****g around with friends. Then they filmed it and put it on the internet. In the Joji case, there are also singing skills to account for, and I’d bet that both of them did a bunch of networking with other social media people to get where they are. Still, compared to the Hollywood entertainer path, this approach is quite compatible with the simultaneous pursuit of other careers, on the off chance that you don’t make it big.

Another objection says that internet success is always due to ‘dumb luck’. This kind of skepticism is often one-sided, totally doubting the relevance of skill and virtue, while putting absolute faith in the power and predictiveness of random chaos. This is usually just saltiness in the clothes of epistemology. I tend to believe that skill, wisdom, cleverness, and boldness are real and operant factors, a least when properly matched with an adequately fertile social context.

I don’t want to argue that factors outside one’s control never determine one’s fate in social media. Perhaps of every 100 equally talented and driven people, only 2 are randomly picked for victory - it’s hard to say. I don’t think social media success is something everyone should do, or even something that more people should do. Perhaps it’s overcrowded; perhaps the iron is no longer hot.

But I found these examples interesting. There are at least some indications that, for people with a certain character & skill profile, there are routes to career success that are non-soul-crushing, highly customized, and which don’t involve incredibly expensive early bets, of the sort that demand impossible foreknowledge that one’s dice-roll will work. It seems like social media can be a great playground and laboratory for starting an interesting career.

~Intermission~

We will now completely shift direction, to the very different topic of philosophy. This is a great time to stretch your legs or grab a glass of water.

We’ll be here when you get back.

II. Implicit philosophy

A dialogue

We enter in media res, overhearing a conversation between two old friends, by the helpful names of Alice and Bob.

Alice: Hey Bob! Want to chat about philosophy? I’d love to hear what you think.

Bob: Philosophy? I’m sorry - I don’t care much for things like ‘noumena’ or ‘the Veil of Ignorance’. I don’t even have a philosophy. 

Alice: Intriguing! But on that last point, a bit unconvincing. Surely you have views on the nature of the world, knowledge, and other such topics?

Bob: Nope! None of that for me. To be frank, I think those questions are a waste of time. We can’t figure out high and mighty questions. It’s better to just act.

Alice: An interesting view! But despite your protestations, perhaps we’re already discusssing the topics that interest me. For instance, while you’re skeptical of ‘philosophical’ pursuits, surely you believe we can figure some things out? This morning you found your way to the grocery store, for example.

Bob: Well, of course! But I can see the store, it’s just down the street. Even if I were blind, I could use sounds or touch. But this is just common sense. When it comes to ‘ideas’, there’s nothing to smell, see, hear, or touch. Worldly things can be figured out, but nothing grounds these abstract explorations.

Alice: So you’re saying that there’s an important separation between the world of ideas, and this other class of ’real’, sensory things?

Bob: You could say it that way, I suppose. There’s a space of things which can be known, and a space of things which can’t.

Alice: But the nature of the cosmos cannot be known?

Bob: Exactly! 

<Alice continues to draw out Bob’s views, helping him explicate the slowly developing picture. Before long:>

Bob: …And therefore, we end up with categories of things that ‘are’, and things that ‘aren’t’. Those things which ‘are’ can be encountered by senses like smell, sight, and touch, but these ‘higher rational faculties’ don’t have any physical interaction with the world of ‘things’. It’s only physical interaction that can convey what things are. Therefore, <philosophy philosophy philosophy about how you can’t do philosophy.>

Commentary

I wonder if people will find the illustration convincing! Alice & Bob are fictional, but I’ve had conversations almost exactly like this with people IRL.

And you can try it yourself. Grab someone who will give you the time of day, who doesn’t consider themselves ‘philosophical’. If you’re willing to patiently draw them out and know what you’re looking for, most people can be helped to articulate vast numbers of metaphysical and epistemic claims. They won’t have indexed these ideas as ‘intellectual’, and may want to downplay their relevance. But these views often turn out to be surprisingly self-consistent, and even map on to notable perspectives in the philosophical literature. It turns out that your mom is a skeptic, the postman is a solipsist, the dentist is a dualist, etcetera.

Why does this matter?

I’m very interested in the ways that implicit assumptions guide action. The default case is that upstream of one’s deliberate thoughts and intentions, live a set of overdetermining factors, in the form of implicit views, assumptions, fish-in-water effects and ambient social pressures. Understanding these semiconscious, hard-to-look-at governing intuitions is hard, but crucial to living an agentic life.

The Alice & Bob dialogue attempts to demonstrate the phenomenon when it comes to philosophy, but the same phenomenon reappears in political and social spheres. ‘Non-political people’ can be especially at risk of acting as the unwitting agents of political and social forces beyond their conscious reckoning.

Addendum

I originally wanted to wrap this up with a quote. The quote is well-phrased, clear, and probably uncontroversial in terms of its actual content.

But let’s be honest: a sober minded thinker who hopes to be taken seriously never likes to quote Ayn Rand. Her ideas may have once enjoyed a more direct line of influence to broader society, but those old telephone wires are fried. In our social context, it may be fruitless to try to articulate the actual value of Rand’s contributions, as many well-meaning people are quite opposed to her, usually pre-intellectually - which is a fancy way of saying ‘for approximately no f*****g reason’ (or ‘social pressure’).

In college I would ask people what they thought of Rand, and remember several of them smugly noting that her work was utter trash, not moments before these deeply thoughtful critics would reveal that they had never actually read her! Alas. I envy no one the task of recuperating Rand’s public image, and am no longer a veritable Randroid of good stock myself. I’ll be the first to cede that Rand’s followers can be quite terrible and there’s a great deal to criticize in her work and in her worldview. 

That said, there are some nuggets of wisdom in her cantankerous pages. So I will end with this:

“As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.”

Remember: there’s no point in quoting this to your friends. Don’t bother reposting it to Twitter. It will have to be be our little secret.