(This has not been proofread)
Just getting my old brain running again, I’ve been listening to a lot of Unsolicited advice in the background while I’m down with a cough (turns out sick me loves philosophy) and I’ve come across some interesting ideas. This channel mostly deals with summaries of philosophical books and topics. Therefore, I’ve added my personal summaries for his summaries. All are welcome to join this neverending game of telephone.
Does it have to be Christian?
The placebo effect and its potential health and restorative benefits using an MRI machine
The Power of Suggestion | Vsauce
A pragmatic argument for religion due to its potential societal, mental, and physical health benefits
Evaluating Jordan Peterson’s Strangest Religious Argument | Unsolicited advice
On the discussion of ideas
A good summary for John Stuart Mill’s original impetus for freedom of speech. He is said to purport that the most effective way to combat falsehood is to let it be repeatedly defeated instead of censoring it altogether, and that believing that something is true without any justification i.e. having a true, but not personally justified (even if it can be justified by others) belief is also undesirable, highlighting the importance of letting what we understand as truth also be constantly challenged. In other words, it is not enough to have true belief—we must have justified true belief.
What People Get Wrong About Freedom Of Speech | Unsolicited advice
Self-worth
Franz Kafka’s sobering description of his perception of his place in society and maybe even why I’m sometimes drawn to people who treat me badly, because unlike those who think more highly of me, these people are intelligent and sharp enough to see through me for who I really am: worthless.
Why Kafka Hated People | Unsolicited advice
Rejection, why it means so much to us, and dishonest ways of coping (according to Nietzsche), such as the fox and the sour grapes. (Much more than that. Fun video if you’ve ever been rejected before)
Why Rejection Hurts | Unsolicited advice
Power and productivity
Loosely linked, these are two videos summarising Nietzsche and Byung Chul Han’s attitudes towards power and productivity.
Why Nietzsche Hated Weak People | Unsolicited advice
Why You Hate Modern Work | Unsolicited advice
The latter is a summary of Byung Chul Han’s The Burnout Society, describing the problems of constant striving towards productivity at the expense of ourselves—viewing ourselves as tools to be exploited. It is good to be bored, because otherwise we would never have time to think about life itself. With social media at our fingertips, we tend to reach for something to entertain ourselves the moment we find ourselves getting a brief respite from the constant bombardment of productivity and stimulation, almost as if we are afraid of boredom itself. Yet, it is only through not doing that we have the chance to think about our lives—only in the absence of that constant external stimulation are we able to think about life and reflect on philosophy.
It points out some sobering tendencies of our achievement-driven world. I have been sick for over a week, unable to do any work. As every day passes, I have felt increasingly frustrated and anxious about the fact I am sick and not able to do work. I am annoyed about the fact I can even get sick, and have considered ways such as trying to induce a fever just to recover faster (according to this article, it is unlikely to work), or using the placebo effect to convince myself I am not sick.
None of my considerations involved recognising that my body is currently damaged, or even considers that it is precisely because I have been pulling one too many all-nighters that my immune system weakened and faltered to the point of being unable to prevent infection. I have no compassion or even acknowledgement of my own physical state, only in that it is precisely an instrument for achieving what I feel I need to achieve, and it needs nothing but to be whipped mercilessly into behaving the way I need it to.
The loose link comes in the form of Nietzsche’s will, and raises the question of whether we should always be pushing ourselves, lest we be deemed weak. On a society level, the socioeconomical pressures almost if not directly force us to feel guilt, fear, anxiety, and worthlessness if we are not achieving.
I take breaks, relax, sleep, and rest because it will make me more productive. I go on vacations because I will be more productive. I play games because it will make me more productive. I exercise because it will make me more productive. I may even believe in God solely for its psychological benefits (such as Jordan Peterson’s version of Pascal’s wager) because it will make me more productive. The Burnout Society Byung Chul Han describes may very well be the reason why religious arguments in our society have started to pivot towards pragmatic rather than epistemic justifications. In this increasingly secular society where the empirical ground has been ripped away from God’s feet. With nothing left to stand on, He becomes at our mercy—we no longer ask what we can do for God, but rather, what He can do for us.
Perhaps it was inaccurate for Nietzsche to say that God is dead. God is not dead. He can still work for us. We decide how we want to interpret Him. We decide what place he has in our lives. We decide to believe according to the empirical benefits He may provide (such as psychological well-being). We don’t even believe it is necessary to believe He exists in order to reap the same benefits. We contemplate the potential moral consequences of letting a different moral system take His place, and decide to leave him there just to fill the holes and keep society from collapsing until we find a suitable replacement. This may be a fate far worse than death, one that even Nietzsche himself may have overlooked when he proclaimed that we have, perhaps even merficully, killed God.
“God should have been dead. God should have remained dead. And we should have killed him”.
Or, maybe, God is dead, and we are dragging his corpse around.
Addendum
There was also actually a video (I can’t remember which) that talked about a philosopher who remarked that nobody is qualified to talk about life given our necessarily-limited perspective: we can only live our lives, not the lives of others. Throw in modern neurobiological findings and we are even less qualified to talk about life.
Conclusion
After being exposed to more philosophy, I’ve come to realise how lacking I am as a philosopher. Lacking the professional education of a philosophy major, I was not forced to read as widely as I should have, instead converging on books and topics that are related to each other. It may be self-evident that I cannot read what I am not aware of, but feel like I’ve just opened the door to far more than I am able to handle, because the only obvious address to this problem of inherent bias is to read literally everything, or at least in equal amounts for each topic. The thought of scaling a wall that is so tall and so ever-constantly growing makes me feel insignificant and delivers a strong desire to give up.
Not only will I not live long enough to ever fully read all of philosophy, I will not have even lived enough lives to be said to understand it. One life is hardly sufficient. And even if I have read all of philosophy, I’m still pulled back to the same question that started it all: “What do I think about it?”. And I feel nothing but underqualified to speak about life, having only lived one of it. I will not even be able to travel to every city and town in my lifetime, or talk to every currently-alive person in my lifetime. In a sense, nobody alive is qualified to talk about life on account of only having lived theirs. This is giving me a headache. I am sick. I will not proofread this, I will go back to sleep instead.
On a side note, I do wonder if, like him, I would too start to be drawn into religion if I had spent enough time fully immersed in it. That means reading only theistic texts and nothing else, surrounding myself with only theistic people, and engaging actively in theistic communities. At least, ones that share a common God, probably Christianity because they speak English. I am aware of the power of psychological effects like the placebo effect, which have been shown to work even when subjects know it is only a placebo. Given the right setting, it may be possible to convince me I’ve experienced a divine revelation as much as I cognitively tell myself it is not real. Throw enough effects and I’m sure I’ll be convinced. I’m not a proponent of unfettered free will, after all, and I don’t believe I am immune from influence.
That said, unless such an experience causes memory loss or neurological damage (which would be concerning), my guess is that I would eventually revert back to my naturalistic view. It would be an interesting experience though, however long it lasts. My biggest fear is that I will end up with a strong distaste of those remaining, a similiar spite Nietzsche has against those he deems weak, which runs counter against my goal of trying to become a more compassionate and accepting person.