Impasse
APPEARANCE
2 a : a sense impression or aspect of a thing
b : the world of sensible phenomena
and
REALITY
2 b : something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
At times, this whole "philosophy" thing becomes rather worrisome. Harking back, I can remember a time when the most pressing concerns I had were how many "friends" I had on my ICQ list. Simplicity was easy to come by. Even the greyscale that has now encompassed my moral compass was non-existent, and the terrible quandary of relativity in conjunction with the motives of other people was no more than a blip on my horizon. Though I spent most of my adolescence in a mire of self-doubt, it was, oddly enough, the most concrete and self-assured time of my life.
It's funny that one of my first exposures to philosophy in any form would be Friedrich Nietzsche, the man whom I would, at various points in my life identify as a) my own personal Jesus, b) the only one who ever understood me, c) the craziest German who ever lived, d) a Romantic, e) not a Romantic, f) leagues ahead of Ayn Rand, and, currently, g) perhaps the most influential philosopher since the buddy-cop team of Socrates and Plato. In other words, Immanuel Kant can blow me. No, seriously. In any case, the humour of this early exposure to the rantings and ravings of a man riddled by anti-Semitism, mysogyny, sexual repression, and (ironically) syphilis, is to be found in the fact that I was initially drawn to him for the sole reason that he was an atheist. And a vitriolic one at that. Thus, in one form or another, my interest in philosophy can be found to stem purely from spite. My interest was only held by those works of Nietzsche that dealt almost exclusively with his wide-ranging criticisms of religion, Christianity in particular. Any attempts to "branch out" ony my part only led me to thinkers like Camus and Sartre who, likewise, denied and attacked the inherent tenets of Christianity in a most interesting fashion. My tastes were refined by a grade 12 Philosophy class which taught me: a) DH Lawrence is a horrible horrible man, b) I have no tolerance for even nascent, naturalist spiritualism, and c) any philosophy which denied the existence of god and vouched for the primacy of in the individual was A-OK in my books, even if it happened to be Ayn Rand's Objectivism.
After all this, after exposing myself to far more dry old philosophical treatises in a year than most people read in their whole lives, after reading everything even remotely "existential" as voraciously as possible, I still maintained my decidedly partisan worldview. Motives could still be neatly and unproblematically attributed to individuals around me, and the problems in my own life still appeared rather surmountable. Or, at the very least, understandable.
Things changed radically in my first year of university, and not just due to the plethora of social issues I found myself entangled in. No, it wasn't even a result of the literature I was forced to read, although that falls neatly under the categorization of "catalyst." On the contrary, in one of the very few instances in my life where I've made a personal choice that has directly led to a change in perspective or action, I decided to refute all the troglodytes out there who ridiculed me for studying a useless subject. I focussed on deriving some overarching meaning from the philosophy I studied, and in the end, not to sound too clichéd, the meaning found me. Heidegger once wrote that though "we cannot do anything with philosophy, might not philosophy, if we concern ourselves with it, do something with us?" It's not until now, in this time of personal epiphanies and revelations, that I can not only understand what Heidegger was saying, but identify it concretely (or at least as concretely as possible when it comes to philosophical matters) with something in my life.
I don't see the trees anymore. All I can see is the forest. I plague myself with debilitating questions of moral obligations, interpersonal conduct, cognitive assurances and impractical conceptions of truth. I can't go out for dinner anywhere without dissecting the cultural impetus behind "tipping." I can't go to the movies without picking apart the dialogue for logical contradictions. Hell, I can't even listen to someone speak without searching for inconsistent premises and invalid arguments. But even worse is that with all this time that I've devoted to studying relativism and metaphysics and skepticism, I find it wildy improbable that I could ever separate such concerns from my daily life. Whenever I'm around a large crowd of people I'm crippled by paranoia and suspicion, fueled mostly by my own interest in solipsism and the problems inherently involved in proving the existence of other minds.
But probably worst of all were the prisoner's dilemmas. If you've never come across the term, think of two bank robbers, A and B. The police picked them both up and are interrogating them separtely. The same deal is offered to each robber: confess, and if your partner doesn't, we'll cut you a deal; hold out while your partner confesses, and you'll get the short end of the stick. You can look at the outcomes like this:
1. A confesses, B confesses - Both get 3 years in jail
2. A confesses, B doesn't confess - A gets 1 year, B gets 5
3. A doesn't confess, B doesn't confess - Both get 2 years in jail
4. A doesn't confess, B confesses - A gets 5 years, B gets 1
In other words, it not only always makes sense for you to confess, it also always makes sense for you to not trust the other person in this situation, because if you do, you might get screwed over. The hard part is coming to grips with how frequent these dilemmas are in daily life. It's not even limited to mundane situations like whether or not to pass someone in traffic (because if everyone passes, then everyone gets slowed down). They crop up in everyday interpersonal interactions. When you talk to another person, it's largely a prisoner's dilemma concerning the amount and type of information you reveal to them. And in most cases, this whole concept of rational self-interest is entirely dominant. Frustratingly, it amounts to a ridiculous lack of certainty concerning what other people choose or choose not to say to you.
This is precisely where the difficulty arises. Where do you draw the line between what you learn and how you behave? When do you stop treating people as cognitive models, thematic pieces, case studies, and test subjects? Maybe this is the secret problem with philosophy. It wouldn't surprise me. There has to be some sort of separation between the lives we lead and the theoretical underpinnings we attribute to it. Questioning everything only takes a person so far. Eventually, you die of inaction and paralyzing doubt.
The conclusion that I've come to is that I'm the philosophical equivalent of a hypochondriac.
Discuss.
2 a : a sense impression or aspect of a thing
b : the world of sensible phenomena
and
REALITY
2 b : something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
At times, this whole "philosophy" thing becomes rather worrisome. Harking back, I can remember a time when the most pressing concerns I had were how many "friends" I had on my ICQ list. Simplicity was easy to come by. Even the greyscale that has now encompassed my moral compass was non-existent, and the terrible quandary of relativity in conjunction with the motives of other people was no more than a blip on my horizon. Though I spent most of my adolescence in a mire of self-doubt, it was, oddly enough, the most concrete and self-assured time of my life.
It's funny that one of my first exposures to philosophy in any form would be Friedrich Nietzsche, the man whom I would, at various points in my life identify as a) my own personal Jesus, b) the only one who ever understood me, c) the craziest German who ever lived, d) a Romantic, e) not a Romantic, f) leagues ahead of Ayn Rand, and, currently, g) perhaps the most influential philosopher since the buddy-cop team of Socrates and Plato. In other words, Immanuel Kant can blow me. No, seriously. In any case, the humour of this early exposure to the rantings and ravings of a man riddled by anti-Semitism, mysogyny, sexual repression, and (ironically) syphilis, is to be found in the fact that I was initially drawn to him for the sole reason that he was an atheist. And a vitriolic one at that. Thus, in one form or another, my interest in philosophy can be found to stem purely from spite. My interest was only held by those works of Nietzsche that dealt almost exclusively with his wide-ranging criticisms of religion, Christianity in particular. Any attempts to "branch out" ony my part only led me to thinkers like Camus and Sartre who, likewise, denied and attacked the inherent tenets of Christianity in a most interesting fashion. My tastes were refined by a grade 12 Philosophy class which taught me: a) DH Lawrence is a horrible horrible man, b) I have no tolerance for even nascent, naturalist spiritualism, and c) any philosophy which denied the existence of god and vouched for the primacy of in the individual was A-OK in my books, even if it happened to be Ayn Rand's Objectivism.
After all this, after exposing myself to far more dry old philosophical treatises in a year than most people read in their whole lives, after reading everything even remotely "existential" as voraciously as possible, I still maintained my decidedly partisan worldview. Motives could still be neatly and unproblematically attributed to individuals around me, and the problems in my own life still appeared rather surmountable. Or, at the very least, understandable.
Things changed radically in my first year of university, and not just due to the plethora of social issues I found myself entangled in. No, it wasn't even a result of the literature I was forced to read, although that falls neatly under the categorization of "catalyst." On the contrary, in one of the very few instances in my life where I've made a personal choice that has directly led to a change in perspective or action, I decided to refute all the troglodytes out there who ridiculed me for studying a useless subject. I focussed on deriving some overarching meaning from the philosophy I studied, and in the end, not to sound too clichéd, the meaning found me. Heidegger once wrote that though "we cannot do anything with philosophy, might not philosophy, if we concern ourselves with it, do something with us?" It's not until now, in this time of personal epiphanies and revelations, that I can not only understand what Heidegger was saying, but identify it concretely (or at least as concretely as possible when it comes to philosophical matters) with something in my life.
I don't see the trees anymore. All I can see is the forest. I plague myself with debilitating questions of moral obligations, interpersonal conduct, cognitive assurances and impractical conceptions of truth. I can't go out for dinner anywhere without dissecting the cultural impetus behind "tipping." I can't go to the movies without picking apart the dialogue for logical contradictions. Hell, I can't even listen to someone speak without searching for inconsistent premises and invalid arguments. But even worse is that with all this time that I've devoted to studying relativism and metaphysics and skepticism, I find it wildy improbable that I could ever separate such concerns from my daily life. Whenever I'm around a large crowd of people I'm crippled by paranoia and suspicion, fueled mostly by my own interest in solipsism and the problems inherently involved in proving the existence of other minds.
But probably worst of all were the prisoner's dilemmas. If you've never come across the term, think of two bank robbers, A and B. The police picked them both up and are interrogating them separtely. The same deal is offered to each robber: confess, and if your partner doesn't, we'll cut you a deal; hold out while your partner confesses, and you'll get the short end of the stick. You can look at the outcomes like this:
1. A confesses, B confesses - Both get 3 years in jail
2. A confesses, B doesn't confess - A gets 1 year, B gets 5
3. A doesn't confess, B doesn't confess - Both get 2 years in jail
4. A doesn't confess, B confesses - A gets 5 years, B gets 1
In other words, it not only always makes sense for you to confess, it also always makes sense for you to not trust the other person in this situation, because if you do, you might get screwed over. The hard part is coming to grips with how frequent these dilemmas are in daily life. It's not even limited to mundane situations like whether or not to pass someone in traffic (because if everyone passes, then everyone gets slowed down). They crop up in everyday interpersonal interactions. When you talk to another person, it's largely a prisoner's dilemma concerning the amount and type of information you reveal to them. And in most cases, this whole concept of rational self-interest is entirely dominant. Frustratingly, it amounts to a ridiculous lack of certainty concerning what other people choose or choose not to say to you.
This is precisely where the difficulty arises. Where do you draw the line between what you learn and how you behave? When do you stop treating people as cognitive models, thematic pieces, case studies, and test subjects? Maybe this is the secret problem with philosophy. It wouldn't surprise me. There has to be some sort of separation between the lives we lead and the theoretical underpinnings we attribute to it. Questioning everything only takes a person so far. Eventually, you die of inaction and paralyzing doubt.
The conclusion that I've come to is that I'm the philosophical equivalent of a hypochondriac.
Discuss.