Month: January 2022

Here’s my advice:

Choose two languages that you have not yet mastered and which seem like they would be worth learning.

Commit to studying them consistently, daily if possible, for as long as necessary to become all but fluent in them. This might take years.

The process of choosing, the first step, should be challenging and exciting all by itself. Available are all the languages that have ever been written down in all of history. We could study ancient Persian, Sanskrit, Latin, classical Chinese, or we could just as easily learn Farsi or Hindi or Italian or Mandarin. With such a buffet, choosing the top two is a big task, which can hardly fail to make the soul giddy with possibility.

The two languages chosen, it’s time to get started on studying one of them. It doesn’t much matter how. I recommend Duolingo, but there are countless options. The point is to get started. If the first choice isn’t working, it’s always possible to jump to a different approach. Restart as often as necessary, with as many different methods as needed; getting started, and not stopping, is the most important thing.

But why two languages, then?

Whenever one language gets too boring or challenging or uninspiring, it’s always possible to jump to the other one for a time.

And if learning one language is ever too easy, it’s easy and exciting to add another and be working on both simultaneously.

Get started, and stick with it. The rest will take care of itself.

I have an hypothesis that I’m not in a position to test.

I began to develop this suspicion when I noticed that a few scientifically dubious conclusions seem often to show up in one another’s company, and a person’s fervency of belief in one of these three seems to relate to the likelihood of the other two being present as well. (There’s nothing special about these three beliefs; they’re just the ones I’ve noticed, but I’m sure there are others that could be included as well.)

The three beliefs that caught my attention are:

• Covid vaccines are seriously harmful, and contracting Covid (even in its least mild variants) has always been comparatively harmless.
• Global warming is not happening, or if it is happening then it’s not caused by human factors, or even if it is caused by us it definitely won’t be disastrous enough to merit any coordinated preventive effort.
• Saturated fat should not be kept from a human diet, since scientists (at least those scientists who aren’t hopelessly mired in the past) have discovered that it’s at worst harmless and perhaps at best even heath-promoting.

(I’m not saying that there is no room for doubt on any of these matters, especially for those of us who are not specialists. I’m speaking instead only about a group of people who have disproportionately strong opinions that go against scientific consensus.)

It would be easy to write this off as a pattern corresponding to low intelligence or anti-intellectualism. It is certainly not anti-intellectualist; those who hold these beliefs seem to feel that they are unusually clever, unusually discerning in their ability to seek out the small number of persecuted and brilliant scientists who dare to speak the unvarnished truth. Furthermore, there are some people who are indeed of above average intelligence who embrace such conclusions, though my impression is that they do not appear to be a majority either among conspiracists or in higher-intelligence populations.

My guess is that there is a type of person, representing some combination of inborn traits and environmental influences, disposed to accept conclusions rejected by experts, to reject established knowledge as willful deception, to consider themselves wiser even without education than others who have relevant training, and to be tricked by misleading arguments (precisely because of their lack of relevant training). This group has been acted on in a small set of particular ways at our historical moment.

How does conspiracy enter into all this? There’s an idea among this group, today, that a class of wealthy, highly-educated (“brainwashed”) people in positions of power and influence are promoting bad science and a campaign of propaganda for purely ideological reasons. Ideologically, this class likes equality a little too much, failing to recognize natural inequalities among people and humanity’s healthy inclination toward respectful, efficient hierarchies. They like equality so much that they even want us to treat animals and natural habitats with a level of dignity worthy only of humans. They are socialists or, to put it more bluntly, communists and marxists, set on establishing a global state; they are tree huggers, fussy puritanical vegans who want to depopulate the earth of humanity, weaklings who are all probably either grossly obese or else skinny runners with negligible musculature. They are ignorant of how law works, of how the market economy works and how favourably it compares to other economic approaches, ignorant of history, of democracy and freedom and rights, of what it takes to win a war or live a healthy fulfilling life, and clearly, ignorant of good science. This is the conspiracy theory, the theory of the world, which is not often stated explicitly, but is constantly gestured toward. It cannot be proven in its entirety, but there are, in the news, enough minor pieces of evidence for every part of it that a person can feed themselves on a constant diet of new examples to reinforce their conviction.

Not all of these conspiracists are Christians, and certainly not all Christians are conspiracists of this sort. Still, this population seems to show up unusually often among practicing Christians. My pet theory here is that creationism in previous decades helped prepare the ground for our current conspiracist situation. There is a family resemblance, without question.

Left-wing prejudice might want us to expect that there will also be a lot of racist or antisemitic sentiment in this population. That certainly hasn’t been my experience, though maybe something like it (eg anti-immigrant prejudice?) is somewhat more common beneath the surface. Still, it seems not to be a major factor at all, from my observation.

Now, accepting that there is this group of people who are susceptible to being influenced in this way: who is actuating their potential? The kindling is set aflame by a variety of groups who hope to benefit from it; big business is a prime example. In the past, tobacco companies were at pains to fund misleading studies and have scientists on payroll who would represent their interests to the untrained public. Similar tactics continue to be employed by food and farming businesses (eg junk food, fast food), and by oil and gas.

There are also politicians and news organizations who benefit from having a visible, outspoken, enthusiastic body of supporters and donors. Politicians like Maxime Bernier have been seeking to leverage this population to their advantage in Canada, with some limited success. In the States, Desantis of Florida (despite his personal belief in the benefit of the vaccines) has shrewdly managed to maneuver himself into a position of remarkable strength by playing to this same crowd.

Disinformation in a country is of course especially desirable from the perspective of hostile foreign powers, who wish to see as much chaos and division as possible among their enemies. Think for example of how Russia has been promoting vaccines to its own citizens while amplifying antivax rhetoric outside its borders. Sometimes as well, left-wing politicians from within the same country seek quietly to foster and promote the crazier side of right-wing politics in order to alienate centrist voters toward their own side; think of how Hilary Clinton initially wanted to have Donald Trump as her opponent in the presidential election of 2016.

I suspect that none of these groups is seeking to help the others but that each, rather, is acting only selfishly. The junk food company isn’t trying to form a body of citizens susceptible to being radicalized for or co-opted by political causes. They just want to increase their profits, or protect against a loss of profits. Each group is unintentionally benefiting the others, and is in turn benefiting from the others, if it does indeed turn out that being ensnared by any one of these things increases susceptibility to the others as I’ve suggested.

A few disclaimers. I’m not trying to say that this is the only pattern of disinformation out there by any means, only that it may be (or become) a particularly dangerous one. I also definitely don’t mean to paint all on the right with a single brush; I consider myself to be overall to the right of centre. I do think, however, that it’s an issue that people on the right need to find a way to handle, though I don’t know any easy way to deal with it.

And all this doesn’t amount to an argument. I’ve been forthright from the beginning that this is nothing more than a string of guesses, tied together from my observations of acquaintances and of voices that I observe on social media. If a reader dislikes what I have said, keep in mind that there is nothing here to disprove. Just ignore me.

If we can’t learn from the people who have something to teach us, we put ourselves at a considerable disadvantage.

What I appreciate about people on “the right” is that they tend to be more respectful of and receptive to old ideas, old texts, old ways, even if such thing might seem initially strange or off-putting. A little patience, a little curiosity, and soon these archaic oddities may sometimes begin to reveal an inner logic and beauty that has been lost to the modern world.

This opens them up to unexpected treasures which are available only to those who go diving into the writings of antiquity. Not all conservatives do this of course, but at the same time I think it is fair to say that there’s no one who does engage in it who doesn’t have some hint of the conservative within them.

I can’t feel entirely at home with the left, where there is typically less trust and more hubris in the attitudes cast toward older thinkers. Insofar as these categories of left and right are meaningful, that is an important consideration for me. That’s not the end of it either, though.

What I find frustrating about people on “the right,” then, is that they are frequently unable to be appreciative of or instructed by more contemporary texts that do not agree with their biases. In this way, they are just as unteachable and obstinate as anyone on the left, and are equally disadvantaged by their irrational obstinacy.

We see, then, the left reading many antiquated texts, if they read them at all, with hostility, to show how they were wrong and how far we have progressed, and to see where the roots of contemporary mistakes may be found. On the other side, we see the right reading more contemporary thinkers and newer ideas, if they read them at all, with hostility, to show how they are wrong and how far we have fallen, and to discover the foundations of contemporary errors.

In my view, both projects are deeply wrongheaded, and easily avoided. The person who seeks to learn from both sides, rather than mindlessly to resist the one or the other, will be at an incomprehensibly great advantage.

I have heard people speak of reactionary thought or reactionary politics as inherently contradictory or incoherent, and I can understand the reasons for thinking so.

The idea here is that reactionary views, qua reactionary, are no longer identical with the original thinking that they purport to defend.

The most striking example that I can think of is the creationists who adopt the language and strategies and insights of modern science for the purpose of defending a more premodern account of the world and its history.

Still, the phenomenon is by no means limited to creationists. To some degree, it is true everywhere and always when there is reaction against some sort of novelty.

Is there ever such a thing as a non-reactionary traditionalism? Can we hold to an older idea without needing to think through how it opposes or overcomes newer alternatives?

I think that is a possibility. I think there is a less bellicose traditionalism that can exist, which simply enjoys itself and is unthreatened by, perhaps largely uninterested by, its contemporary challengers.

But perhaps sometimes the new thing that is born through a desire to hold onto the older reality may even be better in some ways, richer, if we are wise. If we can take the new challenge seriously and incorporate it into our response in a way that illuminates some aspects of the tradition that were previously invisible, we may be able to have the best of both worlds. Maybe sometimes, reaction is its own kind of progress toward something better.

I think it’s easy to assume that a person needs to be pretty mentally tough in order to become physically strong. Surprisingly, this does not seem to be particularly true. Strength training is pretty easy when understood, and not terribly difficult to understand. It’s as if strength training were perfectly designed for us people who might often end up weak by natural inclination.

I’m not saying that it’s only for weak people. It’s for strong people too, clearly, but presumably they’ve already figured that out, so they don’t need me to tell them.

Sometimes after a session of strength training there’s a bit of soreness, but generally nothing unmanageable. The strength training itself shouldn’t ever go too far into the realm of pain or exhaustion. And that’s the worst that can be said about it.

The point is, getting strong is way easier and less painful than a person would think who hasn’t already experienced it for themselves.

The clearest, most undeniable example of this is the deload week. You’ve been training for weeks now, and after all this time, you’ve gotta admit, you’re finally starting to feel sore and achy and weak. What comes next? Take it easy for a while. Just call it a deload week and be lazy for nine or ten days without any guilt.

And it’s brilliant! It’s brilliant because it works. After a deload week, you might find you’re stronger than ever, coming back fresh to all the exercises that had begun to weigh so heavily on you.

It’s almost as if strength training was designed specifically for weak and lazy people to be able to benefit from. I don’t deny that it’s entirely possible for strength training to be brutal and painful and hateful, and maybe sometimes that’s what is called for. But there’s also an easy way, and in the long run it works just as well.

One of the first lessons we ought to learn when we begin thinking about moral philosophy and questions of justice and virtue and duty and rights, is that these are questions that need to be entertained only in the close company of intelligent friends, and often not even then — often, as if in the absolute privacy of one’s own thoughts.

Why is this? It is because morality, as well as being something that we can consider rationally, is something that gets drilled into us by our society and communities at a subrational level. The people around us (and we ourselves too, most of the time) have very strong, emotionally explosive commitments to certain moral convictions, for most of which we cannot give a single convincing argument.

And it’s not a bad thing for communities to inculcate moral standards irrationally into their young people. Indeed, it is a very good thing, a necessary thing. Without it, we would live in communities of vice and injustice and open crime. Some minimal level of dogmatic morality is necessary just to make a society functional. Tampering with that is the work of the foolish.

However, for the philosophical soul who legitimately desires to inquire into moral questions, to find what can be known with confidence about our moral obligations, this situation means we need to exercise reasonable caution in expressing doubts about moral dogmas.

This is not to say that the philosopher will always be an immoralist. By no means. But the philosopher is a questioner, and in any social context there will be things that are appropriately unquestionable.

Now, it is possible sometimes to think rationally about morality in a “safe” context, where the discussion is all about justifying the moral intuitions we already hold, where the questions never lead us away from what is comfortable and familiar. Even in that setting, though, there is some danger. Just by making morality the object of rational investigation, answering to the tribunal of reason, a risk appears that someone will begin to ask the wrong questions, or to find some of offered justifications to be inadequate.

It is a difficult thing, learning to navigate one’s obligations as a philosophical soul while remaining true to our social duties to those around us. It makes for an awkward transition, a series of awkward transitions, during the process of learning, and good teachers and guides are rare. Still, a sharp mind will discover a way, and having found it, will be prepared for a lifetime of joy in community and delight in thought.

There’s a bit of a paradox in the pursuit of virtue. A major part of the attainment of virtue consists in mastering one’s fear. The more I learn, the more important this aspect seems to me. And yet, at the same time, the pursuit of virtue entails desire for the good and aversion to evil — and what is fear but aversion to evils? It seems, then, that pursuit of virtue is the overcoming of fear through fear?

The difference, I think, is in how we conceive of evil. The fear against which we war is fear of pain, fear of evil as pain. Such an impulse, although it is often valuable and may lead us to some good decisions, is ultimately a lower kind of existence for the human person.

As humans we have the beastly and the divine within us. It is all good and valuable, but what is important is to make sure it is properly ordered. What is most divine, reason and contemplation, ought to rule, and what is beastly in us is in need of guidance. We are disordered if we are instead ruled by hatred of pain and lust for pleasures.

It is a difficult thing to have a well-ordered soul! It is a long path to travel, and even when we are quite far along it and may externally have an appearance of virtuous life, there can be countless smaller fears that still torment and master us.

We want people to treat us in a certain way. We want our day to go a certain way. We are afraid. We are looking to the future, seeing outcomes that end in some sort of pain, and we are cringing from them. If we could conquer fear of this sort, then many of our worst qualities and our worst moments would simply disappear.

If we could listen to someone speaking to us and feel peace, feel calm, rather than worrying and wondering and calculating and controlling, how different would that make us? If we didn’t fear judgement, or some subtle loss of status or respect, provoking anger, disappointment, misunderstanding, gossip, confusion.

The things that are really worth fearing are not things outside us that can hurt us. What should be feared are the interior dispositions that distort the world selfishly and remove us ever further from reality. We should fear the ordering of our souls that places reason under the foot of our lower, beastly impulses.

To pursue truth in a philosophical manner demands that we have the courage to let go of our comforting illusions and be ready to face up to whatever reality exists within ourselves and beyond ourselves, however terrible it may turn out to be.

This does not mean that whatever opinion is ugliest must necessarily be truest, that the person whose view of the world is most dismal must always be correct and must be courageous. Such an approach can only be fallacious.

Still, when we look inward, if we are honest, we will have to ask ourselves whether we really are open to discovering truths that are uncomfortable, unpleasant, painful to bear. Perhaps we cling to safe beliefs, and if we’re honest we cling to them precisely because they’re safe. Probably all of us do this in one way or another, usually in ways that are invisible to our own perception. Certainly we should all assume that we do it, and appraise ourselves accordingly.

Atheists are among those who like to claim that they have seized upon such a courageous truth, and it isn’t hard to see why. Compared to the sort of theism which affirms that God is on my side and loves me and has good plans for me, atheism does seem like a grim realism.

And yet, the predictable smug reply of theists has been that the atheists are themselves holding on to a comforting belief that protects them from having to face up to a frightening reality. If there is no God, then maybe there is no eternity, no eternal judgement, no perfect and omniscient judge. To hold a belief which insulates us from considering the most terrifying of all possible futures certainly might appear to be motivated less by love of truth than by intellectual cowardice. Not a few theists have been quick to point this out.

Where does that leave us then? To believe in God is the work of a coward, but so is disbelief toward that God?

Agnosticism is not the solution to the problem. It is inconsequential, in the present conversation. An agnostic will either face up to the possibility of divine judgement and live as though it is a real possibility (in line with Pascal’s wager), thus fearing damnation and hoping in salvation, or else will avoid the question and live as though it doesn’t matter, joining the atheists of our earlier discussion. So agnosticism doesn’t get us any closer to a reasonable answer than we had previously.

Rather, the solution is mysticism. Mystical theism is the most courageous option out of all those so far surveyed. As stated, this does not mean it’s true, but it means at least that it’s not likely to be accepted as if true merely because it is comforting or safe.

Mystical theism means standing at the uttermost tip of reality, alone amidst the vast darkness of the primordial unknown, seen and not seeing, known but not knowing. It is the glimpsing of a terrible goodness beyond human morality, of irresistible power and incontestable justice. It is perfect fear and perfect awe and perfect love fused into a single, simple thought.

It’s funny. I’ve never been particularly attached to literacy as an abstract idea. I think that a civilization could flourish and do well by its citizens even with relatively low literacy rates. I know that seems to make me a bit of an oddball in today’s world, where it is self-evident to so many that higher literacy rates are an unquestionable good.

At the same time, I do think that literacy is valuable for some things, and has even a central place in the cultivation of the best of human potential. So while I don’t think that everyone needs to be literate (hypothetically, at least), I think it would be much worse if no one were literate. Literacy isn’t good in itself for every person, necessarily, but it also must not be allowed to disappear from the face of the earth (not that there’s any danger of that happening in the near future).

So, why am I not an absolutist when it comes to the value of literacy? Reading is a hugely important part of my life, and so it might seem as if I would be more likely to overstate its importance than to downplay it.

To me, literacy seems like money, or firearms, or fame, in that it can be used for good ends, but can also be disastrous when misused. Not every person should own a working gun, as even the most ardent gun rights activists will admit. On balance, it might be better for most people to have firearms, or it might be the case that the dangers outweigh the benefits, in which case maybe it is better for most people not to. As we know full well, there are opinionated people on both sides of the question, precisely because it clearly is a valid question to ask.

Literacy, in my view, belongs in the same category. We underestimate how powerful the written word can be, and how much evil as well as how much good it can bring about. In our world, it would be hard to be a functioning, contributing adult without some basic level of literacy, and so we have no choice but to promote literacy and work to curb its dangers. In other circumstances, however, it is not clear to me that widespread literacy would need to be an urgent priority.

Think of the farming family who live on land that they own, learning skills and stories orally rather than from books. They work hard for two thirds of the year, providing food for themselves and enough extra to sell or trade for other necessities. In their leisure, they prepare food, they tell stories and jokes, they make music together. They can be wise and virtuous and just and happy, peaceful and prosperous and connected, without any need for letters. A vision of the world that treats literacy as a pressing need has no place for such a way of life, which, for me at least, is a serious problem.