It's been quiet here for more than a month. I haven't run out of opinions. That would be a medical emergency. I've just been more interested in testing a few of them than publishing them.
There's a very efficient way to use philosophy badly.
Find a thinker who makes your existing instincts sound impressive.
Extract a sentence.
Put it over a dramatic photograph.
Congratulations, you've learned nothing.
I love philosophy too much to use it that way.
Agreement is the least interesting outcome
Nietzsche can make me question inherited values. Schopenhauer can make me suspicious of restless wanting. The Stoics can remind me that reality does not need my permission.
I don't agree with all of them.
I don't think I should.
A useful philosophical encounter isn't a vote on which thinker deserves to be your mascot.
It's an opportunity to notice where your comfortable assumptions stop working.
Ideas must survive real life
An attractive theory can sound flawless until it meets a difficult relationship, an uncertain financial decision or the ordinary need to cooperate with imperfect people.
Then the edges appear.
I want to know what a philosophy asks me to do when I'm angry. When I'm frightened. When somebody has disappointed me. When an outcome matters and my influence is limited.
If the idea only makes me sound sophisticated at dinner, its practical value is low.
The privilege of changing your mind
I used to be more interested in constructing a compelling argument.
I'm increasingly interested in whether I can recognize a better one.
That is harder than it sounds, especially after you've defended a position in public.
There's ego invested in continuity.
But if I have to choose between sounding consistent and thinking better, I'd like to choose the second.
That's why I keep reading people who annoy me.
Sometimes they are wrong.
Sometimes the part that annoys me is the part I needed.