Philosophy - for old people only?

Kids are intermittently questioned about what they want to be when they grow up. (I suspect people ask this more out of the joy of reassuring their own conceptions of kids' stupidity and lack of realism, than any real interest in what kids have to say) Of course, as everyone else, I dreamed about being a policeman or a rockstar. But when I was in 1:st grade, just having started school, the path towards enlightenment & adulthood, my mind was set on something else. I wanted to be - retired. Teachers, and others, were not taking me very seriously - I was joking, they thought, or just the moronic "kids, awww cuuute". But if I would have it my way I would say that I was, instead, expressing my budding insights about the philosophical life.

Plato argues, in The Republic, that philosophy should not be pursued when one is too young. Young people should, he recommends, hang out at the gymnasium, or cool themselves down with disciplined music (not the vulgar kind that stir up all kinds of mixed emotions). S/he must be steered away from the things - "affluence and similar resources" (Rep., 495a) that are prone to corrupt young minds. The reputation of philosophy is tarnished, Plato advocates, because philosophers live the wrong kind of life; philosophy does not have the role in it that it should have. In Gorgias, Socrates attempts to offer a satisfying reply to the accusation that philosophy is not a worthy occupation "for a grown man" (and, in particular, for a grown manly man). Socrates' interlocutor for the moment, the beastly Callicles, throws a heap of shit at poor Socrates:

When I see an older man still studying philosophy and not deserting it, that man, Socrates, is actually asking for a whipping. For as I said just now, such a man, even if exceptionally gifted, is doomed to prove less than a man, shunning the city center and market place, in which the poet said that men win distinction, and living the rest of his life sunk in a corner and whispering with three or four boys, and incapable of any utterance that is free and lofty and brilliant (Gorgias, 485 a-d).

This is slander, of course (and Socrates knows it). Hanging out with young boys is very nice, thinks Socrates (for several reasons). But isn't there a familiar ring to Callicles' rant - even applied to our own times? "Why don't you get a real job...? You can't spend your whole life on education." But philosophy is not a career, not something one pursues with the intention of increasing the odds of "success". Socrates was aware of that, too. Philosophy is no incidental occupation, Plato says, but it should be reserved for the old, for a period of life when people are "allowed to roam free and graze at will, and to concentrate on philosophy, with everything else being incidental." (Rep., 498 b-c) I am a little sympathetic to what he says here.

There is a reason why I am babbling about Plato. Y & I had lunch and our discussion was slightly bend towards melancholia. Our short life, etc. We discussed philosophers and philosophy, and we both realized that most of the philosophers from which we have actually learnt something (not merely having picked up one or two fine & dandy arguments), are all 50++. Old. The only philosophers we know, who are young and wise, are our friends... This sounds arrogant, of course. But, really, when I skim philosophical journals, I get depressed. I get the impression of 30 ++ guys who, instead of going to the gym or hitting on "the opposite sex" or building a summer house or riding on a roaring motorcycle, write technical articles with lots of technical jargon. "An analysis of Dummett's conception of mathematical infinity compared to his views on truth-conditions". "Deleuze & Aquinas - a comparative analysis". "Fifty-five Cogent Arguments for why Killing Babies Does Not Belong to the Class of Permitted Actions." "A mathematical take on the ontological proof for the existence of God." "The différance of difference - deconstructing the de- of deconstruction." "The young Wittgenstein and the later Wittgenstein - My conceptualist reading, influenced by my very radical re-reading of Frege's nachlass".

Sometimes I am afflicted by the biggest misfortune of all, according to Plato, misology. Hatred of reason. Perhaps that shows that I'm too young for this business. Take your time, the motto of the philosopher, says Wittgenstein (or something like that). But, as you also know, we have to go the bloody hard way. (LW said that, too.) But walking the bloody hard way takes a lot of time. A lot of patience. It's easier to pick up an argument, polish it a bit, and rush onwards. And it's far too easy to write sarcastic, know-it-all blog posts.

But I admonish you: don't grow too old. Towards the end of his life, David Hume was a wealthy man. He had done this and that, and his writings sold well. Hume's publisher asked him to write another book. Hume responded: “I must decline not only this offer, but all others of a literary nature for four reasons: Because I am too old, too fat, too lazy, and too rich.”

Labor phenomena: the luddite movement

England. The beginning of the 19th century. Industrialization is evolving. 1811. English (e.g. textile industry) workers break into factories to destroy machines. They are outraged about low salaries, poor working conditions and they are afraid that machines would de-skill their jobs or make them redundant. A certain mr. Ned Ludd is said to be amongst those who inspired the riots, but that is probably a legend. The luddite movement spread to various part of England during 1812. Parliament passed a law according to which machine breaking was to be punished with death penalty. Several riots were violent, both workers and factory owners were killed. Famine, the Napoleon wars (which disturbed export of textiles) and high wheat prices contributed to an even more aggravated situation, involving many riots, and many people were killed.

Nowadays, to be a 'luddite' usually signifies that one is opposed to technology. The term is often used pejoratively. Still, when I google the term I come upon a very diverse assortment of contemporary writers and activists. One of the few whom I've read is Jaques Ellul, a French writer (The technological society) who describes a society penetrated by technique. By 'tecnique' he refers to a mechanical, rational or even blind preoccupation with means - the ends, to which they are associated, do not concern this perspective of technique. Ellul's book challenge us to think about the different sectors of society that are driven by a 'technological' logic, for which the sole objective is EFFICIENCY.

Speaking of tech-scepticism: I'm happy to have bumped into this blog. A tiny little counterbalance to the massive amount of blogs dedicated to gizmo & gadgets.

Valerie Solanas also talked about fucking-up work. Non-work, refusal to work, and destruction of machines, are integral part of her SCUM Manifesto. In that sense, also she may be called a present-day luddite.

I also come to think of other forms of rejections of today's system of work. Paul Lafargue's The right to be lazy is accessible as a book and there are also homepages like this one. There is also a popular self-help:ish book encouraging the reader to be lazy at the office, but I can't recall the name of that book.

Here's a useful place if you want to know more about all things luddite.

"Everybody is entitled to their own opinion"

R and I often end up discussing the responsibilities and roles of a teacher. R has been a teacher now for a few years and we always have great discussions about her occupation. Based on her anecdotes and her worries, I've realized how much influence over the students one has as a teacher and, perhaps even more importantly, I've realized that some teachers take that influence very seriously, so that reflecting on it becomes important. R often talks about the way her teaching reflects her, as a person, as someone who has a particular picture of the world and particular ideas about how things should be. When voicing these concerns, I usually reassure her that her students most probably appreciate her critical stance towards her subject, that her teaching is characterized by a concern for what is essential in the occupations that her students will engage in later on, but that she also teaches them things that are important on a more general, political level. But of course, she says, she doesn't want her students to give her views the force of law. It's easy to understand her worries.

Yesterday, drinking our after-work beers, we mulled over the way people often end up saying: "everybody is entitled to their own opinion" when there is a situation, in which one is afraid that one easily persuades people to think like oneself. "Everybody is entitled to their own opinions" gives a comfortable liberal, soothing impression. But, as a matter of fact, opinions, if they are to be taken seriously, are not something that a person simply has. For the record, there are some opinions, about which one could simply say that disagreement doesn't matter. This, however, does not make discussions superfluous or stupid, these are simply the cases where disagreement cannot intelligibly cause agony (some discussions about art have this character, others do not). But this is not the standard case. We care about what others think because we care about them. Their thinking is not only to be seen in spoken opinions, but in everything else as well. Granted, of course, that she really means what she says. There are also many situations, in which we would ascribe to somebody a particular thought/opinion (etc.), even though she hasn't asserted it verbally. "Watching her frown, I realize she doesn't like the present at all." At the end of a heated debate, I may angrily exclaim: "Think whatever you want, I don't care."

Once we are aware of these various cases, "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" looses something of its status of Positive Slogan. The reason why opinions are sometimes shuffled into a sacred Personal Zone is probably simply that we are afraid that our influence over other people is of a problematic. But if the world is pictured as a state of two alternatives, these being either a state of thought-hegemony or that everyone has the right to think whatever she wants, then that would be a very sad world. A world where power relations are inescapable and without alternatives.

Shit about shit

Let me indulge in whining for a while:

1) Due to an ailment of my ears, the state of my auditory world is like that of a late 80's Hal Hartley movie - on a crappy VHS tape. These movies resemble my life in other respects as well: stiff dialogue, detachment, quiet surrealism. (Hartley, by the way, is great - I love his work, especially Henry Fool and some of his early stuff! - I would like to watch more stuff of his, however.)

My present condition makes me feel an urge to shout not so gentlemanly things at people at our neighbour department: "shut the FUCK up or I'll prove, by means of syllogistic reasoning, the mediocre nature of Finnish-Swedish literature!". But I am a nice person. Or, if not, I do at least have some half-proper sense of conventions of courtesy.

2) For consolation, I read Thomas Bernhard. Together with Thomas Mann, he is the master of depicting discourses attached to sickness. At times, he is boring, at times, he is funny and ironic, at times his descriptions are really moving.

3) I worry about my academic pursuits not being concrete or focused enough. What if I am doing this for nothing, if, in a few years' time, it will turn out that my project is muddled through-and-through? "Well, I did try..." Did you really? Don't ask questions, punk. What if my research school will sue me for not having done what I was supposed to do? Can they do that? Maybe not, but still.

4) It's cold outside.

5) Everything else is humdrum rubbish.

6) Boring stuff on TV.

Pessimism & possibilities

I've gone over this in my mind a million times.
There is this person that nourishes the opinion that one should, at all times, be on one's guard for any harms that might befall one. If things are good, or just bearable, she takes care to remind you that everything might change for the worse. Look out! I have a hard time trying to figure out what to say here. It is all too easy to presuppose that pessimism enjoys the support of Reason and Good Sense. Isn't it a good thing to watch out for possible difficulties, to be prepared for whatever situation that you may be confronted with?

Thinking about something is often thought to be a quite innocent business. "Thinking about bad things is no guarantee that bad things will happen." But preparing for future disasters is, as it were, an expression of one's perception of the present situation. It means quite a lot that we see something as a possibility in relation to which we see ourselves forced to take a stand. It's not innocent at all to view something as a possibility. What is more, to talk about something as a possibility has, in order to be taken seriously, to have some connection with the way we perceive the present situation. If it does not, I would say that you are simply playing with words. Of course, it is possible that I will be hit by a car tomorrow or that my colleague will put poison in my drink or that I will not be granted another scholarship ever again. But thinking about these things as real possibilities would have quite serious implications for the ways in which I think about my life, my colleague or my work.

My point is that it does not make any sense to say that one sees it as important to talk about possibilities while at the same time reassuring one that this talk is to be understood on a purely abstract level. If you say to me that you think you will probably have a brain tumor in a few years time, then I am, naturally, worried about you. I wonder why you think about this now. I wonder whether you are afraid of having a tumor. If you say that you entertain these thoughts because it is good to prepare for any scenario, but that it doesn't really mean anything specific, then I really do have a hard time understanding you.