03.14.08
“I Mean the Game of Going Insane”
A Philosophy Job Market Blog is a great blog. This is a quote from the last sentence of my previous post:
If anyone asks me about solved philosophy, I’ll tell them about the life and world-changing ideas that make philosophy amazing…
I felt that I ought give some sense of what makes philosophy amazing after writing this last sentence of the last post, but most of what I find amazing takes a while to explain and requires you to know something about me, how I thought and what I now think. Not that this would make for bad blog material - I try very hard to explain things I now believe - but I figured that many philosophers have had a similar experience and subjecting y’all to a biography isn’t my goal.
Then today PJMB busts out with ‘I Mean the Game of Going Insane‘:
In comments, Anon. 5:14’s talking about the howling fantods:
I’m (happily but stressfully) in the middle of my tenure evaluation, and I’ve been remembering lately just how much worse–worlds worse–l I felt during my two years of being on the market and not getting a job. (Sometimes three times really is the charm.) One day just after finding out, for the second year in a row, that I wasn’t going to get a job, I was sitting at the front of the classroom looking at my watch to see if it was time to begin. I looked down and saw the socks I was wearing. They were perfectly ordinary socks. No different from any of the other socks I usually wear. But I was gripped with a deep, undeniable feeling that they were The Wrong Socks. I was wearing The Wrong Socks. I couldn’t do anything right. Not even socks.
Howling.
I studied philosophy like my sanity depended upon it. It may very well have– I try not to have illusions about my failings and I can see how things could have gone very wrong for me. No one speaks of the dangers of philosophy. It is all too easy to lose reality; you lock yourself away working for long enough and there may be no telling how you will emerge. You may start to fear your socks.
One of the more scary facts about insanity is that you won’t be able to tell when you are going insane. It takes an experience such as Anon. described above before you realize something is wrong. And I’d have to qualify that experience as lucky and minor because no one got hurt: imagine it wasn’t Anon.’s socks but Anon.’s significant other’s socks that suddenly caused a breakdown.
Now it might be nice to round out this post by claiming that for all the dangers that philosophy may pose to yourself and others there is an equally great upside of triumph and understanding that may be reached. As I said, “the life and world-changing ideas that make philosophy amazing.” You probably weren’t thinking that I meant something like not having to worry about fearing your socks. But imagine Anon 5:14. I won’t say that Anon is better for that experience of The Wrong Socks, but that the difference in Anon from that day to now is ‘worlds‘ of difference.
It does all boil down to who you are and what you want. If you’re willing to gamble your sanity on the chance that you may one day be happy (if stressed) - Anon may have, and I did so knowingly - then you need not worry about any of this. After you have made your bet, it does no good to worry about it while waiting for the cards to show. If this is news to you, then yes, amazing and world-changing things are possible, but just know that you may have to change equally and change doesn’t come cheap.
When I think about solved philosophy, I remember the confusion, the disturbed contorted thoughts and pain that could have been averted if only the right arguments were available at the right time. This sounds personal, but all the good arguments I have come up with have remained so and have life beyond me with those I’ve told. If I have helped someone understand this world a bit more, then I have solved a philosophical problem.
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