Question

Hello.
I’m looking for measured advice and help with sorting this out.
[After writing everything below, I’m adding this. The whole description is very subjective, and it reflects how I see myself. It’s quite possible that I’m looking at what’s good in me through a magnifying glass, but this is what I’ve got, and with this I’m coming to ask.
The site is public, and that limits me a bit. The question at the end is trivial, and the answer—whatever it is—will probably be short, but I’m presenting it through my personal experience, and that’s why this got long. For me this is a serious matter, so I got carried away in the writing. Not everything seems connected to the issue, but in my mind it’s connected, and I truly apologize for the burdensome length. After writing and deleting part of it, I’m not exactly sure what else to delete. If this is too long and rambling in an excessively oppressive way, I’ll edit it a third time into a very brief version and then ask you to delete this one].
I feel stuck intellectually. Maybe it’s a natural and normal process, but I’m very unhappy with it.
There were a few stormy years in which suddenly all my opinions were being examined, overturned, and shaken up with a great crashing noise. Almost every serious book (usually philosophical or adjacent to that, but also “just” literature—I don’t know exactly how to explain it; I used to read before that too, but this was different) that I read in those years had a pretty significant effect on my thinking and my views. And there was this craving to read more and more, whatever came to hand.
In terms of the inner feeling that I remember having—I felt drive and freedom. Like a hungry truffle hunter running alert through a forest and finding treasure. And if it wasn’t good, then back to the forest, returning with different loot, even better than before (in my eyes).
It’s not always pleasant to cancel out a previous principled opinion, certainly not views I thought were well grounded in me, but it definitely happened, and happened a lot. Everything changed. Even “conclusions” that remained the same as before ended up standing on new foundations (which is absolutely a change in every sense).
But then there are two or three years of stabilization, and by the end of them the opinions more or less freeze, on every major subject that I regard as part of my general and religious worldview. And then there are another roughly five years in which, looking back, there are no intellectual changes, only tiny variations.
Let me put it this way: intellectually, I don’t identify with who I was ten years ago. What do I have to do with him? But who I was five years ago is completely also who I am now (I’m talking in terms of opinions. The core of my personality is probably with me since age four or something). By the way, even during the period when I was changing, I remember that arguments didn’t affect me immediately. I’d read, sometimes be amazed, think about it, and still it was as though there was no change I could openly declare. But it seeps in, and after some time I internalize that in fact I’m convinced by such-and-such argument or such-and-such position. There were tons of changes (including within one topic, from here to there and from there to somewhere else), but very few where after reading and thinking I immediately knew: that’s it, boom, this is convincing. Probably just some kind of unconscious human defense mechanism. On “small” topics I’m sometimes persuaded quickly. I had a study partner (which was wonderful for me) who sometimes couldn’t understand what I wanted from his life. We’d argue for half an hour and then suddenly I’d fall silent and agree with him. “What suddenly convinced you?!”—and then I’d recite back to him what he’d been telling me that whole time. “But you said this and this about that?!” What exactly changed I couldn’t always explain to him. Since yeshiva I don’t remember that happening to me in a face-to-face conversation. In writing it still sometimes happens.
I tell myself that I’m open to any argument. And yes, inside I have this sort of feeling that when I hear arguments I’m somehow able to examine them “without prejudices.”
But in practice nothing moves.
My conclusion from this is that I’ve atrophied. Because it’s not plausible that really all the arguments I pass through don’t seem to me strong enough to replace paradigms.
Even though, truly, the “strong” arguments on the important “spiritual” topics as I see them (epistemology and morality, religion, economics, philosophy of science—and law—identity and politics), the ones I encounter, I’ve usually already encountered more or less in the past.
But it makes no sense that this convenient excuse covers the whole picture. Because the sea is vast.
There is one subject where there has been change, but there’s worldwide hype around it, and the change isn’t really in the infrastructure of the opinion but more in awareness, and maybe also a certain social-cognitive pressure (from the society I read, not the one I live with).
I think I’m still exposed to a fairly broad range of opinions. Forgive the pretentiousness, but my personal opinion of myself is that I think seriously about subjects that seem important to me, and I invest the time that’s required. In particular, if I have reason to believe that from a certain book I’ll come away with major new conclusions—there’s no question I’ll read it.
I’m interested in more than one subject, and more or less keep up and discuss them (with myself and with others) regularly (subject to the constraints of time, which has shrunk because of the need to stay in the race of “practical” academic knowledge, and from life itself, aside from idle times, which always existed and always will).
But in practice nothing moves. Where is a hungry hunter, and where am I. More like a tourist in a supermarket who sees a new brand of pickles, hums to himself, and puts it back on the shelf.
[I don’t know whether this is relevant, but maybe: I have quite a few simplistic and extreme opinions (I’m not so comfortable giving examples within this request, and I don’t think it’s necessary). I make my way through and understand (in my view) complex opinions, and in the end I find myself at one extreme.
I truly have no problem spending hours splitting hairs over the subtleties of different methods and theories and proofs, especially ones I held with all my strength at some period, and I enjoy it, and I also think I can represent them pretty well (and I’ve done that quite a bit).
Because unlike you, who openly and proudly states your views without mincing words, I have different faces in separate circles of my life. And none of them is identical to the face I show myself in the mirror. Please, understand. ) This is another indication for me—admittedly a weak one—of atrophy, because it seems pretty strange to me that that’s where I stopped. But that’s how I think. What am I supposed to do.]
Why am I turning to you.
Because I saw at the beginning of the first book in the trilogy you wrote that you changed your views on important issues.
And that’s even after the whole reasoned quartet (I don’t know whether anything significant from there changed; I didn’t see it anyway, but if you thought that much about all the issues there, then all the more so you thought even more than I did about the other issues that were less present there, like morality, economics, politics, and others).
So I’m jealous. When I read the introduction I closed the book and went to toss around in bed.
I don’t know whether it comes naturally to you or whether it’s a matter of conscious decision and personal process, but I want it too. One candle can light a hundred. The truth is that as an outsider it’s hard for me to believe that anything basic changed even for you at a late stage. When I look at myself it somehow seems far-fetched. Because everything sits firmly embedded. Even though I understand that it’s unreasonable for what I once thought to be, for me, the final resting place. I’ve also developed a kind of inner arrogance (part of it has been with me since I can remember myself as a child). Today I identify myself with my opinions much more than with my conduct. But maybe that’s part of the problem.
And this is what I’m asking for. It will sound pompous, but this really is a deep fear of mine. One-sixtieth of death. That’s also why it took me time to dare admit it to myself, and without the empirical retrospect I wouldn’t have agreed to this diagnosis. And if someone from outside had said it to me, I would have dismissed it with contempt. Lately this fear of atrophy has weakened. In retrospect I’ve been atrophied for years, but I actually see that weakening as a self-warning siren: if not now, when? Or maybe that’s it, c’est tout, all that remains for me is to play around in discussions. And if so, then I’ll simply stop. There are always fascinating and beautiful and important things to keep learning, and it’s a shame to waste time poking and prodding at abstract topics where in the end I’m “like one reading a catalog.” Even though those abstract topics are, somewhere in terms of how I feel, the most important. I’m always running back and forth between the natural sciences and computer science (my career, and I’m completely in it) and matters of “worldview” in the broad sense. And if this stuckness is a stable and final equilibrium point, then so long, and thanks for all the fish.
I want advice on how to reopen the willingness in my mind. And maybe also help identifying what exactly is getting me stuck. And maybe a little encouragement too. Or maybe this is just how it is, and I need to close the old page.