Q&A: Despair
Despair
Question
I’ve invested a lot in recent years in studying philosophy and developing philosophical skill, in large part through this site (which is truly wonderful, it should be said). I’ve reached a point where it’s usually easy for me to spot fallacies, logical leaps, vague definitions and vague statements, acting based on emotion instead of cold analysis, and the like.
As a result, several side effects have developed in my life, and unfortunately the more my philosophical skill improves, the stronger they become. I’m no longer able at all to listen to the news or read the press. If once every few weeks the urge gets the better of me and I open the news or some article, it takes about two minutes before I find such a quantity of stupidity that it makes my blood boil (needless to say, this applies even in places that are supposed to be considered intelligent — Haaretz and the like). On social media the situation is even worse, and I stay away from it like fire.
A similar thing happens even on more “intellectual” platforms. Yesterday, for about the 500th time, I had to stop a podcast after 5 minutes. It was a conversation with a professor, an important scientist. In the few minutes I heard, she managed to make several philosophical mistakes, and even to advance a claim so vague it wouldn’t have embarrassed a yeshiva Jewish thought class. I simply wasn’t willing to listen to an hour and a half of that. Even in conversations where experts speak professionally about their field of expertise and try not to stray from it, somehow they always manage to weave in sentences implying that in every area outside their expertise they are complete idiots. (The worst are those who talk about their relationship with God, “what Judaism means to me,” and things like that — it really makes me want to tear my hair out.)
It’s entered my personal relationships too. Even in conversations with very intelligent friends, over time I realized there are a lot of these kinds of fallacies. Sometimes I simply avoid pointing them out, and sometimes when I do choose to do so and expose the flaws in what they’re saying, it causes them a lot of frustration, maybe some feeling that I’m preventing them from expressing themselves or something like that. I’m not even talking about dates — there, pointing out fallacies is a minefield that I try to avoid as long as possible (by the way, it’s interesting how one can even manage married life like this at all).
And the worst part is that I don’t really feel it can be changed. You can write an article, talk to someone, persuade, explain, corner him to the point where he has nothing left to answer and maybe he’ll even be convinced. But all that doesn’t really cause the overwhelming majority of people to change their minds; somehow it just passes right through them. Even if someone read something the Rabbi wrote and it sounded very persuasive to him, I think that many times he’s unable to distinguish between genuine persuasion through logical refutation (or at least showing something to be unlikely) and emotional manipulation. Meaning, tomorrow he’ll hear someone saying the opposite of the Rabbi and using some emotional manipulation or saying words that sound really impressive, and that will persuade him to the same extent. Another thing: I’m reminded of a story the Rabbi once told, that at the end of a lecture he asked whether the audience had any objections to what he’d said, and when they said no, the Rabbi asked, “So should I bring all of you kippahs and tzitzit?” and suddenly everyone objected. Most people don’t feel bound at all by logical conclusions; they stand in a discussion like spectators on the sidelines, able to be intrigued by it, but when it comes to some practical implication it simply doesn’t interest them.
In short, I’m left with the feeling that most discussions by most people on most platforms about most subjects are simply useless piles of words. Even when someone (like the Rabbi) does come and say some sensible things on a certain subject, they usually don’t receive the proper weight, and most people are unable to distinguish them from the empty talk that persuades them; and even when people really are convinced, they don’t feel any need to apply those things to themselves in reality. It seems that this state of ignorance has continued since the dawn of civilization, and I don’t see too much hope that it will ever change.
All this leads me to ask:
A. What’s the point? Don’t you feel like you’re fighting windmills? That your whole life’s work of teaching people both content and philosophical skill will ultimately affect only a limited number of people, and in most cases won’t amount to any influence on policy in any real-world field? That the fate of all the masses (including the supposedly educated among them) is to remain philosophically ignorant and unable to form a rational opinion on almost any subject?
B. What am I, a small person, supposed to do? Give up trying to talk with people about subjects that require philosophical skill, shut myself up in an ivory tower and study Torah / read books all day? Or keep going with the Sisyphean work of discussing these things with people and being frustrated?
C. I assume that in your life you feel at least some of the feelings I described above. Do you have any suggestions for how to cope with them?
Answer
I understand the feelings very well. I express them here on the site too. And yet, a few comments from personal experience.
First, even if people have fallacies and mistakes, that doesn’t mean there is nothing of value in what they say. It’s worth getting used to judging things in a more nuanced way. Sometimes it’s also worth adopting the principle of charity and interpreting what they meant to say, even if they didn’t express it precisely.
It’s worth remembering that when people look at what you say, they’ll also find fallacies there. We’re all human. It’s easy to see other people’s flaws, but a person does not see his own blemishes.
As for your questions at the end, you’re looking at the picture in black and white. If the goal is to change the world, then yes, that’s pretty hopeless. But if you managed to improve the thinking of a few people, that too is no small matter. Beyond that, if one succeeds in influencing a group of thoughtful people, there is a fairly expanding circle of people around them who will be influenced by them and follow them, even if they themselves are not intellectual prodigies. And they have additional circles, and so on. Influence happens in circles.
A note regarding the lack of integrity of people who recoil from applying theoretical conclusions, and sometimes reject them so they won’t have to implement them. In this context, it’s worth remembering that sometimes people intuitively feel that the conclusion is not correct, and in many cases this happens when they understand the practical application that follows from it. So they go back and reject the argument that leads to that conclusion. It isn’t always just lack of integrity.
Discussion on Answer
To Rabbi Michi: thank you very much for the answer!
To Jacob: I personally started at university; they practice this a lot there. Beyond that, Rabbi Michi has answered this quite a lot on the site and he certainly knows better than I do; I wouldn’t even want to speak in front of him about an egg in kutach.
On Facebook:
I do not at all appreciate the venomous style of your response. What do you gain by insulting a stranger on the internet? Even so, I’ll answer the substance of your points:
A. I don’t understand why I was supposed to bring examples here. I didn’t write an article in order to prove a thesis; I came to ask Rabbi Michi a question. If I were writing an article intended to persuade people of my claims, I obviously would have brought examples.
B. I assume your main intent was to say that I’m probably mistaken, both regarding my assessment of the level of discourse (in Israel?) and regarding my own abilities. As for the level of discourse, I agree that I phrased things in an exaggerated way, and of course people do say things of value. But I think that on many subjects we encounter in everyday life, and that people are sometimes prepared to fight to the bitter end over, philosophical skill is required — and it is simply lacking in almost everyone. Therefore I think all my questions on this topic remain valid.
As for my assessment of my own abilities in this kind of thinking — I understand why you’d think that some stranger on the internet is being arrogant about himself, and I’d probably think that too, but I judge myself in this matter as best I can, and I have only what my own eyes can see.
C. I never claimed to have anything new to contribute. Indeed, in my experience one of the main things that happens when you develop philosophical skills is disqualification: you know how to distinguish between views that are fundamentally nonsense and views that are sound. That doesn’t mean wonderful new insights will necessarily suddenly appear to you about everything. If you really want, I once read (I think in the name of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin) that a Torah insight can also consist merely in clarifying things and nothing more; and if so, I think philosophical skill does indeed help one innovate, if only by clarifying certain things. But new and marvelous arguments, no — you won’t find those coming from me on any subject.
I’ll press just a tiny bit more haha — if I don’t intend to enroll in university, is there still some light recommendation for ordinary folks? I’m sure Rabbi Michi will forgive a small egg 🙂
If you know the Rabbi’s standard answer to this question, then you surely know that he avoids recommending anything specific. For some reason, that’s דווקא exactly what many people here want.
I once asked David Enoch whether he thinks it’s possible to reach a high level in philosophy without university, and he said he can hardly see how that’s possible (except for special cases; maybe the Rabbi counts as a special case). I think I also understand why he thinks that — at university they practice it systematically. That is, for example, when reading a philosophical article there is often an exercise to extract the full argument from the article, and then to critique it. After that you get feedback from an expert, and you repeat this again and again consistently. It’s hard for me to imagine how one could imitate that process outside the university.
As for what one can do, I suppose simply getting to know philosophy itself, and the kinds of questions and thought experiments that have been asked in it — both the beginnings of modern philosophy (Descartes, Hume, Kant and the like) and contemporary analytic philosophy.
Beyond that, I have an ungrounded conjecture: in my personal life I encountered many philosophical questions that occupied me on an existential level, many of them religious, and I had to look for answers to them; many of those I found with Rabbi Michi. I assume that engaging in it out of personal questions rather than out of intellectual curiosity creates a greater need actually to internalize philosophical skill.
One last thing: I really did spend an enormous number of hours consuming the Rabbi’s writings and lectures. I think they are so successful in this context because they are an application of philosophical skill not to abstract subjects that don’t occupy people in everyday life, like whether numbers exist in reality, but to subjects we encounter in everyday reality.
I assume I haven’t added too much beyond the Rabbi’s usual answer 🙂
A question for the questioner: aside from coming to this site, could you recommend the ways you invested in developing philosophical skill? Summaries? Courses? Specific books? Etc.