To learn a subject is to master a new kind of objectivity.

An academic discipline, a person and a culture are all subjects with their own objects.

All objects of all subjects overlap in reality.

People averse to deliberation and reflection love emergencies. They find emergencies everywhere — and if an emergency is nowhere to be seen, they see it anyway. Failing that, they will create an emergency where there was none.

These are not unintelligent people — they are often very clever within their domain of expertise — and this might be the problem. Conveniently, emergencies require just the kind of cleverness they have mastered, and preclude everything else.

They say “There is no time to think!” Why? Because there is always clear and present danger? Because they have so many responsibilities? Because  they are action-oriented and have no patience for people who just want to talk? No, I’ve watched what happens when things do calm down. They make an emergency of their entertainment. They schedule events to drive every peaceful minute out of their lives.

Fact is, they just don’t like thinking very much, especially when it involves the reconciliation of different perspectives. That is understandable. We have known for thousands of years that transcendence is dreadful and that the annoying babble of our neighbors is the primary vehicles of this dread. It is hard to acquire a taste for this sort of thing. They have not acquired this taste.

This does not make them bad people, but it is also not the sign of superior character they’d like it to be.

*

My belief is that the uncontrolled acceleration our lives, the universal intensification of anxiety, the state of perpetual emergency in every domain of life is caused by our collective distaste for serious thought.

The Jamesian “cash value” of an idea in business is how it will be operationalized. How will adoption of this idea concretely change behaviors of people, within and without the organization? This approach is most useful in brand strategy (which is, translated to pragmatist language, strategic pluralism) and is best condensed in Michael Porter’s beautiful admonition to compete, not to be best, but to be different.

I’m feeling a little pessimistic today. If my sources are right, the world is setting itself up for solipsistic fanaticism from every side.

My impression: the best may be gradually gaining conviction, but not as fast as the worst are filling themselves with passionate intensity.

*

Renewed commitment to scientific method, re-conceived more expansively, follows civil war.

See Leviathan and the Air-Pump and The Metaphysical Club.

*

Scientific method alone is transcendent. Religious “enthusiasm” is entirely about egoistic reductionism. I’ve been there. It is fun. It is bad.

Complicating your question can reveal a simpler answer.

Or

Complicating your problem can simplify your solution.

Or

Complicating problems can be the simplest way to a simpler solution. (Eh.)

Or

Simple means, complex ends. Complex means, simple ends. (Spare formulation, but not as universal as stated.)

If simple means are producing a complex end, try complex means to produce a simple end. (Candidate Oblique Strategy?)

…

(Expect more iterations. I’ve used a distillery metaphor to justify complexity as a means to simplicity: If you wish to distill simplicity, you must first mash up and stir together a mess of many particulars, then let it ferment, and only then can you produce something new to distill.)

Philosophy does three things.

• Philosophy discovers as-yet-unposed problems.
• Philosophy develops ways to think as-yet-unthinkable thoughts.
• Philosophy integrates fragmentary knowledge into unified understandings.

It does not do these things in isolation from other activities. Rather, philosophy is present in ordinary thought and practices when routine methods fail and thinking has to think its way through blind newness.

Design systematizes both inter-subjective and objective components, where engineering systematizes non-subjective components.

(This is the latest version of an iterating thought.)

“Having no use” for something has less to do with that thing’s uselessness than the quality of one’s own understanding and hopes. To the extent one understands, everything may be relevant, and to the degree one hopes everything may be problematic.

As we realize that everything, every thing and everyone is potentially relevant and problematic we lose the capacity for violence — and for this reason understanding and hope should be tempered by humility. We are all living things, after all, and we must eat, defend ourselves, and fight for what matters to us. To deny this fact completely is hubris, but to surrender to this fact is base.

To aspire to humanity is to live suspended.

This ought to be useful: Special thanks to my good friend, caffeine.

From the classic animated short Ah, L’Amour.

One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Wittgenstein: “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’ ” I love it for two reasons. First, it shows how philosophy is not an archaic style of theoretical speculation that has been supplanted by science. Philosophy is a perpetual discovery of new scientific turf. Philosophy pioneers what science settles and builds up.

But the other thing I love about the quote is it shows where philosophy can fit into the practical activities of everyday life. If you can’t intellectually move about in a problem space, you can’t work consciously and methodically. But what is innovation than looking for these areas? To extend my pioneering metaphor, in any exploration of innovative possibilities, philosophers ought to be brought along as guides to help navigate and map the territory.

“Why” is not logical; every “why” is a logic.

Until a person’s why-logic is understood that person’s beliefs, behaviors and feelings will seem illogical.

The grasping of a why-logic and the consequent grokking of a world via that why-logic is insight, in the most precise sense of the word.

It is an unfortunate habit of speech that has us say “insight into” another person. We should say we have “insight out from” a person.

I saw a quote last week that said something like “Nothing happens according to plan — but nothing happens without a plan.” I can’t remember the source.

I saw a quote recently that said something like “Nothing goes according to plan, but nothing happens without a plan.” I can’t find it, now.

No marginal status of any kind automatically bestows deeper knowledge. Only an urgent need to understand, followed by active pursuit of understanding yields such knowledge.

What is different about my opinions? Why the difference? How does the difference arise and manifest? How do I bridge the difference with others? How do others suppress my difference, and how do I resist or overcome this? How do I know when I am suppressing the difference of another? How does this dynamic work in general? What are the ethical implications? Why would any person who does not have to ever want to embrace an ethic of respect of the marginal? Can I count on my own loyalty to this ethic if I it carries me to a position of dominance? Should I remain loyal to it…?

Any person who stops trying to understand others and otherness through reflective practice, not as a solitary meditation is going to dwindle in insight, and as the blessed anxiety subsides comforting clarity floods the knowing subject with the blessings of faith: confidence, determination and uncanny charisma.

I lack capacity to how I am not right, therefore I am right.

I have good reason to disregard what my enemies say to me.

Everyone agrees with me on this — everyone who matters.