Mass media

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands."—Oscar Wilde

Consumers of mass media often assume that those who create its programs have the discovery and presentation of truth as their motive. In fact, reporters are part of the society they describe, and subject to its psychological, social, and economic influences. A more intelligent consumer would study the motives of reporters and take these into account in deciding how much credence to place in their programs.

Under some conditions, the market tends to provide incentives for excellence. Under other conditions it does not. In the case of mass media, commercial success has little to do with truthfulness, and much to do with appeal to consumers. It is as foolish to assume that market mechanisms will encourage truthfulness when the public cannot discern truthfulness as it is to assume that market mechanisms will encourage healthy food when the public judges with the palate rather than nutritional analysis.

Of course the journalist does care about the intellectual fitness of his readers. He cares the same way that the fast food cook cares about the physical fitness of his customers. He gives them what they order, and doesn't ask too many questions.

Vocation

The ordinary man calls the way he earns wages his vocation. The wise man calls the way he pursues joy his vocation.

Bipolar

Swinging back and forth between extremes of joy and sadness is considered undignified for adults. So, as adults, we sacrifice both joy and sadness, and settle for a tepid contentment.

Psychology

The typical psychologist understands his patients well enough to help them achieve a moderate sort of contentment. The great psychologist would understand his patients well enough to help them achieve a state of intense rapturous exultation.

It is, in fact, unlikely that a psychologist will understand anyone other than himself well enough to achieve this state. And once he has achieved it, he may very well be too occupied with enjoying the rapturous exultation to share his wisdom with others.

The guru probably can't teach anyone how to attain a state of rapturous exultation. The path is different for each person. But he can inspire them to seek it, rather than settle for the tepid contentment most of us settle for.

Reasoning about reason

To turn the gaze of reason upon itself, to investigate its origins and its proper use, is, far from being a form of irrationalism, a necessary part of the rational life.

Those who make the mistake of assuming that the origin of reason must be found in something rational (St. Thomas, for example) are led to another mistake, belief in a rational Creator. Nature is capricious and far from rational, and yet man and reason have arisen out of her. The origin of reason can only be properly investigated through the use of reason, without appeals to sentiment.

To one who says that it is always good to be rational, we must say, “What about sleep?” Surely he is exaggerating. Perhaps not only sleep but other ways of resting the rational faculty will be beneficial to its overall functioning. This question can only be settled by a rational investigation.

Advice to a young student contemplating business school

“He who busies himself with mean occupations produces in the very pains he takes about insignificant things evidence of his negligence and indisposition to what is really great.”—Plutarch

The commercial aspect of the human experience, particularly when viewed from the point of view of the commercial man himself, is arguably among the least sublime aspects of that experience. To adopt the role of a commercial man is to guarantee that the central character of one’s experience in life will henceforth be a calculating, cunning, and, ultimately, bland and insipid sort of experience.

To spend years of one’s life, only to prepare for a role that subsequently guarantees an inferior sort of experience in the remaining years, seems to me among the most foolhardy of decisions. Yet this is the very path that most would consider “wise” and “practical.”

Specialized training interposes a role between us and our experiences. We experience things as a lawyer would, as an accountant would, but rarely ever as a man or woman would. This is a mistake. We should seek to attune our senses to the aspects of human experience that are most sublime, not those that are most lucrative.

Contracts

The act of assenting to a contract involves only a part of the mind. Yet the law interprets it as an agreement of the person in his entirety. A party to a contract cannot later say, for example, that the part of him that signed the contract is not the part he considers his best part, and try to annul the contract on these grounds. The law recognizes that there are special cases, such as insanity, intoxication and duress, where assent to a contract is not assumed to be authentic. But why does insanity merit such skepticism, when everyday neurosis does not? Why does duress by physical threats merit such skepticism, while duress by psychological manipulation does not? If a person is hypnotized, is his assent to a contract genuine? What about when he is hypnotized by television? The presence of attractive models in advertisements, for example, is a form of psychological manipulation, which, if properly considered, would call into question the validity of all the contracts upon which daily commerce in contemporary society is based.

To make a commitment requires a unity of consciousness that is rare and difficult. To make this an everyday occurrence, as contract law intends to do, is to make something uncommon into something common—both in the sense of making it more frequent than it ought to be, and in the sense of cheapening it.

The problem with commerce

Commercial society allows those with different views on how to order their lives to peacefully coexist with one another. This is its virtue. But there is no mechanism within commerce that helps us to actually understand one another’s views, rather than merely coexisting with them. The market rationally and effectively equalizes supply and demand, but it never asks us to discuss why we supply what we supply, why we demand what we demand.

In a rational discussion, false opinions are challenged, opposing arguments are brought to bear. In the marketplace, both true and false opinions create demand, so there is really no need to distinguish them. Both are opportunities for sales and profit. No matter how false and irrational the demands of customers are, criticizing them is rarely the path to commercial success.

The market leaves each of us to figure out for himself the path to a virtuous and happy life. It requires each of us to develop independence of mind. And yet it provides no mechanism by which we might help one another in developing that independence.

Philosophy as a Profession

Montaigne points out that “it is far easier to live like Caesar and talk like Aristotle than to live and talk like Socrates.” In other words, it is far easier to rest content in the smug satisfaction that one is in possession of the truth than it is to unremittingly persevere in the quest for truth, recognizing that one is and will always remain merely a seeker.

The intellectual of today obtains his smug satisfaction by becoming a “specialist.” Acquiring a narrow but exquisite understanding of one narrowly circumscribed area of knowledge, he becomes, or imagines that he becomes, a possessor rather than a seeker of truth. The truth he possesses, however, is not the sort of comprehensive truth that encompasses the human condition—or even his own individual condition—in its entirety. His specialized knowledge is from the outset intended to be relevant only in his “professional” life. The sole benefit it confers upon his “personal” life is the income he obtains by placing it at the service of his employers.

Our age endeavors to impose this same sort of separation of personal and professional life even in the realm of philosophy, thus effecting a grave and momentous change in what it means to be a philosopher. The philosophers of the past who lived austere and ascetic lives, for example, did not consider this an incidental fact about their “personal” lives, but rather a definitively important part of their philosophical method. Their austerity arose from a frank acknowledgment of the fact—a fact our age resolutely tries to conceal from itself—that every man must make an inevitable choice between two paths: the pleasant, agreeable path to wealth and honors, and the austere, difficult path to truth and wisdom. Hypocrites who claim to be lovers of wisdom, but in reality merely intend philosophy to be a “profession” in which they can achieve wealth and honors, justly deserve the ridicule that has been so aptly dispensed to them by genuine lovers of wisdom—for example, by Plato to the Sophists, by Schopenhauer to “university philosophy,”and by Nietzsche to “culture-philistines.”

Socrates’ character in the Republic observes that most of those who constitute the demos care very little for the pursuit of truth and wisdom, so that the relation of philosophy to a democratic regime must therefore be “as a foreign seed sown in alien soil”—that interaction with the regime inevitably results in the “perversion and alteration” of philosophy—and that the most advisable course for the philosopher is to remain quiet, to mind his own affairs, and to stand aside, as a man stands “under the shelter of a wall in a storm.” 

When the “professional philosophers” of today render their services to the democratic regime, there is indeed just such perversion and alteration. John Rawls, for example, tells us that philosophy conceived as a “search for truth” cannot possibly provide “a workable and shared basis for a political conception of justice in a democratic society.” He proposes instead that we conceive of political philosophy as a process of collecting and categorizing the “settled convictions” of such a society and deriving our conception of justice to accord with these convictions. Thus political philosophy, formerly conceived as a quest for truth and wisdom about political regimes, is now redefined as a quest to reach predetermined conclusions that accord with the settled convictions of the present regime. Like any competent professional, the “professional philosopher” must place the interests of his employer—whether he conceives of this as his state, community, society or regime—above “personal” passions such as those that might inspire him to seek truth and wisdom.

The way to properly honor the classics

The way to properly honor the classics, Nietzsche tells us, is not to treat them as merely a source of historical knowledge, and not merely to imitate their methods and assimilate their results, but rather “to continue seeking in their same spirit, with their same courage, and not to weary of the search."

The great thinkers of the past undoubtedly intended to convey in their writing the truths they found and the methods they used in their search. For many, however, we must recognize another aim of equal or perhaps even greater importance. We must recognize that many of the great thinkers of the past earnestly sought to arouse in their readers those same noble passions that allowed them to become great thinkers in the first place—the passions that inspired their lifelong quest for truth and wisdom—that sustained their ardor in this quest—that gave them the audacity to defy all obstacles in their way.

When we write philosophy today, we proceed as if our sole aim were to convey information as efficiently and succinctly as possible. When we read philosophy, we proceed as if our sole aim were to extract the information contained therein as efficiently as possible. Seldom do we give our attention to understanding those artful contrivances which past writers have used to inspire the passion for truth and wisdom. Even more seldom do we attempt to produce any new such contrivances. In fact, the insipid academic writing style of our age often seems as if it were deliberately contrived to extinguish any sort of passion, or to repel those who already have it. We cultivate discipline, but not passion, forgetting that both are requirements for a genuine philosopher.

Ayn Rand and her followers

Ayn Rand’s acolytes congratulate themselves for having found in their mentor the apotheosis of Western culture, the woman who was finally able to purify the Western tradition from the taint of theism, altruism and irrationality that had infected it for centuries. They are, like all of us, busy people, and thus are very glad of this discovery. It spares them the trouble of reading all these tainted books. The Ayn Rand acolytes, like those fundamentalist Christians who believe that all truth is to be found in the Bible, now have an excellent excuse to avoid reading other books. They can remain ignorant of the entire trajectory of Western culture without feeling guilty about it. Perhaps most tragically, their complacency deprives them of the very knowledge about Western culture that would allow them to assess the validity of the claim that Ayn Rand constitutes its culmination. Philistines seem to be very adept and finding rationalizations to justify their philistinism, and in this regard the Ayn Rand acolytes are no exception.

In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand condemns impostors who demand that they be recognized for “erudition without study, authority without cost, judgment without effort.” (p. 63) When I read this, I think of no one more than I think of her own followers, who pose as philosophers without having studied philosophy, as sociologists without having studied sociology, as economists without having studied economics.

In another ironic twist, the Ayn Rand acolytes do not even find it necessary, when they laud independent thought and creativity, to devise their own way of expressing these sentiments. They merely parrot the aphorisms of their mentor.

Some might find Ayn Rand’s strident condemnations of other writers to blame for the philistinism of her acolytes. I do not. There is nothing inherently blameworthy in exaggerating one’s differences with other thinkers and artists. This is what allows a writer to make these differences clearly visible. The fault lies rather in the credulousness of her readers, who uncritically accept her judgments about other writers without even taking the trouble to read them.

Ayn Rand did not get to be Ayn Rand by reading only the books that she agreed with. She read and carefully analyzed the opposing viewpoints too. They offered a challenge, an exercise in refutation skills. Wouldn't those who admire Ayn Rand want to choose books from her reading list, the books that led, via both positive and negative influences, to her becoming the writer they admire?

While many have lamented the baneful influence of Ayn Rand on her “inner circle” of followers in the 1950’s and 1960’s, most fail to consider the possibility that the followers may have corrupted the leader just as much as the leader corrupted the followers.

The integrity of Ayn Rand’s philosophical views and the quality of her writing, it seems to me, begin to degenerate after the 1950s, precisely the time in which she begins to interact with her admirers. This can be seen by contrasting The Fountainhead with Atlas Shrugged.

The Fountainhead displays a reflective attitude toward capitalism, recognizing that private property is a necessary requirement for the independent man to exist, yet also recognizing the potential for the independent man to be corrupted through commerce with secondhand men.

Just as democracy must be limited, because the majority does not always understand or respect the rights of men, so the man engaged in commerce must carefully limit the influence he allows potential trading partners, because the majority of these potential partners will not understand or respect the integrity of his work. If he fails to maintain such a limit, his integrity will inevitably suffer.

To put it another way, the individual who breaks free from the collective power of the state only to then submit to the collective power of “the market” is hardly worthy of being called an individual. The truly independent individual always steadfastly adheres to the course demanded by his own genius, irrespective of whether the state approves of it, whether the community approves of it, whether the market approves of it.

In Atlas Shrugged, this sort of reflective attitude toward capitalism is largely absent. By then Ayn Rand's writings on capitalism have for most part degenerated into simple-minded panegyric, blissfully if not willfully disregarding the influence of secondhand men in the market.

Those who read Ayn Rand’s books and take away from them nothing but her praise of commerce are, it seems to me, like the followers of Henry Cameron in The Fountainhead who are impressed by nothing but the economical aspect of his innovations. “The sole part of his argument irresistible to the owners of new structures was financial economy; he won to that extent.” (p. 473)

Those who read Ayn Rand’s books and take away nothing but her praise of political freedom resemble another group of Cameron’s followers—those for whom “the freedom from arbitrary rules, for which Cameron had fought, the freedom that imposed a great new responsibility on the creative builder, became mere elimination of all effort.” (pp. 473-474)

The fact that Ayn Rand devoted her later writing primarily to the commercial and libertarian aspects of her philosophical and artistic vision might perhaps result in part from the fact that these are the aspects in which her followers took the greatest interest. Her followers did not care so much for the vision of the uncompromising man faithful only to his own genius. But they were very fond of the vision of the commercial man faithful only to his own material interests. This was a much less demanding vision, much more comfortable. This, therefore, was the vision she chose to develop in her later work.

In the period between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, the method by which Ayn Rand presents her philosophy has also degenerated.

Among the techniques The Fountainhead uses to criticize the philosophy of the secondhand man, one of the most effective is the speeches made by the secondhand men themselves (Peter Keating, Ellsworth Toohey). These speeches, by making the assumptions behind the secondhand man’s philosophy explicit, show just how corrupt and inhuman such a philosophy really is.

In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand speaks of “ponderous inanities ... uttered as a revelation and insolently demanding acceptance as such.” (p. 491) But in Atlas Shrugged, we find the former critic of such inanities uttering them herself. She never tires, for example, of repeating “A is A” and “existence exists.”

The sheer number of repetitions of such statements makes one suspect that perhaps Ayn Rand had begun after all to understand the mental capacity of her followers and to adjust her style of presentation accordingly. Perhaps she, like Gail Wynand’s teacher in The Fountainhead, had given up on trying to teach the best and the brightest and, devoting her attention to the slow and the dull, “repeated and chewed and rechewed, sweating to force some spark of intellect from vacant eyes.” (p. 403)

More importantly, however, the fact that Ayn Rand in her later years degenerated to the point where she could only respond to sophisticated arguments about the nature of reason and language with ponderous inanities like “A is A” and “existence exists” suggests that she was no longer taking the trouble to really understand opposing arguments. She coarsely grouped classes of philosophers together and classified them as evil and corrupt, without stopping to consider that perhaps, in some cases, some of their arguments may have been correct and some incorrect.

When I hear the later Ayn Rand condemn philosophers and whole schools of philosophy, branding them as “evil,” I think of Alvah Scarrett calling Howard Roark “a crank and a freak and a fool.” (p. 524) When Scarrett disparages Roark, it is only because he doesn't understand his work.

Ubi nihil valeo, ibi nihil velim

A favorite motto of Samuel Beckett was "Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis," or, "where you are worth nothing, there you must want nothing." The quote seems to come originally from Arnold Geulincx, a 17th century Flemish philosopher.

Democracy gives the ordinary citizen the illusion that his vote gives him some influence upon the state. This illusion, like the illusion that the lottery is a path to wealth, will only confuse those who are bad at calculating probabilities.

Heirs and vagabonds

The heir to a great fortune will, in rare cases, develop a strikingly independent character. He can have all the splendor of wealth without making himself subservient to anyone. He can think, do, and say what he wishes, without regard for authority or convention.

Even more seldom, a man who is born destitute develops the same sort of independence. He finds it better to remain destitute than to make himself subservient.

These two sorts of independent character have many things in common. Among these is their shared contempt for the covetous, ambitious character.

When the independently wealthy character looks at the ambitious character, he thinks, “How silly he looks, sacrificing all his pride and independence, prostrating himself to others—all this, merely to attain what I have without effort.”

When the destitute character looks at the ambitious character, he thinks, “How silly he looks, sacrificing his pride, his independence, his dignity—all this, merely to attain something that is, in fact, quite possible to live without.”

Convenient oversimplifications

It is inevitable that we must simplify, and therefore always to some extent falsify, the bewildering complexity of the human condition. But we must be wary of going further than necessary. The idea of a unitary “soul” or “subject” simplifies our view of the mind, but only at the cost of entirely falsifying it. The notion that the self is unitary is a useful from of self-deception for those who would like to conceal from themselves the chaotic disorganization of their own minds. Something that is by definition unitary does not need to be made into a unit. Integrity is achieved by definition.

A conversation

"Don’t you think you are being arrogant?"

"No, not arrogant, but rather skeptical. Just to make this clear, I will not accept any of your assertions merely on the basis of your experience and authority. You will have to prove each one to me. This is for two reasons. First, you may be wrong despite your experience, and second, I will never learn to understand things if I merely accept them on authority and do not try to understand each in my own way. If you find this too much of a burden, then I suggest that you find a submissive, whimpering coward to assist you. But don’t expect him to perform his work with anything like the excellence and alacrity that I can provide. True understanding comes only to those who relentlessly insist upon achieving it—only to the stubborn and 'arrogant.'"

Herds of intellectuals

One of the reasons that it is difficult to make much headway in trying to convince a religious zealot that his opinions are irrational is that he feels himself to be a part of a community, and, at a fundamental level, he sees this community, and not himself, as the arbiter of decisions about what is rational and irrational.

One encounters this attitude even among the highly educated. There is a certain sort of intellectual who sees himself primarily and essentially as part of a community—the sociologist as part of community of sociologists, and so forth—and sees this community, and not himself, as the ultimate arbiter of rationality and truth.

Just as the Christian supports his position by citing passages from the Bible, taking for granted that the Bible constitutes the primary source of undisputed truth, this sort of intellectual refers to “the literature” of his field to support his position, and takes for granted that we will accept this as a source of undisputed truth. If you ask him to provide not merely a reference to an article , but to actually recount the specific evidence that convinced him of his particular position, you will find that he very often cannot. The evidence that produced the conviction has faded from memory, and yet the conviction itself steadfastly remains.

Culture requires leisure, but does it really require a "leisured class"?

Lukács cites the following passage from Nietzsche:

A higher civilization can only come about when there are two distinct social castes: that of the working people and that of the leisured, those capable of true leisure; or, to put it more strongly, the caste of forced labor and the caste of free labor.
Nietzsche, Works (Kroner, Leipzig), Volume II, p. 327

Lukács assumes that Nietzsche had perpetuation of bourgeois imperialism as his final goal. In fact, it is an intermediate goal. The final goal is existence of a leisure class that is not subordinated to anyone, and can thus produce art and literature that expresses something individual rather than something devised merely to please others and earn a wage for it’s author.

Nietzsche is certainly right that leisure is required to produce great art, philosophy, and other manifestations of civilization. In order for someone to produce great art he must to a large extent be at leisure to choose his subject matter, and he must not feel compelled to produce art that appeals to the masses. But whether this requires a distinct caste is open to question. Propitious conditions for culture can also occur if there are enough patrons of humanities to support culture, or if the state supports culture, or if there is enough of a paying audience with refined taste to support culture, or even if the artist needs to divert only a small fraction of his time into mundane works that “pay the bills” to support his more advanced art. Could it be that Nietzsche’s pessimistic views on this subject were conditioned by his own inability to obtain an adequate income from his writing?

The label "evil" shields us from a true encounter with art—and with ourselves

In order to shield ourselves from the true awfulness of horrific crimes, we distance ourselves from the perpetrators, putting them into a category separate and isolated from ourselves, the category of the “evil man.”

Great art resists this tendency, making it impossible for us to neatly categorize the perpetrator. We cannot help but sympathize with Roskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

Contemplating horrific crimes without our protective distance forces us to imagine ourselves in the place of the criminal, and to imagine what we would think and feel in his position. What we feel is often a remorse so intense that it cannot possibly be explained by the conventional notion of morality, the notion of following rules. One just doesn’t feel this much remorse for breaking rules. Works like Crime and Punishment teach us that a rule-based morality can never be an inadequate description of the moral universe.

Writer Roommates

Jonathan called out to his roommate Edward, who was sitting in the kitchen, “Edward, could you get me a glass of water?” Edward came to him (sans aqua). “Perhaps," he said, "I should also put on some livery for you, sir?”

“When you're writing, I’ll put on livery for you too. Whoever has the creative fire burning in him is the aristocrat of the moment.”

“Yeah, right. I somehow find myself unable to imagine you waiting on me when I’m having a moment of inspiration.”

“I will, I promise.”

Edward went back to the kitchen to get Jonathan his water, fully intending to collect on the debt at least tenfold.

Jonathan has done something brilliant. In addition to getting Edward to wait on him, he has also given him a new reason to be creative. As it turns out, Jonathan will end up having to pick up Edward’s dry cleaning and groceries. But, oh, what we will not do for a friend whose work we believe in.

Material independence

The formula for material independence is:

r × C + I ≥ E

i.e., real interest rate times capital plus any income from activities which (in the absence of financial concerns) we would be doing anyway in pursuit of our own passions—this sum must be greater than or equal to expenses. The variables r C and I are largely not under our own control. We cannot decide how much capital we will inherit. We cannot decide whether the activity about which we are passionate will produce an income. (Although we can certainly deceive ourselves about where our passion lies.) The only variable that is partially under our control is our expenses. The path to independence is frugality.

Even when it is impossible to satisfy the inequality, we might still achieve a partial independence by pursuing some lucrative but undesirable activity for part of our lives. The danger here is that, in our scramble to make up the shortfall, we will soon come to forget where our true passion lies.

The philosophy of television

Television commercials encourage us in the belief that all of our needs can be met by the passive and impersonal means of the marketplace. The television programming supported by these commercials encourages us in the belief that all of our intellectual needs can be met by adopting the passive role of a spectator.

Television presents a certain point of view on the care of the self, which can be specified approximately as follows: "All the activity of the self should be directed toward the marketplace. Creative activity should be directed toward creating marketable goods in order to acquire money. Recreational activity should be directed toward consuming marketable goods in order to spend this money."

What is absent in the television-inspired view of the world is a relationship of the individual to himself and others not mediated by pixels or dollars.

Let us now contrast the television worldview with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as a representative of the philosophical worldview.

The philosopher “looks to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason.” The television viewer flips the channels until he finds something entertaining.

The philosopher recognizes “how few the things are which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods.” The television viewer recognizes that a rich variety of things is required to be constantly entertained and distracted.

The philosopher knows that “those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.” The television viewer knows that the movements of celebrities are far more entertaining.

Should one respect the law?

The question "Should one respect the law?" resolves into four questions. Do laws deserve more respect than the legislators who devise them? Do legislators deserve more respect than the groups who elect them? Do groups deserve more respect than the individuals that compose them? And, finally, what sort of individual elects our legislators?

The culture of scientific beauty and technical elegance

Today's tendency toward specialization makes ever scarcer the person of both science and letters, the person who is initiated into the esoteric world of science, and yet has enough of a background in the humanities to place his pursuit in a wider historical, intellectual and aesthetic context. One of the reasons such persons are needed is to recognize and articulately describe the nobility and beauty of science.

Goethe says, in regard to mathematics, that the mathematician is excellent only insofar as he is sensitive to the beauty of mathematical truths. This applies just as well to any other science. If, in the future, we are to have scientists and engineers who are, by this standard, excellent, we will need at least some to be articulate and aesthetically educated enough to help their peers recognize the nobility and beauty of their pursuits, pursuits that are most often perceived as useful and lucrative, and yet morally and aesthetically indifferent.

In particular, as the governance of science and engineering is usurped more and more by commerce, which finds value, not in their elegance, but only in their tangible results, it becomes ever more important to articulate the non-commercial, non-utilitarian aspects of science and engineering. If we aspire to make the scientists and engineers in our society something more than wage laborers—to restore to these professions at least some of the reverent awe which was formerly their due—or, at least, to allow scientists and engineers some satisfaction from their work aside from wages—we must preserve what is perhaps the most neglected aspect of the heritage of science and technology, the culture of scientific beauty and technical elegance.