Part 1 looked back on how I struggled with making sense of the world and overcoming nihilism. I was fortunate enough to live in a time where a good education was available and affordable, so I was able to engage in a “philosophical quest” to find many satisfying answers. But what should be obvious by now is that there are many challenges in today’s world that are “at odds” with my philosophical outlook and values, and dealing with these challenges requires some strategies to live comfortably in the modern world. Part 2 discusses some of these challenges and offers guidelines for dealing with them. The guidelines are what I use to “survive” the challenges, and they are offered here as my own answers rather than some “universal” guidance that will work for everyone.
Challenges of the modern world
There are at least 6 major “philosophical” challenges that we face in the modern world. Some of these challenges have already been touched on in the retrospective, but this section looks at those challenges more systematically. They are:
- Lack of personal commitment
- Lack of respect for expertise and serious thinking
- Popular culture and celebrity
- Organized Religion
- Vengeance
- Technology
The first three of these challenges are addressed in this section. The last three have their own sections below. These are all presented as challenges, and then in the next major section I’ve tried to address some practical strategies that I use to deal with these challenges.
As the reader might have surmised by now, I do not share the popular belief that our modern world is the culmination of Western culture, building on and learning and subsuming previous cultures. We are part of a long historical evolution, but it is not one that is necessarily moving forward toward a higher level of existence or cultural refinement. In fact, I’m deep in an opposite camp, where I think we do not understand our cultural heritage and have lost an appreciation of what is unique about human beings, and this thoughtlessness is more pernicious than in other times in history. For the most part, modern culture is superficial and lacking in beauty, and there are so many “lost souls” that we are far from being the pinnacle of Western culture. It’s true that our highly developed science has yielded information that has allowed us to be relatively free of diseases and provided the ability to extract energy, improve transportation, and increase personal wealth. That evolution has allowed greater access to the arts, but overall, these advancements have not made us more thoughtful, and in many ways have contributed to a cultural decline. So, with that damning generalization as an opener, let’s look at some of the underlying issues and outline a strategy for being a better human being in the modern world.
An easy starting point for addressing those accusations of shallowness and “flatness” of the modern world is Kierkegaard’s “The Present Age”. Kierkegaard describes how the lack of passion and commitment leads to the loss of individuality and the rise of a mass culture that “flattens” meaning in the world. We no longer respect great acts of thought or passion as uniquely human endeavors, but as something that anyone could do, given the time and inclination. This flattening of meaning, or leveling, is characterized by idle-talk, or gossiping, and shallow curiosity, and it results in reflection in which we fail to understand the difference between things that are worthwhile or significant. Kierkegaard sees this flattening as deriving from a lack of commitment and warns us that idle talk leads to paralysis and inability to act. As Dreyfus notes on the back cover of the paperback:
[Kierkegaard] foresaw the dangers of the lack of commitment and responsibility in the Public Sphere. When everything is up for endless detached critical comment as on blogs and cable news, action finally becomes impossible.
So, this lack of personal commitment is a key issue dogging modern society. In the video referenced earlier, Dreyfus showed several examples of authentic lives demonstrating commitment to causes, skilled craftsmanship, and even Flamenco artistry. There are many, many other ways to express individuality and commitment to causes, arts, skills, partners, plants, animals, or other things that are part of our world. If you are in a relationship with things that define you, you are doing well in this confusing modern world. However, if you waste too much time reflecting on others and their passions without an appreciation for their commitment, you should question your own values and find a constructive way to focus your passions.
Another key to surviving in the modern world, related to respect for commitment, is respect for expertise and profound thinking. This appreciation for respect and responsible thinking is essential for maintaining qualitative distinctions and avoiding the “leveling” and “flatness” of the modern world. Dreyfus offers the example from academia and the study of literature:
For example, the distinction between serious literature and trivial literature can be maintained only by teachers who are committed to the practice of teaching serious literature. Kierkegaard refers to this kind of commitment as “the qualitative differentiating power of passion” and contrasts it with the leveling reflection of the present age.
This respect for expertise and serious thinking is critical for coming to terms with the modern world, as there are so many people today who have declared themselves experts on topics that they clearly don’t understand and have no ability to appreciate. The number of people in the modern world who have a shallow and misguided understanding of history, literature, music, and philosophy yet offer their lack of knowledge to others as profound truth is enough to make an “intellectually honest” person cry. So, respect for expertise is another key issue we need to address in this modern world.
Another characteristic of our modern world is the pervasiveness of mundane popular culture. This is a challenge for us in the modern world, but one that is so complicated that it needs to be addressed in a dedicated sociological study, and it is probably not even possible, given so many failed attempts already. Our modern fascination with celebrities is another area of study that deserves separate treatment. We have an interesting need to adore pop culture icons, sport figures, and political personalities even though the lives these figures lead are often shallow, corrupt, or hopelessly closed to beauty and wonder. There are many sociological studies of celebrity in the literature that offer good insights into the evolution and need for celebrity.
God, no! (Organized Religion)
One of the questions that I always dreaded but that no one has ever ask me is: do you believe in God? I dreaded that question because it is one of those loaded questions that not only presupposes an answer, but it also presupposes a common understanding of what we mean by “God” and “belief”. Neither of those words is well defined in today’s world, so the question starts off on a bad footing. It’s also a true example of a loaded question, in that what is really being asked is whether you are a good God-fearing person or a heathen, and no one is going to ask you that question unless they suspect you aren’t one of them. It’s one of those questions that many “lost” people in today’s world like to ask, so it is worth having an answer in your back pocket.
The answer I keep prepared, is this question: what do you mean by “God”? Do you mean the Aristotelian “Prime Mover” that sets everything in motion? Or do you mean the Descartes or Miltonian giver of light and reason that allows us to have thoughts and a “soul”? Or do you mean the spiritual force that accounts for our soul, or do you mean some other notion of God taken from various religions. The notion of God has changed throughout history, and an effective approach to avoiding that question is to derail it by putting the question in an historical perspective.
Unfortunately, the way too many people think of “God” in today’s world is a throw-back to the medieval Christian view of a God that imposes order and forms on all things. Dreyfus argues that this view derived from the Roman epoch in which their understanding of being was to impose form on matter, by hammering it into shape. The Romans imposed order onto things, and it was this forceful imposition of order that led to the building of roads and cities, and it was how the rulers controlled the populations. This imposition of form on matter led to the concept of a God that sets up the order in which everyone has their place and direction “from above”. As Dreyfus puts it in the video referenced earlier:
The Christian God imposes all the forms on everything, and everything has its proper place in a hierarchy. And everybody knows what to do because they’ve got that place. The king does what kings do, bishops do what bishops do, and nobody has to worry about whether they should be a soldier or a peasant or a bishop because that’s all settled in their given tradition and their family and their location in the scheme of things.
The modern era starting in the 16th century redefined this concept of God, and in the current era of technology, the concept of God has morphed again. With so many variations on Christian theology, there are many ways to “believe in God”, and we don’t want to trivialize this issue, as this is a topic worthy of considerable discussion. There are many social benefits from a population adopting any belief in God, predominantly because God-fearing people are much less inclined to behave erratically and are typically more compassionate and less self-indulgent. So, I’m glad that so many people “believe in God”.
But that simplistic Middle Ages view of a supreme being who hovers over us and guides us in all our daily activities and provides order in the universe and social placement is still with us today, and those who adopt this view are the ones most likely to ask whether you believe in God. That view of God as a benevolent authoritarian figure shapes many people’s views of politics and social order. But to someone who looks for more satisfying answers to the question of being, this simple view of God is an anachronism left over from the Middle Ages, and it is not a good enough answer to “what makes us human”. It doesn’t account for the Greek concept of emergence, and it doesn’t account for scientific revolutions, and it fails to address the mysterious beauty of the part of the iceberg that sits below the surface.
I’m aware that I’m using the term “Middle Ages” in a disparaging way, as though nothing good could come from that period of history. But when you look at how art, literature and other cultural milestones and innovative thinking are conspicuously missing from this age, the term “Dark Ages” seems appropriate, and the oppressively authoritarian concept of God appears to be at least one source of that cultural decline. It’s as though people in this ere were unwilling to recognize the existence of the matter under the tip of the iceberg, much less appreciate its beauty.
The bottom line is that I try to avoid situations in which anyone would ask me “do you believe in God?”. I don’t think it is a good question, and a proper answer can’t be given in the short time you would get with the person who asked. However, maybe the position of Feuerbach is the best simple answer, that “people created God, and not the other way around”. I wouldn’t claim to be atheist or agnostic, as you don’t have to be either of those to question the Christian fundamentalist view of God. I might even just say “yes,” thinking of God as Aristotle’s Prime Mover or Milton’s light of reason or great art or love. But if the context called for a simplistic answer to belief in the authoritarian Christian God of the Middle Ages, my answer would be “no”, or maybe a more emphatic “God, no”.
Organized religion in the United States includes evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism. Evangelicalism is the doctrine that sustains the Christian God of the Middle Ages, and Christian Nationalism is the political arm that attempts to legislate evangelicalism. Much of modern society still embraces the evangelical doctrines and our politics are deeply colored by Christian Nationalism. These movements are often helpful in keeping our society orderly and they play an important role in preserving respect for personal commitment. So, these movements can be important assets for our society. And yet, in many ways they are harmful and should be viewed with suspicion. Christian Nationalism is especially suspect in that it doesn’t just advocate a private and personal commitment to God but goes much further and attempts to impose these views on others through civil and criminal laws. There has been an enormous amount written about the dangers and hypocrisy of Christian Nationalism and the self-righteousness of evangelicalism, and there is no point in trying to rehash those arguments here. But a warning about attempting dialogue is appropriate, as a philosophical discussion with members of religious organizations about religion is usually not possible. Faced with a room of evangelicals and Christian Nationalists, my response would be a simple “none for me, thanks”, and I’d quietly head for the door.
Counterbalance: In Praise of Religion
Since organized religion is such a pervasive and potent force in our culture, it is worth noting some of the positive aspects of religious convictions other than the increased social accountability referenced in the previous section. The anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann has pointed out how advocates in the evangelical and charismatic Christianity movements report that they feel the presence of God and view the spirit as “real.” They experience God as someone with whom they can communicate on a daily basis through prayer and visualization and speak of God as being in the room with them or touching their shoulder or other physical manifestations of their belief. She observes that they view these projections as quite “real,” as they make no distinction between these physical manifestations and other things in their world.
But, in her studies of anthropology, Luhrmann notes similar projections of physical events in other cultures, and even in cultures that embrace witchcraft or magic. So, what is important here isn’t *what* people believe, but rather *that* they believe. It is the relationship to the object of their belief that is most important. This notion of a deeply held passion brings us back to Kierkegaard’s defining relationship, in which the relationship is what defines our meaning and our reality. The defining relationship becomes a “subjective truth” that is eternal, universal, and necessary. It is a personal truth that lacks scientific objectivity, as these projections are not verifiable for other people. However, those words and touches from God are a subjective truth that meets the other criteria that we expect from “truth”.
I have argued throughout that conviction and commitment are essential for embracing what is most important for us as human beings, and that being in a defining relationship is the key to overcoming nihilism. “Serious” religious beliefs can be a defining relationship, so it is important to recognize the value of those convictions. Besides making people more socially predictable, religious beliefs can have the profound benefit of making us more human and bringing us closer to being.
But it is also important to recognize that there can be many other types of defining relationships that embrace being and that might be more appropriate for those who need a spiritual diet mixed with larger portions of objective truth. And that is why Kierkegaard’s discussion of the defining relation is so profound–it allows us to understand what we need to preserve from our Judeo-Christian heritage while also allowing us to embrace the Greek tradition that has resulted in the evolution of the objective sciences.
Vengeance
This topic is different from the others, in that it discusses a mode of being that I have tried to avoid, rather than having it be a major factor in my own life…or, at least, I hope that it hasn’t been a major factor.
Vengeance and retribution play a huge role in the ugly shift in conservative political thinking in the era of Donald Trump. This period is characterized by culture wars trying to eradicate the liberal ideas of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and equality under the law, with punishment by government intrusion on personal freedoms and censorship. The need for punishment fosters a vigilante “lock them up” mentality driven by populist “anti-elite” sentiment. These revenge-driven culture wars have seemingly replaced the “traditional” conservative values of small government, free markets, and a strong national defense posture against totalitarian regimes. This populism has emerged before in modern society, and if previous cycles hold true, it will eventually become more muted, but it won’t die out completely. So, this flare-up of divisive populism will probably pass, eventually, but that undercurrent of vengeance and need for retribution will remain. But how did we get to this culture of vengeance, and how can we rise above it? And what exactly do we mean by “vengeance”?
The reason vengeance has become so pervasive in the modern world has its roots in the way we embrace the concept of the individual. In the same video referenced earlier, Dreyfus notes that in the modern age, starting with the Renaissance, humans replace God as the giver of meaning of all things in the world (this is the movement called humanism). We embrace a culture of domination over things, and hold as heroes the conquerors, explorers, scientists who revealed nature’s secrets, sports figures or even cowboys who confidently exert their will on the new frontier. This modern approach to things is what Nietzsche calls the “Will to Power,” and the human will to power is the driving force that gives us meaning and motivation.
Nietzsche defines vengeance as “the revulsion of the will against time, and the “it was””. Heidegger discusses this somewhat cryptic quote from Nietzsche in the book “What is a Thing?”. Nietzsche argues that in the modern era, the way we form ideas and pervades our thinking is dominated by revenge, which is the way the human will deals with the past. The past can’t be changed, and this inability to exert power frustrates the will. As Heidegger puts it:
Faced with what “was,” willing no longer has anything to say. Faced with every “it was,” willing no longer has anything to propose. This “it was” resists the willing of that will. The “it was” becomes a stumbling block for all willing. It is the block which the will can no longer budge. Then the “it was” becomes the sorrow and despair of all willing which, being what it is, always wills forward, and is always foiled by the bygones that lie fixed firmly in the past. Thus the “it was” is revolting and contrary to the will. This is why revulsion against the “it was” arises in the will itself when it is faced with this contrary “it was”…This revulsion within the will itself, according to Nietzsche, is the essential nature of revenge.
Nietzsche points out that revenge takes the form of punishment to disguise its hostile nature. Punishment allows man to achieve vengeance with a sense of moral purpose, claiming that the punishment was well-deserved:
‘Punishment’—that is what revenge calls itself: with a lying word it counterfeits a good conscience.
Nietzsche’s hero in the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra has a singular focus to deliver man from vengeance, and he does this by teaching the doctrine of the “eternal recurrence of the same”. Heidegger devotes at least 4 lectures in the book “What is Called Thinking” to this doctrine, yet never puts the doctrine in a form that is easily understood by anyone who hasn’t studied Nietzsche extensively or Aristotle for “ten to fifteen years”. Obviously, a full understanding of this doctrine is way beyond what could be addressed in this retrospective, but we can note that Nietzsche’s doctrine is intertwined with modern man’s understanding of time, and his prescription is a new relationship with time that “celebrates the future, not the past”.
Heidegger poses yet another understanding of time in his tome Being and Time, and I must admit that I don’t understand it any better than Nietzsche’s, lacking that “ten to fifteen” years devoted to the study of Aristotle. But the take-away from this section isn’t to articulate a philosophical doctrine of being and time that overcomes vengeance, but rather to realize that the spirit of vengeance and punishment is woven into our modern culture. Vengeance is a base and evil spirit that we need to rise above to be better human beings. Heidegger also notes that Christianity has another way to deal with frustration of the past through repentance, although repentance only applies to the domain of faith.
I haven’t provided any explicit answer to the question posed earlier: “how can we rise above vengeance?”, but we should note that Heidegger’s understanding of being rejects the notion of human being as a “will to power”, while providing an explanation for how it evolved. He also proposes a different understanding of time that he claims is a return to the early Greek thought of the pre-Socratic philosophers. Once that view of man as will to power is overcome or a different understanding of time is embraced, there is a path to deliverance from vengeance. So, a lot of the discussion prior to this section will provide hints on how to overcome the vengeance that permeates modern culture. Although I feel somewhat freed from vengeance and the need for punishment, I always feel that pull backward and too often fail to resist it. But I take some comfort in knowing that I can recognize this threat and that I am at least occasionally successful in rising above it.
Technology
The most visible difference in the modern world versus previous times is the emergence of technology. It’s easy to focus on computer technology as a primary agent of change, but mechanical technology has probably had an even greater impact on life in the modern world. We have mechanized so many tasks that were once the domain of human labor and have developed machines that are incredibly efficient at digging, mining, assembling and other manufacturing tasks. This efficiency in manufacturing, combined with computerization, has changed the world we live in and forced us to alter or abandon traditional ways of interacting with the world. We need to better understand how technology has affected our relationship with the world and ensure that technology does not dilute or threaten the ways of thinking that we have identified as most important.
As an engineer, I’m quite at home with technology. I’ve been comfortable all my life in applying logic and technical information to solve technical problems. And I’m comfortable with using technological devices and I understand their limitations. I know how electronic devices work down to the transistor level, and I know how computers work. But I’ve also spent a large part of my life questioning whether this type of thinking was worthwhile as a full-time pursuit and questioning the role that technological things should play in our lives. I feel Heidegger has captured what is unique about technology, so once again, we’ll invoke his writing.
Heidegger makes a distinction between two very different types of thinking, which he calls calculative thinking and meditative thinking. The type of thinking that characterizes technology is calculative thinking, which Heidegger says starts with “given conditions”:
Its peculiarity consists in the fact that whenever we plan, research, and organize, we always reckon with conditions that are given. We take them into account with the calculated intention of their serving specific purposes. Thus, we can count on definite results. This calculation is the mark of all thinking that plans and investigates. Such thinking remains calculation even if it neither works with numbers nor uses an adding machine or computer. Calculative thinking computes. It computes ever new, ever more promising and at the same time more economical possibilities.
I usually think of calculative thinking as “cleverness” because those who are most successful at this type of thinking can quickly understand the given conditions and can search through many options to find the answers. I could come up with many, many examples, but one that sticks out is the joke I made about Leon Lett for Super Bowl XXVII. I was on travel in Garland, Texas (Dallas), sitting with co-workers for lunch. The Super Bowl game had been played the night before, and Leon Lett had recovered a fumble of the opposing team and was running it in for a touchdown. However, he did some “showboating” and gloating on the way and a defender was able to knock the ball out of his hand, denying the touchdown. It was a big enough deal to make #2 on ESPN’s Top 25 Biggest Sports Blunders list. So, I’m sitting there with my coworkers discussing the play, and suddenly, the joke came to me. I turned to our host and said: “I know what happened—that was a case of premature jock elation”. The joke was delivered in mixed company and created some awkwardness, but most of my engineering coworkers respected the cleverness, although some stared at me as though I just arrived from another planet. And that’s what it was—cleverness, or in Heidegger’s terminology, calculative thinking. The joke wasn’t a breakthrough in thought, but rather a clever navigation of given conditions, with some organization and skillful wording. I knew that there was a joke there, somewhere, and I was clever enough to find it and give it life. I know that calling a joke “calculative thinking” may sound strange at first but coming up with that joke felt much like solving any other engineering problem. The given conditions were what happened at the game, the need for something clever to say, and what could be said in that environment. Sure, creativity was required, but it was a matter of investigating alternative punchlines, knowing that an “answer” was probably there, waiting to be found, and then I had to plan the joke presentation. There wasn’t any math or computing involved, but the type of thinking was the same as what engineers use to solve more technical issues.
So, what is meditative thinking, and what does it have to do with technology? We had already leaned heavily on that tip of the iceberg analogy, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise when I claim that the exposed iceberg is the domain of calculative thinking and the hidden beauty that is normally not seen is the domain of meditative thinking. Meditative thinking is what allows the hidden beauty or what is always closest to us to emerge. For Heidegger, meditative thinking is a higher form of thinking than technological thinking or cleverness, as there are no preconditions, no goal in mind, and no planning or investigations. In some of his writings Heidegger describes meditative thinking as the gift of beauty from great artists and thinkers. In other writings, it is simply what is most close to us but not in the “clearing” of human experience where words are not yet available to describe it.
I know this discussion of meditative thinking may sound very lofty and abstract, but one example might help illustrate this distinction. Heidegger claims that the type of thinking required in applying scientific knowledge is very much different from the thinking done by philosophers and the great scientific thinkers. Great scientific thinkers such as Newton, Einstein and many others employ meditative thinking to uncover new ways of explaining the hidden relationships in nature and to envision and articulate a mathematical framework for those relationships. Using the terminology from Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, they are the thinkers who cause scientific revolutions, creating “paradigm shifts” in how we understand nature. Once the new paradigm is adopted, we revert to what Kuhn calls “normal science”, applying the new paradigms without any need to be revolutionary. This “normal science” is where technology is born and thrives and blossoms, creating a world of labor-saving and computing technologies that make our lives easier, more orderly, and more predictable. Crudely put, meditative thinking uncovers the patterns and models that we use to interpret the world, whereas calculative thinking applies those frameworks and paradigms in ways that are often quite clever, but not revolutionary.
It’s worth pointing out that many religions claim to be based on meditative thinking, and to the extent that they dwell on the nature of thinking and what it means “to be,” they could be good examples of meditative thought. In fact, the music pieces I enjoy the most are the Bach sacred cantatas, which are works of beauty with religious themes, and some of the greatest works of art ever created were inspired by a deep religious conviction. But unfortunately, many modern religions appear to be based more on calculative thinking, with well-defined dogma and the practical goal of redemption and salvation to escape the threat of a tortuous after-life. This is no doubt an exaggeration based on limited personal observation and public displays, but we are simply noting in passing that many modern organized religions may be more akin to calculative thinking than meditative thinking.
The reason Heidegger dwells on this distinction between calculative thinking and meditative thinking is that we live in an age of technology, in which calculative thinking has mostly taken over and radically changed our relationship to the world:
The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry.
In this new relationship to nature, we become increasingly efficient in developing more technology and most workers are reduced to a replaceable component in this assault on nature. Machines are becoming ever more efficient at excavating and construction, transportation, and manufacturing. Computers are increasingly improving, and they are collecting data that is used for medical and biological technologies and to develop powerful pattern-recognition technologies. By compiling and analyzing warehouses of human speech and writing, computers are now able to display results in “natural language” as artificial intelligence algorithms mature. Heidegger notes that this trend will not stop and that there is little hope of controlling this technological progression:
…technological advance will move faster and faster and can never be stopped. In all areas of his existence, man will be encircled ever more tightly by the forces of technology. These forces, which everywhere and every minute claim, enchain, drag along, press and impose upon man under the form of some technical contrivance or other—these forces, since man has not made them, have moved long since beyond his will and have outgrown his capacity for decision.
So, given our fate to live in an increasingly technology-driven world, what should we do to live harmoniously with this fate, and what can we do to preserve what is beautiful and most essential about human beings? Heidegger introduces two concepts that he believes will help us preserve our nature as thinking beings: “releasement towards things” and “openness to the mystery”. Releasement towards things is a way of allowing technology and technological devices into our lives while at the same time leaving them outside, and we do this by understanding that technological devices are not absolute but remain dependent upon something higher. That “something higher” is the hidden nature of technology, which is the subject of “openness to the mystery”. “Openness to the mystery” is the recognition that there are limitations to calculative thinking, and that meditative thinking is needed to uncover the depths of human being and yield what Heidegger calls “lasting works”.
If releasement toward things and openness to the mystery awaken within us, then we should arrive at a path that will lead to a new ground and foundation. In that ground, the creativity which produces lasting works could strike new roots.
Living in the modern world (survival tips)
We can identify philosophical ideals and objectives that allow us to appreciate human being, but at some point, we need to address that “elephant in the room”, which is the everyday realities of earning income, getting along with coworkers and neighbors, being part of a family, and so many other everyday concerns that often leave us no time at all to engage in philosophical thinking. So, how can we comport ourselves in ways that embrace what is most important to being alive while going about our daily routines to keep everyone fed and healthy and reasonably well-adjusted? And to make sure we keep this discussion grounded in more familiar terms we can quote Joni Mitchell (and appreciate her reference to Shakespeare):
Just before our love got lost you said “I am as constant as a northern star” And I said, “Constantly in the darkness Where’s that at? If you want me, I’ll be in the bar”
The challenges of the modern world outlined in the previous section are just interesting rants unless we can identify some ways of dealing with those challenges in our daily lives. Obviously, we will all need to find our own ways to deal with the general lack of personal commitment, lack of respect for expertise, the shallowness of popular culture and the rapid emergence of technology, and other challenges of the modern age, but there are some guidelines that I follow to help me through daily life. These are:
- Learn to “get along” with others
- Be in a relationship
- Stay engaged with modern culture
- Learn to live with the mundane
- Embrace and control your inner iconoclast
- Develop a good relationship with technology
- Develop skills
- Interact with the physical world
- Understand your physical needs
- Avoid vengeance
- Avoid the “emotions” oversimplification
- Trust yourself
Learn to “get along” with others
All the other guidelines in this section are intended to help one live a fuller and more meaningful life. This one is far more basic, in that it is intended to cover all those negative social behaviors that can get you ostracized, labeled, or even jailed in your community. Obviously, if you can’t maintain the freedom to live your life according to your principles and values, none of the other guidelines here will matter.
There are many published guidelines for “being a better person,” and every religion has a code of ethics and morals that articulate what it takes to be a good person in the eyes of God. Just about every religion is going to have some form of “golden rule” (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), and every religion and social code will specify things you should not do (such as the ten commandments). These “dos and don’ts” are part of a social contract that everyone must follow to get along, and if you don’t understand and conform to those basic behaviors, you will have a difficult and unhappy life. Organized religion provides a useful function of indoctrinating people who otherwise might not honor that contract, but there are many other ways to manage a culture that ensures basic respect of others and provides enough civility to allow most people the personal freedom to pursue a more thoughtful life. Being a “good person” is essential in the modern world if we need to be a part of a workforce and to enjoy the opportunities of a stable social network, so understanding those guidelines and being able to get along with others is a basic skill we must all master to some extent.
A very good definition of being a good person is captured in Galatians, in which the Apostle Paul describes what will always be allowed in Christianity:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
If we can learn to embrace these characteristics and values, we will be able to get by in most social situations. Fortunately, there are many good people who demonstrate these characteristics, regardless of an association with a particular faith, and their examples communicate the value of these practical social attributes to others. The Catholic version of this list (from the Vulgate translations) adds chastity, modesty, and generosity, but you will get along just fine in today’s world by embracing those original 9 attributes as a personal moral code.
It’s worth noting that for many people in today’s world, being a good person is an “end in itself”, and as a result, there are many good people who aren’t concerned with other philosophical issues. That’s fine, but for someone who needs an answer to nihilism and who needs to question why things are and where ideas and things come from, this moral code is helpful but not sufficient. It’s also worth noting that there are many bad people who don’t share those same values and who prey on good people and take advantage of their good characteristics. Those social dynamics are interesting, but far beyond what we want to address in this retrospective.
Be in a relationship
The discussion of Heidegger and Kierkegaard outlined the role of relationships in defining our world. There are many types of relationships: with other people, religious convictions, political causes, skills or crafts, social organizations, and so forth. Kierkegaard argues that the relationship with Jesus is most valuable, but Dreyfus argues that Kierkegaard’s defining relationship embodies a higher truth with another person in the world. Any relationship that involves unwavering commitment is better than getting lost in the flatness of the modern world. Everyone needs to be in some type of relationship with deeply held personal commitments to keep from being overwhelmed and flattened by the challenges of living in the world.
Stay engaged with modern culture
There are so few concerns and issues in today’s world that pass the 100-year test mentioned earlier, but we need to stay involved with those concerns, nonetheless. That means that we need to stay engaged to some extent with today’s crazy politics, the culture wars, the pop music, major sports and other celebrities, automobiles, cell phone apps, and so many other issues that will look strange to us or even silly in another 100 years. We don’t have to take these issues as seriously as other people, but if we ignore them entirely, we are not going to be able to interact with others and will be marginalized as useless “geezers” who lack any understanding of the world around them. A strategy for surviving in a shallow and superficial world is outlined in the next section.
Learn to live with the mundane
I already noted that a good understanding of mundane popular culture is a complicated topic that needs separate treatment. But there is a nice summary in the YouTube video with Sting, in which he talks about popular music lacking surprises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efRQh2vspVc:
…the essence of music is surprise. When I listen to a piece of music, if I’m not surprised by a piece of music within the first eight bars, I’ve stopped listening, I’ve switched off, I need surprise. Both Dominic [Miller, his guitarist] and I have a teacher called J. S. Bach. You play eight measures of Bach, and you will be surprised, every time…composition is really about surprise.
Obviously, there are many other great composers who can offer surprises, but so often popular music lacks that element of surprise that results in a feeling of freshness and openness. Another great composer spoke of great music allowing us to “feel as yet unfelt emotions”, which is another way of thinking about the surprise referenced in the video. When so much of the world around us is mundane and simply repeating the same musical ideas that we have heard before, then music has lost its ability to open new worlds, and instead just reinforces what we already know. This reinforcement of the same old ideas is comforting to people who need the affirmation of mass thinking to feel better about themselves, but it is also a sign that our culture has become stagnant and is no longer capable of being surprised.
Unfortunately, resisting the mundane can easily result in your being branded an arrogant intellectual, so you need to learn how to live in popular culture without having it strip you of your reverence for freshness and surprise and openness. Heidegger’s concept of “being open to the mystery” is a “headier” and more poetic version of Sting’s “surprise”, but in both cases we find guidance for living in the mundane while maintaining our respect for greater works and attending to our thirst for true innovation.
Another way to deal with the mundane is to preserve the past. There is a common but incorrect view that culture has evolved over the last 3000 years and that modern man is the pinnacle, appropriating and leveraging all previous knowledge. Although this may be true in the sciences and technology, it is simply not true in philosophy, literature, music, and other arts. Anyone who seriously listens to the devotion in Bach or understands Shakespeare’s vision of purity and nobility or looks for insights into human behavior through Greek mythology will be able to attest that these great peaks of western culture are much higher than the smaller hills on which most modern performers stand. We have a rich and profound history, and we have devoted expert scholars among us who try to preserve and help others appreciate that history. Even if there is not enough time or educational opportunities to learn from our scholars, we need to recognize that there is greatness that we may not understand and we need to appreciate those who dedicate their lives to preserving and protecting those peaks. The populist notion that academics are elitist and out of touch might have a small amount of truth, but for the most part those who dedicate their lives to preserving the past serve as a desperately needed “conscience” for the modern world.
Embrace and control your inner iconoclast
Reading philosophy and reflecting critically on calculative thinking can be frustrating in a world in which most people are content to blend in and not ask difficult questions or “rock the boat” in any way. One response that comes naturally is to be disruptive by questioning what others do and by openly rejecting their heroes and beliefs. This behavior will brand you as an iconoclast, and I’ve been called that numerous times by coworkers that I trusted and respected.
There’s not a lot you can do if you don’t accept other’s beliefs, except to learn to control what you say and when you say it. Living in a small town can make the problem worse, and having a job that requires extensive social interaction will simply not work if you can’t tame or otherwise control your inner iconoclast. Fortunately, many jobs in engineering and technology don’t require the social interaction that can reveal your rebellious thinking, and there are many large urban areas that allow one to live inconspicuously, without worry of hurting someone’s feelings by questioning their beliefs. There is no simple answer or guideline for managing that inner iconoclast, other than to learn when to keep your thoughts private and not say things that will have others want to ostracize you. And if you dare to be an iconoclast amongst neighborhood religious zealots, you might get sentenced to burn in Hell for eternity. But at least you won’t get assigned to clean the Corgi butts in the afterlife—we know who is getting that duty.
Develop a good relationship with technology
Technology has emerged as a defining characteristic of the modern age, and no one can stop technology from continuing to evolve and play a larger role in our lives. We are going to see an increased dependence on machinery to make humans more efficient, and when combined with the algorithms for machine learning, more and more manufacturing work that was done by humans in the past will be done by “smart” machines. We have already become dependent on technical devices and networked communications in most service industry workplaces, and companies that don’t embrace the new technologies are getting left behind. We need to learn how to live with these new technologies as the pace of technological evolution increases.
Heidegger talks about “releasement toward things” to let technology into our daily lives without allowing technology to define our relationship with nature and others in the world. This comportment towards technology sounds promising, but it only makes sense if you start with a proper understanding of technology. Most people do not understand the science of how things work and the calculative thinking that underlies the evolution of technical devices. As a result, they view technological devices as some type of magic that is as mysterious as great art or profound thinking. That’s why I think it is important to get a proper education in the sciences, so that you can understand how technology has evolved and can see behind the apparent magical nature of these devices. For example, you should know the basics of how a computer works and how a motor works and appreciate how machine learning works, so that the devices we are surrounded with don’t appear to be so magical and mysterious. In fact, it is important to know the basics of electricity and plumbing and carpentry and automotive repairs, just so that these technologies don’t overwhelm us and get conflated with things that are far more complex and mysterious.
So, a good relationship with technology is one in which you both use technological devices and understand how they came about and how they work. You don’t need to understand all the engineering involved in technical devices, but you need to see that there is no mystery involved in technology, but rather a long history of evolution with lots of calculative thinking and scientific discovery along the way.
Also, there are some practical benefits of having a basic understanding of technical devices. This insight is going to allow you to depend less on repairmen and technicians who make a living understanding technology, so there can be some economic benefit from not having to rely on their services. And, obviously, just knowing when to call for technical help and being able to understand their fees can save you considerable expense and can help avoid the embarrassment of being exploited.
Develop skills
If Heidegger is right, one of the most “human” or “humanly primal” things you can do is interact with the world as an artisan or craftsman. He claims that this appreciation of skilled interaction with the world began with the ancient Greeks and lies at the heart of Western philosophy. The skilled craftsman embraces the concept of beauty as “emergence,” allowing the underlying nature to emerge as a “thing”. The great artist reveals new ways of thinking about the world and establishes new patterns of thought that open new possibilities for things “to be”. We can’t all be great artists or great thinkers, but by embracing the role of the craftsman we can better appreciate “being” and live a life that is more meaningful and better aligned with beauty.
In an age dominated by constant technological evolution and in which we use machinery to forcefully impose order on the world, how do we succeed as craftsmen and allow the discovery of new ways of thinking and beauty to emerge? Dreyfus offers many examples in the video referenced earlier. My answer has been to understand technology and use that understanding in making craft items that are innovative and unique. I try to apply my knowledge of electronics and acoustics and my limited ability to use machinery to build audio equipment. It’s a hobby, meaning that it is a pursuit done more for pleasure and recreation than as a job, but it is one that requires more time and commitment than most hobbies.
The hobby work I do in audio design is quite serious stuff at times. I can design complex electronic circuits, design the circuit boards, assemble them, and write the code needed to control them. I’ve written simulations of audio designs for the PC, written code for Android phones, and even hand-assembled microcomputer code back before high level languages were available for those devices. I’ve come up with some innovative loudspeaker topologies, and I used to attend the Rocky Mountain Audio Festival to see what other designers are working on. Most recently I’ve been working with electronically steerable array loudspeakers, and I enjoy applying DSP and other design technologies in ways that most others would never consider.
Although audio is my main hobby, I’ve got many other interests that allow me to change the world around me in interesting and sometimes innovative ways. From building onto the house or repairing the house, or working on cars, or making tables, I enjoy working with things and creating new things. I can’t claim to be a great craftsman or even highly skilled, but I respect those who are and applaud their efforts. These skills aren’t going to help you socially, but they keep you close to a more appreciative understanding of human being.
Interact with the physical world
Heidegger quotes the 18th-century author Johann Peter Hebel several times in his discussion of thinking:
We are plants which—whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not—must with our roots rise out of the earth in order to bloom in the ether and to bear fruit.
This quote is one of those simple sayings that can get under your skin, where you keep thinking about it on many occasions. The main thought here is that human beings and their spirit, are part of and intertwined with nature, and that without that rootedness and interaction with the ether, we can’t grow. But what is most interesting about this quote is the way it applies to both our physical and spiritual being. Heidegger uses it to talk about meditative thinking and its rootedness and nourishment, but it applies as well to our interaction with the “physical” world as well. Heidegger doesn’t draw a sharp distinction between the spirit and the physical, so this ambiguity is not a surprise.
It’s the physical connotation of Hebel’s quote that is most unnerving. There is an emerging view of the human body as an extremely complex chemical machine, evidenced by new areas of study in what is usually called biomedical engineering. If we combine that view of our physical nature with Hebel’s observation, we become more aware of how interconnected we are with nature, and we appreciate how our biological roots and interaction with the ether, or the world around us, is needed for us to grow and thrive. We can’t easily separate this interaction with nature from our spirit, and it makes more sense to embrace our physical being than to deny it, as has been done in many religions.
Our need for physical interactions includes our urges to touch and manipulate things as well as others. It is important and uniquely human to work with things around the house and manipulate everything from food to gardens to projects of any sort. It is important to touch others to address our need to be interconnected with other humans and to satisfy those biological urges. It is important to kiss your wife, pet the dog, put food in your mouth, feel the sun, get wet, and smell the outdoors, as all these interactions with nature and other beings are part of how the human chemical machine grows and thrives. Interacting with the physical world is how plants grow and eventually bear fruit, and although we are far more complicated than plants, there is that common truth that we too need to interact with the world to grow and thrive.
Avoid vengeance
Western philosophy evolved to embrace the human will, and the will responds to things no longer under its control by attempting to “make things right” through vengeance. So, modern man is inclined toward vengeance and seeking restitution for perceived limitations on its power. In today’s complex world of diverse interests, there are many ways in which the will can be frustrated in its need to exert power, and this frustration results in an underlying indignation and hostility that can be harmful to constructive social and personal relationships. Unfortunately, that’s just one of those “cultural winds” (or zeitgeist), that shape our responses to events and other people in today’s world.
The section on vengeance in this retrospective addressed some possible philosophical solutions for rising above vengeance, but any such “practical” solution will start with observation and recognizing the extent to which vengeance dominates the spirit of our times. It is important to learn to recognize vengeance in its many manifestations and to find a path that results in more positive relationships. Eventually the cultural winds will change, and vengeance will play a smaller role in defining how we approach others, but in the short term we need to remain vigilant and keep vengeance out of our lives as best we can.
Avoid the “emotions” oversimplification
A common way to map out the range of human response to events is to resort to a “model” for feelings or emotions. The “Feeling Wheel” (Wilcox) and the “Wheel of Emotions” (Plutchik) are often used, with many variants, including impressive colorful maps that attempt to depict a comprehensive range of human feelings or emotions. One of the more interesting emotion maps is based on word association studies on people’s response to works of art: https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/art-emotions-map/. Similarly, we often rely on a palette of emojis to summarize our feelings in sending text messages.
These wheels and maps are useful for modeling certain types of human behavior for certain cultures, but they suggest a fixed wiring of the brain that oversimplifies a much wider range of possible human responses. Heidegger has a lot to say on moods, as he explains that humans are always in some mood or another. However, he rejects the common view that moods are private feelings that arise from some innate “wiring” or experience from within that we can discover by reflection and depict in maps. In doing so, he makes an argument like the ready-to-hand and present-at-hand distinction that applies to objects, such as hammers. He argues that moods are the way that we first encounter the world through concerned interaction, and that “emotions” are artifacts of analysis that obscures the cultural richness and intentionality of human moods.
Dreyfus offers an example that illustrates the cultural origin of moods and argues that there are social moods that the traditional understanding of “emotions” fails to account for:
Shame over losing face, for example, is something one can feel only in Japan, while the exhilaration of romantic love was for a long time the exclusive property of the West.
The comedienne Zarna Garg points out this difference of the West’s “I love you” culture in her special on Prime Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Ou078IjbU. She notes that in Indian culture couples do not say “I love you” and that if her husband were to say it to her, she would know that he was cheating on her with a white woman.
And Dreyfus expounds on this concept of social moods by quoting an early lecture from Heidegger:
A “well-disposed” person brings a good mood to a group. In this case does he produce in himself a psychic experience, in order then to transfer it to the others, like the way infectious germs wander from one organism to others? . . . Or another person is in a group that in its manner of being dampens and depresses everything; no one is outgoing. What do we learn from this? Moods are not accompanying phenomena; rather, they are the sort of thing that determines being-with-one-another in advance. It seems as if, so to speak, a mood is in each case already there, like an atmosphere, in which we are steeped and by which we are thoroughly determined. It not only seems as if this were so, it is so; and in light of these facts, it is necessary to dispense with the psychology of feelings and experiences and consciousness.
The point of this section is to point out that we should be suspicious of attempts to create a psychology of feelings and consciousness, as these attempts are usually oversimplifications that blind us to a more insightful understanding of human nature. I tend to cringe when people describe themselves in terms of their “emotions” and “feelings”. That pseudo-scientific account of human behavior is usually too shallow to be taken seriously, although our popular culture requires that we accept those accounts as “real”. Many people also tend to advocate “happy” or positive feelings over the negative ones as the way to lead a better life. Although there is some value in this simplistic outlook, Andre Gide has more to offer when he says: “It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made”.
Trust yourself
The modern age in the West is probably much more difficult to live in than other eras, given its social diversity, the emphasis on capitalism and the unrelenting pace of technology. Many modern writers have commented on the difficulty of finding meaning and having lasting values that keep people “well- adjusted” in this age, and I have no appetite to address those observations in this retrospective. There is some good practical guidance in the literature that will work well to address those issues for many people, but most of that guidance does not work for a “tekkie” with a philosophy background like me.
But some guidance that will work for most everyone, including myself, is to keep questioning what most people accept as truth and to question how our thoughts come about and how different they are from people living 100, 200 or 1000 years ago. That questioning attitude will keep you open to more profound thoughts and will help reaffirm how deep and mysterious we really are. Those references to what lies under the visible part of the iceberg are not just poetic vagueness—they are an important way to keep focused on things that are most meaningful and valuable.
Another important guideline is to understand the limits of technological thinking and technological evolution. Technology is going to evolve whether we understand it or not, and there is no way to stop it. But by better understanding the type of thinking involved and recognizing the danger of allowing this type of thinking to completely overtake us, we can achieve a much more harmonious relationship with the modern world. Heidegger talks of the importance of understanding the dangers of technology when he quotes Holderlin:
Where there is danger, there is hope (Doch wo Gefahr ist, da wächst das Rettende auch).
Put more bluntly, there is hope for modern man when he understands the danger of technology, and when we no longer recognize the danger, there is no hope.
A final guideline that people like me need to survive more comfortably in this modern world is to trust that thoughtful refection, skillful interaction with the world, being in a relationship and understanding technology is part of living a rich and full life, and you don’t need other people’s approval to be happy. There are so many social pressures in today’s world that call on us to live our lives in a certain way and be a member of a religious organization or be part of some social group, and in most cases those pressures have origins that are superficial or misguided and that are no longer relevant. It may sometimes make your life easier by “going with the flow”, as long as you can stay true to your principles. Sometimes you may feel out of place and misadjusted, but often, you will find that it is the people around you who are empty and even crazy and that in comparison, you are OK.
There are going to be many times when you do things that are embarrassing, and that you will regret for many years. But if you can stay true to your values and keep open to beauty and wonder and lead a thoughtful life, all those stupid and embarrassing things will pass, and damaged relationships can be repaired. Sometimes it takes some extra trust in yourself and confidence in your values to get through rough times. Your confidence and stability will earn you some respect…or at least some intimidation, and that respect is a solid foundation for building or rebuilding relationships.