I occasionally get remarks that a philosopher would agree with something I’ve said or has made observations similar to my own. It happened yesterday in the comments to a post (apparently Hobbes concurs). Off the top of my head, I’ve been told I’m broadly Machiavellian, that Nietzsche would approve of this essay, and Bastiat would endorse this one. I’ll take people at their word, because I haven’t read any of these guys.
It may surprise to know I’ve never read any philosopher. I’ve been exposed to concepts and phrases from scrolling the timeline, but that’s the extent of my philosophy exposure.
This is an intentional decision, for two different reasons.
I listened to this modified song on loop while writing.
Nietzsche Speaks of This
I was turned off by philosophers at a young age. I kept seeing people leverage them as smart-by-association “Hegel speaks of this, Kant concurs” intellectual stolen valor. As if name-dropping a guy’s interpretation of the world were a way to score status points. I don’t care what he thinks, what do YOU think? Or do you?
Not only does this not warrant any big-brain credits, but acting as a conduit for the ideas and musings of others suggests you don’t have many of your own. Being an avatar for someone else’s opinions is not a personality. It always struck me as weird and hollow to brag about serving as a node for another man’s output; I view this as antithetical to intellectualism, yet it’s typically perceived as synonymous with it.
What you sincerely believe should stand on its merits, buttressed by your own defenses. When I see a philosopher referenced, I sense an outsourcing of cognitive effort, handing out a clever-looking pastiche of what another thought up. In its worst manifestations, it’s an Appeal to Authority-esque “I don’t know why I think this, but this guy did so… checkmate!” that severely rubs me the wrong way.
It’s possible for people to use a thinker’s ideas as points of departure, crafting a unique perspective that’s not a simulacrum. I just… don’t see that happen very often.
It didn’t come off as people sharing their own thoughts in pursuit of enhancing another’s worldview; it felt like a pissing contest. “If you would please consult Heidegger on these matters, you will see your folly is… most follyful”. I saw exchanges existing only to impress those I had no desire to impress.
Philosophy in practice reeked of cognitive insecurity, like a display for the speaker’s intellectual vanity, peacocking beliefs that weren’t even his! He just picked them off the academic grocery store shelf, grabbing a box of cereal from the philosophy aisle while saying, “This is good. I like it. This is mine now. I am now a staunch proponent of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch school of epistemology”.
I’ve come to learn the quality of someone’s thinking is inversely proportional to how many names and ‘well so-and-so says this’ they rely on. When they bombard you with the opinions of others, name-dropping to make it seem credible, they reveal themselves to be operating entirely in someone else’s frame, exhibiting little to no ability to synthesize insights or assess information on its own merits… “Did anyone else say it’s okay to think this? What book is this from?”. These types can only interpret what you say if it’s sufficiently couched in credentials.
You cannot borrow philosophical truths, you earn them. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, however you still must move your legs and add something yourself; you can’t just sit on his shoulders and call yourself tall. If you’re going to flaunt it, at least get there on your own, man.
The vibes I’m referring to are as follows:
My initial aversion to formal philosophy stemmed from these observations, formed in my early 20s. However I still avoid philosophers to this day, and the reason has evolved past my distaste for their adherents’ smuggery. My issue isn’t who reads philosophy, it’s what the practice itself can and cannot accomplish.
There's a strange tension in critiquing philosophy while occasionally engaging in it myself (I honestly don’t consider what I do to be philosophy, but technically it is). This is not lost on me. If you find it hypocritical, please keep in mind I contain multitudes.
Second-Hand Scars
Some answers can be handed to you, such as facts that let you pass a right/wrong test. Math, chemistry, accounting, medicine. Objective domains. If the LLM can cleanly answer it, it probably fits into this bucket. Dmitry speaks of thi… excuse me, I speak of this in Trashbags of Facts and Insipid Oceans.
But, there are answers you shouldn’t be handed, as they can’t be sufficiently ‘handed over’ anyway; because they’re not actually answers, they’re existential wounds. “You know how I got these scars…” is the prelude to a genuine philosophical accounting.
The following image (compared to the ones above) juxtaposes the status-seeking pseudo-insights that litter discourse with what an authentic exposition resembles. It’s raw. Like porn: you can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.
An act of philosophy unveils a harsh reality most have evolved not to notice, by design. It’s when the human mind is exposed to nature’s axioms in jarring fashion. It almost always involves a tragic journey. Suffering is a prerequisite for producing something viscerally profound.
You cannot absorb the lessons of such a journey without embarking on it yourself. Muscles do not grow without weight-bearing stress; sentience does not expand and mature without soul-straining distress.
There are no shortcuts, this includes books. You can’t inherit scars. Philosophy is tracing around disfigurement left on your skin.
Truth in Different Shapes
There are three kinds of truths:
A scientific truth is one that’s technically true. A basic fact.
A Darwinian truth is one that’s technically false, but if you act like it’s true it aids survival or your navigation of the world.
It’s usefully true, because it results in good (healthy, productive) behaviors. The error in your model produces accuracy in your actions.
Example: A porcupine throws its quills. This is scientifically, technically wrong. But it’s useful to believe it because the resulting behavior aids survival (you avoid the porcupine under false pretenses and don’t get pricked).
Grandmas are chock full of Darwinian wisdom: don’t go outside when it’s cold, or you’ll catch a cold! Cracking knuckles causes arthritis, swimming after eating gives cramps. All technically wrong. All useful in some way.
Most religious stories are civilizational Darwinian truths. Nature doesn’t do coincidences at scale, and supernatural myths are scaled-up survival heuristics.
Religion is a human universal for the same reason language is: populations that had it outcompeted populations that didn’t. It’s beneficial for societal coordination and cohesion that we collectively convene on certain behaviors as morally “true”, regardless of the concrete veracity of the story motivating them.
Assessing religions on scientific grounds commits a category error: like judging a hammer by how well it writes. They are evolutionary instruments, not intellectual ones. They are not scientific stories, but moral coordination frameworks. Usefully true, technically false.
A philosophical truth is an unforgiving confrontation with the nature of reality that alters your navigation of the world. Whether this manifests in healthier behavior is… to be determined.
This is what I mean when I say most have not evolved to assimilate philosophical base truths; there is diminishing Darwinian utility to sentience after a certain degree. The species is not made better off if we become too conscious. Pathological consciousness, otherwise known as nihilism, is harmful. NPCs exist for a reason; nature does not do coincidences at scale.
Contemporary philosophy guys who dissolve coherent, actionable structure into self-referencing symbol recursion looping without external reference (philosophy citing philosophy to prove philosophy) and stare so aggressively into their navel they conclude “depression is the only rational stance” are prime examples of intelligence morphing into idiocy. Consciousness eating its own tail.
Muscles are metabolically expensive, and sentience is cognitively burdensome; there are decreasing, and eventually negative, returns to each.
Philosophical truths can be scientific, Darwinian, both, or neither. There are kinds you are better off not knowing.
Describing a Symphony
Men wear their realizations on their face. Hard-gained wisdom seeps out of their demeanors. You couldn’t hide it if you tried. Watch someone who’s actually been through divorce versus someone who’s read about attachment theory. Listen to someone who’s built a company versus someone who’s studied entrepreneurship. Watch someone who’s buried a loved one versus someone who’s contemplated suffering. The weight sits differently.
You can spot borrowed insights the way you can spot a fake military uniform. It’s apparent when someone does not carry the burden of his own insights; it’s how you can tell he didn’t gain them through a journey but borrowed them from a book.
The scars of another can be regurgitated. Memorized. Cited passively to earn debate points. But they’re inherently not tidbits of academic information; they’re unkind revelations, intimate epiphanies, emotional lesions. They sort you must endure to internalize.
If you read and nod in agreement but didn’t get there on your own, it’s tantamount to reading a description of a symphony. Or a written summary of a piece of art. You did not hear it. You did not view it. There’s only so much you can apprehend without bearing witness yourself. Experience is the essence of philosophical intelligence, not symbol rotation and rearranging definitions.
You can parrot what you’ve been told the symphony resembles, but you will never appreciate the depth, beauty, pain, and knowledge that went into its discovery through mere recapitulation. Some lessons must be experienced. Unalloyed philosophy is when people recite their own symphonies. Pseudo-philosophy is describing the symphony of someone else.
When I saw this scene as a kid, maybe around eight years old, it grabbed me and never let go. It beautifully encapsulates first-hand scars vs second-hand symphonies:
Life Road Trips
Getting to uncomfortable truths is part of life’s road trip. You need to see the sights, hear the sounds, and think the thoughts for it to be properly appreciated. You don’t borrow the pictures of others, you take your own shots. The point of a road trip isn’t the destination.
Philosophy is fundamentally a library of incredibly sensitive (acutely observational + emotionally resonant), introspective, contemplative, perceptive people documenting their life road trips. What they’ve reaped, felt, been painfully subjected to and uplifted by.
Their experiential pilgrimage informs their contemplative output. You have to do the thing, you can’t just read about the thing.
Is their excursion relevant to you? I don’t know… did you take the same road? In the same car? Same weather? At the same speed? Are you as good a driver? Did you break down at the same spots? Are you one for detours?
Philosophy, the kind that isn’t just sophisticated-sounding symbol rotations, is an autobiographical compendium of a man’s most salient life trips.
You cannot simply copy and recite these things. They will never be yours.
Philosophy of a Fist
My approach to the great pensive tradition does not scale; it’s specific to how I process information and derive conclusions. I don’t like to be told what to think on entirely interpretive matters and don’t feel the need to borrow personal insights. This approach is likely counterproductive for most. The lived road trips of many are devoid of experiential substance, and they're elevated by living vicariously through those who have the eyes to see more.
Advanced society would be worse off if everyone viewed philosophy as I do. For the simple reason it’s often better to at least have a verbal understanding (answers that let you pass a test) of someone else’s trials and tribulations than none at all.
The ‘get there through doing’ method of philosophy yields an embodied understanding: wisdom that resides not solely in your mind, but in your bones. This produces an internalized, intuitive, physical grasp of a concept by virtue of it being revealed to you, not given to you. You don’t forget (and also cherish) the stuff you have to earn.
Reading the symphonies of others doesn’t allow you to comprehend something in an embodied, integrated way; it only yields nominal awareness. Do people who read baby books but don’t have babies fathom what it means to be a parent? Philosophy degrees with no personal road trips are analogous to reading “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” written by someone with no kids who’s here to tell you what it’s like to be a mom. Peddlers of second-hand symphonies.
You can watch Jon Jones fight, mimic his techniques, study his mannerisms. Yet embedded in those superficially reproducible moves are decades of ingrained instructions and methods he cultivated through combat. Those oblique kicks that look simple contain 10,000 hours of distance management learned through getting tuned up. The effortless head movements encode decades of pattern recognition from sparring. The way he reads an opponent’s hip movement to predict strikes is scar tissue that learned to think and move.
You cannot only study MMA. You develop a relationship with violence by enduring violence. By learning your elbow’s geometry through taking elbows yourself, then returning the favor. By discovering which ribs break easiest because yours did. Repeatedly. The classroom can teach you the names of techniques. The cage teaches you which ones work on Tuesday when you’re tired and your opponent is faster than the video suggested.
There are shortcuts for passing tests, not for building muscles and movement; they both require stress and experience to cultivate and hone. Hormesis applies to all of life.
Applied philosophical acumen doesn’t come from studying others getting punched, it comes from taking punches. Degrees in Punching Studies are no substitute.
![Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson [750×400] : r/QuotesPorn](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FqsY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F11070213-813b-43d8-b288-702a50bde50c_750x400.png "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.\" - Mike Tyson [750×400] : r/QuotesPorn")
Concluding
I know many of you read and enjoy philosophy, so don’t take this as a slight or personal criticism. These are simply reflections and decisions specific to me and how I learn.
I prefer to take my own pictures, earn my own bumps and bruises, describe the scenic overlooks myself, driving life’s Route 66 without another’s personal map. The map is rarely the terrain, anyway. To document my symphony as I hear it, I don’t want to be primed or prompted.
I suspect (hope) people can sense how my reasoning and breakdowns reflect conclusions I arrived at through personal mental detours and life lessons, fleshed out in the articulation and defense. There’s a journey in there, you can’t fake that. So, for better or worse, you are witnessing the output of a guy who is trying to drive without borrowed directions.
I always smile when told that someone before me “speaks of this”. It means another driver with similar temperament and sensitivities once took the same exit I did, saw the same valley, felt the same vertigo at the same turn. Fellow travelers comparing pitstops earned through motion, not borrowed from maps.
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Jung speaks of this
There is a reason that true liberal arts education (the school of hard knocks + working around other geniuses + time for quiet contemplation in exile) cannot be delivered to the masses.