As great as the Stoics were, I lose patience with modern philosophers pretty quickly. This sense of irritation started for me in college when I first encountered the “logical fallacies.”
For anyone unfamiliar, these are several-thousand-year-old frameworks cooked up by very dead Greeks to ensure that the people around you live in fear of your razor-sharp wit. They include terms like “ad hominem” and “red herring” which are shouted by debate bros at the top of their lungs whenever you stray from the path of perfect western logic.
In that philosophy 101 class, I realized that logical fallacies aren’t for people who want to make friends, form connections, and build community.
They are for people who want to be right.
Here’s the thing about being right in the modern world: there’s nothing special about it. We are living in the most information-saturated time in human history. Anyone can find information that backs up whatever crazy nonsense they’re determined to believe. Right now, the last thing the world needs is people who are right, because everyone’s convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are completely correct. We need community. We need to heal.
The path of western logic only ever did one thing for me: it made me miserable. Then I would double down on that misery while trying to find a way out by reading more philosophy. It was a vicious cycle.
Here’s what I’ve learned, and what I wish more modern amateur philosophers understood: the depth and complexity of the moral universe can be found under your average pine tree at four in the afternoon. No dead Greek could ever teach you as much as you learn from the simple act of talking to a squirrel.
The world we live in demands active, patient listeners and problem-solvers. Who cares what you know? Everyone’s convinced that they know something world-changing, and yet the world doesn’t change.
“I love my country, and I want to see it improve. We spend too much time in this country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, and talking past the other person. I prefer to talk with the other person. And that has been the key to my success.”
-Darryl Davis, from A Slight Change of Plans
One of the most important lessons that I learned from working in a retirement home at a young age is that true wisdom comes from lived experience, not endless hours of study. If I’m looking for life advice, I will ask the veteran of two world wars, any older-than-average bartender, and my grandma way before I’ll ask an average academic who’s read all the great philosophers.
I’m tired of people who know that they’re right. Everybody seems to have simple answers to the huge problems that we’re going through as a planet. We sit around forming grand, dramatic theories about why the “other side” thinks and acts the way they do, to spare us the indignity of actually going and talking to them.
It seems to me that the average person would rather sit around convinced that the world is f*cked (as long as they know they’re right) than actually fight to change things for the better.
You don’t get points for knowing stuff. There’s too much free information floating around for that to matter. Your life is measured by the actions you take.
At the end of your life, sitting around looking back on your legacy, will you be happier knowing that you memorized all the logical fallacies, and therefore smoked all the people around you in debates? Or knowing that you helped a Sudanese NGO start locally funded grassroots projects?
Will you be more fulfilled knowing that you spent hours and hours doomscrolling and tweeting, convincing yourself and others that the religious right was out to ruin America? Or having helped plant thousands of trees in deforested areas?
Knowledge and philosophy are like ice cream and salt. A little bit used in the right ways can make life exponentially better. But overconsumption can turn you into Jabba the Hutt.
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