NEWARK, NEW JERSEY - 12 SEPTEMBRE : Diddy se produit sur scène lors des MTV Video Music Awards 2023 au Prudential Center le 12 septembre 2023 à Newark, New Jersey. (Photo par Noam Galai/Getty Images pour MTV)

Tout d’abord les faits, puis les faits alternatifs. Sean Combs — alias Diddy, Puff Daddy et P. Diddy — ne réside plus dans son manoir de 19 millions de dollars sur Star Island à Miami, mais au Metropolitan Detention Center de Brooklyn, où le magnat de la musique de 54 ans partage actuellement des repas et des quartiers de sommeil avec le fraudeur crypto Sam Bankman-Fried parmi d’autres criminels divers. Selon son acte d’accusation fédéral, le fondateur de Bad Boy Records a été arrêté pour ‘avoir créé une entreprise criminelle dont les membres et associés se livraient à… la traite des êtres humains, le travail forcé, l’enlèvement, l’incendie criminel, la corruption et l’entrave à la justice’. Les tabloïds se sont régalés de l’histoire d’orgies de plusieurs jours, alimentées par l’alcool, les drogues et ces 1 000 bouteilles d’huile pour bébé découvertes sur les lieux.
La débauche ressemblait à quelque chose tout droit sorti de The Great Gatsby, se souvient Elisabeth Ovesen, auteur à succès de Confessions of a Video Vixen : ‘Des hommes en smoking, des femmes nues avec des ailes d’ange, du champagne et des nageurs synchronisés à l’extérieur, avec des relations sexuelles en groupe dans les salles de bains, des plateaux de hors-d’œuvre et des pilules de drogue passées à l’intérieur.’ Une fête de Diddy aurait eu lieu dans un jet privé qui a volé autour du monde pendant des jours — une innovation qui aurait amusé l’imagination de Fitzgerald.
Alors que les ragots continuent de parler des frasques sexuelles, le cercle international des célébrités de A, B, C et D — de Leonardo DiCaprio et Jennifer Lopez à Derek Jeter et Nicole Richie — sont tous devenus étrangement silencieux, pétrifiés par ce qui pourrait sortir alors que les détails des sessions de ‘freak off’ commencent à émerger lors de ce qui promet d’être le procès le plus sensationnel depuis que Johnny Depp et Amber Heard ont débattu de la question de savoir quelle matière fécale a taché les draps. Sans parler des scores d’anciens amis et relations de Diddy sur des charbons ardents en attendant la prochaine docuserie Netflix sur les abus de Diddy — ‘Une narration complexe s’étalant sur des décennies’, selon le titre d’une exclusivité de Variety. Déjà, les tentacules du scandale ont touché certains des noms les plus puissants de l’industrie musicale — du co-fondateur de Def Jam Recordings Russell Simmons au légendaire Clive Davis.
Ce cirque indécent a conduit le comédien Bill Maher à conclure que ‘l’industrie musicale est cette fosse ouverte de misogynie, et franchement, de viol et de harcèlement sexuel, et d’une manière ou d’une autre, l’Ange de la Mort a volé au-dessus d’eux’. Et, comme d’habitude, Maher a raison sur quelque chose — bien que ce soit quelque chose de troublant. Les médias traditionnels peuvent être bien équipés pour couvrir le sexe, les drogues et la chute des célébrités. Mais leur formation sur ce que leurs professeurs appelaient ‘vérité vérifiable’ ne les aide guère lorsqu’il s’agit d’un mal surnaturel remontant aux Chevaliers Templiers, encore moins de l’ange de la mort et de ses consorts terrestres.
En revanche, le scandale a plongé la foule conspirationniste d’extrême droite dans une frénésie d’hystérie satanique de ‘je vous l’avais dit’. Les vérités croient maintenant posséder ce qu’ils considèrent comme une preuve positive que ce qu’ils ont toujours dit est vrai : il existe un cabale d’élites subversives dont le commerce est le trafic d’enfants. L’idée séculaire a été redynamisée dans l’imagination de ces individus que FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver et Ipsos n’arrivent jamais tout à fait à cerner, les hommes et les femmes qui ont toujours soupçonné que Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion et chaque autre rock star qui s’est déjà habillée en rouge sont membres des diaboliques Illuminati — aux côtés de Tom Hanks, Beyoncé et des Royals britanniques.
Les faits sont des faits : les Illuminati étaient une réalité. Leur première réunion a eu lieu le 1er mai 1776, dans la petite ville bavaroise d’Ingolstadt, dirigée par un obscur professeur de droit nommé Adam Weishaupt. En l’espace de quelques années, il deviendrait l’un des hommes les plus détestés d’Europe, accusé d’adultère, de meurtre, de viol et de conspiration pour renverser le gouvernement.
Contrairement à Diddy, Weishaupt n’était pas vraiment un criminel. Il a créé les Illuminati parce qu’il ne pouvait pas se permettre les cotisations pour être franc-maçon. Il a gardé sa société secrète parce que les idées des Lumières qu’il professait étaient impopulaires parmi les jésuites alors au pouvoir : que les femmes pourraient posséder une intelligence égale à celle des hommes ; qu’un humain d’Afrique pourrait être aussi humain qu’un d’Europe ; qu’il pourrait ne pas y avoir de dieu catholique orthodoxe.
‘Les faits sont des faits : les Illuminati étaient une réalité.'</su_pullquote]Ce n’étaient pas seulement des idéaux libéraux largement acceptables, mais aussi populaires, et en quelques années, les rangs des Illuminati s’étofferaient de plus de 2 000 membres de l’élite sociale — aristocrates, banquiers, barons, diplomates, médecins, écrivains et esprits. Si Adam Weishaupt avait vécu en Amérique, nous pourrions vénérer son nom aux côtés de ceux d’Adams, Jefferson et Madison. Au lieu de cela, les jésuites convinrent Karl Theodor, le duc de Bavière, de déclarer les Illuminati comme une organisation subversive. Une série de brochures sponsorisées par le gouvernement proliféra, déclarant que les Illuminati étaient des sodomites débauchés, qu’ils géraient des réseaux de prostitution, qu’ils buvaient le sang d’enfants trafiqués et qu’ils agissaient sous les auspices de l’Ange de la Mort.
Le barrage de médias sensationnels horrifia le public lecteur d’Allemagne, de France et de Grande-Bretagne, puis traversa l’Atlantique vers les États-Unis, où l’hystérie des Illuminati enflamma bientôt des vagues de peur politique et finit par dynamiser la campagne présidentielle de Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rien de tout cela n’est une nouvelle pour quiconque suit des comptes de médias sociaux conspirationnistes dédiés à l’Omniwar, aux meurtres de Clinton, aux événements sur l’île d’Epstein, ou au lait cru. Il est clair que Diddy avait rejoint les rangs des Diaboliques qui peuplent le FMI et le Forum économique mondial. Cela est évident pour tout le monde.
Tout le monde, c’est-à-dire, sauf les soi-disant ‘médias traditionnels’ qui continuent d’ignorer le fait saillant des faits alternatifs :
Exhibit A : Les mémoires de l’ex-femme de Diddy, Kim Porter, récemment sauvées de la décharge de déchets numériques, qui ont récemment dominé les charts d’Amazon — malgré les inquiétudes qu’elles soient fausses, et malgré le fait que Porter soit morte. Découvrir la logique cachée et la rhétorique de la conspiration dans ces pages est un jeu d’enfant pour les esprits enflammés qui scrutent les subreddits et Parler.
Exhibit B : Ashton Kutcher, chéri des entrepreneurs technologiques et ancien ami intime du notoire Did, qui a été largement cité en disant qu’il ne peut pas être cité sur certaines des choses qui se sont passées. Ce qui amène la foule éveillée à croire que les freaks offs ont livré quelque chose de bien plus étrange que le banal lancement de Wall Street où l’on lance un nain avec un canon.
Exhibits C, D, E, et F : Des photos de Kamala et Diddy, Oprah et Diddy, Taylor Swift et Diddy, Prince Harry et Diddy…
Ensuite, il y a la question troublante de Justin Bieber, dont les images envahissent les publications de la foule Q. Le voici torse nu, probablement ivre, clairement soumis à Diddy, qui tient la star depuis traumatisée dans ce qui ne peut être décrit que comme un étranglement amoureux. Au cours des années suivantes, Bieber s’est retiré dans les multiples conforts de Jésus, bien qu’il ait émergé en larmes cherchant à ‘protéger’ Billie Eilish du mal. Rien à voir ici, ni dans les vidéos de plus en plus inquiétantes qui émergent quotidiennement, comme le segment de 10 ans négligé de Keeping Up mettant en vedette Khloé Kardashian parlant de Biebs lors d’un Freak Off nu — bien que Khloé, elle aussi, ait décidé de ne plus en parler et simplement espérer que tout cela disparaisse. Ce qui ne sera pas le cas.
Typique de la réponse fiévreuse parmi les théoriciens a été le fil de la célèbre journaliste américaine des célébrités, ancienne de O’Reilly Factor et shit-poster, Liz Crokin, qui a saisi l’occasion d’amplifier l’accusation de cannibalisme de Vladimir Poutine parmi les élites américaines : ‘Poutine appelle depuis des années le cabale pédophile satanique élitiste,’ a-t-elle écrit sur X.
‘Je me demande si Hunter est déjà allé à une fête de Diddy,’ a posté Jake Angeli-Chansley, le chaman Q-Anon aux cornes de Viking qui a pris d’assaut le Capitole le 6 janvier.
Pour être sûr, l’avocat de Diddy, Marc Agnifilo (dont les précédents clients incluent une pléthore de membres condamnés de cabales sataniques, comme le leader du culte NXIVM, Keith Raniere, accusé de trafic sexuel) a promis que Combs viendra témoigner et racontera son côté de l’histoire (‘C’est une histoire humaine. C’est une histoire d’amour.’), ce qui, bien sûr, ne convaincra personne de quoi que ce soit, car le récit a métastasé au point que le grand public accepte désormais l’homme qui insiste pour que nous l’appelions ‘Ye’ comme un témoin fiable du fait que Diddy était, entre autres choses, un agent fédéral — amenant ainsi les Illuminati aux plus hauts échelons du pouvoir.
Cependant, les éditeurs se grattent la tête, se demandant qui, quoi, quand, où et comment de telles fictions pourraient jamais être acceptées. En dehors de la tragédie personnelle et du triage, ce qui est triste, c’est que les grondements de la Conspiration Diddy présentent la dernière et meilleure opportunité pour la télévision traditionnelle et l’establishment de la presse d’aider à sauver leur industrie de l’extinction, sans parler de la démocratie elle-même, en admettant la prévalence et le pouvoir de la théorie du complot.
S’ils n’ont pas appris de Donald Trump, de QAnon et du 6 janvier, la théorie du complot possède une logique et une rhétorique puissantes et persuasives. Sur le plan strictement empirique, le récit des méfaits de Diddy a fourni aux purveyors de théorie du complot précisément ce que les philosophes appellent ‘réalité objective’. La critique de la théorie du complot faiblit ici, car le raisonnement inductif et déductif conduit tous deux le ‘chercheur indépendant’ sobre (alias, prédateur numérique) à la même conclusion : c’est les Illuminati. Et les gens y croient. Beaucoup de gens y croient.
Au lieu d’ignorer la Conspiration Diddy, les médias traditionnels devraient admettre son pouvoir et sa présence comme un artefact de notre moment de méfiance et de désespoir. Ils devraient examiner son histoire, considérer son raisonnement, compter ses adhérents. Les éditeurs seront choqués de découvrir que l’histoire de l’histoire est quelque peu différente du ‘moment Me Too’ du rock and roll, comme The New York Times l’a récemment conclu. Ils devront admettre à quel point la théorie du complot est devenue courante.
Bien sûr, pour que les médias établis fassent face à la version Illuminati de l’histoire, cela signifierait non seulement se traîner dans la boue de la mythologie populaire, mais aussi entraîner un grand inconfort pour Hollywood et l’industrie musicale, sans parler de marcher sur le fil du rasoir des politiques raciales et sexuelles qui ont aidé à permettre à Diddy en premier lieu. Mais faire autrement à ce moment délicat serait une faute politique. La Conspiration Diddy explique beaucoup de choses sur la façon dont le monde en dehors de la bulle des médias traditionnels pense. Le New York Times, le Washington Post, l’Atlantic, le New Yorker, CNN, MSNBC et tous les autres peuvent ignorer le chant des sirènes de la théorie du complot aussi longtemps qu’ils le souhaitent — mais alors ils ne devraient pas s’étonner d’où viennent tous ces votes pour Trump.
Nous, les libéraux, aimons secouer la tête face à cette malheureuse circonstance, soupirer et en rester là. Ce qui est une erreur que nous avons déjà commise. Car s’il y a une chose que les derniers siècles auraient dû nous apprendre, c’est que ce que nous refusons de reconnaître peut nous mordre à l’arrière. Cela dit, les médias traditionnels resteront sans doute contents de se tenir au-dessus de la mêlée et d’ignorer les bruissements des conspirationnistes — ce qui est encore une autre raison pour laquelle Donald Trump se réinstallera très probablement dans le Bureau ovale, codes nucléaires nichés entre son Diet Coke et son Filet-O-Fish de McDonald’s, téléphone à la main, prêt à poster.
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SubscribeThe author uses a novel to try to explain something about the human mind, and i can see what she’s getting at.
She invokes two different approaches and tellingly, describes philosophy as “a safe space for the unfettered operation of mind” as opposed to an untethered approach as characterised by Musli. (I’m tempted to call him muesli, as a scattering of all kinds of ingredients.)
So what i find interesting is how the internet is changing the way our consciousness works; or rather, how we allow it to work. The scatter-gun approach with lack of lengthy concentration is an obvious parallel with browsing, allowing a huge number of ideas to flit through our heads.
To cut to the chase, the question is: what should we do with consciousness? It can be both a blessing and a curse, a tool to advance ourselves and our species whilst also creating a void to be filled with potential harm and falsehood. When young, many find themselves becoming captured by ideology as a means to fill that void (see yesterday’s essay by Mary Harrington) until the realities of life intrude. Some never escape that trap (see any essay by Terry Eagleton).
It just feels like something vital is changing. We’re becoming far more aware of these issues than hitherto, as both the intellectual space freed up by mechanisation and the pace of life expands, whilst our output into – and receptivity to – the internet creates an externalisation for us all, a kind of universal consciousness, along the lines envisaged by Teilhard de Chardin, or perhaps a less holistic way.
Perhaps philosophy provides “a safe space for the unfettered operation of mind” – but there are many philosophies, religions and political systems of thought competing for attention. Strangely none of them converge on a single truth, possibly because there will always be people motivated to break any emerging consensus for all sorts of ‘reasons’.
Thank you, but do not all things in fact converge on a single truth? Is it not love in its unlimited expressions, in its eternal and universal utility?
Doubling Down, continually, is a limited version of ‘unlimited expressions’, and even that ends in unintended consequences, which disrupts any Eternal, Universal Utility.
The essay by Agnes Callard managed to explain the difference between a life guided by the pursuit of serious self reflection, a moral code by which one might try to live and a life that was “a machine for the relentless devaluation of life.” In that former mode, one might as Callard notes be frightened of what one might find in such a serious pursuit of meaning, or truth and perhaps simply see the whole activity as overwhelming us. But at far as I can tell, she nonetheless comes down on the side of those brave enough to inquire, to seriously question ourselves, even in the face of arriving at some revolting conclusions–a task for which philosophy is uniquely suited. Musil, for all his interest in different experiences really is aptly described “what happens when ideas are forced to do the work to which they would only be suited if you did not remove any possibility of ever wholly encompassing some subject matter”. All in all, her essay takes dead aim at Musil’s glibness and deeply cynical approach to living. Under the description she offers, Musil is unarmed without philosophy–something he considers uesless. Too bad for him.
I thought this was a fascinating piece. Exactly consistent with how the Old Testament describes human nature.
Upvoted, not least because I don’t understand why you received downvotes without a comment to explain what you got wrong.
So does Star Wars
Star Wars is more realistic though
I read TMWQ twice twenty or thirty years ago, and always understood Ulrich’s intellectual prostration as a metaphor for the teleological vacuum besetting the Austro-Hungarian empire on the eve of its eclipse. (For the record, I was also a decidedly second rate analytical philosopher, and quit academia the day I got my PhD.)
Bravo RC! Humblebrag of the year. Love it!
Hai thang yow!
“also a decidedly second rate analytical philosopher” – ouch!
When I studied Philosophy over 59 years ago I concluded Western Philosophy’s search for truth was doomed to go round in circles and it should be focussed on choice. Since then the choices available to humans have multiplied and their capacity to make them has diminished. It will disappear completely with a reliance on AI in LLMs that mimic the lowest common denominator of the past thoughts of humans. At first aimlessly and then mindlessly.
The art of thinking has withered on the vine in recent decades. Having been surprised at a request to teach critical thinking to PGs, a data search showed no mandatory twaching of this skill in the Russell group, with creative thinking consigned to schools of management entrepreneurship/ innovation modules. Doubtless a focus on certification over education has not helped, but senior academics are now discusslng whether AI jeopardises even this functional outcome and what can be done (central exam halls ar the obvious answer but resisted because of the cost relative to the Covid virtual option – univeersities being a profit maximising racket these days).
We need to start thinking again, to become excellent secondary data researchers, build inductive/deductive skills and enjoy the freedom of our own conclsions. And to do that we have to make the time for reflection. I saw a hopeful shift in last year’s UG cohort, and I hear this years are more Why (is that so) than How (do I get a first).
Your comment is very interesting. In the light of your words I wonder what you think of my (self serving) thoughts.
So, I teach mathematics and statistics at a pre/first year university level and believe that students should be able to do pen and paper calculations. For example, work out the variance by first principles for say five data points. Any big data set, shove it into a calculator.
Am I silly? Is there any value in this?
Not at your level but I’ve had occasion, with younger people, to revisit the lost mysteries of arithmetic. They complained it hurt their heads. I used to ask them what it was like to go to the gym after a long absence. That Maths is the mental gym? Train hard, fight easy stuff.
At school we used log tables, I used to write down the numbers as powers after taking the log, e.g. if the calculation involved taking the log10 of 5.2 I would write down 10^0.716 for that number. Helped me to remember what it meant. I don’t think anyone else did that. Even then most students were just going through the motions.
Not sure how useful this is at University level.
You must be as old as I am. You said:
Not sure how useful this is at University level.
It is of historical and theoretical value for young engineers to known their heritage.
Log tables were useful for engineers before they were elegantly encapsulated in the slide rule. What an absolutely brilliant and elegant mechanical device for advanced mathematical calculations. It took quite a long time for computers to surpass it.
You’re posing at least two questions here: will it have pragmatic value for young peoples careers – the mundane question; or more importantly for me, will it provide them with pleasure and satisfaction throughout their lives like some find in killer sudoku, the Times crossword, learning other languages, or playing with recursive structural equation models in the social sciences. There is incredible value for those who find it thrilling, or even just fun.
I’m long retired from teaching mathematics and statistics, but I still savour them – and intellectual play in general.
Perhaps a cycle is being broken? First requirement is an inspirational teacher, next the inspired who will grow to pass it on.
A classic example of why I dislike philosophy – the idea that you will be able to understand everything if you just think hard enough. Reality is much more complex than that.
It is also self indulgent; you can’t think much about these things if you’re up at six to get to work
Golly. If only someone had thought to make a distinction between the active and contemplative lives, and to observe the value of leisure and contemplation for any human life that aspires to be anything but merely slavish.
Agreed.
Even the very concept of truth is a bit ridiculous. In many, if not most, areas of inquiry there simply is no possibility of landing on a singular, undeniable truth. The complexity is what makes our world so interesting.
For instance, what is the meaning behind the name “Boxing Day”? I’ve already seen three different explanations in my email today. So, this question, which first occurred to me fifty years ago, is still up for debate.
Note: It’s likely that the first uses were a) oral, not written and b) very local. The people involved are long gone. I think.
2+2=4 is pretty straightforward, I think.
Yes, I believe Aristotle tried to drill down to the basic, uncontroversial truths starting with “A=A”.
‘Identity,’ logic’s most fundamental axiom: whatever a thing is (A, B, P, X… whatever), it is whatever it is.
The clue is in most but not all
However, when there are multiple interpretations available for a set of evidence, not all interpretations are equal. It seems to be not that simple to assess which is the best interpretation, one useful tool being Occam’s razor.
Not in BLM land it doesn’t.
Being that I am currently at the Trona Pinacles in California which is on Bureau of Land Management land, your comment took me a second to realize that you’re not commenting on thar BLM land. Hahaha!
Not if you are off the Post Modernist persuasion or you subscribe to the white patriachal approach to maths-its whatever you want it to be-which is great unless you are doing a job that requires mathematical precision!!
That’s axiomatic, rather than the truth.
Are you saying that it’s not true that 2+2=4?
It can be true, assuming the digits are numbers.
If they are strings, ‘2’ + ‘2’ = ’22’
What is true, isn’t true, always. Someone will come up with the same question, but in a different context. But the original will likely still stand.
Anybody capable of reading this understands they are numbers and therefore the concept represented is always true. Only a deliberate misinterpretation would say it is not. If we didn’t all agree and assume such notation represented numbers mathematics would be nigh on impossible. If it was intended to represent a string that would need to be clarified in accordance with the conventions of our common language and one way of doing that is enclosing in quotation marks as demonstrated yourself. ‘2’+’2′ means something completely different than 2+2.
No one told Microsoft (if you’ve ever programmed in VB you have to be very careful )
There is a difference between a simple fact and a complex truth.
Straightforward, but like all analytical truths–things true by definition–not very interesting. According to the conventional meanings arbitrarily assigned to the symbols in the equation, as far as equivalence is concerned ‘2+2’ is just another way of saying ‘4’–or ‘3+1,’ ‘9-5,’ etc. This doesn’t tell us any more than what we already had to know in order to use the symbols correctly in the first place.
Beware of: ‘2’ + ‘2’ = ’22’
(?) It doesn’t follow from our frequent inability to ascertain what’s true that the concept of truth is itself ridiculous. As for ‘complexity,’ this is a comparative term: it would make no sense to situate things on a complexity continuum that didn’t offer both lesser and greater complexity alternatives. Plus if simple things aren’t themselves interesting, at what point in the complexity hierarchy does interest make its appearance, and if there, why not earlier or later?
Surely what your thus far unsuccessful quest for the meaning of ‘Boxing Day’ should turn your attention to isn’t any opacity in the concept of truth but the very nature of explanation itself, and its limitations. If you wonder how an animal knows how to do something despite no other animal having taught it, for example, and someone suggests, “That’s its instinct”–swell! That clears that up! Now you know how and when to use the word ‘instinct’ appropriately in an English sentence; but are you any wiser than before? In fact, you’ve been given a mysterious black box where an explanation should be; and yet, we accept such black boxes as ‘explanations’ all the time. As long as we can stick labels on things, enabling us to tidy them away into the right closet, our desire for order is appeased and we don’t inquire further. Poke around too closely in those closets, though, and the world can suddenly reveal itself to be much less satisfactorily explained than we thought.
Reality is complex because every individual lives his own reality, reality is a mix of family and societal background, genetics, experiences, what you read and learn, culture, interactions with others, religion or lack of, urban or rural ilfe, etc. There are many different realities, that’s why no one agrees on anything.
I respectfully disagree with the notion of many different realities. There are many different perceptions of reality.Yes, reality is complex, and ultimately unknowable, in total, in this incarnation. We perceive reality through the lens of the inputs you described. Consequently, we interpret reality with varying degrees of correctness and incorrectness simultaneously.
What you have described is not philosophy at all. Some sort of pastiche of someone thinking.
PPE (and History) graduates are why we have rampant NET Zero policies.
Don’t mean to be intentionally cruel but this is pretentious twaddle. “All that can be said can be said clearly.” Where’s Wittgenstein when you need him.
The Tractacus is unreadable.
Wittgenstein might reasonably ask: What do you mean by that?
It could be a variant of „the dependence effect” you mentioned another time: by giving information about Robert Musil’s book, you create the need to read it.
…..
Thank you for explaining to me why I find Robert Musil unreadable
That’s funny. I gave up halfway through the article. I had no idea who Musil was and now I’m not at all interested in finding out.
Living only in the mind breeds impotence. Your heart or gutfeel can give your life direction and then one should commit oneself to act on this. That gives experiential knowledge, the only true knowledge. The rest is mental masturbation.
I have a family member who is like this character. He collects trivia about far distant stars and arcane mathematical equations, but never researches the dangers of Diabetes 2. I once casually quoted to him a stanza from Bob Dylan’s Tombstone Blues, which I think makes the same point as the essayist, and he was highly offended:
Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge
There’s philosophy and being philosophical. You can peer at a drop of water in a cloud but it has condensed from the gas of water vapour and is about to fall earthwards. To do this one needs to be close up. A medium sized cumulus weighs 200 tonnes, one needs to be miles back from it to appreciate its majesty, its weight is counter intuitive but a small aircraft can fly through it barely impeded. Best avoided, big brother cumulo nimbus has a fearsome engine raging inside it
A big cloud looks as if it is heading somewhere, has a purpose. It has, it’s heading to where conditions are suitable to redistribute the world’s water. No volition beyond the prevailing wind ‘seeking’ to balance air pressure. It’s part of an auto balancing system but what did the primitives think before science appeared?
A primitive, a child even, will know clouds rain but not that they are completely made up of water. With experience the child grows and expands its purview.
The point? Learn to fly something. You’ll have something new to consider beyond the skill and the machine itself. Look out of a passenger aircraft window and smile at people who say we’re overcrowded. Ponder the narrow minded. Become philosophical over their philosophy, or lack of.
One of your primitives who predates our science is Aristotle. He said the cloud has a purpose, to provide rain.
He wouldn’t have agreed with your idea that its purpose is to redistribute the world’s water. That is not a purpose for him, nor for me as far as I can understand it, and so is not true. It is, using Aristotle’s ‘primitive’ terminology, purely incidental, and to him, of no account.
Therein lies your philosophy. You live in the desert and dismiss, begrudge others’ clouds. You miss the point. I dare say you now know more about clouds than before. Look up today, a huge cloud over your head, all you see. There’s still a stratosphere and more above. Both you and Aristotle don’t see the wood for the trees. A shame with centuries between you.
I am making the point that Aristotle sees further than you, and had the terminology to criticise and correct what you said.
All the best books do teach you how to live. This is one to avoid it seems.
What about those philosophers who believe that have found the answer to how people should live? Here’s a few: Marx, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot etc.
Better hope that you never find the answer!
I read TMWQ 50 years ago and it had a similar effect on me as listening to Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan around the same time –
Neither author tries to offer a solution, or even a signpost, but the effect was to inspire me on the path to “relentless” discovery, honesty, self-knowledge and the realisation that the answers to the questions Musil & Dylan pose lie not in more “thinking” but in the realm of the heart, where experience and observation go much deeper than words and concepts. Dylan’s challenge had me travelling through 30 countries over the following years, but it was only later that I was fortunate enough to learn that the journey / challenge is actually more about undoing and realising what a wonderful life we ‘simply’ have, than embracing some convoluted (or even ‘sublime’) philosophical “truth”. As Socrates has it, “Know thyself” .
Nicely put. Though Dylan might be allergic to the very idea an encapsulated Life’s Philosophy, I’d guess he does have a sense of mission and purpose, and with some kind of through-line, though changing shape over the decades. To communicate that sense of questing, maybe, and to call out beauty and bravery as well as injustice, suffering, and sorrow. And to make much of it sound good—though many have disputed that. In Dylan’s body work, the emphasis is toward the grim and sorrowful, but with many notes of mercy and gladness (more so during some decades than others). The fact that he remains quite silent about his own inner motivations and even seems pretty uninterested in exploring them is part of his mystique, and legacy. But he doesn’t seem like a mere leaf blowin’ in the wind.
It takes different breeds of seekers to help feed the hungry spirit of the world—or somethin’ fancy like that. If nothing else, Dylan is clearly a noteworthy original of lasting impact.
Reading this article made me wish that, hope that, Agnes Callard would write a piece for UnHerd on Fernando Pessoa’s very interesting (philosophical, anti-philosophical?) work The Book of Disquiet. (A brother can dream.)
As philosopher Ed Feser has shown, we in the west have literally lost our minds since Ockham’s absurd nominalism, Hume’s self refuting “fork” ideology, Kant’s incoherent antirealism, Descartes’ forgetting about that of which he thought and the train crash of disconnected postmodernism. The answer, preposterous as it might seem to claim in this wasteland, is in Final Causality and the realistic metaphysical foundation of Thomism. Sanity. Final Cause is the ultimate shaper of all reality; God.. all is moved by love. We are definable by the ends we seek. https://www.amazon.com/Thomass-Aristotelian-Philosophy-Nature-Obsolete/dp/1587314320
Well… he hasn’t “shown” anything; rather, he’s put forward an argument that we can either agree or disagree with, in part or in whole.
Immortal Souls – Ed Feser. The evidence
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Souls-Treatise-Human-Nature/dp/386838605X/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title
Ultimately only a handful of people are able to be true philosophers, because it is a destabilizing and mind altering endeavor.
Many more would be much better suited to following ideas rather than leading, not entering in any such dangerous intellectual exercise at all… much better for them to conquer intuitively, if at all, than to enter the intellectual labyrinth and ruin themselves.
As Nietzsche said: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
I’d still position Alain Badiou and Jordan Peterson as the key thinkers of the Left and Right over the past 20 years.
Some might rightly mention Sloterdijk, and I would say that Zizek has been invaluable in bringing Lacan’s thought back into the culture in lieu of the Anglo academy’s rather toxic obsession with Deleuze and Guattari since the 1990s (they being another prop for the Judith Butler post-structuralist complex).
The only right, proper and great thinking for the mind, is to ask what is ‘thought’. Is it a ‘subject or is it an ‘object’. Can it be studied when itself is the subject studying itself as an object?