Enough

Enough about academic philosophy. Like all institutions it has its good and its bad. It is easy to focus on the less than perfect features of anything, and keep harping on those features as if one is fighting a great battle. But this can become a bit like running in place, huffing and puffing without getting anywhere.

 

The more interesting thing is to just think and to try to understand the world.

 

The point of the experiment is to do philosophy in everyday life. Not to harp about professional philosophy from everyday life. There is much that is good about academic philosophy. It is best to leave it at that, and to focus on the philosophy itself.

 

The joy of simply trying to understand the world. What a precious thing. Let me not take it for granted.

 

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The desire to rail against professional philosophy comes from fear. The fear that I have lost out on my opportunity to do philosophy. That out here, in this everyday world, I am lost.

 

There is a lot of this fear. Often I now feel as if I do not belong anywhere or to any group. This blog, for instance. Who are its readers? To most non-academics it might seem like gibberish. What would or can most of my family or friends who have not read academic philosophy make of my reflections on Rorty or Wittgenstein or how classes are taught? Perhaps the blog seems to them as impenetrable as picking up Kant's First Critique or a random philosophy journal article. I imagine them thinking, "A lot of noise. But to what end? What is the point?" And to most academics the blog might seem like the ramblings of a disgruntled soul, someone who couldn't make it and yet can't let go. Can they relate to the blog as a space for seeking the kind of knowledge they seek? That the very same intelligence which I might have channeled into a journal article is channeled into the blog. I imagine them thinking, "But why does he have to do philosophy over there, in that way? Why not here, the way he used to? This is just confusion."

 

The fear of being stuck in between. Lost to both sides.

 

And what if something happens to me? What if I get sick? Or struggle financially and get lost in the efforts to simply survive? Then what? The fear that the experiment will have failed for purely non-intellectual reasons. That perhaps my life would become meaningless. That no one would understand why I chose the path I did. The fear of the remark, "How unfortunate. He wasted his life." The fear of the pain this would cause those close to me. The fear of letting people down. The fear of losing myself.

 

In the face of this fear, a desperate grasping for any sense of achievement. Any sense of I am doing something rational and good. What is the easiest thing I can try to prove so that the experiment will not be deemed a total failure? Ah, atleast this much: here are the problems with that institution. If nothing else, I managed in my life to show the inconsistencies of that. Maybe that will help future people avoid those inconsistencies. I can contribute in that way at least. Something tangible that I can leave behind, so that my life will not have been for nothing.

 

Being Positive

When I decided to leave academia, it was a tumultuous period emotionally and intellectually. It was a time of personal transformation and expansion of horizons. It was also a time of some unclarity and not being able to even think about some basic issues. Such as what other job I was going to have. I resigned without looking for another job. Without even thinking about an alternate career. And I didn't even know exactly why I was resigning. There were reasons I gave myself (I didn't enjoy the contorting I felt I had to go through to put my thoughts in publishable form), but even to me it was unclear why such reasons had to imply leaving the profession. After all, if I wasn't enjoying what I was writing, perhaps I could write in a different way. Or on different topics. Or seek to go to different conferences. Why leave the profession altogether? It was hard to answer these questions when colleagues, family or friends would seek to raise them, because I myself did not know the answers.

 

What I felt though was that making this decision and following this path was something I absolutely had to do. Even though I could not give clear reasons to myself for my decision, what I felt strongly was that down this path lay my intellectual and personal growth. That somewhat down this path I would better understand the reasons, but that at first it was imperative for me that I make the choice and plunge into this path.

 

I firmly believed that what I was doing was not irrational. That it was a perfectly rational action, which was being guided by a grasp of reasons which in principle could be shared with other people. However, I also strongly felt at the time that I couldn't express those reasons clearly to myself or to other people. What I felt was that I was grasping and being moved by reasons which I was still unable to grasp clearly in thought. That I would be able to grasp them in thought only by allowing myself to be moved by an intuitive awareness of the reasons. That a life transformation motivated by a fledgling awareness of the reasons was necessary before I could be able to articulate them more clearly. That I had to act now, and that the reasons would come to the surface in the ensuing years. As if my leaving was like a seed which had to be planted and that the reasons for leaving were like the branches of a tree which would grow from the earth over many years.

 

What I felt strongly when resigning was that this was a decision I was actively making. That it was a positive action, a movement towards growth and not merely a reactive decision. That I wasn't leaving the profession out of resentment or anger or lack of confidence. That I was leaving because I felt it was the right thing for me to do in better understanding myself and the world.

 

In the past year, however, it was not always easy to think of my leaving as a positive action. Suddenly bereft of a career, and still thinking all the time about philosophy and so not having much energy for thinking of a new career, it was natural for me to cast about trying to understand this decision I had made. Unable to hold on at times to the sense that I choose to do it, it was natural to feel that circumstances had driven me out of the profession. That the profession was unjust! Close minded! Arcane! That a great ill was done to me, and that somebody or some institution has to be held accountable for it! Filled with sadness and bitterness at my fate, I felt at times that I did not so much choose to leave as that my pain in the profession made me leave. And with this thought deep seated and long hidden anger, frustration and resentment rose to the surface of my consciousness. I mourned for the Bharath I could have been, the Bharath I imagined when I was twenty that I would become, the essays and books I felt I would write as a professor, the classes I would teach, the changes I would help make from within the profession. Even after leaving the profession, my desire for that path was still strong and it seemed at times as if left to my own volition I would have never made this decision. That the decision was so unnatural and so contorted that it could only be a reactive decision. A decision made only out of pain and not out of joy. And the more I felt this, the more the anger and the resentment got a grip on me.

 

Balancing Philosophy and Life

In my previous post I gave one reason I haven't been blogging. There is another reason as well. It is that I was having difficulty balancing my philosophy and my everyday life.

This was most obvious in the case of my work. I have been working at a non-profit as a temp for the past six months. In the first three months I completely enjoyed the work: it was new and refreshing, a welcome relief to be working again after the six months I took for myself after leaving academia. And it was invigorating to be doing something practical after years of thinking of work in terms of making progress on interminable conceptual problems. It was great as well to come home from work and not have to think about it. The work felt fresh and freeing, as if it drew me into itself and I was doing it with a smile.

 

Then I started blogging. I wrote the blog posts with the exhilaration of long pent up ideas and emotions. To even just be writing about these ideas into a public space felt new and amazing. Here was an experience I had never had before with philosophy: expressing it in public from the bottom of my heart, with full conviction, with complete identification with what I was saying. As a student and even as a professor I always felt that an essential part of me was missing from my expressions, that there was always a part of me which held back from affirming what I said or wrote. As if I wasn't fully present in my expressions. And I wasn't. Back then I was so busy constantly trying to show only this side of me here, and only that side of me there that I hardly had the feeling of expressing myself fully. After a while it became such a habit that I would do it even when it wasn't necessary, just because I never developed the capacity of expressing myself with a unified voice. But when I started to blog, here was this unified voice which I was suddenly writing with. What a gift and treasure to speak with one's whole being! Instead of all the parts of oneself squabbling amongst themselves, they work together, march together and point towards a common goal which they aim to achieve together. The way a country enjoys the declaration of peace after years of seemingly interminable civil war, so too my spirit rejoiced at the peace I felt at having finally found a unified voice.

 

Part of the excitement was also that I was doing philosophy publicly again. True, it wasn't the same as talking philosophy with colleagues or students. With a blog many of the joys of doing philosophy physically together are lost. But when blogging there is at least the having of a public voice of philosophy--of speaking out into a public space and expressing oneself philosophically. In a way I had not expected when deciding to leave academia, the thing I missed the most about academia was the opportunity it provided to have a public voice. A teacher is like an actor or an athlete in that she performs her task on a public stage, a platform which unites her with the history of the subject and with all the men and women through the ages who have contributed to that platform. To speak with a public voice in this sense is to speak with the voice of humanity, as part of something larger than oneself. Certainly any person can speak with this voice when they express the common humanity they share with all people. Just as any person can enjoy the pleasures of basketball in their driveway or of singing in their shower. But it is a different thing to do it in a public way where other people look to you to channel such a voice. Once one experiences this public persona, it can be addictive.

 

And I was addicted to it, even though I didn't know it. I realized it after I left academia when I found myself thrashing about for something that I seemed to have unexpectedly misplaced. I was grasping for the public voice I had lost. No longer a professor, I discovered that when I did philosophy by myself it was still fun and pressing and exciting, though it felt 2-dimensional instead of 3-dimensional. A certain resonance was lost. The boom of the voice displaced by a quiet speaking to oneself. That I had gone from playing in the NBA back to playing in my driveway. No doubt it was an unconscious desire for my lost public voice which drove me to blog in the first place. And having found some semblance of a public voice, I held on to it for dear life, as if I would never let go of it again even for a second.

 

And after blogging for a few months that holding on desperately to a public voice started to suffocate the rest of my life. Suddenly I wanted to blog all the time, feeling excited to have found again some link to a public voice. I was most happy when I was blogging. When I wasn't blogging, I was thinking about possible blog posts. In a way I had not anticipated when I started to blog, the blog suddenly threatened to take over my whole life, and I was loathe to distance myself from it lest I lose the public voice of philosophy once more.

 

Let It Be

Some days it feels like the experiment is a bust. I must be crazy. What am I going on about? If I care about philosophy enough to have this blog, why didn't I just stay in academia? Perhaps I am missing something. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I have a character flaw which makes me not commit to things. Or maybe it is like what some people say to me regarding my decision to leave: "Oh, you were burned out, huh?" The implication that I failed stings. All the more so because deep within me that is the one interpretation of the events which I fear. And which I worry might be true. Maybe all the hoopla of my ideas about why the experiment matters is just a cover for the fact that I failed. Maybe I just couldn't cut it, and I couldn't face up to it. Is that what I am doing by writing now? More cover up?

 

This self-flagellation and dejection didn't come out of nowhere. I knew I shouldn't do it, but I did it again today. I went to the websites: Harvard, Berkeley, Pitt, Chicago. To the Leiter blog. To see what the professionals are doing. What is happening there. What am I missing out on. Some part of me feels desperate to reaffirm some connection to the profession.

 

And yet what I see on the websites only makes me feel more distant. For where on those websites can I find my story? Or stories of others like me who had trouble committing? The websites depict only the humming machinery of the profession. The talks. The publications. The same circles of people going around giving talks at each other's departments. The polished sense of progress. And commitment. Why did I have so much trouble with that commitment? Why is it that they were able to do it, and I wasn't? My mind unconsciously asks these questions over and over again, and unable to answer clearly, it gives up, exhausted. The fall back answer arises readily: "because I did something wrong, or I didn't do something enough, or I was too stubborn. It is my fault. Something in me is lacking." And the voice which speaks this answer in my mind suggests the path of action: "Hide all this. Don't let it come to light. Your feelings of insecurity--those are your fault. Just having the feelings shows that there is something wrong with you. You are weak. Don't perpetuate the weakness by showing it to others. Bury it. Don't give a hint of it to anyone. Look normal. Be normal."
 

In the past I fell prey to this voice. I accepted it's claim that my pain is my fault. But now I see that is not true. The pain is not my fault. Nor any one else's fault. It is simply a fact of my consciousness this evening. Caused, like all facts, by the flux of events in the world. It is not a fact to run away from. To the contrary, it is a fact which holds the clue to my self-understanding. If I can look the pain in the eye and accept it as it is, without putting myself or others down, then some new understanding of myself and the world is possible. The new understanding is always only around the corner from simply acknowledging the pain. From letting it be. Given the turbulence of this evening, no point thinking too much. Or trying too hard to understand. The only way to gain understanding is to be good to oneself. To acknowledge that the deepest part of who one is can only be good. To let the pain be. And to let the understanding come in its own time. To trust and to know that it will come. To let it be.

End of the Work Day

I feel exhausted after work today. It was a good day. A good week. Am helping a wonderful non-profit with a conference they have coming up, and doing data entry and coordinating work for that. I am glad to be contributing.

I remember being tired like this after a day's work of being a professor as well. Preparing for class, grading, working on my own research, keeping up with new articles--that was non-stop work. The people in academia are some of the hardest working people I know.

There is an important difference, though, between how I feel now after a day's work and how I felt when I was in academia. Back then relaxing from work meant taking a break from philosophical thinking. Obviously I don't speak for how it is with all academics. But for me, after 8-10 hours of reading, writing, teaching philosophy, I needed a break from anything philosophical. I think that is why I started learning the piano then; something different, something which engaged a different part of me than what I was using all day.

Interestingly, now after a day's work I feel like relaxing by thinking philosophically. I get to experience philosophy again as something refreshing and simple. As something I come to on my own, without constantly worrying about if someone else already had the idea I am thinking or if enough people will like what I write in order for it to be published.

I am glad that now my job and my philosophy are separate. I find my current job intellectually and emotionally exciting and fulfilling. Because the habits I am learning are different from what I was used to, I feel like all of me is fully engaged when I am at work. I am fully present, and that is a nice experience. And since my job involves tasks like making phone calls, cataloging information and being present for any new tasks that come up, I can't follow any philosophical train of thoughts that pass through my mind. I have to pause when a philosophical thought comes, note it, and save it for later. I was worried when I left academia that perhaps this kind of situation would make me yearn for academia again. But now I don't feel that way at all. Saving the philosophical thought for later is actually a great experience. By noting it, it is like the thought is lodged in my mind, and while I am doing my work, my unconscious is working over the thought and fine tuning it. Actually not consciously thinking and brooding over the idea does wonders for keeping the idea fresh and alive. And when I take a break for lunch or am taking the metro home, the thought is there for me--polished by the unconscious, ready for me to examine with the happy realization that after a good day's work, the idea is there for me to play around with it.

Who is a Philosopher?

Oh man, Bharath, you are crazy! You say in The Experiment that you want to see what will happen if you think philosophically about life without following the habits of professional philosophers (reading the latest books by professors, going to conferences, etc.). You even say that you are curious to see if perhaps through this experiment you might gain some philosophical knowledge. That's absurd! How can you gain philosophical knowledge without doing what the philosophy experts do? Are you also going to find a cure for cancer without reading what medical experts have to say? Or build a house without knowing anything about construction? Come on! There is no need to do the experiment; we know in advance how it will turn out. You can't gain philosophical knowledge if you don't follow the latest, cutting edge advances in philosophy, which is what professional philosophy is about. This is obvious.

I feel the force of this thought. Since I left professional philosophy this argument will sometimes come to mind with an urgent energy, suggesting that perhaps I have made a big mistake; that perhaps I must be deluded or insane. What am I thinking?! It has been a year since I read any professional philosophy. How could I possibly think this can help me somehow improve my philosophical thinking?

It is interesting that I feel this worry mainly when I am by myself; if I am talking a walk and am a bit sad, or if I am at home and not sure how to spend the time. I have noticed that I almost never feel this worry when I am in public spaces, such as in the metro or the grocery store. To the contrary, I have noticed that especially when I am in the metro even the hint of the worry seems to disappear. So much so that I now love riding the metro to work. It is soothing and calming. It makes me feel connected to people, and in that connection I realize that I am not at all deluded or insane. That I am perfectly well, and that all is well.

What is it about the metro that has this effect on me? It's because it gives me a chance to really think about the above objection. And I find myself responding to it in the following way.

Look at all these people. Some might be doctors or lawyers. Some security guards or secretaries. Maybe artists or stay at home parents. Or maybe they never got a steady career. Whatever they are, surely most of them aren't philosophy professors. And what does that mean about their philosophical ability? If the philosophy professors are the experts in philosophy, and they are discovering the deepest philosophical truths of the universe, then what does that mean about these peoples' lives?

Most of these people sitting in front of me on the metro don't worry about finding medical cures because the medical researchers are responsible for that. Similarly, they don't worry about building bridges, because the engineers are responsible for that. So could these everyday people leave philosophical questions as well to the philosophy experts? So if someone asks them, "Do you have free will? Or are you determined by your upbringing?", could they just say, "Hey, why are you asking me? Let's ask the philosophy professors, and they will tell us. I haven't read all the great philosophers and the latest journal articles, so what clue could I possibly have on the topic? I get my philosophical views from the professors the same way I get my medical knowledge from the researchers. After all, they are the experts. We would be crazy to think that we--silly old us who can't even read a page of Aristotle or Kant without getting confused--can contribute anything on the issue of whether we have free will."

And perhaps they say the same thing when asked, "Is there a God?" Or "Do you think it's OK to ban gay marriage?" Or "Does human life have meaning?" Or "Is a democracy a better form of government than a dictatorship?" If they keep responding in the same way--"Hey, the philosophy professors will tell us!"--then in what way is society cultivating the art and skill of self-reflection in its citizens?

The idea that philosophy professors are the only ones who discover philosophical knowledge seems innocent enough, if one doesn't really think about it. But if one does think it through, it can be a frightening thought which seems to actually imply a kind of mindless, unreflective society.

The majority of people are not professional philosophers. If that means that they cannot contribute to the content of philosophical knowledge (as opposed to contributing by funding professional philosophers), then what responsibility can they have for thinking philosophically in their own lives? And if they don't have that responsibility, how can we have a flourishing, intellectually vigorous and free society?

The Experiment

When I was a student I wondered if it was possible to do experiments with respect to philosophical topics. It seemed so cool that scientists could formulate hypotheses, structure experiments, and work step by step towards knowledge. An experiment suggested a democratic approach to knowledge: it is not the prestige of a thinker or her charisma which dictates what is true. It is the facts themselves, which are carefully accumulated to avoid biases of any kind. I felt this is the method of finding knowledge. And as a philosophy student, I wanted to find philosophical knowledge. And yet: what kind of an experiment could one do in philosophy?

I have finally found a form of experiment which is applicable to philosophy. It is to think of one's life itself as an experiment, and to use philosophy to explore new and interesting ways of life. In this blog I will think out loud about an experiment of this form I am engaged in. The blog will be a space to process my thoughts about it. And to discuss it with anyone who wishes to engage with me about it in the comments section. No background knowledge is required in order to talk about the issues addressed in this blog. It only requires the desire to think about life and to engage in conversation.

The Question

For sixteen years I was trained in professional, academic philosophy. Four years in undergrad, nine years in graduateschool and three years as a professor. This was for me a very beneficial period in which I learnt a lot and worked with good people.

During this time I learnt the trade of professional philosophy. This involved two things:

1. I learnt the manner of thinking which is taught in philosophy classrooms: questioning basic assumptions of life, analyzing arguments, articulating one's views, drawing connections between abstract viewpoints, etc.

2. I learnt the habits of being a professional philosopher: writing journal articles meant for fellow professionals, going to conferences, grading students' essays, applying for grants, etc.

During my initiation into the profession in graduate school, there was no distinction between (1) and (2). In my twenties when I was getting a graduate education, I was learning to think philosophically by learning the habits of being a professional philosopher. Like any graduate student I tried to improve my philosophical thinking by improving my ability to do the things professional philosophers do: by improving my dissertation, trying to get better at writing grants for funding, by aiming to get published, seeking to go to conferences. It felt as if the better I did at these activities the better I would be at philosophical thinking, and so the better I would be better as a philosopher.

It never occurred to me then that perhaps (1) and (2) can come apart. That maybe I could improve my philosophical thinking without worrying about the habits of professional philosophers.

A few years ago I started to wonder: What would happen if I used my ability to think philosophically completely independently of the habits of being a professional philosopher? What if I used my ability to think philosophically not to write for professional philosophers or to teach Plato and Russell to undergraduates, but to reflect on my life without the trappings of a profession? What if I took the energy I was expending on trying to publish or keep up with the latest journal articles (like any professional philosopher, I was expending a lot of energy on this), and instead used that energy to cultivate habits for improving myself as a human being? What would happen then?

If I did that, would I gain a kind of philosophical knowledge which perhaps I wasn't gaining as a professional philosopher? Could it be that philosophical thinking free of professional habits might lead to a kind of knowledge which maybe I wasn't learning or teaching in the classroom? Is there any such non-professional philosophical knowledge to be found?

The more I thought about this question, the more exciting it seemed.