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.

 

Guilt, You Don't Own Me

I haven't blogged in more than a month. It was partly because it was good to take a break. Recharge. Clear my head.

But there was another reason too. And I could feel it even as I was finishing my previous post. The post in which I expressed publically for the first time the pain I felt in college of not having the philosophy of my home reflected in my education. I had felt this pain for fifteen years, from when I went to college to when I was a professor. Most of the time I repressed the pain. Though I could feel it then, I couldn't see it. I couldn't identify it. And I wouldn't identify it.

 

If anyone had said to me in college, "Bharath, do you have any culture issues about your classes in terms of combining your Indian and American halves?", I would have said, "No way. I am quite lucky. I don't have any such issues." I would have smiled broadly and thanked my stars for being part of such a wonderful world. I wouldn't have let the thought linger in my mind for even a second, so sure I was then that such issues didn't apply to me. I would have said then, "I am simply interested in philosophical truths. Cultural, sociological issues--those subjective domains of human messiness-- those have nothing to do with me!"

 

I see now that I dismissed such thoughts not because I didn't have any issues about understanding myself as an Indian-American (a hybrid, a mongrel, belonging neither here nor there uniquely, but belonging to both fully). I really didn't consider the question long enough to truly entertain it.

 

Instead, I dismissed it because of GUILT.

 

How could I say that I have an issue about how my home life relates to my school life when neither my family nor my teachers acknowledge any such thing? Here was the root of the double-edged guilt.

On the one hand, to claim that I have such an issue seems to draw a sharp line between myself and, say, my father. After all, as someone who grew up in India and was there till his forties, my father's experience of education did not involve any sharp difference between his home life and his education. Thus to say that I am having an issue at school would be to say that my experience of education was different from my father's. But if we are different in such a fundamental way, then in what way could I think that my father's life could be a guide to my life? If we are different in terms of how we learnt about the world, are we essentially living in two different worlds? Such a thought felt like a betrayal to me, and out of my love and respect for my father and my family, I buried the thought as totally irrelevant to me.

 

The issue here is not that because I grew up in a Indian home, my individuality was somehow thwarted. The same issue arose for me with my decidedly American teachers. That is the other edge of the guilt.

 

As far as I could tell, my teachers too did not have the kind of issues I did in reconciling the culture of their homes with that of their education. If for them there was any such tension, it seemed to me that it was because their families might have been religious (Christian or Jewish), and they were breaking free of that to embrace the Enlightenment values and language taught in the philosophy departments. Though this can be a big rift, it is hardly of the magnitude which I would have to contemplate in my own case.

 

For my teachers the rift, it there was one, was centered on the issue of religion. But issues of race and of culture, and the hundreds of other issues that come with that--these did not apply to them. Breaking with the Bible to embrace Kant's Groundwork can no doubt be a big break. But in a way that break happens against the background of a common shared culture. After all, Kant, like Descartes and Leibniz and scores of other greats, was Christian, even if his understanding of it was totally different from that an Augustine or an Aquinas. And even the atheist greats like Hobbes and Hume and Nietzsche -- they are responding to the Western tradition, and saw themselves as part of that tradition.

 

My Story 2

In an earlier post I described how I was conflicted for many years about academic philosophy. Why was that? Why did I resist committing fully to the profession even as I was a part of it? In thinking about this question, I have found myself going back to how I initially came to philosophy.

I first became aware of philosophy through conversations with my father; conversations which continue to this day. When I was about 15 we started talking about The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita. About the nature of the self and consciousness, and how to live a good life, and the meaning of existence. About what Krishna meant by saying that we should act without thinking of the results of the action, or what is Brahman and how we can experience it within ourselves as the truest reality. The discussions made a great impact on me. I felt, perhaps like many adolescent sons, that my father was living a full life, and that he was striving to grasp the essence of being human. I admired, as I still do, my father's unwavering positivity and spiritual equanimity, and sensing that for him these virtues were rooted in his understanding of The Gita, I was eager to understand the text so as to gain for myself the fullness of human life. Even in the situations where I felt that my father, being a person, had limitations, I still respected the ideal of how to live which he valued. Philosophy, as I grasped it in relation to my father, was mainly a way of living, one which was open to any person so that they could lead, irrespective of their circumstances, a flourishing life in the deepest sense. Here was the first concept of philosopher I came to cherish: the philosopher as any person.

As I became more enthusiastic about philosophy, I wanted to do it all the time. I wanted philosophy to reverberate in every aspect of me, constantly and with great energy. This desire took a hold of me when I was about 16, around the time most kids in America start thinking about who they want to be after high school. My fledgling interest in philosophy thus took on for me a possible social and career identity. I was still unaware of academic philosophy, and, at any rate, I needed at that time a form of public philosophy which had the language and the cultural rhythms of my conversations with my father. I found the image of this in the 8th century Hindu philosopher-monk Adi Shankaracharya. It was a natural extension, since my father's interpretation of The Gita is similar to Shankara's (Advaita Vedanta). I was particularly drawn to the ideal of the monastic life, and the idea that a life of renunciation might foster certain forms of spiritual and intellectual consciousness which might be otherwise hard to acquire. Here was the second concept of philosopher I came to cherish: the philosopher as monk.

It was easy enough to imagine how one might become a Hindu monk in 8th century India. But how does one do that in 20th century America? I didn't know. And how does one become a philosopher as monk even while remaining a philosopher as any person? That is, how do I follow Shankara's path without turning my back on my father's form of life? I didn't know. These two questions were the most pressing questions I had when I started college. When in my freshman year I discovered the philosophy department, I latched on to it as the answer to these two questions. On the one hand, philosophy classes seemed no different in principle than my physics or math or language classes, and so by becoming a philosophy major I felt that I could study philosophy without breaking with the general trajectory of life presupposed by my family. On the other hand, philosophy professors seemed not so different from Shankara in that both dedicated their lives to philosophy, and I hoped that here perhaps was the 20th century American version of the 8th century Indian monk life. Here was the third concept of philosopher I came to cherish: the philosopher as professor.

Philosophy in Public Spaces

A striking fact of non-academic life is how little philosophy comes up in one's interactions with other people. In my normal exchanges at work or at the shopping mall very rarely do philosophical topics come up in conversation. When sitting on a bus or walking down a street, there is hardly any sign that at one time Socrates or Plato existed, or that even in this century there was a Wittgenstein or a Dewey, or that even at this very time there are thousands of people pouring over philosophy texts seeking the deeper truths of life. In the normal course of life, everything seems so settled, as if the only task for each person is to get through the events of the day.

Of course, it is not that philosophical topics can't be found at every street corner or in every interaction with another person. Certainly they can be found. When looking at a Gap ad, one can wonder, "What concept of human excellence is being assumed here? Why do people find it natural to think that this is a form of excellence?" Or when seeing people packed like sardines into the subway, one might ask, "What is individual and what is communal in each person? How much can people be in control of their lives, and how much are they at the mercy of nature and society?" These strike me as completely natural questions, which arise from just looking at the world. And yet, try raising these questions with other people in the flow of everyday life. It is exceedingly hard. "What is the matter with you? It's just an ad. Get it together. Are you feeling ok?" Or: "Damn. We shouldn't have taken the subway in rush hour. Stop pontificating, and move further in!" The real difficulty isn't even that others will shoot down the philosophical questions. It is to even express it to another person. And even more: to hold on to it within oneself as something important and pressing and exciting.

This isn't because most people are stupid or disinterested in broad questions of human life. I think the reason for the paucity of philosophy in everyday life is that the world one engages with is now so diverse. Here is a European descended Christian. There an African descended Muslim. And here an atheist from Australia. And there an agnostic from Chile. And it is not just about countries. Or religions. Here is a person without many extended family ties, and who thinks of the world more in terms of friends than family. There another person who is defined by his family ties, and identifies with them deeply. Here is a person who loves sports. There a person who doesn't care about them at all. Here is someone who loves Hollywood movies. There someone who thinks that such movies are trivial. Etc. And etc. Society is now so diverse that there is no guarantee that one shares palpable deep values and commitments with most people one encounters.

 

Philosophy concerns abstract questions. But this doesn't mean that therefore one can talk about philosophy with anyone. As if since philosophy is abstract, conversations about it can bypass the ordinary norms of human bonds. To the contrary. Ironically, the very abstractness of the questions implies that they are best pursued with people with whom one has a certain kind of closeness fostered by shared habits: friends, colleagues, family, etc. One doesn't say to a stranger, "So, about the meaning of life..." More likely, one keeps quiet. Or else: "It's a nice day today", and so on. A philosophy conversation is a joint reflection on shared forms of life. When there is no palpable sense of a shared form of life between people, a philosophy conversation seems out of grasp. When it feels as if one can't even talk to a person about the weather, it is hard to talk about the nature of the self or freedom or the good life.
 

Amateur Philosopher

Here are two facts. I chose not to be a philosophy professor. And I still want to do philosophy. This combination can make it seem as if my attitude to the profession must be a combative one, as if I don't like the profession. I fall prey to thinking this sometimes too. But it's not correct.

 

There are different ways in which one might be contrasted with a professional philosopher.

 

1) A professional philosopher as opposed to not being a philosopher at all.

2) A professional philosopher as opposed to a critic of professional philosophy.

3) A professional philosopher as opposed to being an amateur philosopher.

 

When I tell people I left professional philosophy, mostly their response seems to be to think that I didn't like philosophy, and so want to leave that behind. They are assuming here contrast (1).

 

When I say that isn't the case, and that I still like and envision doing philosophy, they get a worried look. As if I had just declared war. I imagine they think that I have it in for the profession for some personal reason (maybe I dislike my former colleagues, or I resented not publishing, or maybe I just wasn't good at it but am not able to accept that). By saying that I still want to do philosophy, I seem to be implying that the philosophy profession is somehow corrupt or trivial or some other dirty thing. They expect me to be mad. Angry. Or to at least take a righteous tone, as if I had some principles which I wasn't willing to sacrifice, and which the profession was asking me to sacrifice. When I sense this look in others, it brings out similar conceptions in myself. So I take on an angry tone. Or a righteous tone. As if I am Luther putting up my 95 theses. Here contrast (2) is assumed.

 

I have spent a year fluctuating between contrast (1) and (2). Sometimes I would think, "I just didn't want to do that". But this seems hard to tell myself, since I think about philosophy pretty much constantly. So then contrast (2) presents itself. And so I would think, "Yes, the profession is all wrong! What craziness! Why is no one else seeing this? I must be a great philosopher, ahead of the curve. A prophet. Ok, then, I will speak out as a prophet. I will criticize the profession, like Jesus knocking over the tables of the money changers." A great energy would overtake me. And then....frustration. And then...depression. The whole thing seems forced. Not natural. As if I am taking on some grand project to justify my decision to leave. As if I creating an enemy to prop myself up. I ask myself, "Is the philosophy profession bad? Deeply wrong?" I think there are deep assumptions of the profession I disagree with, but that doesn't make the profession unjust or vicious. It just means I have a disagreement with some of the ways the profession functions. And where exactly do I disagree with the profession? To take on the critic stand a battery of charges is needed. Do I have such a list? As I think about it, I realize: "No, I don't have such a list." I don't even know what exactly philosophy is. I have ideas, like any one else. But if I am honest with myself, I know that I am puttering around just like anyone else. This recognition takes out the venom from my mind. It deflates the call to revolution. And then at first I feel lost, as if a public stance I could take has been lost. But slowly I feel more peaceful. Because I know in my heart that I was not meant to be a critic of the profession. That is not why I left. It is a pose I could take, but it is also a pose in which I could lose myself. Better to avoid it altogether.

 

Recently, in the past few weeks, I have started to think that contrast (3) is what applies to me. "Amateur philosopher" can be understood in two ways: one who has not acquired the skills of a professional philosopher, or one who does not make an income as a philosopher. The former does not fit me, since I did acquire such skills. But the latter does now apply to me. Philosophy is no longer my career.