The Conversations People Don't Want To Have
Debating is hard. Conversation doesn’t have to be debating.
People find asking questions hard. They don’t know what to ask. Something is screwy there.
But OK. What happens if I ask the questions?
I ask what they like, what interests them, what they do, what their plans in life are. Stuff like that to start with.
They know the basics of how they spend their time, e.g. they work 40 hours a week at Walmart. They don’t have very accurate, detailed knowledge.
They have and know some interests.
So then I'd ask *why* they have those interests and if they think they should have more control over how they spend their time.
And maybe they answer a bit, and I ask more questions.
And pretty soon the answer is: “I don’t know.”
And then I ask if they think they *should* know, or see value in knowing. Do they want to understand themselves better? Do they care about that?
There are reasons to prioritize knowing what you’re doing, and why, before doing a bunch of stuff. I could explain that if they don’t get it, but lots of people would understand that.
And you need to know what you’re doing, and why, in order to critically examine it very well. And, as we attribute to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. And people agree with that or claim to and feel bad about openly rejecting it.
So then what’s left but to conclude that they would benefit greatly from being an expert at philosophy ASAP?
And there are a few other big themes to be said. If their goal is to do X, I can ask if X is hard and complicated. Have thousands or millions of other people failed at it? What kind of success rate have others had? And so, if it’s hard, *how* will you succeed? What are you doing to succeed where others failed or would fail if they tried? What methods are you using to accomplish this big thing? How do you organize your ways of making progress? How do you approach learning stuff that comes up within the project? etc. And so, again, it leads quickly into: they need philosophy, they can’t possibly succeed without it, and are they going to leave their fate in the hands of some philosophy they picked up in childhood from their culture and cannot clearly state or critically examine today?
Or, in the alternative, I could end up asking: So, you have no big goals? You don’t plan to do anything significant or important? You’ll just do small, easy projects (that don’t combine into anything greater) until you die? You are content for your life to be pretty pointless? Maybe you’ll help someone else with their project, like if you work at Amazon your life has the point of helping Jeff Bezos with *his* projects. Is that good enough for you? Considering you have no good way to judge if whose projects are good to help with.
People won’t talk with me because they don’t want to have *those* conversations, and the followup ones criticizing tons of what they currently do and think.
They also don’t want to conclude they need philosophy yesterday but that they suck too much to learn it soon, so they need some bandaids on their life, some compromises to try to make the best of a bad situation.
Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com
People find asking questions hard. They don’t know what to ask. Something is screwy there.
But OK. What happens if I ask the questions?
I ask what they like, what interests them, what they do, what their plans in life are. Stuff like that to start with.
They know the basics of how they spend their time, e.g. they work 40 hours a week at Walmart. They don’t have very accurate, detailed knowledge.
They have and know some interests.
So then I'd ask *why* they have those interests and if they think they should have more control over how they spend their time.
And maybe they answer a bit, and I ask more questions.
And pretty soon the answer is: “I don’t know.”
And then I ask if they think they *should* know, or see value in knowing. Do they want to understand themselves better? Do they care about that?
There are reasons to prioritize knowing what you’re doing, and why, before doing a bunch of stuff. I could explain that if they don’t get it, but lots of people would understand that.
And you need to know what you’re doing, and why, in order to critically examine it very well. And, as we attribute to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. And people agree with that or claim to and feel bad about openly rejecting it.
So then what’s left but to conclude that they would benefit greatly from being an expert at philosophy ASAP?
And there are a few other big themes to be said. If their goal is to do X, I can ask if X is hard and complicated. Have thousands or millions of other people failed at it? What kind of success rate have others had? And so, if it’s hard, *how* will you succeed? What are you doing to succeed where others failed or would fail if they tried? What methods are you using to accomplish this big thing? How do you organize your ways of making progress? How do you approach learning stuff that comes up within the project? etc. And so, again, it leads quickly into: they need philosophy, they can’t possibly succeed without it, and are they going to leave their fate in the hands of some philosophy they picked up in childhood from their culture and cannot clearly state or critically examine today?
Or, in the alternative, I could end up asking: So, you have no big goals? You don’t plan to do anything significant or important? You’ll just do small, easy projects (that don’t combine into anything greater) until you die? You are content for your life to be pretty pointless? Maybe you’ll help someone else with their project, like if you work at Amazon your life has the point of helping Jeff Bezos with *his* projects. Is that good enough for you? Considering you have no good way to judge if whose projects are good to help with.
People won’t talk with me because they don’t want to have *those* conversations, and the followup ones criticizing tons of what they currently do and think.
They also don’t want to conclude they need philosophy yesterday but that they suck too much to learn it soon, so they need some bandaids on their life, some compromises to try to make the best of a bad situation.
Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com
Comments & Events
Anne B
I thought anyone could learn some philosophy. Philosophy is about how to best move forward in life, no matter what your current situation. Sure, most people, myself included, aren’t ready to learn complicated philosophy. But isn’t there simple, low-level philosophy that could help someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing in life or why or how to do it? Isn’t that the kind of thing we’re supposed to be learning at this Basecamp?