I am a thinker. I am so apologetically and with much embarrassment, but even with the weight of that understanding I remain a thinker. I often counsel people searching for their life's purpose to pay attention to that which they do when they have nothing to do. If you find yourself singing your life needs to contain much singing, if you find yourself dancing or reading or taking care of people or telling jokes then you fill your life with that. I think...constantly, neurotically and obsessively; I think about thinking and how I feel about my thinking. I try to feel about thinking but inevitably find myself thinking about my attempt to feel about thinking and then correspondingly feel guilty having spoiled my attempt at feeling with thought. I have this whole stand up routine I deliver to friends when I am attempting to convey the intensity of my neurotic thoughts. I really should create a flowchart that begins with "Any topic of conversation", passes through several incidental intermediary stages like "Impending collision of the Andromeda galaxy with the Milky Way" and ends with "You (me speaking to me) are worthless and a failure and generally a drain on the human species".
It's funnier in person.
Just now though a thought appeared which I trust because it was accompanied by a feeling of rightness. Perhaps, the thought goes, the pervasive anxiety and epidemic of neurotic thinking I am experiencing is symptomatic of not applying my proclivity towards thought in a productive manner. You see I have made my life in the world of music which is a world deeply distrustful of analysis. I often feel like an impostor trying to evade detection by the "real" musicians. Analytic thought is truly my greatest talent. The creative lifestyle has come much more difficulty for me. I've had to learn it piece by piece. I love it though. I love it wildly and passionately and with a profound sense of purpose and meaning. Analysis mostly makes me feel dirty and whorish, like I'm selling myself. This I think is largely due to an internal dichotomy as to prospective career choices. My feeling self very much wants to continue on with music and to grow my creative powers to their full potential. My thinking self, which is nothing less than a little bastard, advocates towards a profession in the law. The choice then presents itself to me as being between happiness and material comfort.
But what if I've created a straw man here. What if the problem is not analytic thought in totality but this singular material manifestation of it in my contemplation of a career in law. After all there are plenty of miserable, unexpressive, wonderfully talented musicians out there drudging away day after day for money. That's just as terrible an existence isn't it? What if I need to be applying my reluctant talent towards more wholesome pursuits. What if by doing so my brain turned its attention away from the neurotic, obsessive and anxious and towards the love of knowledge, which is what philosophy is supposed to be.
So then we begin where I began my love affair with knowledge, in the arena of political philosophy. I first entered the minds of the great thinkers of western society at the invitation of my 11th grade AP US History teacher. An amazing man and amazing teacher. He would indulge my rebellious but intellectual tirades and challenge my thinking, which was refreshing in that it was not dismissive. He began nudging me towards this book or that and I ate them up voraciously. I was a huge consumer of enlightenment works which influenced the American founders: Locke, Montesquieu, of course Jefferson and eventually I found my way to Rousseau.
Rousseau was fascinating to me for several reasons, firstly he was a musician. I was not particularly moved by his music but knowing he lived in that world spoke to my own struggle at the time between my analytical and musical selves. Secondly he just wrote differently than most other philosophers. If you've ever had the displeasure of reading Aristotle than you understand how tedious and monotonous these people can be. Now don't get me wrong I appreciate the mental dexterity and the enlightened minds but on a fundamental level, reading philosophy is often boring as shit. Rousseau isn't though. He is brash and emotive and has a keen flair for the dramatic. Let me show you some of what I mean by taking you through just the very beginning of his Social Contract.
Watch how he begins with this odd statement of humility (rare among philosophical types):
"This little treatise is part of a larger work which I undertook many years ago without thinking of the limitations of my powers, and have long since abandoned."
...So two words in he is self deprecating, this little treatise, which he then follows with a recognition of his mortality. Continuing on...
"...Of the various fragments that might have been taken from what I wrote, this is the most considerable, and the one I think the least unworthy of being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists."
That's his introduction to his work. "Uh hey um, I wrote this stupid thing and it was part of a bigger thing but I was too stupid to finish it so this is the least shitty part of what I was trying to do before. I burned the rest". Refreshingly human I think. One of the most irritating parts of reading philosophy for me was the prevailing sense of having intellectually conquered nature or the universe or the subject of their little treatise. It always felt like a newer more pathetic manifestation of the same obsolete male impulses towards screaming and thumping one's chest at having killed something. Humility is generally lacking in philosophy but Rousseau intrigued me with this little opening. Continuing on...
"My purpose is to consider if, in political society, there can be any legitimate and sure principle of government, taking men as they are and laws as they might be."
That is a pretty god damned succinct thesis statement. My 9th grade English teacher would be proud. The efficiency of it is artistic. He is writing about political right, whether or not government is a justifiable human phenomenon on moral or utilitarian grounds and he manages to describe that subject in an incredibly efficient, plain and complete manner in just 30 words which average maybe four letters each. (It could almost be a fucking tweet!) It is beautiful and again refreshing. So much different than most philosophers. Continuing on a little ways later, the famous line...
"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains."
Talk about a flair for the dramatic. What a gripping thing to say. It pulls you right forward doesn't it? This again is succinct and plain spoken and direct in a powerful way. It becomes the central point of the work; that man is in a sense de-volving, getting worse over time as a result of society. He'll argue everything from moral impurity to freaking prevalence of disease have increased over time as a result of man inventing societies.
I can't only praise him though. I just thought I'd begin by explaining why he is fascinating to me. He is still at his heart a westerner with an unhealthy love of the rational mode, like a stalker in a tree with binoculars. Yea it's good he is passionate about something but there's a fine line between endearing persistence and restraining order, you know what I mean? Consider the following...
"The oldest of all societies, and the only natural one, is that of the family; yet children remain tied to their father by nature only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this need ends, the natural bond is dissolved. Once the children are freed from the obedience they owe their father, and the father is freed from his responsibilities towards them, both parties equally regain their independence."
Now before dissecting this with the rational scalpel, doesn't it just feel wrong? I mean doesn't it get down in your stomach and swirl around, kicking up nauseousness and leaving you feeling uneasy? I know as a male I feel the impulse to sometimes act brutish and coldly in vulgar indulgence of the desire to procreate as often as possible before death but that feeling even in its most intense form is accompanied by a sense of wrongness or numbness, which one comes to understand as the willful ignorance of wrongness. It is natural to want to protect your children, to see them grow strong and wise and happy. It is natural to preserve the family unit and to be kind and loving. At least I feel that way.
Anyways you can see the cold blooded approach of the rational surgeon (philosophers) whereby emotion is relegated to a vastly subservient position in the hierarchy of truth seeking and silly conclusions such as the one above are suddenly and easily arrived at. It is interesting though to note that even the most rational of formulations must begin with an emotional premise and it is not irrelevant I think to consider the fact that Rousseau himself abandoned his children after being abandoned himself by his father. Perhaps this shaded his conclusion above in convincing himself to simultaneously forgive his father and absolve himself of his own sins.
Such is the game we play when we try successively to place the ideas of philosophers in the box of psychology and then vice versa. At least it seems more fun to me than the all too familiar neurotic arm wrestling in my brain. We'll see how this goes. Maybe we'll continue one with Mr. Jean-Jacques and his inquiry into the principles of political right. Maybe someone out there will engage in a substantive discussion of his flamboyant and irregular treatise. That would just hit the spot.
Good Times
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