undelete your account

I’m not on Instagram any more. that means there’s nowhere to put the pictures I’m starting to take again but here.

Bertrand Russell wrote that in the modern world, it’s become difficult to pursue the highest ideals of the intellectual life and that we moderns live in the “most parochial” era since Homer. by this he means that there is a tendency in contemporary thought to disdain the hard won wisdom of previous eras in favor of viewing everything through recently conceived frames. “We imagine ourselves at the apex of intelligence, and cannot believe that the quaint clothes and cumbrous phrases of former times can have invested people and thoughts that are still worthy of our attention.” most people making a name for themselves as public intellectuals—that scabrous and embattled profession—do so by applying preapproved dogmas that often only serve to signal their allegiance to some faction while reducing the need to think clearly.

Russell places one cause for this tendency with the need for the money and the fame that support a career in thinking. this appeals both to the psychological desire for validation and also the need to make one’s living. another cause is the rapidity with which the world changes, which creates an anxiety about keeping pace with the times while fearing the inevitability of being surpassed and the risk of appearing “untimely,” as Nietzsche would put it.

these are only epiphenomenal symptoms, according to Russell. ultimately, in the modern world, there is a desperate lack of compelling context. “Every serious worker, whether artist, philosopher, or astronomer, believed that in following his own convictions he was serving God’s purpose.” as the world became more and more secular, principles like Truth, Beauty and Goodness floated the spirits of atheistic “workers,” but their earnest faith in these principles had the paradoxical effect of privileging subjective conviction, which is prone to manipulation by the above mentioned desire for acceptance among one’s peers, over an objective reality. thus, Truth gave way to rhetorical force, Beauty deemed a social construct, and Goodness reduced to mere cultural behavioral norms. deprived of divine justification, a would be visionary/revolutionary was left with a weakened psychic defense against the pressures of dogmatism and social conformity. “For these reasons a greater energy of personal conviction is required to lead a man to stand out against the current of his time than would have been necessary in any previous period since the Renaissance.”

I don’t really care whether this diagnosis is right or not. Russell is kind of obnoxious, even if I sympathize with his opposition to dogmatism in favor of clarity of thought. he spends too much harping on Marxism, as would be expected from a British aristocrat. but what struck me about this brief essay, “On Being Modern-Minded,” were the last two sentences (emphasis mine):

A certain degree of isolation both in space and time is essential to generate the independence required for the most important work; there must be something which is felt to be of more importance than the admiration of the contemporary crowd. We are suffering not from the decay of theological beliefs but from the loss of solitude.

imagine what Russell, who wrote this essay nearly 90 years ago, would say about the chattering classes on Twitter and Substack, hordes clamoring for attention by either parroting shibboleths or rage-baiting.

I have almost entirely removed myself from the social media ecosystem. this was for the exact reason Russell suggests: I recognized a need to develop my attention, and my personal conviction, away from the weaponized consensus manufactured by social media platforms. these platforms also just take up too much of my time, filling my experience with a kind of white noise that dulls my ability to perceive the subtleties of life, a perception that’s indispensable to anyone hoping to represent their impressions of the World via artistic and intellectual practices like literature, film or music.

but now I’m wondering if there’s not still value in trying to express oneself via these most immediately available means. whether a desire to get back online is a sign of strengthened personal resolve, or if it’s the addict’s faux-naive belief that they can use responsibly now.

in any case, I’m back to writing online, and I intend to do so consistently again.