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Tag: philosophy

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    Solvitur Ambulando: Wisdom in Motion

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    1–2 minutes

    “Solvitur ambulando”—it is solved by walking—offers a pragmatic epistemology. Rather than abstract theorizing, resolution emerges through movement, embodiment, and engagement with the world. (Often the phrase is employed to move from abstract arguments to real world situations, and practical examples.)

    However, rather than merely shifting to talking about reality, walking itself becomes both literal and metaphorical: a way to process thought, defuse anxiety, and restore perspective. Problems that feel insurmountable spur bodily motion, anxiety transformed into repetitious rhythm, which provides clarity.

    Thinking is aided by moving, wisdom enhanced by action.

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    Simulated Selves and the Persuasion of Reality

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    1–2 minutes

    The art of persuasion interweaves shared beliefs (intersubjective ideas) and simulations (theoretical fantasy), producing perceptual misalignments.

    These are narratives or stories that reframe our view of reality. While spun from fiction, their effects become real (measurable), entailing a shift in material conditions despite very little reality being accounted for in the story.

    Thus, the self and world coalesce; identity becomes a node within shared simulations.

    Persuasion, then, is not deception, but architecture—constructing experiential truths that weave real-world effects into structure.

    These constructs dissolve dualities (fantasy vs reality, matter vs form), revealing that if a simulation elicits real emotions, consequences, or decisions, it is real in all impactful senses.

    Reality, shaped by consensus, is a persuasive simulation (an intersubjective idea) we have all agreed to inhabit.

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    The Fragility of Defining Good

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    1–2 minutes

    True goodness cannot be solely equated with nobility, utility, or purity.

    These frameworks, although tempting, create vulnerabilities that are exploited: simplifying goodness into a single metric provides a means for elites to reinforce capitalism (economic value) and submission (moral justification).

    Goodness as usefulness is a typical reduction where utility reduces morality to transactional value. Purity, meanwhile, fosters exclusionary sanctimony. And nobility is a trait that is both mythic, with its mix of cruelty and mercy, folly and wisdom, yet is historically rooted in familial nepotism, despite attempts at redefinition.

    None of these fully captures the messy reality of ethical life. Consider one who pays a bribe to save a family: neither value is added nor purity preserved, yet the act resonates as "good" or "right."

    Goodness resists rigid categorization; it thrives in the gray areas where rigid moral systems collapse under the complexity of real-world situations.

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    Failing Toward Extremity

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    1–2 minutes

    From Westward Ho, we get a model of radical, even ethical, perseverance: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” In a perverse sense, this becomes the noble revolutionary spirit: failure is valorized over productivity; the iterative attempts are the path, eclipsing the goal.

    Persistence despite failure embodies the scientific method of collecting failures as data points of knowledge and a worthy action, but socially introduces a zero-point principle of always starting anew. Begin again from nothing.

    In this sense, it is contradictory to modern ideas of success and efficiency, making repeated failure itself a revolutionary concept.

    Yet, commitment without results breeds disillusionment and resentment. The lack of success leads to mobilization and recruitment being driven by masochism or resentment, an enactment of failure and loss as liturgy of pain, burning out as we “fail again,” commiserating in our lack, until we “fail better” into nihilistic extremism.

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    All Good Things: not compatible

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    1–2 minutes

    By declaring other values “good,” which is itself a value, we conflate and redefine them as familial. At best, they are a dysfunctional group that is variously at odds and antagonistic to each other.

    The optimistic view…that all good things must be  compatible , and that therefore freedom, order, knowledge, happiness…must be at least  compatible , and perhaps even entail one another in a systematic fashion…is not self-evidently true… Indeed, it is perhaps one of the least plausible beliefs ever entertained by profound and influential thinkers.”

    Isaiah Berlin

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    The Intersubjective vs. The Ideal

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    1–2 minutes

    Politics operates between intersubjective reality (shared perceptions that shape movements) and abstract idealism, where principles transcend practical concerns.

    Grassroots politics emerges from collective experience, while ideological politics refines these into utopian visions. However, when ideals detach from reality, they risk becoming dogma, imposing rigid, often contradictory standards akin to religious orthodoxy, leading to harmful edicts.

    The challenge lies in translating theory into practice without coercion. Social change is most sustainable when ideals are integrated gradually, through cultural acceptance rather than force or exclusion.
    A balance must be struck: too much realism stagnates progress, while unchecked idealism alienates those it seeks to uplift.
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    Language function

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    1–2 minutes

    Language is constructed for multiple reasons, but let’s consider two ways it functions.

    Language systems, such as math, attempt to map and make communicable the patterns found in the world. We call these objective scientific facts, though they are constantly being disputed and refined.

    Another type of language, like gossip or emotional bonding, is akin to primate grooming: fostering social hierarchies. Furthermore, they establish symbolic ideology tied to identity, such as politics or religion, allowing for intersubjective alignment: we call these social constructs, some of which are subjective.

    To delineate, there is revealed truth (fact) and created social constructs (opinion) that can have enough power to manifest as functional truth.

    Interestingly, a lie or “alternate category” can have power, feel like truth, and be maintained as fact. This is why we return to science and investigate reality to reveal the lies through discovery, not additional fabrication.

    And yet, no one wants to live in a brutal reality without moral social constructs, like justice and mercy, seldom found in the animal kingdom. To be overly logical is to become a brute and risk expulsion from communion, which realistically expels truth for stability and social cohesion. This is also a truth in it’s consequences.

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    It’s not what you say…

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    1–2 minutes

    Common sense aphorisms can appear contradictory but often point towards a truism.

    “It’s not what you say, but how you say it”

    counterposed with

    “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do that counts”

    leads us to realize what you say is not essential (content), but the aesthetic form or concrete event is our means to derive meaning.

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    The universal revolutionary impulse

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    1–2 minutes

    Is there a universal thread that unites revolutionary warring factions?

    Viewing revolutionary potential as a shared impulse could reveal an unseen ideology, showing people they are more alike—driven by a craving for change—than opposed. Alternatively, their differences might shrink to mere juvenile angst, maturing into the sublation of antagonism.

    Optimistic, yes, but not without hope.

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    too much truth is suspect

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    1–2 minutes

    We demand unvarnished clarity, yet when trauma—like a crime—is reported too concisely, the teller becomes suspect for their clarity and precision.

    Inconsistency is consistent with human nature, while over-embellished stories, laden with absurd detail, show their lies—straining too hard to convince, they abandon natural behavior.

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