Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at the philosophy of the face.

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

It takes about three seconds.

When you first meet someone, it can take just three seconds to figure out if you will like them. It might be the way they make eye contact, how easily they smile, or the tilt of their head. You can figure out if you’ll get on with someone in the time it takes to draw a breath.

Our brains have evolved to live within communities. All of the known higher primates live in social groups, and so there’s clearly a massive reproductive advantage to being able to read others’ moods, body language, and faces. It’s even been suggested that the reason we have whites around our irises is specifically so we can see where other people are looking. We can trust people more if we can track their gaze. It allows us to understand each other.

I don’t need to throw fuel on the eyebrow-scorching bonfire that is “social media is bad!” We all know the goods and many ills of the always-online world. But one of the greatest casualties of communicating with people through devices is that we miss their faces. How easy is it to misinterpret someone’s words over email? How often do we assume a comment is mean when it was never intended to be so? How funny is it when you have to explain to people you were being sarcastic?

I’ve always loved Orwell’s line: “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” I love the idea that every frown, smile, and deep, wistful thought is somewhere etched onto our faces. Of course, Orwell couldn’t have predicted the sheer technological achievement of the beauty industry, but I think the point is still true. Our autobiographies are etched onto our faces, and it takes three seconds to see if it’s the kind of autobiography we want to learn more about.

So, our faces are important. This week, we look at just how much.

Go well,
Jonny

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A union of souls

Sometimes, my children will lie to me. I know, I know — you expected better from a Philoso-dad like me. But, despite all those bedtime readings of Nicomachean Ethics and ethical dilemmas at breakfast, my two boys are lying little toe-rags.

“Who put their muddy hands on this wall?”

“Freddie!” says Charlie, and “Charlie!” says Freddie. It’s like that scene from Labyrinth.

And so, if I suspect a whiff of deceit, I will tell them to come to me. I’ll squat down on my aging, creaking legs, and I will look them in the face.

“Are you lying?” I say.

Of course, they’re my kids. I’ve been around them near-constantly since they were born. I know their mannerisms and quirks. I can read their “tells” as easily as I could a massive billboard. But the second they’re both standing in front of me, their faces bare to my beady, inquisitive eyes, they cave.

Unless you’re very well practiced, it’s really hard to lie convincingly to someone’s face. Because pausing the world to look into someone else’s eyes has a kind of intimacy. If eyes are the window to the soul, then eye contact is a form of union.

Sometimes, this can be intense. It feels uncomfortably invasive. At other times, it’s great. In the soft, kind eyes of someone who loves you, you will find home.

Philosophically, the face has an interesting role in ethics. Why is it easier to be cruel to somebody in the comments section rather than to their face? Why do we prefer to have hard conversations over the phone or via text message? Because interacting with someone’s face is qualitatively different from just speaking past them or from behind the curtain of a screen.

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas once argued that when you truly stare into somebody’s face, you open a part of your being that you cannot ignore. You see their vulnerability. You see their mortality. You see their aliveness. A person’s face, without any words, says, “I exist, I suffer. Please don’t destroy me.”

In his book, The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi describes how the SS guard at Auschwitz almost never looked the prisoners in the eye, because to look was to recognize their humanity. Levi writes about how the guard would look through them, around them, anywhere but at their faces, because their faces were the one thing the system couldn’t destroy.

We are living in a society determined to remove the face. We can send abuse to somebody without seeing their expression crumble. We can swipe past somebody on a dating app like they are in a catalog. We outsource our killing and our wars to a drone at the click of a button. We can read about thousands of dead in a headline and feel nothing, because there is no face.

Levinas would argue that every time we remove the face from the equation, we remove the thing that makes us ethical. And so perhaps the most important ethical question of our age is not “What are the rules?” and “What are the morals?” but “Whose faces have we stopped seeing?”

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IN A QUOTE

MINI READING LIST

• How the “4 Types of Luck” can enrich your work-life

• Over-optimizing your life is making you fragile, not better

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At the time of writing, 2.5 million people follow Mini Philosophy across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. That is an insane number of people, and I’m forever grateful for being the hub of such a wonderful community.

I‘ve made genuine relationships over social media. I’ve stayed up late discussing new and niche ideas. I‘ve partnered with wonderful organizations and charities. I’ve met people in real life and turned online avatars into real-life friends. I‘m blessed to be able to meet such a varied stretch of the philosophically inclined population.

But sometimes, people send me seriously weird stuff. I don’t mean abusive, trolling messages. Anyone in any corner of social media will get those. “You look like a tw*t,” someone sent me last week. (And after checking it wasn‘t sent by one of my mates, I quickly clicked “block” to never hear from them again. I hope they’re happier now.)

No, today I‘m talking about the messages that are just a bit strange.

So, here for your generous paying-eyes only, I‘ve collated three categories of messages that I get all too often. And, as a bonus, I include the one that makes me laugh every time I read it.

I hope you enjoy.

Go well,
Jonny

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Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at the ethics of attention.

You can find the companion article here: The “rawdogging” trend: A new term for an ancient practice

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease

I miss a lot of things about being a teacher.

I miss the energy and humor of the young. I miss the look of happiness when they got the grade they worked for. With the older students, I deeply miss the moment that the philosophy moved from being an abstract, dead thing to a lived and relevant reality. The class would transform. It became a 20-person support group, and the conversation was a kind of therapy. I transformed, too.

One thing I absolutely do not miss is classroom management.

I didn’t like telling people off. I didn’t like being the law. But most of all, I hated that some days I gave all my attention to the loud, disruptive, attention-seeking students and gave the good, hardworking ones the bare minimum.

Perhaps I wasn’t cut out for teaching. If any readers are still teachers, I’m sure you manage it better than I did. But I never found a way to give my attention equally or fairly. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” as they say. It felt unfair at the time, and I felt guilty after those days. It might even have been one of the reasons I ended up leaving.

So, this week I wanted to look at the ethics of attention. Is it ever wrong to look at some people rather than others? Is it okay to only read about one topic while ignoring all these others over here?

Grease out, everyone, let’s fix them squeaks.

Go well,
Jonny

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You can change your algorithm

In 1877, William Clifford published one of the most influential papers in the history of philosophy. I think that in all the interviews I’ve had with philosophers over the last two years, this one has come up the most (with Thomas Nagel coming in second).

The article was titled “The Ethics of Belief,” and it’s about whether we have moral obligations to believe certain things. Clifford says we do, and he gives his famous line: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

When philosophers talk about the ethics of belief, they usually do so in three steps:

First, our actions can be moral or immoral.

Second, our beliefs motivate our actions.

Therefore, what we believe will motivate moral or immoral actions.

If you believe that foreigners are inferior and a blight on the Earth, you will behave in an immoral, racist, or abusive way. If you believe that other people always have something to teach you, then you will approach the world with curiosity and humility. Beliefs motivate actions, so study your beliefs carefully.

I think we can treat an “ethics of attention” with the same kind of argument.

I’m an old fan of the old stories. I love legends and fables. And one of the most common themes across almost all mythological traditions is the “you are what you eat” motif. When Persephone of Greek myth eats pomegranate seeds in the underworld, she becomes part of Death. In Norse mythology, whoever drinks from the Mead of Poetry becomes as songful and lyrical as any Warwickshire bard. When Fionn eats the flesh from the Salmon of Knowledge, he becomes the wisest man in Ireland.

All these stories are getting at something similar: We become what we attend to. The modern-day Persephone reads article after article about war and genocide. She watches Islamic State execution videos. And so, she has nightmares. She becomes morose and retreats inward. Your friend from school has spent years reading the romantic poets, attending writing courses, and is a regular at the local art gallery. They speak beautifully and have the kind of golden aura that makes saying “golden aura” somehow not a cliché. Fionn at work is the smartest man you’ve met. He’s a voracious book addict and never loses a pub quiz.

What we attend to changes us, and so there are good and bad, better or worse things we can attend to. Sometimes, this might be an issue of mental health. It’s been documented that young girls who spend hours looking at skinny, designer-clad models on Instagram are more likely to develop body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and depression. At other times, this might be tied to an explicitly ethical issue. Young men who hang on everything Andrew Tate says will start to walk and talk like him. They might end up misogynistic, arrogant, and with no fewer mental health issues than the young girls.

Then, there’s the news. In his book, Nexus, Yuval Harari talks about the idea of an “information diet.” As he put it in an interview with Big Think: “We should watch the quality of the information we feed our mind. If we feed our mind with all this junk information full of greed and hate and fear, we will have sick minds.”

And so, for most of us, we should be careful — or deliberate — about what information about the world we consume. Don’t turn away from the atrocities in the world, but don’t saturate yourself in them. Don’t focus exclusively on your own backyard, but don’t get lost in the problems you cannot help. Moderation in all things, as the Greeks were wont to say.

The ethics of attention says that we are what we attend to. And so, what we consume on social media, in our conversations, on TV, and so on is going in somewhere. Knowing this allows us to be more intentional about it. Choose your conversations; choose what movies you see. Instagram even lets you change your algorithm now.

You are what you eat, and you become what you give yourself to.

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IN A QUOTE

I love reading Jared Henderson and he wrote an essay last year focussing on Heidegger and Weil’s notions of attention. This quote is a cracker:

MINI READING LIST

• The 4 “beauty ideals” that fuel modern-day prejudice

• Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder

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Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at the many forms of resilience.

You can find the companion article here: The daffodil’s guide to outliving the winter

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

I’m not a huge fan of Monty Python.

Even saying that sounds sacrilegious. As we were growing up, Brits of a certain age were often expected to view Monty Python with the kind of sacred reverence you usually reserved for religion.

“Which is your favorite Monty Python movie, son?”

“Impossible to answer, Dad; they’re all so brilliant. How can you rank perfection against perfection?”

“Right answer. Now go put on The Life of Brian.”

Some of the jokes are funny enough. Most are very clever. But to a boy who binged on a postmodern, ultra-ironic diet of Alan Partridge and The Office (UK), Monty Python was a touch basic. But, for all that, there is one sketch I think about a lot. It’s a sketch that became family lore: something we would repeat again and again when the opportunity came up.

It’s known as the “Four Yorkshiremen.”

The idea is that one man — a Yorkshireman — says something like, “In my day… we’d only have a cup of tea.” Then the reply comes from their friend, “Aye…without milk.” The third Yorkshireman frowns, leans in, and says, “Or sugar.” The fourth smiles wryly, “Tea? You lads were lucky. In my day, we had water only.”

“Water?! You were lucky. In my day, you only had puddle gloop, and you’d be happy for it!”

And on it goes, the four of them competing with each other in a competition of misery.

I often think about that sketch.

One of the most grating things is when you encounter a real-life “Yorkshireman” (I should say, this is an unfair stereotype). Sometimes, if you tell someone you’ve had a hard day at work, they don’t smile sympathetically. They will try to one-up you. “Oh, my day was worse.” If you’re crying about some breakup or tragedy, they’ll hug and pat you, then say, “Well, it’s not as bad as when my dog died.”

This week we look at the battles we all fight and why kindness, always kindness, is best.

Go well,
Jonny

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Getting out of bed and turning up

This week, Big Think released our latest print issue, The Roots of Resilience. It’s an artful exploration of the many philosophical, scientific, and psychological facets of resilience. (If you want a copy, please do sign up to become a Big Think member — you’ll get four print magazines per year.)

And as I was flicking through my copy, I was struck by just how versatile the idea of “resilience” is. Like any thick, complex concept, I’m sure we all have a vision of resilience. If you asked me a few months ago, I’d say it was being tough. Resilience is slogging through the dark night, a snowstorm rocking you back. Rocky Balboa is resilient. I’ve always associated resilience with success.

But there are many different kinds of resilience. Yes, there’s the battered boxer getting up in the tenth round. But there’s also the resilience of a young student who works hard when her friends have all gone to the pub. There’s the mother who is weak and headachy from a stomach bug, but still puts breakfast on the table for her kids. There’s the old man who is kind, generous, and friendly, having just been told something awful at the doctor’s.

I’ve actually come to revise my conception of resilience. I think resilience is getting out of bed every day and showing up. That’s it. It’s being there when the world is trying its damnedest to make you not be there.

There’s an old saying I think about a lot: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

It’s one of those lines that changes how you deal with other people. Everyone is fighting. Everyone is having to be resilient. Everyone found it hard to turn up, at some point, but they did.

There is a well-observed phenomenon in the social sciences known as the “oppression Olympics.” This is where two or more people try to “out-oppress” each other. Like a real-life Monty Python sketch, they try to list all the many ways that their misery, their oppression, is worse than others’. No, of course, this isn’t a sketch, and oppression of any kind is never really funny. But the point is that this kind of one-upping of each other’s suffering has two problems:

First, it dulls our kindness. When we focus only on our suffering — however bad or worse that might be — we fail to appreciate that others are suffering too. To paraphrase Tolstoy, everyone is unhappy, but we are unhappy in our own ways.

Second, it obstructs genuine change. When we are too busy locked into a shouted, indignant oppression Olympics, we turn our ire and effort onto each other rather than the causes of that suffering.

“Clive asked me to get this report done in two days; that’s ridiculous.”

“That’s nothing,” your friend replies. “Clive once told me to work until 9 p.m. to get one to him the next day.”

Both situations are bad. Both people are wronged. Clive is an arsehole. And yet, the bickering competition between colleagues misdirects anger from the source of the problem: Clive.

All of which is to say that we are all resilient. Everyone reading this newsletter right now has had to get out of bed, turn up, and put on their tough-cookie face for a while. This morning, I spent a few minutes worrying about this and dreading that. I’m sure you did the same. We each have something we are battling, and it’s good to be kind, always. But it’s also good to help each other in the battle.

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IN A QUOTE

From my wonderful colleague and friend Anne-Laure le Cunff:

MINI READING LIST

• Why your attention keeps slipping away (and how to get it back)

• Need to find your focus? Take some time to lose it.

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Growing up, I had kind and loving parents. They sent me to a great school. We were always comfortable. But recently, I’ve become conscious of another kind of luck: I’ve been completely, utterly insulated from the “manosphere.” Of course, I know about Andrew Tate. In my teaching days, we had entire training sessions about male radicalization. Everyone in education has seen Adolescence. But in my day-to-day life, I’m lucky that I don’t actually know any manospherics. Whenever I meet someone who talks or acts like HSTikkyTokky, I’m fortunate enough to be able to walk away and find someone more my jam.

But this month, thanks to the always-brilliant Louis Theroux’s new Netflix show Inside the Manosphere, my social media world has become saturated by the stuff. My March has been overwhelmed with quotes on top of clips nestled in opinion pieces. And so, in this month’s Philosophy of March, I’m going to get meta. I’m going to look at the commentary around the manosphere and explore what it tells us about just how Freudian everyone has become these days.

Next, we’ll explore the storm in a teacup that is Timothée Chalamet’s comments about ballet and opera. And in the age-old spirit of “controversy sells papers,” I’m going to argue that he was right.

Red pills and leotards at the ready, everyone; we’re diving into March.

Go well,
Jonny

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Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at Aztec philosophy with Sebastian Purcell.

You can find the companion article here: Aztec philosophy: How lucky you are to not be in prison right now

Paid members can find our full interview at the end of the newsletter.

Last Thursday, I won at Settlers of Catan.

For those unfamiliar with board games, Settlers of Catan is a resource-collecting game that hits the sweet spot between “needs a bit of skill” and “still mostly luck.” It’s a near-perfect game for an easily distracted, mostly-here-for-the-chat philosopher. Pete, our board game host of the month, took his defeat well. He almost always wins, but didn’t expect my hidden victory-point cards.

After my win, I jokingly said to the table, “I might put this victory on LinkedIn.” Laughs from most; a grudging smile from Pete. Of course, the joke works because winning a board game is unlikely to sit next to all the “I’m excited to announce I’m starting a new role…” of LinkedIn. But it also works because board games are not meant to be about any worldly prestige. Yes, Magnus Carlsen might earn a ton by winning at chess. And yes, Monte Carlo does host an annual backgammon tournament. But Settlers of Catan at Pete’s house on a Thursday is just for the fun of it.

So much of what we do is instrumental. We do a thing for some other thing. School to get a qualification. A qualification to get a job. A job to get money. And so on. A board game has its own internal goals — collect victory points, bankrupt your opponents, conquer the world. But once the board is neatly packed away with the satisfying swoosh, the game is done.

“Thanks, Pete, best be off.”

And so this week, we look at the beautiful, tragic, and life-affirming magic of a “pointless game.”

Go well,
Jonny

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One can’t imagine Sisyphus happy

In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus presents the story of poor Sisyphus, condemned to push a whopping boulder up a hill for all eternity. Of course, it’s a metaphor for the human condition. We all have rocks to push up hills until we die. And yet, Camus tells us that we must “imagine Sisyphus happy.” Smile at your boulder. Laugh as you sweat.

I’ve always found that a hard line to swallow. I cannot possibly imagine chortling my way through a never-ending torture. I’d probably start cackling madly after a few years, no doubt. But it would be the joyless mirth of the broken mind.

To my mind, it would be much better to imagine Sisyphus playing a board game at Pete’s. It has to be something with at least occasional glimmers of fun. The board game is inherently pointless. When the time is up, the meeples are shuffled away in their tiny plastic bags like the Grim Reaper with his scythe.

“Thanks, Pete, time to die.”

In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with Aztec philosophy expert Sebastian Purcell, and I did that thing a lot of European philosophers do. As Purcell was explaining this unfamiliar philosophy, I kept trying to rationalize it through the prism of what I know.

“So is it a bit like Plato?” I asked. “This reminds me of Camus.”

In Aztec philosophy, there is no sense of progress or any intentional, rational order to the cosmos. The Western intellectual tradition is, in the main, steeped in the Judeo-Christian conception of “sacred time.” This is the idea that everything started out a bit crap — in a swirling chaos, exiled from Eden — but we’re on the road to perfection — heaven, rapture, utopia. Keep walking, folks, it’s not long now. But this is how Purcell explained the Aztec idea:

“The fundamental nature of the universe isn’t guaranteed. It tends to come together in organized form and then fall apart over a period of time. The core idea here is that the universe isn’t complete. We try to establish a sort of order and arrange things, but it never fully locks up.

Humanity’s activity is an attempt to struggle against these sort of entropic features of the universe. And there’s beauty and value to be had in that struggle. There is not going to be achievement, because you’re not gonna win. But there’s beauty and value to be had in the struggle itself.”

When I reflect on my own life, I suspect that on some unconscious level, I’ve internalised a notion of false immortality. As de Beauvoir wrote in her book All Men Are Mortal, death is something that happens to other people. I’m the exception that bucks the rule. I hope for some eleventh-hour intervention. I’m hoping for some miraculous life extension, or I’m willing to settle on a bit of an afterlife.

A part of my being stubbornly, wilfully rejects the idea that the world is entropic. Somewhere deep inside, I still assume sacred time is right. There’s an intentional hand guiding the universe.

I usually shuffle this off as being “evolutionary.” I believe that the human brain has to think this way, otherwise we’d be crippled by death-anxiety all the time and would never bother doing things. I think this is still true. I think that our brains can’t focus on mortality for too long, or else we’d just wither. But in our interview, Purcell introduced me to another tradition altogether, and it challenged me. The Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions assume some divine, guiding hand. Even Hindu and Buddhist traditions assume there is some order to the cosmos — even though it’s not a human-centred one. Aztec philosophy is built on the assumption that there is no discernible order. Everything is a temporary and accidental configuration.

“This reminds me of Camus,” I blustered.

Aztec philosophy doesn’t just stop at that absurd — even nihilistic — point. It makes a virtue out of pointless continuation. It elevates carrying on as the greatest act of humanity. Courage is when you do a thing knowing it will fail. It means building when the bulldozers are already on their way.

But to be truly great according to Aztec philosophy — to really live a good life — we should enjoy the process of living in the shadow of death. Purcell uses this metaphor:

“Your life is a linked sequence of actions on the world’s stage, whether that dance is done well or poorly is the only thing that matters… making it longer doesn’t make it a better dance. You don’t have to live longer, but you do have to do it well.”

The problem with Camus’ version is that a boulder is too boring and a hill is too hard. Sure, life is full of pain, suffering, and grief. You’ll find no toxic, quixotic positivity here. But life is more than boulders and hills. It’s full of laughing children, woodland walks, delicious dinners, and board games at Pete’s. Life is just as often a dance and a game as a boulder. And so, let’s imagine Sisyphus playing board games. Let’s imagine Camus doing a jive. Then I can imagine them happy.

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MINI READING LIST

• How to be authentically happy in a world full of suffering

• The biological necessity of boredom in the age of screens

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Watch my interview with Sebastian Purcell here:

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Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at the wisdom of wizards.

You can find the companion article here: The 3 types of reading (and the 2 you’ll pick)

My dad and I lived in a tall house.

On the second-story landing, there was a small library stacked with all the science fiction and fantasy books my dad had ever read. And so, a young Jonny Thomson gorged himself on a diet of sword, sorcery, and adventure.

I would spend hours deciding what to read. I’d work my way around the broken spines and dusty tops, reading blurb after blurb, before finally settling on a new world to explore. On the second landing, I met Conan the Barbarian, Fitz the Assassin, and the Wizard of Earthsea. Some days, I spent more time in Middle-earth or Westeros than I did in my own house.

As happens with books, most of the plots and characters have now flattened into a blob. They’re there, somewhere, but formless and vague. It still happens that I will occasionally start a book only for my brain to interrupt me 50 pages in.

“You’ve definitely read this before.”

Sometimes that’s an issue. Other times, I’ll reread it anyway.

One thing I’ve learned from decades of reading fantasy books is that you should always listen to a wizard. I don’t mean the fledgling, green-faced first-years of Hogwarts. No one wants to hear advice from a novice throwing out sparks from stuttering incantations. I mean the kind of wizard with age, experience, great power, and probably a long, flowing beard. Wizards say the best things.

So, here for you all are three examples of philosophical gems from the mouths of wise wizards. Yes, I’m sure an “actual” philosopher said a lot of these. But indulge me with a newsletter and allow me a moment to re-adventure my way through the second-story landing of my dad’s old house.

Go well,
Jonny

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The wisest wizards I know

Gandalf: The world we have

One of my favorite wizard-quotes — and sorry for being predictable — comes in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. In the Mines of Moria, where things are looking orcishly grim, Frodo takes a moment to self-pity. He complains to Gandalf that he wishes he were born in a different time. He wishes this hard quest had fallen upon somebody else. And so, Gandalf says:

“So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Tolkien has a way of expressing the human condition that is both beautiful and tragic. The Lord of the Rings is full of fear, sorrow, and sad endings. And yet in this line, Tolkien reveals something remarkable about the human spirit. We carry on. We fight on. We get up from the ground, and we get out of bed every day.

But the real power in Gandalf’s line comes in how far it connects us with other human beings. Because all humans before and after us will endure hardship and suffering. And yet we must all try to push back the tide, however hopeless.

And in that struggle between light and dark, good and evil, love and hate, we are bonded with everybody else, locked in the good fight. We have such a small window of time on this planet, and as Gandalf put it, the mark of greatness is how we spend it.

Master Hand: The Equilibrium

When I first read Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series, I never really liked the magic system. It was too messy. It meant learning the “Old Names” and being boringly careful in how you used magic. I wanted overpowered sorcerers hurling fireballs. I wanted cackling warlocks trapping the heroes in black, wispy tendrils. I didn’t want wizards saying things like, “You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium.”

The magic system in Earthsea is about balance. If you take a bit from here, you’ll need to give something in return. If you drained magic from the Earth, the Earth would drain something from you. Only now do I come to appreciate the wisdom in this.

Every time we choose one path, we reject another. Being one person means not being someone else. For example, yesterday my kids came home from school and asked me to jump on our trampoline with them. I had work to do, and so I said no. Every hour I choose to work is an hour I’m not playing with my children. The reason I don’t now live in some “time-is-passing” regret of lost opportunities is because of Le Guin’s kind of magic. I cannot spend every hour with my kids. I cannot spend every hour working. I need to be intentional about things. I need to recognize when, where, and how I spend my time. I need to know where I give my energy and where I take that energy from. I need to protect the Equilibrium.

Still, I’d love to hurl fireballs.

Nightingale: A Firm No

The Rivers of London series is probably one of the more niche fantasy series to appear here. In fact, the pedants among us might even say it’s “magical realism” and not fantasy at all. In my opinion, if it has magic, monsters, and quests, it’s as good a fantasy as anything happening in Faërie.

In the series, Nightingale is the teacher and top wizard, and he’s old-school British. He’s witty, somewhat emotionally stunted, and brushes catastrophe under comic euphemism.

“Do try not to get eaten, Peter. The paperwork is substantial.”

But one of the greatest lines comes in the first book when he tells his protégé:

“I’ve always found that a firm ‘No’ is often the most effective spell in one’s repertoire.”

The great thing about Ben Aaronovitch’s world — a thing I’ve always found problematic in the Muggle vs. Wizard distinction in Harry Potter — is that nine times out of ten, the modern, real-life, and technological solution is better than the magical one. Magic is cool and interesting, but Nightingale is a policeman who uses his intelligence and experience more than his magic weaving.

Saying no and setting boundaries is a form of protection. It is a healing spell. We say “no” when the world is too much, and we need to retreat a bit. But, as Nightingale knows, a “no” will often stop people in their tracks because they want you to be okay. Others are almost always more accepting of our boundaries than our people-pleasing instincts often appreciate.

A “no” isn’t always selfish. Often, saying “no” means that when you do say “yes,” people get the full, undiluted version of you. Not the burnt-out, half-present, quietly-seething version. The one who actually wants to be there.

Nightingale knows this because he’s old, wise, and has had centuries of practice declining things politely. But we can all do it. We just need the willingness to disappoint someone in the short term to then show up properly in the long term. A firm “no” is a spell of protection, rejuvenation, and fresh power.

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• Aztec moral philosophy didn’t expect anyone to be a saint (Aeon)

• Ten lessons the Aztecs can teach us today (The Guardian)

Jonny is the creator of the Mini Philosophy social network. He’s an internationally bestselling author of three books and the resident philosopher at Big Think. He's known all over the world for making philosophy accessible, relatable, and fun.

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What connects a horny prince, a conquering general, and the messiah? Nietzsche can tell you.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch — translated as “superman,” “overman,” or “beyond-man” — is probably one of the most famous ideas to come from one of the most popular philosophers. Many readers aspire to their own version of Übermenschdom, and modern philosophy is very much still caught in the ideological grip of “overcoming” and “value-creation.”

The Übermensch first appears in Nietzsche’s book Human, All Too Human, but is really padded out in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But even after that, no one entirely knows what he meant. That’s probably how Nietzsche intended it.

The first problem is that “Über” can often mean “bigger” or “dominant,” and so the immediate temptation is to say “the Übermensch is the dominant one.” Well, kind of. Sometimes.

As we shall see, Nietzsche does refer to real-life warlords, generals, and emperors as Übermenschen, but their title doesn’t make them an Übermensch. That’s just an incidental byproduct of their underlying Übermenschy character. An Übermensch might take over the world, but it’s not a requirement.

So, what does an Übermensch look like? Are they an antisemitic blond beast of conquest or a romantic poet grappling with beauty? Are they an intellectual social reformer or an alpha male who shakes your hand too firmly?

This week, we look at five examples Nietzsche gives in his work to see what they reveal. While these examples might seem wildly disconnected, there is a thread to be found — an Übermenschian filament. We just need to line them up and spot the pattern.

Go well, ye Übermenschen,
Jonny

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Hello everybody,

This week, we’re looking at intergenerational friendships with Dr. Kerry Burnight.

You can find the companion article here: The philosophy of indoctrination and how to fix it.

Paid members can hear my full interview with Dr. Kerry Burnight at the end of the newsletter.

I used to work with a man named Dave.

Dave was an old-school Cockney geezer. He would slick his hair back like Elvis and had the voice of a man who liked to smoke.

When I first moved into an office with Dave, it was great. When you grow up phoneless in the East End of London with a local pub two doors down, you learn how to spin a yarn. And Dave could turn a stale two-minute anecdote into an hour-long drama worthy of NPR.

But what I enjoyed in entertainment, I paid for in service. Because Dave was an old-school Cockney Luddite, as well.

“Jonny mate,” he’d say, “Can you tell me how to log in to this new intranet?”

I knew all of Dave’s passwords.

“JT! JT! Why can’t I just do it this way instead?”

I went to Dave’s funeral late last year, but — if I’m honest — we’d fallen out of contact long before that. Some friendships depend on a time and a place. But I miss him. I miss the way he’d swear far too loudly in polite company, how he’d always be up for a Friday drink, and how his passwords were his grandkids’ names. But I also miss knowing Daves. I miss having friends — real friends — who weren’t the same age and stage of life as me.

This week, we look at intergenerational friendships.

Go well,
Jonny

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The missing vertical thread

In the 1960s, the British philosopher and polymath Michael Polanyi argued that there are two kinds of knowledge: tacit and explicit. Explicit knowledge is all the stuff that you can talk about, write about, and explain. I can tell you about the water cycle, you can tell me how to make scrambled eggs, and Dave could tell me about growing up in Hackney. Tacit knowledge is what you know but can’t explain. Why do you hate jazz? How can you tell if someone’s looking shifty? Can you tell me how to ride a bike?

In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with the gerontologist Dr. Kerry Burnight about her new book Joyful. During our conversation, we talked about how important it is for older people to have younger friends and vice versa. Older generations benefit from the enthusiasm and “not-going-to-die-soon” vitality of youth, and the younger generations benefit from the wisdom of older people.

But what does that actually mean? It can be both patronizing and clichéd to say, “The older generation has so much to teach us.” It’s a cliché because everyone says it. And it’s patronizing because “so much to teach us” often means some whippersnapper nodding their head aggressively and making “hmm” noises while granddad tells us all a story we’ve all heard before. That is not what Burnight means, and it’s not what teaching means.

The wisdom you get from intergenerational relationships is not explicit knowledge. With the greatest respect possible, unless my friend is a recently retired professor from a top university, Wikipedia, or even AI could probably teach me the topic better. What you learn from older generations is what the ancient Greeks called phronesis — or practical wisdom.

Phronesis, like any skill or ability, is something you get better at the more you use it. And while you can theorize your way to a degree of practical wisdom, by and large, you can’t skip the hard part. You have to have been in a sticky situation or two to know how to get out. You have to know different kinds of people to know how to deal with the next one. You need to know hardship, suffering, and loss to know how and why you must carry on.

The great thing about phronesis — and why it’s often seen as a tacit kind of knowledge — is that it’s fundamentally adaptive. Phronesis will change to the context you provide it. It speaks to the person in the room and responds to the myriad factors that make this situation, right now, a difficult one.

When we are growing up, we often see our parents as role models. Not necessarily in the moral sense — our parents can do all sorts of wild and immoral things — but in the sense that they model how we should interact with the world. Parents define what’s normal. But then, at a certain age, our parents are shuffled from center stage to somewhere in the wings. They go from putting you to bed every night to buying you socks at Christmas. For the rest of our lives, most of our day-to-day existence is surrounded by people who are the same as you. And everything is the same. In my 20s, we all talked about relationships, work, and the gossip of young adults. In my early 30s, it was all about weddings, houses, and cars. These days it’s about pensions, careers, and back pain. We’re all going through the same problems, and we’re all fumbling and guessing our way forward.

When I shared a room with Dave, I absorbed his phronetic knowledge like a philosophical sponge. I never took notes or noticed what was happening, but it all went in somewhere. I heard how he opened a conversation with the boss — friendly, funny, but firm. I saw how he moved his hands in just the right moments as he was telling a tale. I listened to his laugh. His warm, loud, contagious laugh.

Dave role-modelled life with all his years of tacit knowledge, and I absorbed it all through tacit learning. I grew when I was around Dave in a way that I never did around my peers. It’s wrong to call Dave “avuncular” or “a father figure” — he was a friend, and it’s important we appreciate that category.

These days, all my friends are within the same ten-year window as me. I work at home, and I write. I live with my family. Occasionally, I’ll interview a tenured professor or an aging author — but they’re not my friends. We’ve set up society to run in horizontal strips: childhood, studenthood, young adulthood, middle age, retirement. Each division does its best to deal with the world as it can, but is forced to reinvent its solutions again and again. We have lost the vertical thread — the old sitting with the young, not to tell stories or to teach some explicit theory, but simply to live alongside them. And in doing so, we have lost one of the oldest and most powerful forms of growing up.

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IN YOUR OPINION

Roughly half of about 5,000 respondents on the Mini Philosophy Instagram page said they have no friends more than ten years older than them. Why do you think this is? Message or comment below.

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Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at the wisdom of the journey with Martin Shaw.

You can find the companion article here: The 3 colors: What folktales teach about how to grow wise

Paid members can watch the interview at the end of the newsletter.

Here is a story.

In the village of Swaffham, John the Pedlar had a dream where a red-cloaked figure told him to go to London Bridge. Something remarkable was there.

His wife rolled her eyes. The priest told him it was just a dream. John knew it wasn’t.

John walked to London Bridge, and over many days, he slept in ditches, lived off the land, and met a motley cast of wayfarers and rogues — an adventure for another day.

When he got to London Bridge, John met a shopkeeper.

“Well, this dream told me to come here,” John said. “But for the life of me, I’ve no idea what to find.”

“Ha! You idiot!” The shopkeeper scoffed. “Never listen to dreams. Why, only last night I had a dream about this red-cloaked bloke. He said to me, ‘There is treasure buried under an oak tree in the Pedlar’s garden in Swaffham.’ In Swaffham! A Pedlar!”

The shopkeeper laughed. John gasped.

The Pedlar picked up his pack and headed back to Swaffham. He took a spade and dug under the oak. There, he found a jar with some strange Latin inscription.

“What does it say?” he asked the priest.

“It says ‘Under me there is an even greater treasure still,’” he replied.

And so, John dug some more.

He found the treasure. He was made rich, and the story ends happily.

Today, we explore the long road to London Bridge.

Go well,
Jonny

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A different kind of teacher

There is a lot of wisdom in philosophy. Read a few of the ancient Greeks, then some existentialists, and take your time over the Daodejing, and you will come away with a headful of golden aphorisms. But the wisdom you get from books is a certain kind of wisdom. The life lessons you learn on the road are different. You can tell a toddler a hundred times that playing with fire is dangerous, but it takes a candle’s burning flame to really teach them.

Years ago, when I was a teacher, I had to give those kinds of talks that every young person gets.

“Remember, alcohol can destroy your liver,” I would say. “It only takes one bad acid trip or one STD to ruin your life.”

True, of course, but behind the nodding heads and polite attention, I knew these kids would be on a weekend bender the second the school bell rang. In one ear and out the other before you can say, “Really good point, sir. Thanks.”

The same is true of philosophy. We can read a hundred books about the vanity of status or the inadequacy of riches, but until we meet the reality of that, it’ll only ever feel like someone else’s truth. “Moderation in all things” is a beardy, boring thing to hear until you learn how hollow a binge can feel.

In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with probably my favorite thinker alive today: Martin Shaw. As you can hear below, our conversation sauntered through the deep and wonderful realms of myth, philosophy, and life. But this bit hit hard. Martin said:

“I’ve had a very à la carte relationship [with various philosophies] for years, like a magpie’s nest of ‘Well that seems wonderful, and that’s quite profound, and I’ll take this from over here.’ And what I had then was a lot of growth, but I didn’t have a lot of depth. So, the trade for me is that yes, it is not the wide-open luxurious playing field of my 40s. I have a smaller patch of ground to work with now, but I can just go much deeper because of my commitment to that inquiry.”

In the story of John the Pedlar, John doesn’t just go into his garden and find the treasure. That’s hardly a story, and it’s hardly a journey. It’s only after walking to London Bridge that he learns that what he wants — what he needs — is back in his village. It’s only after we’ve experienced the “luxurious playing fields” of our younger years that we find the deeper joy of a “smaller patch of ground to work.” Only when we get wealth, power, status, or whatever, do we realize that we’re no happier for it.

If we are to change in a good way — to mature, to temper, to mellow — then we need to live a little. You cannot grow a tree with botanical theory. A tree needs water, sun, and soil in which to grow.

And this brings us to the other part of all this. In the story of John the Pedlar, it is only thanks to the help of his Latin-speaking friend, the priest, that he gets to find the real treasure. His wife, the priest, and his village are the soil in which he grows. We all need mentors, parents, helpers, elders, teachers, sages, novelists, poets, and guides. We need some wise other who has been there and who knows the way.

This is where I part ways with Shaw. He walks with myth, and I walk with philosophy. His latest book, Liturgies of the Wild, shows us how powerful a guide myth can be in initiating us into life. The legends and sacred stories we’ve told for millennia are the soil in which to root. I am only beginning on my mythological journey. Where Shaw has a library in his mind, I have only a few scribbled notes. But I do carry philosophy with me. In the various phases of my life — in both the thorny bracken and the luxurious fields — I’ve turned to philosophers. I’ve found joy in Epicurus, wonder in Meister Eckhart, love in Iris Murdoch, and consolation in Viktor Frankl. Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and even strange old Ludwig Wittgenstein have been my guides.

Whether it be philosophy or myth, phronimos or seanchaí, we all need our guides in this life. A guide is not a teacher who gives you the theory. They are there on the path with you. And it’s only on the path that we actually learn anything at all.

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• The friendship recession with Richard Reeves

• Mentorship and the multigenerational workplace with Chip Conley

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It was my birthday this month. Happy birthday to me!

The more I have, the more they change. No piñatas to whack or cocktails to regret, but a lie-in, some cake, and a cuddle from those who love me. It was a good birthday.

You might be surprised to hear that my birthday was not the biggest news this month. In fact, it’s been a rather busy time for the tapping and yapping commentariat. But from a bevy of choices, I think there are two clear winners for this week’s Philosophy of February: the Epstein files and Iran.

First, we’re going to look at the morality of going to Epstein Island. If you read about the Epstein files from any reputable media source, you will find, at some point, a variation on this line:

“The appearance of [person] in the files does not imply criminal activity of any kind.”

And their lawyers will nod happily, and the mentioned [person] is off the hook for another day. But should they be? Of course, appearing in the files or visiting the island doesn’t necessarily indicate criminality. But there is a difference between legality and morality. And so, this week we’re considering: At what point does looking the other way, asking no questions, or being willfully and consistently ignorant amount to neglect?

Second, we’re looking at Iran. I read an article last week where the BBC laid out “seven scenarios” for what might happen if the U.S. strikes Iran. And the first scenario they consider is that a swift intervention catalyzes a peaceful move toward a democratic Iran. With admirable understatement, Frank Gardner writes, “This is a highly optimistic scenario.”

And so, the philosophical issue we’ll explore today is a thorny one: Is democracy ever compatible with Islam?

Go well,
Jonny

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Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at difficult conversations with ourselves.

All new Mini Philosophy Masterclasses are now live here.

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

There are many kinds of difficult conversations

Ben has been in a relationship for three years. His girlfriend keeps making comments about rings, weddings, and children. He keeps pretending he can’t hear them. He scrolls his phone every night, gets drunk every weekend, and laughs a touch too hard at his best friend’s weddings. It’s amazing how easily the world distracts from the conversations we need to have.

Yvette has been on the “How to have hard conversations” course. She’s even got a certificate somewhere. She has read HR’s policy on dismissals ten times in the last 24 hours. But she wasn’t ready. The second she delivered the news, Clive’s face crumpled. Banterous, bragging Clive: father of three, weekend golfer, just booked a holiday, and now crying. Not the Hollywood sob of the broken, but something subtler and somehow worse.

Lucy opens the email from the radiographers. Yan is waiting just outside her office to hear what she has to say. It’s spread. She’s always liked Yan — she likes all her patients — but she really tried this time to not get too invested. It never works. “Sam, can you tell Yan to come in?”

Conversations like this are difficult because of the emotions involved. They hurt people. And while they are difficult, they are also an unavoidable part of a life lived alongside other humans, braided in relationships.

There are all sorts of philosophical issues lurking behind these conversations, like the ethics of how, when, and why to have them. But I would argue that there is a deeper and trickier conversation we don’t often consider enough: the difficult conversation with yourself.

So, this week, we look at just that. I think it’s time that me and I had a chat.

Go well,
Jonny

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The whispering voice of the midnight hour

A conversation is between two or more people. So, you’d be forgiven for telling me that “a conversation with yourself” is a nonsense expression. You can’t play tennis with yourself, seesaw with yourself, or have sex with yourself*. You can’t have a conversation with yourself.

Fair point, fair point. If we are to go any further with this nonsense talk, I will have to make the case that we are each made up of at least two parts. We have “personas.” And, lucky for me, I think this is a fairly defensible position.

On the most psychoanalytic level, many people like the Jungian idea of a “shadow self” — or some darker, repressed aspect of ourselves that needs attention and light. Yes, all of our taboos, fetishes, and intrusive thoughts live in the shadow self, but so too do the things we say about people after they leave the room or the love we never believe we deserve. In this view, a difficult conversation with yourself means psychotherapy. It means taking a Lacanian knife to your psyche, carving away all those protective facades, and finding that buried, malnourished inner shadow or child or whatever that needs attention.

But I’d argue that an even better vision of all this comes from Søren Kierkegaard when he talks about “the midnight hour.” In his work Either/Or, Kierkegaard writes, “Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?”

Half a century before Freud, Kierkegaard was making the point that inside each of us there is a voice. You might call it a gut feeling, intuition, conscience, or “the midnight hour.” The existentialists might call it your “authentic self,” and the religious might call it your “soul.” Whatever name you use, the point is that this voice is always there, always whispering, always begging. It knows. It knows that you lied when you said, “I tried my hardest.” It knows that it’s not true that you had no choice. This voice tells you that you’re addicted to your phone, sugar, or the gym. It tells you that you’re unhappy in this relationship, at this job, and with this life.

There are some kinds of pain that will never go away. You ignore the slight, occasional aches, but they become less slight and less occasional every day. Over time, the pain becomes so crushingly present that you have to deal with it. Likewise, the voice will not go away. Kierkegaard argues that if you ignore the midnight hour for too long, there is at first a kind of lashing, projecting “madness” that treats the world poorly. Then, there is an utter annihilation of yourself. It “ends with your nature dissolving into a multitude.” For some, this is a kind of death. Who you are dies, and your body is shuffled onwards by the “unhappy demoniac” of society, expectations, and not upsetting anyone else. For others, this madness erupts into a crisis, breakdown, and dangerous downward spiral.

This all makes sense. It’s all very poetic. But what does any of this mean?

It means you need to take that voice seriously. See the midnight hour as a kind of pain of the soul, and as with all pain, it’s trying to tell you something important. As Kierkegaard put it, “Truly, you should not trifle with what is not only serious but terrifying.”

Sit down and have a conversation with yourself. Mute all the modern world’s clamour – no phone, no company, no distraction – and listen to your voice. This doesn’t have to be a pretentious picture of meditation. You don’t have to pull up a seat next to a fire in an ancient house. This could be in the shower, in bed, late at night, or at the bus stop as you wait drunkenly for the last ride home. Because that voice can pop up at any time, and we can either choose to listen or choose to hide it away. The advice of philosophy is to walk towards the difficult conversation with yourself.

*Counter arguments welcomed in the comments.

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Hello everybody,

This week, we’re looking at the philosophy of stupidity.

You can find the companion article here: How to spot a stupid person with Carlo Cipolla’s “golden law of stupidity”

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

Thomas sat in silence as his mom opened the letter.

Earlier that day, his teacher had shouted at him again. “Idiot boy! Good for nothing!” she screamed in front of the class. She wrote a letter and said:

“Give this to your mother. Do. Not. Open. It.”

Dutiful and honest, Thomas took the letter back to his mom. He waited for her disappointment.

His mom read the letter, and her fists clenched. She made that growling noise she only made when she was furious.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Thomas said, and she looked up at him. Her face transformed. She ran to cuddle the young boy.

Thomas’s mom took him to the school and demanded to speak with the teacher. As Thomas sat outside, he heard muffled shouts.

“How dare….if you ever….taking him out….”

After that, Thomas was homeschooled — mostly by his mother but increasingly by knowledgeable others. Every day, she would tell him he was brilliant. He was gifted. He was so, so smart.

Thomas Edison became one of history’s most famous geniuses — an inventor who changed the world and who is now an emblem for intelligence. Only years later did Edison learn what the letter from his teacher had said:

“Thomas is addled. He should stop coming to school. It’s pointless.”

Today, we learn about stupidity and intelligence.

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Stupid blind spots

This story has been embellished over time. It’s true that Edison was called “addled” by his teachers, and his mother withdrew him to homeschool. But it’s probably not true that a letter was sent home, or that his mother hid the “addled” part from young Thomas. But, as the saying goes, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. Anecdotes like this survive because they often reflect a broader, cultural truth: “intelligence” and “stupidity” are not things you can easily label.

Let’s give the teacher the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that Thomas was a daydreaming, unruly boy who never followed instructions. Well, that teacher’s entire 19th-century pedagogic model was built on the idea that “schoolwork” meant intelligence. The greatest educators of the day argued that essays, algebra sheets, and good grades meant you were “intelligent.” And so, when young Thomas didn’t match those criteria, “addled” would have been harsh but true to the standards of the day.

Today, we know it’s hard to define “intelligence.” While we might be depressed by how rigidly antiquated the school system still is, society more broadly has gone beyond the “grades mean smarts” mindset. And, of course, if we cannot easily define intelligence, it’s no wonder we also struggle to define “stupidity.”

Some people argue that “stupidity” is the same as “dumbness” — it’s a matter of IQ and brain power. Others might say that “stupidity” is the same as “foolishness,” where someone simply doesn’t think things through. Immanuel Kant — who always had an opinion on most things — argued that “stupidity” meant an inability to recognize some event as belonging to a certain rule. For Kant, stupidity is a congenital inability to apply general concepts to particular cases. The well-educated physician may know all the broad rules but cannot apply them correctly. It can’t be helped. They’re a stupid doctor.

I think there’s something to all of these. Like the word “good” or “love,” “stupidity” has a range of uses and is understood broadly. I’ve certainly used “stupid” in all of the above ways, but if pushed, I’d say I most often use “stupid” as a synonym for “foolish” in my everyday vernacular. When I try to carry five bags of shopping from the car rather than making two trips and inevitably drop them all, my wife will say, “That was stupid.” And she’s right.

But in terms of the philosophy of stupidity, I prefer what Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote about it in their 1947 work, Dialectic of Enlightenment. For Adorno and Horkheimer, stupidity is a “blind spot.” It’s where we are simply unable to see the good, the right, or the “intelligent” thing to do.

We all have blind spots. Sometimes, these mean gaps in our knowledge. I know very little about car maintenance, so I’ll probably drive a creaking car until its tires fall off. These blind spots are resolvable in that we can read a book, watch a YouTube video, or take a course — often after life reveals our blind spot to us (as when I end up broken down on the way to London).

But Adorno and Horkheimer define a blind spot more in terms of some unconscious repression or “scarring.” They argue that there is often some negative and formative experience in our lives that forces us to develop a blind spot. It’s when something in our upbringing teaches us to simply look one way all the time.

They give a metaphor: Imagine a snail, sliming along with its antennae out. The antenna is how the snail experiences the world and learns. Now, imagine a bird plops down nearby. The snail panics, pulls in its antennae, and retreats to its shell. No more curious learning and exploring. Hide. Defend

We are all snails. We have various ways of experiencing the world and various ways of learning about the world. But from our earliest childhood experience, some of these ways are nurtured, and others are burned off. Here are two depressingly common examples:

A boy loves reading science books. He tries to talk to his parents excitedly about what he learns, but they laugh at him. They sneer at reading, and they mock him. The boy develops a blind spot.

A young mother is desperate not to repeat the mistakes her own mother made raising her. She is obsessively attentive to every action of her daughter. She’s always around. Always helping. And yet, her obsession with correcting means she is blind to the good her own mother did. She doesn’t let her daughter explore on her own, develop independence, or develop confidence in her own abilities.

We all have our blind spots. Most of these are born of some kind of negative stimulus. A dad’s mocking laugh. A mother’s neglectful parenting. A teacher calling you “addled.” If you beat down a mental process enough times, it simply stops growing back. If you never use a muscle, it will atrophy.

So, what are your blind spots? What are you stupid about? And is there a way to resolve it?

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• Amy Gallo on How to Have Difficult Conversations at Work

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Today, we are launching the Mini Philosophy Masterclass page for paid subscribers.

The idea is that I will upload short segments from my interviews with the biggest names in academia that will spark a conversation, seed an idea, or help steer our lives. In this first batch, you will find (among others):

• Historian, activist, and Humankind author Rutger Bregman on how to redefine success.

• Author and “Daily Stoic” Ryan Holiday on Elon Musk — and “the genius and the demon.”

• Bestselling author and literary giant Ian McEwan on why we crave connection.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will update this page with more videos, more big names, and content from a variety of different disciplines. I will also begin to upload my own longer 5- to 10-minute explainers—a kind of Philosophy 101. I’ll explore proofs for God, the main theories of ethics, definitions of beauty, the basics of political philosophy, and so on.

So, if you want to enjoy that, please pop over to the Mini Philosophy Masterclass page (or consider upgrading if you haven’t already).

Today, though, I offer Mini Philosophy members the full video of my conversation with the philosopher Simon Critchley, where we discuss “metamorphosis.”

One of the most popular posts and notes I’ve done here on Substack was about “metanoia” and rebirth after a cataclysm, so I really enjoyed unpacking that idea a bit more in this interview. I hope you enjoy the video and my essay on the topic below.

Go well,
Jonny

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I have a love-hate relationship with Freud.

On the one hand, there’s a kind of guttural appeal to his notion of the unconscious. Like most people, I tend to think my dreams are telling me something and that my psyche is governed by these swirling, unseen psychodynamic forces. I generally believe that talk therapies are beneficial to almost everyone and that sitting down for an hour’s introspection with a trusted ally is never a bad thing. And yet, I don’t think about my parents that much. I don’t dwell on the past as much as a psychoanalyst would suspect — I try to look forward more than backward. When you spend so much time repairing what is broken, you never build or find anything new. When you spend your life unpacking the past, you never live in the present.

As I said to a close friend of mine on the weekend, “I’m sure there’s all sorts of trauma lurking in my childhood if I dug around a bit…

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Hello everybody,

This week, we’re looking at archetypes with Carl Jung, Immanuel Kant, and Gilles Deleuze.

You can find the companion article here: Which of the 5 philosophical archetypes best describes you?

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

I’m a sucker for a label.

I’m a sucker for any of those “What personality type are you?” articles. I know which Hogwarts house I’d be in, what my spirit animal is, and which star sign I am. On a rational, empirically steered level, I know it’s all mostly hokum — BS wrapped in archetypes, neat boxes, and the veneer of taxonomical rigor. I know that eight billion people cannot be wedged into tiny pigeonholes of Type A and Type B. And yet, I’m a sucker for a label.

Two days ago, our family opened fortune cookies in a kind of almost insultingly clichéd celebration of the Chinese New Year. And, after dutifully chomping through the sugary cardboard shell, I read my fortune:

Even by the low standards of mass-produced fortunes, this was vague. How do you define happiness? Are we talking about my recent life or the time since my first gurgling moments of infancy? As my editor, Steve, pointed out: “It’s not even a fortune.”

And yet, the fortune cookie did its job. In those six words, I suddenly became aware of the happiness in my life. Those tiny words on that fragile, waxy strip of cheap paper changed how I perceive the world — if even for a moment. Yes, there has been happiness lately. I had a lovely visit to the zoo over the weekend and a long-overdue pint with an old friend. I watched the Fallout season finale and managed to go for a run most days. There is happiness in your life.

I think most of us can agree that fortune cookies are a fairly harmless thing — even beneficial in my case. But what happens if we take it a step further? What happens when we talk in terms of sacred prophecies, strands of fate, or unshakeable labels? What happens when we talk about psychodynamic “archetypes” and take them very seriously?

Today, we look at the good and the bad of archetypes.

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Live like a fungus

Experience is what happens in the space between what you expect and what the world gives you. The concept of “concepts” dates back to Plato, but was really hammered home by Kant. The idea is that we all experience the world, and we learn to categorize it. Furry, four legs, barks? Dog. Cold, white, falls from the sky? Snow. Rude, arrogant, and mean? An asshole.

Once we rough-sketch these categories, we use them to chop the world into bits. We start seeing dogs everywhere. We stop marveling at snow. We know just how to deal with assholes. Over our lives, we will tinker with and recalibrate these categories — not all dogs are furry and not all assholes are arrogant — but by and large, they stay pretty robust.

Archetypes are a kind of category of the mind. In the same way that “asshole” is a quick-draw heuristic, so too are all the psychoanalytic or popular archetypes we interact with. When Jung talks about the Shadow, the Child, or the Father, we interpret behaviors through those concepts. “She’s so caring,” we say, “a ‘natural mother.’” You only have to go to one seminar about Type A and Type B people to suddenly see them everywhere.

Our minds love to break the world down into these neat boxes. It relieves us of all the tiring mental labor of having to analyze things from scratch. But the true philosophical and psychoanalytic power comes in what it means for introspection. Because when we recognize that we are never just one thing or another, we can start to appreciate the complexity and fluidity of being a human. We are never just an archetype. We are not always empathetic, or logical, or sociable, or highly driven. These are facets, not unified identities.

And so, if someone says, “I feel as if I need to sit down with my Shadow for a bit,” that makes sense in a Jungian way. It’s a kind of introspection and emotional spring cleaning. I often tell people that my life oscillates between yin and yang. January was certainly a yang period — busy, high-energy, and demanding — and so I look forward to some yin. I just want a good sit-down.

I am not a Daoist nor a Jungian, but I appreciate the power of both in helping us make decisions and “know ourselves.” But there is also a sting in the archetypal tail, and it relates to something the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze said.

Deleuze once argued that a lot of psychoanalysis — and archetypes are almost always framed within psychoanalysis of some sort — risks oversimplifying our personalities. Even if we allowed for dozens or hundreds of archetypes — “I contain multitudes,” as Walt Whitman put it — they will still be shoehorning our lives into forced and artificial categories. Categories help make experiences easier. But they also risk reducing them. Everything I do or think can be shuffled away into a category — “that’s the trickster speaking,” I say, or “I’m embracing my inner child” — but this actually changes the experience itself. If I spend two hours playing computer games, I might say that’s “embracing my inner child,” but to do so also moralizes it, however subtly. It’s immature, it’s regressive, it’s slightly shameful.

Deleuze calls this the “tree model,” where humans are imagined as trees with a central, core trunk and various arms and branches that are variations on this core essence. But Deleuze thinks a human life is more like grass or even a fungus — what he calls the “rhizome model.” We spread out and grow widely but have thin roots. The parts of our being overlap, but there is no “core.” If one patch of grass dies or is ripped up, the grass carries on growing in the other direction. A tree model says, “I am this way because of my childhood, because of my parents.” It says, “I am this way because I’m a Pisces, a Type A, or an ESFP.” But a rhizome model says that who we are is mostly random, unknown, and unpredictable. We are made not through orderly curricula or neat narratives but through accidents, obsessions, and unexpected connections.

Humans love to box things, but a human cannot be boxed.

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MINI READING LIST

• “Epistemic trespassing” — why intelligent people often behave like idiots.

• The basic laws of stupidity — by Carlo M. Cipolla.

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I am both a philosopher and a content creator. At times, that’s a tension quite hard to hold. The philosopher in me wants to explore the tiny, parochial nooks of The Academy: formal logic, scholastic metaphysics, and early Wittgenstein. The content creator in me wants to appease the social media gods with self-help, relationship advice, and 3-second hooks.

It’s hard to hold, but it’s not impossible.

Over the ten years I’ve worked on Mini Philosophy, there have been a few times I’ve hit the sweet spot. I’ve managed to explore the rigorous depth of proper philosophy while showing how it can help us all in our day-to-day lives.

And so, for this week’s members’ email, I’ve collated and expanded on three of the most popular “practical philosophies” in Mini Philosophy history.

As always, thank you for your generous support.

Go well,
Jonny

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Hello everybody,

This week, we’re looking at the philosophy of nostalgia.

You can find the companion article here: Buried alive, leeched, and attacked with a poker: The dark history of nostalgia “cures”

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter (apologies to any native speakers for my pronunciations of some words).

Nostalgia is cool at the moment.

If you spend any time on the artsy and philosophical side of social media (of which I am a proud denizen), you will eventually stumble upon some nostalgia-made-cool. I am as guilty as the rest.

Because English has only a few words for nostalgia-adjacent emotions — like heartache, homesickness, or sorrow — English speakers tend to grasp thirstily for what other languages have to say. And other languages certainly seem to have richer accounts of a complex emotion.

In Portuguese, you have “saudade,” which is a deep, melancholic longing for something or someone now lost. The Germans have “Sehnsucht” for that visceral ache that comes on when you yearn for the past, or something lost. In Welsh, “Hiraeth” is a more geographical kind of nostalgia that pines for a certain land and home country. And, of course, you have the Japanese. That sense of drifting pathos for a world that’s left behind is very Japanese. And you’ll find a cottage-industry obsession with the concept of “mono no aware,” or “the pathos of things.”

I am sure you’ve felt some of these words. I certainly have. I’m not sure whether it’s the sign of the times, my increasing old age, or reading too much philosophy, but the more I look back, the more I get that heart-aching lurch of Sehnsucht. It hurts to remember the past. It’s sad to remember how good things were. It’s embarrassing to think how utterly ungrateful or unappreciative I was of everything I had.

Pain, sadness, and shame are powerful emotions, but they are also dangerous emotions. And so, this week, we look at the joys and the dangers of nostalgia.

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The good and bad kinds of nostalgia.

Nostalgia is an invented word. Of course, all words were invented at some point by someone, but while nostalgia might sound like some ancient Greek idea, it was actually coined in the mid-17th century by a doctor. Nostalgia was a condition to be cured, like insomnia or anemia.

Part of this was because physicians back then didn’t really separate mental and physical conditions into the boxes we do today. Now we have psychology and physiology. Back then, everything was psychosomatic — a spectrum more than a binary. But the reason nostalgia was taken so seriously and treated medically is that it was seen as being incredibly serious. It caused heart palpitations, nervous shaking, sweats, and, occasionally, self-starvation. Nostalgia was important because it was life-threatening.

Nowadays, we’ve come to realize that the emotional effect of “nostalgia” does not cause all of these physical symptoms but might co-occur with them. Nostalgia and nervous sweats are both caused by an unknown third condition. But according to the philosopher Svetlana Boym, we should still view nostalgia as a dangerous thing — not for its symptoms but for the behaviors it motivates.

Boym argues that there are two kinds of nostalgia: a good and a bad one. The “good” kind is what Boym calls “algia,” or a longing for something gone. It’s the saudade of reflecting on a childhood friend, lost even to social media searches. It’s the mono no aware of grieving for the childhood you once had — the faces, the laughing times, the simpler existence. Algia is not “good” in that it’s always happy and pleasant, but is simply harmless. In fact, it can even be beneficial. This reflective brand of nostalgia allows us to linger in our memory, using the past as a way to find a bit of creative space in the present.

The “bad” kind of nostalgia is when we long for some imagined “golden age,” either in our lifetime or long before. This “back-in-the-day” syndrome is what Boym calls “nostos,” or “the return home.” Boym argues that nostos often encourages people to do two things: first, to reject, mock, or even hate the world as it is; second, to seek some rebirth or return to a better time — be that real or imagined.

This sense of nostos is not necessarily bad in itself. Many reformers and progressives are often motivated by an internalized utopianism that hates the problems in the world and then seeks to remove them. But the problem for Boym is “the promise to rebuild the ideal home lies at the core of many powerful ideologies today, tempting us to relinquish critical thinking for emotional bonding…In extreme cases, it can create a phantom homeland, for the sake of which one is ready to die or kill. Unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters.”

The good and bad of nostalgia is that algia — longing for what’s lost — is what unites us. The reason all those nostalgia words are so popular on social media is that most of us feel them. Most of us miss the good old days of our childhood — cared for and carefree. We miss the joys of playing computer games, going out with our friends, and staying up watching TV after the parents have gone to bed. Nostos, though, divides. It says that the new, the young, or the different are an unwelcome change. It says not only “I miss the old days,” but “You are the reason the old days are gone.”

There will always be an allure to nostalgia. In fact, as far back as diarists and historians, we can find cases of nostos in action. In the 1st century AD, Plutarch was nostalgic for the lost, great Greek city-states. In the 1600s, Michel de Montaigne was nostalgic for Plutarch’s Rome. And in the 20th century, J.R.R. Tolkien was nostalgic for Montaigne’s pre-industrial idyll. The movies and books we read present ancient Rome, medieval villages, and the 1960s as some kind of heroic, bucolic, swinging golden past. Maybe that’s true, and maybe that’s harmless, but Boym argues we should be careful that nostalgia doesn’t make us hate the neighbors we have because we love people we never met.

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MINI READING LIST

• Why the next 25 years will force humanity to reinvent itself - Peter Leyden for Big Think.

• My short video on Ibn Khaldun’s Empire Cycle

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We’re nearly there. We’ve nearly made it through the never-ending Marathon des Sables that is “January.” I would like to have words with whichever Roman or pope decided to give January 31 days. But here we are, trudging our way to the end.

In 2026, paid Mini Philosophy Club subscribers will get a monthly philosophical exploration of the news affecting the world. We’ll look at technology, entertainment, sports, health, the arts, and, of course, geopolitics. Each month, I’ll select three of what I think are the biggest stories and unpack the longer, deeper, and often ancient philosophy framing what we read.

This month, we’re looking at:

First, Trump and Venezuela; Putin and Ukraine; and Xi and Taiwan. We’ll look at The Melian Dialogue and what the words “power” and “neutrality” mean in the 21st century.

Second, we’ll look at CES in Las Vegas, where Boston Dynamics somewhat stole the show. We’ll also explore the philosophy of robotics and why we want our robots to walk and move like us.

Finally, we’ll check out one of the most popular movies to come out on Netflix in December and January: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. The movie is great on its own merits, but it’s also full of throwaway philosophical nuggets. Let’s see how Benoit Blanc can help introduce some C. S. Lewis.

Go well, and thanks for all your support,
Jonny

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Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at the value of anti-sociability.

You can find the companion article here: The Oprah Rule: What everyone wants you to say in a conversation

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

Humans do a lot of things together.

It’s fairly uncontroversial to point out that we tend to hang around other people. We live in families and neighborhoods, of course, but we also sit next to strangers in the movie theater, wait in line at the supermarket, and watch football games alongside thousands of faceless others. But why? What motivates us to leave our quiet isolation and assemble?

The philosopher Bernard de Mandeville argues that the best and possibly only reason we meet other people is for selfish ends. We gather around others for “Ease and Security,” and so that we can get what we want. In his most famous work, The Fable of the Bees, Mandeville asks us to imagine a “Grumbling Hive” of bees who are prosperous only because they are all driven by self-interested vices. When the bees are suddenly made “honest” and virtuous (perfectly sociable), the hive’s economy collapses, and the community is destroyed.

Sociability is good in that it helps us, but it’s a waste of time, intellect, and character for anything beyond that.

Mandeville believed that only those of the “vilest and most hateful Qualities” enjoyed company for its own sake. He thought weak, boring, and unimaginative people like being around others because they can’t think or create fun for themselves. The man of superior intellect, we suppose, is the one who enjoys his own company alone, leaving the house only for the dirty business of shopping or getting some necessary help. Ideally, we’d avoid even that.

Mandeville thought that humans were no more “naturally sociable” than a grape is “naturally wine.” Yes, we can press, squeeze, and mutilate grapes into a bottle of Merlot, and we can do the same with people in societies. But a grape is not wine. A human is only forced into society by society itself.

While Mandeville was certainly considered a touch odd, he wasn’t a loner or a recluse. He was a family man, politically active, and a man about town. And yet, he certainly argued against sociability.

So, today, we look at the philosophy of anti-sociability.

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The Trickster Unleashed

One of the most popular and universal archetypes in folklore is “the trickster.” Loki shaved the goddess Sif’s hair; Hermes stole his brother’s sheep; Anansi hid various relics in trees. As with all archetypes, the Trickster represents a type of person. Or, more psychoanalytically, it represents a part in us all.

In his 1920 book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud argued that inside each of us, alongside all the law-abiding, goody-goody smiles and nods, there is a shadow. This shadow — or the “death drive” — wants things to break down. The Trickster looks at all the neat rows and wants to push them over. The shadow sees a perfect, glistening spider web and smashes it with a stick. The death drive looks at a happy, canoodling couple and says, “Maeve, was this the guy you said had a tiny penis?”

Many philosophers have suggested similar ideas. There’s the Janus-face of ancient Rome, Schopenhauer’s “Porcupine’s Dilemma,” and Nietzsche’s Dionysius vs Apollo. Most of these thinkers argue that there is a tension in our being between sociability (wanting to be around others) and anti-sociability (wanting to run to the woods and hide in a snug cottage). It’s a stale, Barnum statement to say: “I bet you like being around friends, but also like being alone sometimes.” Well, call me Mystic Meg and get me a crystal ball if I’m right.

But anti-sociability is not the same as solitude. Someone wanting to be alone to think or recuperate is not anti-social. Even the old prig Mandeville accepts that solitude is great, but company is sometimes a necessary evil. No, anti-sociability is something darker. It’s something for the Trickster. Anti-sociability hates being around others. It never seeks company and wants others to feel the same. To be anti-social is to see a chattering, laughing gaggle and then sow a great deal of drama. Where the anti-social person sees concord, they bring discord.

Kant is as far from psychoanalysis as an 18th-century analytical German can be, but his account of “social unsociability” bears striking similarities to the Freudian bunch — just on a larger scale. Freud and Jung argued that the Trickster is not some troublesome demon to exorcise. Instead, we need to sit down with our shadow and chat things over. Make peace with the facets of our being. The death drive has a purpose, and we need to find out what it is.

Likewise, Kant argues that the “unsocial” person has an important role to play in society. In his essay “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” Kant argues that while sociability is no doubt a cause of peace and security, too much peace and security suffocates us. When we live too long around a table in an agreeable jollity, with ingratiating gurns slapped on our faces, we get bored. More importantly, we get nothing done.

The unsocial person — the Trickster — will throw everything up in the air and bring a bit of necessary fire to the event. We need creative destruction. We need dissent, argument, fighting, and civil war. We need to break up the party so we can all wind our way to a better one.

When things are nice-nice for too long, they grow stale and stop evolving. Sometimes, we need Loki and Anansi to strut into the room, arm in arm, champagne open, hats a-jingling, and bring a bit of raucous anarchy to get the party started.

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MINI READING LIST

• Svetlana Boym’s Nostalgia and Its Discontents

• Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Use and Abuse of History

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Hello everybody,

This week, we’re looking at new life, new starts, and Hannah Arendt.

Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.

It’s done.

The holidays are over, the Christmas trees are down, and you’ve secretly returned that sweater you pretended to like.

And as we all rush back to work, there’s a specter haunting our conversations: the New Year’s resolution.

Now, in my experience, there are three kinds of “resolution” people.

First, you have the cynics. The cynics post mocking pictures of crowded gyms and sneering comments about “Jan 1st joggers.” They assume — not without evidence — that almost all of the New Year's resolutioners will have given up or fallen short by February. “I don’t even know why you try,” the cynic says.

Second, you have the shruggers. These are those who just don’t care about resolutions.

“My resolution is to give up resolutions,” my dad quips every year.

But there are also those shruggers who will point out that there is nothing special about January. If you want to change, change. If you want to give up, give up. Don’t wait for some arbitrary movement of the Earth to do so.

Third, there are the “new year, new me” lot. These are the ones who love a resolution and love telling others about it. For this group, January is a blank page yet to be written. All of the mistakes and tears belong in a diary labeled “2025.” And the moment the clock strikes midnight, we throw that diary onto the bonfire.

I am a card-carrying resolutioner. I love a new project and enjoy seeing how far and for how long my willpower will last. In years gone by, I’ve given up chocolate, alcohol, and fizzy drinks. This year, I’m giving up interprandial snacking. (Wish me luck.)

So, I thought it only fitting that we look a bit more closely at what philosophy has to say about new starts. This week, we look at “natality.”

Go well,
Jonny

If you’re looking for a good New Year’s resolution, what about learning more philosophy? The Mini Philosophy Club is live this year — with more content, podcasts, and online events. If you want to sign up, you can do so below:

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We are not made but born.

In her book The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt introduces the idea of “natality,” which is about our capacity for new beginnings. Arendt argues that philosophy and literature are often obsessed with mortality — the fragility and finitude of life. And while it is true that we are “born to die,” fixating solely on endings misses a vital dimension of the human experience.

Arendt argues that Western thought has come to be “death-ridden.” We interpret everything about life through the lens of its eventual end. Philosophers have long loved the “memento mori“ meditation, which says, “remember, you will die, so get living while you still can.” It’s found in Ecclesiastes, Michel de Montaigne, and is a favorite of Stoicism. In more modern times, Martin Heidegger argued that death is an omnipresent force that defines everything we do. We are walking a path with only one destination. We each meander this way and that, but ultimately, we end up meeting the same grim and cowled figure.

Natality challenges this death fixation. It suggests that we should not be defined as “mortals” but as “natals.” When a child is born, the world is offered a new set of possibilities — suddenly, there is a new actor on the stage of history. And for Arendt, what makes humans unique is our ability to start again. We are under no obligation to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done because, as Augustine suggested, the beginning of a human is the beginning of a “someone” who did not exist before. Yes, we will die. But our living will have forever changed the Universe.

Arendt and her successors argued that the human condition is not only about endings, but about constant, radical beginnings. Each of us contains the potential to reshape the world — however that might look. Within each of us is the “seed of change.” We have the power to interrupt the automatic flow of history — to stop the “machine” of social exchange and start something entirely unpredictable.

The seeds of growth

Arendt focused on the political and existential implications of “natality,” but thinkers like Adriana Cavarero and Luce Irigaray added something extra.

Humans do not spontaneously generate. The gods do not pull us from an Elysian hat. We are not “made” from nothing but are born from a mother. Everyone reading this newsletter was carried and nurtured by a mother. And so Irigaray and Cavarero argue that when we talk about “natality,” we should focus more on the forgotten and repressed symbol of the feminine as a symbol of caring love.

When we think about change or growth, we should not see it as some kind of individual resolve. We are not born alone, we don’t live alone, so why would we change alone? Instead, we should see growth in terms of “physis,” or the generative power of nature. You cannot shut your eyes and imagine a tree into existence. You must plant a seed in fertile soil and tend the ground.

The point is that almost all change happens when we allow ourselves to be held up and pushed along. Reach out to others to ask their advice. Ask your friends to pick you up when you stumble. Turn toward the world in which we are cradled. It is not a weakness to call on others; it is often the only way we can change and carry on

In 1915, the Austrian Gustav Klimt painted his famous Death and Life. The painting features a busy mosaic of humanity — a loving couple, a mother with her child, an old woman. They are all surrounded by flowers and vibrant designs. It’s a bright and hopeful montage of life. To the left, the Grim Reaper waits. His body is made up of tombs and gravestones. His grin is suitably evil. But I’ve always seen the painting not as a kind of grisly memento mori. I take great hope from it. Because while the Reaper might pluck ones and twos from the mosaic, and while we all, individually, will die, the dancing, glowing throng of life will continue.

We fail, and we win. We break, and we mend. We die, and we live.

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