Why does everything on the internet feel shallow?

You won’t remember this newsletter, and here’s why.

Hello everybody,

This week we’re looking at mysticism and time with the philosopher Simon Critchley.

You can find the companion article here: The public-private myth: Why religion can’t be kept behind closed doors

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I went to a very small school.

Many people reading this will have likely gone to a secondary school with a thousand or so students — corridors crammed, sports teams competitive, and the cafeteria a tribal battle for territory. My school had 350 students from top to bottom. In some ways, this was a curse; we were trounced at football, and you didn’t have much choice in who your friends were. In other ways, it was a blessing; you learned how to talk and socialize with almost anyone, and the class sizes were blissfully small.

My history class was an especially dramatic case. Thanks to some quirk of the timetable and my peers’ penchant for the sciences, there were only two students in my A-level history class. Two students, with two teachers, for two years between the ages of 16 and 18. This meant we had time. Of course, we did all the mandatory curriculum bits. We wrote all the essays, learned all the facts, and talked until the bell about Oliver Cromwell and the USSR. But Mr. Jones did something more.

Mr. Jones was the best teacher you could ask for: funny, intelligent, and always in control of the class. And he used those two years to properly school us. We talked about classical music, poetry, and theater. We talked about philosophy, theology, and politics. We talked about all of the things that never crossed the ink-jet reams of a syllabus guide. Mr. Jones represented what school could be, and used to be, and we went where our curiosity took us.

And it was only possible because we had time.

Simon (L) talking about mysticism; artist’s rendering of Jonny (R) enjoying a mystical experience.

Time for depth

This week, I spoke with the philosopher Simon Critchley, and we were supposed to talk about mysticism. But we didn’t. We rambled and ruminated as far as one hour would allow. Some people — people like Simon — have such agility to their thought and such an invitational warmth to their intellect that it’s impossible to stay on one track. So, as you can hear below, we enjoyed ourselves shooting the philosophical breeze.

Of course, you can’t do this with everyone, but if you devote yourself and commit to a period of your life to think and to talk, it often comes. And, for Simon, this is what philosophy is all about. As he puts it:

“We get what’s called a digression in Plato's Theaetetus, where Plato argues that time is always running out for the lawyer or the businessman. The philosopher, by contrast, has time. So, what is a philosopher? A philosopher is someone who has time. Someone who is in that sense at ‘leisure,’ and that leisure isn't just a kind of lying about. It's a leisure activity which is the taking of time.

“I think that's really important: the idea of philosophy as taking one's time and not being hurried into some set of beliefs or some set of policies or some set of outcomes.”

Given you subscribe to my newsletter, and have gotten this far, I can assume you are concerned about the deeper aspects of life. But even here, and especially on my social media videos, there is a kind of depthless vapidity to things. I’m sure you’ve felt it. It’s that feeling you get when you cram for an exam. The knowledge feels insecure — its dry sand trickling from your cradled hands.

The internet specializes in short-form everything — articles less than 1,000 words, Reels no longer than 90 seconds, 17 open tabs, and another intruding notification. You can devote a hell of a lot of time to the internet, but it’s a disparate, distracted, and disconnected kind of time.

In Critchley’s most recent book, he looks at the lives of various Christian mystics like Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhart. While they vary hugely in biography, they are joined in one thing: They all devoted a great deal of time to their religion. They carved out weeks, months, and years for meditation and prayer.

The result is a reward. The spiritual or mystical experience stays with you in exactly the way “content” does not. It transforms the life of the mystic. It consumes who they are and recreates something entirely new. The Greeks called this metanoia, a transformational experience that involves a break with the old self. The phoenix from the ashes. Love after a breakup. The dawn is brightest after the darkest night.

This is more than just “the phone is the great nemesis.” This is more than the boring and stale observation that “the internet is destroying us.” This is about time. For the people who aren’t entirely sucked dry by what Simon calls the “really sh*tty jobs,” we have more time than we think. And if we don’t spend that time in deep, important conversation or meditation, we won’t find anything deep or important.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” the computer scientists say. “Time in, depth out,” we might say instead.

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IN YOUR OPINION

A fascinating poll this week, but again much hinges on how we define “mystical.” Given my audience in a previous poll revealed itself to be roughly 65% non-religious, this result isn’t overly surprising (the general public seems to be about double when it comes to having had mystical experiences).

I had a wonderful answer to my question about mystical experiences this week, which I enjoyed reading, and I hope you do too (slightly edited for length):

I was raised religious but became a devout materialist atheist in my early 20s. I had what can only be described as a mystical experience in the fall of 2015. Coming on the heels of a difficult emotional experience that in some ways resolved a childhood trauma, I suddenly felt energized, like my world had gone from black and white to technicolor. I was sleeping four hours a night and talking incredibly fast. Time slowed down, and every night I would feel like I was channeling some other entity while writing it down furiously.

Of course, this looked and felt bonkers, so I went to see doctors and a psychiatrist, wondering if this was some kind of mania. My psychiatrist said it was incredibly rare for someone to develop bipolar after age 40, and that a cycle would return soon enough. (It never did). It was finally a neurologist that told me, “What's happening to you is how shamans get made.”

In the two months that this happened, I had had only one vision, where for a few minutes I felt completely connected to the Universe and felt a strong presence of a powerful entity — though no voices heard or feelings felt, just a unified recognition that we are all one. But gradually, I started sleeping longer and longer (to my usual 8 hours a night), the time dilation stopped, and I went back to my old life. Nothing like that ever happened again, and I spent the next year trying to figure out what the heck had happened to me.

As someone who didn't believe in any “woo,” you can imagine how strange this all was, including experiencing what I can only describe as paranormal phenomena. In my later research, I found there was some version of “spiritual awakening” in nearly every religious tradition, but the explanation that resonated for my experience was the Hindus’ kundalini awakening — a religious tradition I had no connection with.

Nearly ten years later, I am still not religious, but definitely have a sense of wonder about the Universe that I didn't have before, feeling fairly sure now that there may be some kind of superstructure behind it all and that ultimately that structure, whatever it is, is benevolent towards us. I don't know what the true nature of reality is, but the mystery of it is still endlessly fascinating to me because of that short-lived mystical experience nearly a decade ago.

Next week, we’re exploring the philosophy of memes with Idil Galip, and I’m asking:

What meme do you think has had the biggest influence on the world?

Send me your thoughts via email or comment below.

MINI READING LIST

• Galip’s academic philosophy article on memes

• The story behind the internet’s most viral (and misunderstood) political meme.

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RESOURCES

This newsletter contains my reflection on the topic at hand. Here is a list of the material shared in this email, as well as extra content about the topic that I've shared on my other social platforms:

• The companion article inspired by my conversation with Simon Critchley.

• My short video exploring rituals, featured on Mini Philosophy's Instagram page

• The full, unedited audio interview with Simon Critchley:

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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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