Cynicism

I have a relentless drive to know more.

I want to know more, relentlessly more, about what is not mysterious, so that I might reach some vantage point that serves as an observation deck from which the mysteries I appreciate come into clearer view.

I want to know more, relentlessly more, about what is merely self-induced blindness, a refusal to see, so that I might reach some vantage point that serves as an observation deck from which the vastness of my ignorance come into clearer view.

I have a great deal of unintegrated cynicism

I tend to that think popular wisdom, in every domain, is bullshit. An internal skeptic lashes me forward so that I do not settle for bullshit.

I distrust what is taught at school not because it is wrong, but because it is incomplete — awfully incomplete. It stops at the brink, pulls back precisely when things are about to become intense, unsettling, profound, and demanding of my mind's 100% engagement.

And incompleteness is often troublesome. What is taught at school can make it seem as though upholding one virtue requires repelling its opposite. Yet, In my view, to uphold one virtue is to want to study its opposite so that a holistic understanding of what is being upheld can be developed.

Truth is never taught. Much of what is taught is largely bullshit. Perhaps this is not because teachers intend to teach bullshit, but because truth cannot be taught. It can only be pointed toward.

Half-Dose

I was so elated when I read Kierkegaard's passage about the half-dose:

Imagine a kind of medicine that possesses in full dosage a laxative effect but in a half dose a constipating effect. Suppose someone is suffering from constipation. But — for some reason or other, perhaps because there is not enough for a full dose or because it is feared that such a large amount might be too much — in order to do something, he is given, with the best of intentions, a half dose: “After all, it is at least something. Even if it doesn't work very well, it is still something”. What a tragedy!

Popular wisdom often strikes me as precisely this kind of half-dose.

The metaphor is also remarkably suited to unraveling an otherwise puzzling tension: deep self-reflection can lead either to great danger or to jubilation. It is a journey one can undertake only through one's own experience. Any teaching or written script is at best a reference and at worst a half-dose, which produces the very opposite of the full-dosage effect.

Deep self-reflection initially produces more confusion. We are then offered what appear to be remedies: compassion, generosity, humility, radical acceptance … But these cannot bypass the confusion. Deep self-reflection is such a medicine. When prescribed with only a half-dose, we feel the very opposite of the intended effect.

And many people remain stuck in constipation.

I rarely hear anyone say that the way out is simply to do more of it — that you are on the right track. Instead, I often hear fear, caution, and skepticism, probably because people have caught a glimpse of the danger this medicine can stir up. And they conclude that it does not work because it makes you feel worse.

Let them remain constipated. I will find myself the second half-dose.

Truly, this seeking cannot be bypassed. You cannot directly take the second half-dose. Because if you did, you would then once again have taken merely a half-dose, and you would still be stuck in constipation.

Hesitation

At the end of June, I watched a Youtube video about Nietzsche. It was so lovely. I wanted to read Nietzsche.

But I encountered resistance.

An outsider might suspect that many psychologists become psychologists because they suffer from mental illness themselves. And that reading or studying psychology might somehow make one mentally ill. The same suspicion can be directed toward philosophers. An outsider might suspect that many philosophers become philosophers because they are mad. And reading or studying philosophy risks drawing the reader into madness as well.

I recognize this attitude as fear-driven, but not entirely unreasonable.

I have had the same fear. I first heard of Nietzsche in middle school. I learned that he had suffered from mental illness. It was tempting to imagine that his mental illness resulted from having ventured too deeply into the abyss. And I used to fear that, if I read him, I too might be drawn to that same depth of the abyss and go mad.

I thought maybe I should wait for my fragile little mind to grow into a more mature, well-rounded, and better-equipped version of itself before opening a book that, for some reason, seemed like a vessel of tabooed knowledge.

A tiny part of my resistance had a more light-hearted explanation. I am obsessed with the concept of a polyglot, and I want to learn more foreign languages myself. German is at the top of my list (followed by French, Italian, and Japanese, the order doesn't matter). I thought I should learn German first and read those great minds in their native language.

Either way, whether because of linguistic inadequacy or mental unpreparedness, I thought I was not ready. At that moment, another voice in my head said: Ha! I caught you! Don't you wait until you feel ready. It never comes.

So I bought the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra and began to read.

Madness

To set the baseline, immediately before this, I had finished two collections of Emerson's essays. Emerson had already opened me to a wholly new realm of resonance.

As I read Nietzsche, I feel that I have never before been spoken to from a place so close to my innermost core.

It is home — and, by contrast, as though I have been homeless my entire life.

I used to think philosophy was necessarily obscure and convoluted, and I must strive for understanding. But with Nietzsche it is not like that at all. It is needless for me to try to understand, because what I read is simply something I know but have found no way to tell.

With every sentence, some part of me that have been locked in a dungeon for what feels like forever cries out a loud “YES!”. Even when I disagree, my sensation is an affectionate disagreement.

What a brutal truth I just discovered about myself! There is incurable madness in me; there are sharp blades in me; there are bullets darting through me; there is dazzling light in me.

Someone who once knew me may grieve that I have become hardly recognizable, or that they can no longer fully behold who I am. Flickers of that grief frequently arise in me as well. And I am scared that other parts of me cannot keep pace with the fastest-expanding edge of my mind.

And so I fear my madness. I fear my blades and bullets. I fear my light.

And so I am cautious of anything that might further awaken my madness, sharpen my blades, accelerate my bullets, or intensify my light.

But I simply am. Whoever I become tomorrow cannot be caused by what I read today. My love of analytical psychology and existential philosophy is not the cause, but the consequence of who I am. Nothing I read can manufacture a truth within me. It can only make the truth already in me more apparent, more outwardly shown, and therefore more difficult to pretend not to see.

I am feeling the irreversible momentum of having been set in motion — some unstoppable motion.

Survival Instinct

I was so elated when I read Nietzsche's passage about the battle of virtues.

To have many virtues is a hard fate; and many a man has gone into the desert and killed himself because he was tired of being a battle and battle-ground of virtues. But this evil is necessary, envy and mistrust and calumny among your virtues is necessary … you must love your virtues — for you will perish by them.

Perhaps some of the extreme confusion I have suffered — and have been unable to speak about — does not arise from a battle between good and evil. It arises from a battle between one good and another good.

I am a battle-ground of virtues.

For the first time I had found something that resembled the second half-dose. It is life-saving.

Were I asked why I enjoy philosophy, my guarded answer would be, “Because I see tremendous beauty”. But the truer answer is that I find comfort there — a sort of rare and lifesaving comfort. It is a kind of comfort I do not easily disclose that I need. But in those rarest moments, my cynicism finally feels like a portal, or an engine, rather than a sting.

I am accustomed to living with stings. I am forced to become accustomed to them. I have never understood marriage or romantic relationships. At times, my inner voice cries out: “Oh, how am I supposed to survive on this earth with a mind that thinks like this?!!” So when Nietzsche writes, “And your marriage makes an end of many brief follies with one long stupidity,” I instantly recognize that this is no ordinary happening of being seen.

And when he writes,

There is wickedness in your sublimity. I know you. In wickedness, the arrogant and the weak man meet. But they misunderstand one another. I know you.

— For the first time I hear something that matches my inner voice in intensity, rawness, honesty, sharpness, and paradox.

Then he goes on:

I see you wearied by poisonous flies, I see you bloodily torn in a hundred places; and your pride refuses even to be angry.

— I don't know how to utter anything in response other than “I love you!!”

I want to know more, relentlessly more, to hunt for the second half-dose. I want to rise above, relentlessly rise above, not out of pride or condescension, but out of necessity, out of survival instincts! Otherwise, I can too readily see myself as the one in the desert, driven to self-destruction by the weariness of being both a battle and a battle-ground.

I used to refrain from most philosophical texts, because I could see no legit “trailhead” into that deep forest. Now, however, I see a handful of trailheads. And from where I stand, I can see many scenic spots woven into the trail system and lying within my reach: Hesse, Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard …

Scold Me!

I anticipate that reading great philosophers will feel like being scolded, because they will invite me to confront the meagerness of my human adequacy. What a pity! Such encounters inevitably trigger significant shame and self-judgment. I will be more than happy if this happens in less than 50% of the time I spend reading.

What a peculiar relationship I have with an author! I let myself be scolded, yet still want to read more!

As a segue, I do feel less scolded these days.

This Monday, the sun cast dappled light across my window railing. I looked at it and smiled with a flicker of happiness.

In the past — in 2024, for example — the same sight would have struck me as ironic. My primary sensation would have been that the scenery itself was scolding me.

Nature is not rushing at all and is joyfully at ease. Only human beings — only I — seem to rush without ever feeling that it is enough, trapped inside a spinning wheel painfully opposed to the slowness and ease of nature. How miserable, how bitter!

Laughter is a sign of transcendence, before which, I am incapable of laughing.

I cry when I have not yet outgrown my misery and bitterness.

I used to think that invoking the “cosmic joke” was condescending. It seemed to imply an attitude not giving a shit to the stage of crying, whereas I believe that crying is an essential gateway to become capable of entertaining with such jokes.

At present, I cannot quite grasp Alan Watts' notion of the cosmic joke. Nevertheless, I can clearly see how past misery can gradually turn into a joke. Extrapolating from this pattern, I can anticipate that eventually everything becomes a joke.

Whom Am I Reading?

My world changed when I reclaimed my reading time. Reading is not a waste of time, nor is it a pastime. It is a necessity, because reading is the fecund soil underneath my visible productivity.

Perhaps there is another source of my enjoyment from reading — one too important to ignore: when I read an author, I am also reading myself.

Some texts afford such a diverse range of interpretations and reactions that, in the act of reading, I can no longer distinguish whether I'm reading the author or reading myself. Such a text is a naturally occurring object worthy of close study, meditation, and examination in its own right.

When I read Emerson, I feel more at home than I do anywhere else. One hypothesis is that Emerson's writing builds a home for me. Another hypothesis is that his writing serves as a transportation vehicle that sends me home — to my true home.

T.S. Elliot wrote in reply to a letter from D. H. Lawrence:

I have long aimed to write poetry so transparent that we see not the poetry, but that which we are meant to see through the poetry, poetry so transparent that in reading it we are intent on what the poem points at, and not the poetry.

This is it.

Behold what it points at.