The Intellectual Menu System
In praise of irreverent learning
In terms of my intellectual interests, I avoid menus. And I often recommend that you avoid them too.
What I describe as a menu system is a prescriptive order of topics that the prescriptor has previously drafted and designed without any consideration for your interests and expects you to follow it to meet certain ends. This in an institutionalized setting, will be a curriculum. But to be clear, I am not against curriculums. I am against menus.
A menu system better describes free learning that is not so free anymore because you have been handed down a studying curriculum that was designed for someone else’s interests but which masquerades as a grand purpose.
Because I have rambled elsewhere about curriculum and curiosity, I will spend little time making any distinction as to why I am not against curriculums. I will just dive into fighting menus.
It is important to clarify that I speak on the side of pursuing one’s curiosity outside the frameworks of a defined institution; which includes obsessing over any topic that one chooses. I emphasize the freedom to run in any direction, not bound by any curriculum or dictate, or purpose. I also beforehand denounce outright praxis which is the practice that requires all learning to be a means of achieving some stated change in the world. In a more concrete format, I disagree with Karl Marx that “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” I reject it.
As it is with menus in restaurants, your choices are limited and uneditable. But it is good that you can if the first restaurant does not have what you want, change restaurants. Still, even with myriads of restaurants to choose from, the case remains that every menu in every restaurant you enter has limited choices and they remain uneditable — you either take it or you leave it.
Unfortunately, the “take it or leave it” implication of menuism is out here in the world with us in terms of learning. The seeming difference however is that this menuism comes with — perhaps comes right behind — insufferable waiters and waitresses.
There exists a class of people like Miss Summer Brennan who find it “unacceptable” that men are less likely to buy and read nonfiction books by women. The question I ask myself is: on what grounds is it unacceptable? To find it worrying, fine. To find it alarming? That’s ok. But to find it unacceptable? That’s a stretch. She goes on then to give men a challenge that they should buy more nonfiction books by a female and post the cover. There you go: a waitress.
Another class of world-hall monitors exists: those who chide you for caring about something that on their calculated pie chart is negligible. “This is only happening in less than 4% of whatever so why do you care?” My answer: I just do. Now that’s just the minor problem — that they are chastising you for your fascination. The bigger issue with this class of people is that they base their care on statistical results which, frankly, is utilitarianism and innumeracy in disguise. (To be clear, ensemble properties are not equal to individual properties in probabilities and statistics. E.g, Twenty percent (20%) of patients experience side effects does not mean one patient has a twenty percent (20%) chance of experiencing side effects.)
Or, to be more direct. Why are you in this age and time reading The Iliad — a literary text by a dead old white cis-hetero patriarchal male demon — when you should be reading Undoing Gender by Judith Butler so that you can educate yourself and become a champion of women’s liberation?
The audacity to walk up to anyone and prosecute their fascination, because it deviates from an ideological interest dazzles me. I wish I were that self-absorbed. The only explanation as to why anyone can walk into your sphere without invitation and tell you what you should be reading, who you should be reading, what you should be caring about, and what causes you should be championing is that they are self-anointed waiters, waitresses, and hall monitors of the free world. They must have deludedly believed themselves to be vanguards or revolutionaries of a cause that gives them the authority to dictate what you can have and what you cannot have.
To them, reading for leisure is possibly a sin. And that is no hyperbole. To them, every time you pick a book what you should be doing is “educating yourself.” The sentiment is not unpopular among people who think that there is enough oppression going on in this world for you to not be partaking in an activist program. To them, choosing to do nothing — nothing that they see or approve of — is a sign of privilege. And in their zero-sum calculations, your privilege means someone is getting robbed somewhere.
How dare you read for leisure when the climate is changing fast enough to kill your dogs? And speaking of dogs, aren’t you supposed to be reading Vegan literature to understand why eating meat is killing the planet?
This attitude that assumes that you ought to pursue interests that are tailored to a moral, social or political goal is the symbol of the menu system of intellectual interests. It without a doubt sucks out the joy that is in irreverent learning. In a free world, irreverent learning is the best.
All that I have described so far is endemic in a BookTube culture that prides itself on what books you have read rather than on what interests you follow and how well you follow them. Not that the quality of books does not matter. But a passionate, obsessed reader who digs into any interest irreverently, is vastly better than anyone whose pride is grounded in what types of books they have read. Tepid readers who are not obsessed with their topics but are rather signaling to the world by the types of books they read should be spat out of your mouth.
I tell you — verily, verily — that it is way too easy to distinguish between the obsessed and the tepid. Way too easy. You can do this by observing curiosity in children.
Childlike obsession is I am certain the one genuinely anti-mimetic phenomenon in this world. This can be easily demonstrated by observing the mimetic desires of children. When children poke you with their curiosity, it is not because they believe that the world is going to change by them knowing the answer. Asking you the question is like relief from a boner (in the adult sense) and receiving the answer is satisfaction in itself.
Talk mimesis all you want — and people can be so obsessed with it — but kids demonstrate mimesis and anti-mimesis at the same time.
For instance, when a child pines for a toy that his mate fiddles with, you see mimesis and envy in operation. But not long after — because children cannot pretend for long — they will stop playing with the toy. They might not want the other kid to have it but they are as well not interested in it either. It becomes apparent then that they only want the toy because someone else wants it.
However, whatever a child is genuinely obsessed with, you cannot snatch from him without ripping out his soul as well. Now that is what true obsession and curiosity are. And this presents the Gamaliel principle:
And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God."
— Gamaliel’s Principle
In the same vein as Gamaliel but for genuine intellectual fascination: leave people alone to pursue topics they are interested in; if the interest came by mimesis or imitation, they will burnout: but if it is genuine, it will withstand the tests, you cannot deter them, and you would have found yourself fighting authenticity.
You will know that someone is truly obsessed with a topic when the pursuit survives in the face or absence of its status-conferring property (its ability to get him laid, fetch him money, or give him a place among the cool kids, or give him a sense of moral superiority), the face or absence of interference (coercion/ persecution/ seduction/ enticement), and they are willing to follow the subject wherever it leads. Meaning: it is only a matter of time. Obsession is not merely about energy or intensity but also a case of time.
Back to the waiters and hall monitors of the world. These self-appointed tend to excuse their towering behavior with moral and political guises. Can you possibly resist ‘educating yourself’ about climate change without coming off as an environmental Nazi?
I have no objections to moralizing, wanting a better world, or expending quick action. But If I am going to converse with people who will set my moral and social budgets, I choose to chat with Jesus, Paul the Apostle, The Dalai Lama, Martin Niemoller (for fear he will quote at me that I did not speak up when they came for the socialists), and for diversity sake, Mother Theresa. Not with some outrageous, histrionic waitress at the Social Justice Black-Owned Cheese-Cake Factory. Action is good. But acting intensively without any modicum of reflection is a thing I wish to avoid. And acting without reflection is the danger of the philosophy of praxis.
While praxis in its unadulterated form — which is to say in theory — is informed action, practice does not always follow this script.
The danger in praxis — in practice — is the pace at which theory calcifies into dogma.
Because of the urgency of whatever the situation may be, new and passionate entrants have little to no time to reflect and intimate themselves with the theoretical principles of said doctrine. And without skipping a beat, leaders, and vanguards supply slogans, memes, and talking points to their non-elite members. In other words, things that set out as praxis eventually remove the need to genuinely acquaint oneself with the subject matter which may have otherwise provided room for questions, disagreements, and possible reiterations. In even simpler terms, thinking dies, and sloganeering takes its place. After all, the world is about to collapse; we must act now.
For me, my intellectual curiosity is a form of leisure. Relief. A form of relaxation. A kind of catharsis. A type of blood-leaving-the-vas deferens. It is letting off steam; valve-like. It is flatulence — brain fart. It is not labor even if it might be tasking. Neither is it something intended to change the world. There is no goal. There is no research direction. It is not teleological. I don’t wait for a “result” to enjoy it. I simply relish everything I pursue. And at some point, my mantra was, “I do not want to change the world; I just want snakes to disgust me less.” And I mean it. I want snakes to disgust me less.
Although change may happen. But it is a side effect. Just as bodily flatulence — fart — empties the room because it stinks. The stench is the by-product; relief is eternal.
I have had spells of trying to define what I do in some high-sounding term in order to appeal to people’s sensibilities. But every time I tried, I realized that there was something about setting out with a hefty goal — perhaps to educate the masses or awaken the world — that turned fluid and flowing curiosity into a stinkingly unenviable rigor mortis. It makes your pursuit, however noble, fragile. And of course, cold as well. This brings me to my last stop: the search for truth.
The search for truth is noble. And many people I love and know are in search of objective truth. While I cannot entirely disagree with that — without looking like Satan, I must recommend that it is not so appealing. Of course, it is not appealing because as I have mentioned earlier, it makes your pursuit, however noble, fragile.
For instance, with philosophy. Studying philosophy is best and most interesting when it starts with wonder rather than an aggressive desire to unveil falsehood. When philosophy over the course of time left Socrates’ description that philosophy begins with wonder to take up the search for truth which eventually became science today as we know it, it became less interesting and less lively. To put it simply: it died and we have been living with its corpse.
My recommendation, however, is that as you study whatever you wish — be it philosophy or shellfish — with the goal of finding objective truth, accompany your search for objective truth with a sense of wonder and a taste and appreciation for beauty. Without beauty and wonder, the truth becomes stale.
It is good for a philosopher, if he will get married, to get married to a beautiful woman. The awe evoked by beauty is nourishing to the soul. Trust me — even though I am not married — that it is good for your pursuit of truth.
Have something that always calls your attention to genuinely wonder about it. And by wonder, I don’t mean a rabid curiosity that yearns in you to vandalise the object. Find something whose very presence soothes your inner vandal. Find the Lois Lane to your Justice League 2017 resurrected Clark Kent.
Do you wish to avoid menus and practice irreverent learning? Employ the three musketeers: Truth, beauty, and wonder.
To quote The Patron Saint of The Basilica Irreverentia, Richard Feynman:
Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.
Thank you for reading, have an irreverent week.
And the meme is back!
See you next week.
“To them, every time you pick a book what you should be doing is “educating yourself.”
This excerpt reminds of me of the bewildered looks I get when I say that I am trying to understand how someone became Osama bin Laden or Stalin. I always have to add that my curiosity also extends there.