The Death of Philosophy

As pop-philosophy saturates the internet, original thought becomes a rarity.

    If you have spent any time scrolling through Facebook videos, you have undoubtedly come across a veritable network of 'thought leaders' whose content can be found on every social media site imaginable.

    This brand of ‘mass philosophy’ became phenomenally popular during the rise of the New Age movement in the 1970s. Today’s pop philosophers have inherited that movement and their philosophical narrative is often constructed of similar components. Typically, they consist of a Smorgasbord of pop psychology, Eastern philosophy, and basic components of Western Enlightenment and Renaissance writings.

    Today’s pop philosophers sport mass fanbases and have built a highly lucrative industry of self-help books, lecture series, world tours, and online shows. Today, the sphere of pop philosophy is quite broad. It encompasses life coaches such as JP Sears, Buddhists seminarians like Eckhart Tolle, and even includes ostensibly unrelated ideological movements. 

    For instance, New Atheism and the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW)** both have striking parallels with their more Zen counterparts.

**IDW, a group of professors and media pundits who espouse a hard-right philosophy masked in the language of ‘free thought’ and ‘reason’.

    It’s not hard to see why mass philosophy has become such a widespread phenomenon in Western culture. It has proven successful thanks to its ability to distill complicated subjects into a simplified format, allowing for a much wider audience to understand the arguments presented. 

    In this fashion, the fad of popular philosophy has made esoteric philosophical arguments accessible to a wider audience. It also makes use of bold arguments which are delivered with an unshakable certainty.

    Unlike the dry philosophical writings of luminary thinkers such as Emmanuel Kant, pop philosophy literature does not exhaustively cover potential objections to the arguments presented. It also refrains from qualifying claims which are made. 

    Instead, popular philosophy tends to gravitate towards simplified yet impressive claims. The goal is not to build a logically sound argument, but to build an argument that many people will read. Pop philosophy tends to be far more entertaining – and thus appealing – when compared to its ‘real’ philosophy counterparts.     

        Problem?

    Given the title of this article, it is obvious that I am not going to be kind in my assessment of pop philosophy. For some of you, the negatives of pop philosophy may not be immediately apparent. You might think that it is a good phenomenon.

    It’s not.

    Pop philosophy is greatly detrimental to real philosophy. It can also be quite harmful to our social and political discourse.

It’s bad for Philosophy

     To say that pop philosophy is bad for the academic discipline is an understatement. In truth, it has directly contributed to seriously distorting and hampering the development of academically rigorous philosophies. 

    Thanks to its proliferation, the principle goal of most of these pseudointellectuals is not to search for a deeper truth to life, but to maximize the profitability of their ideology. Thus, readership and viewership are far more important to pop-philosophers than the logical soundness of their arguments.

    For this reason, pop philosophy dilutes the logical rigor of philosophical teachings. For one, pop philosophers tend to greatly oversimplify their arguments, stripping them of all nuance. 

    This allows a wider audience to understand the conclusion of an argument without examining its reasoning in any detail. Consequentially, such arguments are hardly scrutinized by the audience that hears them.

    Pop philosophy does not entertain the Platonic style of thoroughly debating a position, but rather expects its dictates to be accepted at face value. Thus, pop-philosophy arguments are to be accepted without a deeper look into their reasoning, allowing logically unsound ideas to escape careful examination.    

    It is therefore not surprising that the philosophical arguments that come from pop-philosophy are generally poor arguments. They suffer from being under-explained and tend to be rife with logical fallacies. Most such arguments can be easily deconstructed if one spends enough time to sift through the plethora of buzz words and meaningless jargon.

            Example??

    All of this is quite broad, so let’s look at a specific example from Eckhart Tolle, a German spiritual leader and major purveyor of pop philosophy. In Tolle’s most popular book, The Power of Now, Tolle delineates his ‘novel’ synthesis (as in not at all novel) of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism and Western philosophy.

    Unsurprisingly, when examining his book, it is not difficult to nitpick, and identify many contradictions in Tolle’s reasoning (some dude clearly had a lot of fun with that!). But let’s not content ourselves with surface level criticisms. Let’s take a deeper look at one of the central arguments of Tolle’s book.  

    Tolle markets himself as a purveyor of enlightenment. To his followers, he is a wise guru who has the solution to the mental disquiet and stress that plagues modern life. At its base, Tolle’s argument draws heavily from dualism, the idea that there are two distinct aspects that make up the self. 

    This is a concept that is utilized by the three major monotheisms and has been extensively explored by Western philosophers such as Descartes (one of the leading proponents of mind-body Dualism). 

Generally, Tolle claims that an aspect of one’s self must be excised, for it is not the ‘real self’. Tolle identifies the ego as the source of human vice. To him, selfishness, cruelty, prejudice, and unhappiness all stem from one’s egoistic conceptualization of the self.

            Sunyata

    The ego is therefore an illusion of sorts that must be purged from the self. How is this to be achieved? Is it not obvious? You must live in the present moment, in the now, for the now is powerful. So, before we proceed, let’s talk Sunyata (for starters, what the hell even is that?). 

    Sunyata is integral to the argument Tolle describes. Very broadly, this term refers to the concept that our lives are in a sense* an illusion. According to this idea, any purpose for life is fleeting and illusory. Life is therefore a cycle, where we go through the daily motions, and one day are greeted by death. In other words, life is devoid of lasting meaning.

    For Tolle, this means that the only thing that matters is the now. Thus, whatever troubles us in the wide world or imbues us with mental unease is immaterial, for it is nothing but a product of the ego, which refuses to see the now, and refuses to accept the inherent meaningless of life and its trifles.

    OK. 

    So first off, Sunyata considers the ‘now’ as Tolle describes it to also be illusory. By the very nature of Sunyata, the now is an unidentifiable and unknowable quantity. It, like all else in life, is not permanent. 

To pursue the now is therefore to trap oneself in an endless cycle, like Sisyphus. It is to see the reflection of the moon on the surface of the pond that is your mind, and to never free oneself from that invisible pond (see how easy it is sound pretentious? I can do this aaaaaall day). By the time you can discern and understand the now, the now has already passed. 

    But here’s where that asterisk comes in: the meaning of ‘illusory’ as described by Tolle is well, illusory. In Sunyata, the nearest English translation of the Sanskrit term māyā is illusion. However, māyā does not refer to illusion in strictest sense of that word. Rather, māyā in this context is meant to describe that life is much like a ‘phantasm’, a dreamlike state. 

    It is meant to convey the idea that the meaning and values we ascribe to life are vulnerable to the erosion time brings, as are all human constructs.  

    Nevertheless, māyā does not refer to an existence utterly void of emotion or meaning, as the phantasm we inhabit is real to us. In it, we are like actors on a stage, all participants in an improvised piece where none of us know our lines and all of us do our best. And like all plays, we – along with the meaning we ascribe to our existence – are temporary. But that doesn’t mean these things are illusory.

    And it doesn’t mean that we should abstain from ascribing our emotions to our experiences. This is something that Tolle, and all human beings do. Sunyata does not call for an end to this fundamental aspect of human expression. It merely hopes to make us more aware of this phenomenon, so that we better understand the self.

    To properly appreciate the lesson Sunyata teaches, one must practice being mindful, thoughtful, and wholesome. This is impossible if one is to suppress their mind's impulses. The key to enlightenment in Zen Buddhism is understanding why you think what you think, not ignoring what you think. 

    So, right off the bat, Tolle completely mischaracterized a foundational part of his argument (I wish I could say I was surprised, but…). That alone should make you question the merits of other aspects of his argument. 

    But let’s not stop here. I’m never one to leave a job half done, so let’s talk ego.  

            That durn ego!

    What do Buddhists say of suffering? What is Bodhisattva?

    When the Buddha attained his spiritual awakening, he became aware of Four Noble Truths which defined the realities of life. One of these Four Noble Truths was that suffering is an unavoidable aspect of existence in the world (samsara). However, this does not mean that suffering is eternal. 

    Indeed, one of the stated goals of Zen Buddhism is to work towards ending this suffering through enlightenment.

    This is where Bodhisattva comes in. When one embarks on the path to spiritual enlightenment, they become a Bodhisattva. These individuals hope to reach the level of enlightenment that Buddha reached. Their goal is to become aware of the phantasmagoric nature of life, to see the impermanence of life’s meaning, of emotion, of principle. 

    In this sense, they can transgress the constraints of ego, and discern the transcendental nature of our existence.

    But they do not remain in this state. An integral principle of Mahayana Buddhism – of which Zen Buddhism is a strand – is that the enlightened must return to the intrinsic boundaries of human existence. After all, we are all mortal, and as such we are bound spatially and temporally to the world we inhabit. 

    If an enlightened Bodhisattva is to linger in this transcendent space, and thus doesn’t return to help others achieve enlightenment, that individual has also fallen prey to ego. They have chosen to ignore the suffering of others, to ignore their own mortality, and to attach themselves to delusion.

    Tolle’s interpretation of Zen Buddhist principles is in effect a distortion of this idea, as it seems he would have you stay in the transcendental state indefinitely.

    And when you think of it, the uncorrupted idea makes a lot of sense. It is certainly correct that our lives are insignificant when compared to the sheer scale of the universe. But we do not inhabit a celestial realm. We are bound by temporal and physical constraint and so the meaning we ascribe to our lives matters to us, and that is what Sunyata says.

    Even if our existence may not matter in the grand scale, it still matters to us, for we cannot exist in a state transgressing time and space. We must return to that which binds us to our temporary world, so that we may help others to see the light. That is the mantra of Mahayana Buddhism. 

        I’m not done YET folks!

    Phew! That was quite a dive down the rabbit hole into Zen Buddhism, but we are not done. Let’s keep this complain train moving and discuss why pop philosophy is largely devoid of original ideas.

Pop Philosophy is Stagnant

    For all the fanfaronade and pageantry that envelopes commercialized philosophy, it couldn’t be more stagnant if it tried. Pop philosophy is almost never revolutionary, nor innovative. It is predictable, and changes little from decade to decade. 

    Tolle’s technique of a ‘Western-Zen fusion’ is roughly the same as that of Alan Watts, a British-American philosopher who pioneered the introduction of Zen ideas into Western culture. 

    Even the ‘language-camouflage’ strategy of making far-right ideas sound more palatable (re. intellectual) utilized by the IDW is not their own invention. William F. Buckley Jr. was using a similar style of delivery on his political debate show Firing Line long before pundits like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson gained notoriety. 

    Likewise, the ‘four horsemen’ of New Atheism (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett)  don’t have much new to say, as most of their ideas derive from the writings of 19^th and 20^th century atheists (Bertrand Russell, Mark Twain, Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche). 

    It is also quite telling that virtually no major pop-philosophy narrative speaks out consistently against social injustice, prejudice, or inequality of any kind. Mass philosophy always happens to conveniently align with the status quo, despite the fact that its representatives insist that they are ideological freethinkers.

    In other words, both gurus and pundits have capitalized on ideologies that have long existed. 

    Another highly objectionable side of pop philosophy is the immense profit motive. Pop philosophy is a very lucrative business. In fact, here is a chart of just a few pop philosophers showing their net worth:

 

    All the people on this chart are millionaires. Now, this on its own doesn’t disqualify someone from being a ‘true philosopher’. It should however give you pause, because pop philosophy made these men rich. They therefore have a multi-million-dollar reason to have you read their books, watch their videos, and attend their seminars. 

    Hypothetically, if they lie to you in order to achieve that, it’s not a big deal, for what is one lie when there are millions of dollars involved???

    Knowing this also raises a pertinent question: namely, can these individuals truly understand the problems of the average joe as they purport to? Would you trust a man who has a Jaguar (or five) parked in the garages of his massive mansion(s) to understand the stressfulness of living paycheck to paycheck? Can these "intellectuals" truly comprehend the daily challenges of the working poor?   

    Furthermore, it seems that the goal of philosophy – the pursuit of truth – is corrupted if that truth must be profitable in order to be considered valuable. If this is our standard, what incentive do we have to unabashedly pursue truth if it could lead to a philosophy that doesn't make money? 

Once we consider these questions, the stagnancy that envelopes pop philosophy becomes far easier to understand. An idea that challenges the status quo is seldom a profitable one (just ask any civil rights activist in America). Therefore, a pop-philosophy theory must master the art of appearing to rock the boat without actually saying anything revolutionary.

    But mass Philosophy poses more than just integrity issues or logical quandaries. It is also dangerous for our society.  

Pop Philosophy is Dangerous

    Pop philosophy is a major supplier of what can generously be called pseudoscience (and what can not so generously be called anti-intellectualist bullsh*t). Pop philosophers of all stripes tend to take significant liberties with science either by distorting known scientific facts to suit their narrative, or by inventing their own claims which are tenuously rooted in scientific language. 

    One of the most blatant examples of this is JP Sears (the man who always looks like he's a penniless hippie even though he's a multi-millionaire YouTube creator).

    In fact, JP Sears' pseudoscientific fuckery is emblematic of the way pop-philosophy at large dabbles in bad science. Sears regularly spices up his videos with a dash of quackery, either by railing against bans on coconut oil (which he sells), or by stoking the flames of anti-vaxxer fear. 

    But every now and then, Sears will lay down the heavy stuff, as he has since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    Since quarantine has deprived him of his regular (and need I add highly lucrative) life coaching seminars, Sears has contented himself with pumping out sarcastic videos which parrot the sentiments of the most insane Coronavirus conspiracy theories.

    From one episode in which Sears jokingly depicts quarantine rules as having been the creation of a hapless janitor (ha-ha, soooooooooooo original and creAAATIVE!), to another in which quarantine is depicted as total house arrest (as in you can’t even go to the supermarket), Sears has made clear that he doesn’t like quarantine. 

    And its not like he doesn’t have a huge profit motive for doing that, no, of course not. He’s Just Asking Questions… (in other words, he's JAQing himself off, no harm could come of that)

    I don’t think I need to explain why this is incredibly dangerous (but here goes...). It is truly shitty to profit off the ignorance and fear of others, and I guess it says a lot about Sears that he is so good at it. COVID-19 bullshit is literally lethal. Countless people who thought the pandemic was a hoax have gotten sick and/or died because they refused to take necessary precautions. 

    Additionally, medical science woo involving the curative powers of alcohol and cleaning products have led to incidents of poisoning and death. Sinophobic COVID conspiracies have even led to a spike in racist attacks against Asians (Sears hasn't peddled any racist conspiracy theories to the best of my knowledge, but you get the point). 

    Additionally, it is critical to stress that though quarantine rules have been confusing and have not remained consistent with time, this is in no way indicative of conspiracy. 

    The rules devised for quarantine were largely based on the international consensus of doctors and epidemiologists (people who have dedicated their adult lives to studying communicable diseases, so you and I don’t have to).

    These rules were not forced on anyone by some shadowy international conspiracy. Indeed, some countries (the US and Sweden for instance) did not fully comply with the recommendations of the international epidemiological community (and still don’t). 

    The reason our strategies for containing COVID have changed isn’t because of some cloak and dagger nonsense. This is literally just how science works. Methods to solve a problem are devised, and once a better understanding of the problem is attained, we develop new solutions based on our improved data.

    Scientific theories are not gospel. They are just the explanations that most logically suit the data we have access to. For instance, imagine if we still adopted a geocentric model of the solar system (where the sun and planets orbit the Earth), despite the enormous amount of conflicting evidence we have accrued through more effective methodologies of astronomical observation. Would that not be stupid?

    Is science hypocritical because it ‘went back’ on its previous centuries-long claim, and adopted a heliocentric model (the one we have today), which better suited the evidence at hand?  

    Since before the worldwide spread of COVID-19, scientists around the globe have been racing to find the best ways to stymie the spread of the deadly virus (on top of which they are researching potential vaccines). In a highly dynamic and dangerous situation such as a pandemic, to have never-changing methods would be a very misguided strategy.

    And in a time when ascertaining the truth can be a mammoth task, having multiple streams of contradictory pseudoscientific information greatly muddies the waters. 

    It is for this reason that mass philosophy is an especially detrimental phenomenon in the 21^st century, as it is one of the central distributors of bullshit. And that bullshit does more than just confuse us. It also stymies social change. 

        Racism is Stressful (so don’t think about it too much)

    We haven’t even delved into the myriad ways in which pop philosophy props up the status quo by spreading racist, misogynist and prejudicial drivel. The IDW is the most obvious offender in this regard. Indeed, you don’t have to look far to find quotes of Ben Shapiro saying something racist about Arabs, or being an asshole to transgender people. 

    And when he isn’t whining about the cultural Marxist agenda stifling his right to consequence-free speech, Jordan Peterson often delights in promoting his 1950s perspectives on women in the workplace (their biologically predisposed to make less than men!), or consent (women need the institution of marriage to protect them from rape!) 

    Also, did I mention that Peterson has been accused thrice of sexual assault by his own admission (!)    

    But this delightful menagerie of caveman values masquerading as intellectual brilliance is not the only way pop-philosophy props up social inequity. Believe it or not, some of it can be quite a lot subtler. Often, pop-philosophy will deploy basic techniques so that it can effectively abdicate any responsibility towards discussing social problems. The first is misdirection.

            Misdirection

    Typically, this entails distracting an audience with a red herring, making them believe that other insignificant issues are bigger problems. For instance, some pundits revel in explaining how it is white people (and not those who were brought in chains as slaves to this country) who are oppressed in America. 

    White privilege is just a myth, they insist, and meanwhile white people are being censored, and intimidated (re. they can’t say racist things with impunity like they used to). After all, the real problem is that someone smashed the display windows at Macy's, or robbed a Target. These poor and angry disenfranchised people are being too aggressive (where's the civility in society gone???)

    Another classic misdirection – and a favorite of those who are easily frightened by social reform – is demonizing the victim. For instance, have you ever noticed how incredibly concerned some pop-philosophers (IDWs and New Atheists alike) have been about the nonexistent scourge of false rape accusations?

    Despite their apparent unwillingness to speak about the epidemic of sexual violence in America, some pop-philosophers are deeply concerned about the possibility that women could lie about being the victims of sexual abuse. And how logical it is to devote so much time and energy to a problem that exists only in the imagination of devout misogynists. 

Relativism

    Why deny that an issue exists, when you can just ignore it, and claim it can’t be solved anyway? This is the specialty of the relativist. Sure, racism, sexism, or what have you is a serious problem, but why waste sleep over it? People have always been racist, after all, and boys will be boys. (did you hear that they have racist people in China too? Were all the same!!!)  

    Thinking about the suffering of the marginalized is hard, and you’ll stress yourself out out if you think too much about it (remember, life is an illusion, and none of it matters anyway, riiiiiight???).

Here’s the Point

    I could make this a thirty-page diatribe against the ills of commercialized philosophy, but I guess I will have to settle for a ten-page one.

    Ultimately, the voice of a few dissenters is of little use against a multi-million-dollar industry. Pop-philosophy will continue to be a prominent cultural force in our society for decades to come. The best we can do is learn to recognize it and become adept at detecting misinformation. 

    If someone unabashedly advocates for simple solutions to complex issues, that person is not revealing a deeper truth to you. They are trying to make a sale. It is up to us to actively reject what pop-philosophers try to compel us to buy.

    I understand that most of us are not going to transform into academically inclined philosophers with an adept understanding of logical fallacy. Indeed, I am not trying to say that I or anyone else needs to be that way (for the record, I am definitely not saying that I am a philosopher or an academic with any authority in this subject. These are just my opinions, and nothing more). 

    The point is that we are going to have to become more skeptical and discerning of the stuff we see online. When you see a claim online that lines up with your preconceived notions of the world, question it. Remember that an entire system of algorithmic bots brought that content to you based on your previous internet activity (ergo, the bot found something it knew you would like). 

    So, do not take it as gospel. Scrutinize it. Who is making this claim? Where are their sources coming from? What motivations could this creator have for pushing this claim? 

     We must all learn to be more discerning if we are to preserve the integrity of the art of pursuing the truth. 

Share this article, and leave a comment! All engagement is good engagement, if you squint hard enough. Write us at contrarypedant@gmail.com with your (angry) thoughts!   

FURTHER READING

https://trendcelebsnow.com/jp-sears-net-worth/

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/New_Atheism#Not_New_Atheists

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/authors/jordan-peterson-net-worth/#:~:text=Jordan%20Peterson%20net%20worth%3A%20Jordan,political%2C%20social%20and%20cultural%20issues.

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/authors/eckhart-tolle-net-worth/#:~:text=Eckhart%20Tolle%20net%20worth%3A%20Eckhart,to%20live%20with%20his%20father.

https://info-buddhism.com/Ethical_Discipline_Bodhisattvas-Geshe_Sonam_Rinchen.html

https://www.poehm.com/en/eckhart-tolle-criticism/ (a man who nitpicked Tolle’s book and some of his videos, outdoing yours truly in the art of pedantry).

http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/the-failure-of-now-how-eckhart-tolle-coddles-the-status-quo-and-why-it-matters/

https://medium.com/@CKava/the-problem-with-jp-sears-2c5d1b8664fd (JP Sears pseudoscience)

https://buddhism-thewayofemptiness.blog.nomagic.uk/

https://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/cgi-bin/serveimg.pl?file=/scans/MWScan/MWScanjpg/mw1085-zuSkavraNa.jpg (Sanskrit dictionary)

http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/the-failure-of-now-how-eckhart-tolle-coddles-the-status-quo-and-why-it-matters/ (an article about how Tolle and the New Age movement generally preserve the status quo)