This painting of Spinoza is a deeply profound entire worldview for those despairing of our current situation.…
This painting of Spinoza is a deeply profound entire worldview for those despairing of our current situation. Spinoza was excommunicated by his own community for heresy. It’s what the image shows. He was unmoved, also what the image shows. It means much more than it appears. /1 https://t.co/sOYXj3zMft
The simplistic view would take some greeting card sentiment from this situation, about standing up for what you believe in. But lots of ignorant and wrong people do that too. Spinoza’s genius and legacy was to do something unheard of. /2 https://t.co/bxm5vNsznF
He made understanding, true knowledge, the foundation of all life. Separate to any individual or group. And while nearly everybody thinks the knowledge they have does that already, that it’s ‘objective’, it’s really not. We’ve seen it in this pandemic. /3 https://t.co/QPS4HZizJb
The same facts, entirely different interpretations, depending on the social group. Almost nobody really pursues a truth that would have them excommunicated from their own group. It’s always team sports. That’s what made Spinoza something unique. But he went much further. /4 https://t.co/4YjzExG1WX
We seem incapable of thinking outside the crowd, the group. We’re social creatures, that’s inevitable. We think to solve the world’s problems, we have to mobilise large groups of people. Always this obsession with groups. But say you get a group to all agree to something. /5 https://t.co/z5LwqgLvzy
How long does that last? Politicians use strategic tricks to try to get groups to think a certain way between elections. Usually within a term or two people turf them out, no matter what they say or do. What lasts, what has a much longer impact on people? /6 https://t.co/rHDE5qCpCO
True knowledge. When it was discovered cervical cancer was the result of HPV infection, people started getting HPV vaccinations, no questions asked. There was no need to play tricks or exhaust anybody ‘mobilising’ people. Stuff worked, so people did it. But there’s more. /7 https://t.co/gFObQF1Rhj
Because once you have something that works, that is actually true, arrangements have to be put in place to make sure that thing is available, readily and in perpetuity. And that’s where an institution is born. That’s what they are. Social structures that transcend team sports. /8 https://t.co/McuNt9cyO2
Look at any health department. Not set up like a football team, to support this or that group. Set up to organise and deliver health knowledge. That’s why it endures across generations, long after all the team sports squabbles have moved on. And this is Spinoza’s true legacy. /9 https://t.co/J6QKEYKcv8
When you despair of the seeming lunacy of our time, as Spinoza easily could of his, you don’t need to work to convince all of society to be better. That won’t ever happen, they will always turn it into team sports. Stick to knowledge, real knowledge. /10 https://t.co/IjYyI5XS66
That’s all that will change the world. That can change it. And by doing that alone, you are changing the world. It might not feel like it, because it’s not as immediate as mobilising a crowd. But that mobilisation is fleeting and rigid and dumb. Fads and fashions. /11 https://t.co/4oB0qEPLIJ
Spinoza even explained how to know when you had really understood something. A feeling of joy. Not anger, sadness, happiness - all of that meant you weren’t there yet. Still too attached to social organisation. Only joy indicates true understanding. /12 https://t.co/QY3Rw0raDG
Look at Spinoza in the painting. Calm, inquiring. As the crowd agitates noisily behind him. That’s the model for our times, and all times. It’s not individual, it’s not collective. Knowledge transcends all that. By genuinely knowing, the world changes. It can’t not. /end https://t.co/SrbcLV0QSW
