Still the most beautiful meditation on the brutal tension between sociality and knowledge. Spinoza. Sociality…
Still the most beautiful meditation on the brutal tension between sociality and knowledge. Spinoza.
Sociality uses knowledge as fodder, to build and unify teams. To fight other teams. The team’s success becomes what is true. /1 https://t.co/fk6wxdjEgX
The fight between what is true, and what is popular. What is popular being what allows you to fit in, to be accepted, by a particular group.
That’s all peer review is, as well. Science does not escape this. Real truth risks actual excommunication, from a community. /2
‘Speaking truth to power’ is an affectation. It’s much more difficult to speak truth to friends, and family.
Real truth will offend all of the teams. Not just create a counter-team. It’s not contrarianism. It’s knowledge that will challenge the very way we all live. /3
As Spinoza said, there is only one metric that reveals truth. Real truth brings joy. Everything else is team sports.
The joy of ‘ah’. Of revelation of how something really works. An actual, physical sensation of liberation. /4
Liberation in understanding, but also liberation from the stifling oppression of group conformity. I’ve been invited to collaborate with multiple groups, in this pandemic.
I always politely decline, or simply don’t show up (virtually or otherwise). I know how groups go. /5
The focus always becomes maintenance of the group, over where the truth of a situation may lead you. ‘Solidarity’, ‘connection’. Uttered as inherently good things.
Both give me the chills. I’m not anti-social. I love friends as much as anyone. But not teams. /6
I had a good time at high school. But I also saw the brutality of the sociality there, and I see it now in adult life, everywhere.
Particularly wth the explosion of social media. The technology of ‘likes’. Naked, thermonuclear popularity. Disguised as connection. /7
Creating ever more rigid conformity, as teams harden their defences in battle with other teams.
Sociality is the glue that holds societies together. We need it. But it’s not benign. It’s also our most lethal foe. /8
Right now people would rather die (of Covid), than not conform with their teams’ rules. But the teams who oppose doing nothing for Covid are also rigid.
They rally around performative things, like wearing masks or ventilating air. Both crucial public health activities. /9
But once sucked into the vortex of team sports, every post here just energises the teams (for and against), and fires up the likes and counter-Tweets.
And makes the platforms even richer. Every click. It’s what the platforms are for. To monetise the clicks. /10
Social media is where truth goes to die. Where an ‘influencer’ can be spouting the most insane bullshit, and be worshipped as a revealer of truth.
There are flashes of genius here too. Glimpses of actual truth. But the vortex of team sports will swallow those too. /11
That’s not to say don’t be here. Come here for those occasional flashes of genius.
But don’t build a team around them. Being in a team will make you rigidly refuse to see anything.
/end