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I'll withhold comment about the religious aspects, but I think I would like to see more academic interest in what it means to "live the good life" in a developi

I'll withhold comment about the religious aspects, but I think I would like to see more academic interest in what it means to "live the good life" in a developing era of high technology, with an anxiety-inducing attention economy, lower-cost material needs but increasingly tempting highly marketed material wants and positional goods (an economy in the style of Tyler Cowen's "Average is Over"). Teach people enough to critically understand whether progress is a treadmill, and whether the treadmill is worth getting off. There is evidence (higher suicide rates, and depression rates, although depression rates may be influenced by underlying trends in clinical technique) that all this progress doesn't make us any happier. Keeping up with the Joneses to compete for status results in a pretty shitty nash equilibrium when there are a billion people in the world. It feels like any and all effort that the humanities put into making an actual impact on modern day life is just lashing out at power structures. This can help achieve equality in the long run, but for student's who are studying these topics, it does not provide anything actionable to their own lives. Academic Philosophy is applicable to a student's current and future life, but the way that it is studied only rarely provides a grounding foundation for a personal lifestyle philosophy.

jerf 8y ago
"I think I would like to see more academic interest in what it means to "live the good life" in a developing era of high technology," That would be very good. I've seen more work on that topic here on HN, indeed, I've contributed more work on that topic here in HN than I personally have seen come out of academia. This is not a statement of pride in HN or myself, it is a condemnation of academia. I see a lot of judgmental discussions about whether things are good or bad or pathological or qualifying for DSM diagnoses, but very little on how to navigate the morass. This used to be a core topic for philosophy; it's certainly a huge component of Stoicism, if not the main focus, for instance. I will however give academia one bit of the benefit of the doubt, which is that it's been awfully hard to keep up lately. Writing about how to have the good life in 1990 would have only marginal utility in dealing with the civilizational neurotic hysteria that social media is creating, for instance. But it would still be nice to see some more effort put in this direction. I can only imagine going to my advisor and telling them I want to focus on this. They may individually and intellectually support me, but the system will utterly reject it.

jerf 8y ago

"I think I would like to see more academic interest in what it means to "live the good life" in a developing era of high technology," That would be very good. I've seen more work on that topic here on HN, indeed, I've contributed more work on that topic here in HN than I personally have seen come out of academia. This is not a statement of pride in HN or myself, it is a condemnation of academia. I see a lot of judgmental discussions about whether things are good or bad or pathological or qualifying for DSM diagnoses, but very little on how to navigate the morass. This used to be a core topic for philosophy; it's certainly a huge component of Stoicism, if not the main focus, for instance. I will however give academia one bit of the benefit of the doubt, which is that it's been awfully hard to keep up lately. Writing about how to have the good life in 1990 would have only marginal utility in dealing with the civilizational neurotic hysteria that social media is creating, for instance. But it would still be nice to see some more effort put in this direction. I can only imagine going to my advisor and telling them I want to focus on this. They may individually and intellectually support me, but the system will utterly reject it.