The Life Choices of the Phenomenologically Ignorant

If we never leave our laptop, what constitutes “being rational” is very different compared to if we’ve journeyed outside

Photo by Mark Olsen

Imagine we never left our laptop, that we stayed in our office, typing day in and day out, staring at our screen. Sure, we venture to the store for so some food and coffee every now and then, but mostly we spend our time on our laptop. Would we, always on the laptop, have the same notion of “rationality” as someone who worked a farm? No, I’m not asking about intelligence or IQ here, but really the question is regarding “boundness” and if that shapes how we carry ourselves in the world. Are the two people going to “carry themselves in the world” identically? Or would we expect there to be differences?

Phenomenological experience shapes rationality and “what we think,” and if we mostly choose to live a life where we spend a large amount of time on a laptop, then “what we think to do,” to focus on, to consider, and the like, will be different from someone who works outside. For us on a laptop, it might not be a “good use of time” to learn about the weather in detail, but for the farmer it might be a very wise allocation of time. In this way, our setting and “immediacy” influence how we allocate our time, what we value, what we consider a good use of time—on and on. As discussed throughout O.G. Rose, considering this, we cannot readily discuss “autonomous rationality,” as in a rationality that is not grounded in anything outside of itself: rationality is always organized relative to a (nonrational) truth. Failure to acknowledge and accept this true can lead to some of the “totalitarian horrors” which worried David Hume, as described in “Deconstructing Common Life.”

Alright, now imagine we were in Plato’s Cave, watching the images on our laptop, having a great time—would our “rationality” be organized and defined differently from someone who left the cave? Obviously, yes (that’s arguably the whole point of Plato’s Allegory), but if that’s so, why wouldn’t this apply on a less extreme scale? Say if we never left our part of the country? Our town? Our apartment? In this, we can see virtue in traveling and “getting outside our bubble,” for this helps keep our rationality from being “bounded” in ways we might not fully appreciate. But that said, let’s ask a different question: Would someone who never left their apartment organically live according to a rationality that was more a threat to the State or systems of power or less? If we answer “less,” this might mean there is incentive for the State to get us all to live inside caves.

Wait, wouldn’t we realize we were “imprisoned?” Ah, perhaps, but what if there was a bolder pushed over the entrance with a door painted in it, one that made it look like we could leave the cave whenever we wanted (we “just happen” never to try to leave—we’re having too much fun on our laptop)? In this condition, we could “tell ourselves” that we could leave whenever we wanted, and thus we would, to ourselves, not be imprisoned at all. We’d just be hanging out (the lighting was good and the Wi-Fi strong)—good spot.

No one forces us to stay on our laptop and never leave our apartment, but habits, work, and the like can organize us in such a man that we are “practically forced” to stay on our screens. Precisely though since we aren’t “technically forced,” we cannot say that the State is “controlling us,” and furthermore we have “reason to think” we aren’t trapped. And thus we don’t try to escape, which suggests that the distinction between “practical” and “technical” might benefit systems of power…

I am not saying that the government invented screens to control us, but I am saying that “being less of a threat to the State” seems to be unintentional consequences of society emerging as it has. And I don’t even want to say that the internet cannot “check and balance” power—surely the internet has helped us “speak truth to power.” However, what I do want to note is the risk of “phenomenological ignorance” (to use Raymond K. Hessel’s excellent phrase) indirectly contributing to the formation of individual rationalities in a manner that make it easier for the State and/or “power” to act and operate unchallenged. Perhaps not, but all that depends on how we are “phenomenologically ignorant,” which to some degree we all must be, but the more we’re aware of this problem, the less we’ll be ignorant of it.

If we are “phenomenologically ignorant” about Thymos, for example (which Raymond thinks and writes on brilliantly), then it won’t be possible for us to “organize our rationality” in a manner that makes gaining the benefits of Thymos “rational,” and thus we won’t. If indeed humans need Thymos to thrive and fully function, then a rationality which is organized away from considering and living with Thymos will manifest, and at this point we could suffer “The Meaning Crisis” and lack the resources to understand how and why. But stuck in “phenomenological ignorance,” we will be unable to make life choices that could help us avoid this conundrum.

Lastly, making our vulnerability to “phenomenological ignorance” all the greater, I fear that rationality itself hates acknowledging its need and reliance on something “outside of itself,” mainly (nonrational) truth. Rationality naturally seeks to be “autonomous” and “self-sufficient,” and thus naturally resents “truth.” We don’t like to think that our ideas are shaped and influenced by our environment, for our environment isn’t entirely in our control, as we don’t like to think that our ideas might simply be reflections of our upbringing. Rationality denies this influence, even though it doesn’t follow that “being influenced” is the same as “being wrong,” and even though it’s possible for rationality to advance and “move beyond” the truths according to which it starts off orbiting. Rationality is not doomed or fated by “truth,” and yet it is still humbling. Humility can hurt, and thus there might be incentive in the nature of reality itself to favor a “phenomenological ignorance” that denies the need and influence of (nonrational) truth.

If rationality can keep its self contained to a regular and nearly “given” phenomenological experience, then quickly the line between “rationality” and “truth” blur, for I lack experiences where the two divide to unveil that they are separate. If I only ever experience a farm, then I am always living in a place where “understanding the weather is a good use of time,” and thus it’s “practically” the case that “understanding the weather is always a good use of time.” So organized, it becomes easy then to think that it’s (always) true that “understanding the weather is a good use of time,” nonconditionally and universally. And in this way “rationality” and “truth” are “practically unified,” and so “autonomous rationality” is “practically achieved” (even if not actually). In this way, the more rationality can organize us into being “more phenomenologically ignorant than not,” the more rationality can be (to itself) “autonomous” and “self-sufficient.” And so rationality itself may naturally structure us toward a way of life that makes us easier to “capture” and control by the State and/or sources of power.

Again, I am not saying that the State intentionally makes us “controllable” (that is a different question); rather, I only hope to suggest a connection between “phenomenological ignorance” and controllability. If we are not to be so vulnerable, we must actively fight the tendencies of rationality to lead us into “phenomenological ignorance,” which will be very difficult, for rationality, by definition, will always find “good reason” for us to stay “phenomenologically ignorant” (via “confirmation bias,” self-deception, efforts to save energy, etc.). To save reason from being vulnerable to power, we will have to fight reason with reason.

To approach the close, I hope the argument here makes it clear why Raymond’s work on Notes from the Pod is so critical, for the text describes ways that we today are increasingly “phenomenologically ignorant.” The more we “practically live” in a pod, the more this problem will worsen. It is not by chance that Raymond’s next book is Studies in Thymos, for the more we live in a pod, the less we will develop or even know about Thymos (and for “good reason,” problematically). Indeed, I believe the loss of Thymos is a major contributor to “The Meaning Crisis,” but knowing this requires experiences that unveil the existence of and need for Thymos (say in wrestling or rising to the challenge of a crisis). Mainly, we must experience accidents, unforeseen circumstances that we could not avoid via calculation and that now we must respond to in ways that are not easy to determine.

In “Accidents Uncover Substance” by O.G. Rose, it was discussed how Paul Virilio believed that it was only in an accident that the “substance” of a thing could be identified or come out (it is only in the shipwreck that we learn what essentially constitutes a ship), meaning that “accidents” were necessary for truth (to disclose itself, almost Heideggerian). Our mental tools of self-deception, avoidance, and the like are just too powerful: only an accident can “break through”(which may also suggest why addressing “The Meaning Crisis” must be “accidental,” which means we must avoid being overly-calculative, as Raymond discusses regarding Plato’s “Laches”). Well, problematically, if we are “phenomenologically ignorant” and control and/or limit our environments closely, the likelihood of an “accident” occurring and unveiling “the substance of things” (and ourselves) is very low. But isn’t that good? Isn’t it rational to avoid accidents? Indeed, it’s foolish to take off “armor,” believing strength is found in nakedness, that wearing animal skin was for Adam equivalent to Samson cutting his hair…The least will be…

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