The Plato Plateau

This post started off as a joke. I was attempting to snow clone the Peter Principle for philosophy. It led to a longer thread of thoughts. But first, the snow clone: 

The Plato Plateau: People philosophize to the level of their anxiety.

Smoking farmer with branches by Kono Bairei (1844-1895). Digitally enhanced from our own original 1913 edition of Barei Gakan.

Anxiety is the realization that you have absolute choice over life – Kierkegaard. Anxiety, in this context is not nervousness. It is a positive thing when harnesses. We harness it everyday.  

Anxiety is a generative. Anxiety creates identity by locating stable places to launch exploration.

Action, exploration, and anxiety are a motor. Anxiety → exploration → action → refreshed identity. Inaction leads to identity death

Realizing you are radically free to choose can also lead to a forest of perceived signals. These can be an overwhelming inbox or simply overloaded ambition.

When anxiety overwhelms it becomes difficult to tell signal from noise.

Tools like GTD crash anxiety. When overwhelmed, GTD works well. When there is too little anxiety identity becomes ephemeral. 

GTD isn’t a means to nirvana: GTD integrates 10k, 30k foot views to reintroduce future anxiety.

When your identity is smeared across too many anxieties you declare anxiety bankruptcy and crash your identity in some safe spot. Journals, sabbaticals, quitting.

Like the parable of the rock soup, vaporized anxiety needs a place to condense onto. Ideally something disposable but sufficient to let your identity create an “ordered world of meaning”

Life examination occurs with identity crashes. Philosophy provides just enough of a toehold in the abstract to spur action in the actual. 

Philosophy is a way to spur action absent anxiety/identity. We pick the philosophy depending on the degree of identity loss.

Philosophy can be broadly sorted as:

Survival – laws and tactics oriented

Social Cohesion- harmony, virtue ethics, etiquette 

Systems level order – algorithms and protocols oriented

Self Knowledge and Meaning – reflecting on existing and consciousness 

Meta-systems – theorizes about theories

Most scientists and builders work best at level 3 systems level order. Going lower, i-ii, for environmental crises and higher, iv-v, for internal crises. 

Complexity of selected philosophy is not superiority. A rung’s usefulness matches your identity state and environment, not some civilizational high score.

Philosophy as Periodic Maintenance: Crashing and philosophy sampling are maintenance actions on the place called identity.

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