WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.111 --> 00:00:06.119 There's an amusing subgenre of Kierkegaard that deals with the press in the media. 2 00:00:06.239 --> 00:00:06.439 Yeah. 3 00:00:06.920 --> 00:00:14.829 And I actually think it's incredibly timely for the world that we live in today, but it's also just kind of funny. 4 00:00:15.090 --> 00:00:15.530 Back in 1845, 5 00:00:17.415 --> 00:00:23.901 There was a literary reviewer who talked a little bit of shit about Kierkegaard in a local tabloid. 6 00:00:24.561 --> 00:00:29.826 And Kierkegaard, of course, just being a bundle of sunshine and joy, didn't take it very well. 7 00:00:30.046 --> 00:00:32.469 He got very, very butthurt about it. 8 00:00:32.669 --> 00:00:35.992 And so he decided to kind of like poke the bear a little bit. 9 00:00:36.092 --> 00:00:43.879 And he wrote some disparaging things about the publication and the author and made fun of his ideas and his work a little bit. 10 00:00:44.619 --> 00:00:54.723 And in Kierkegaard's mind, he was stoking an intellectual feud with another intellectual and that they were going to argue ideas to ideas. 11 00:00:55.343 --> 00:00:59.264 What he didn't realize is that most people don't care about ideas. 12 00:00:59.985 --> 00:01:02.846 They just enjoy reading about somebody shitting on somebody else. 13 00:01:02.926 --> 00:01:11.889 And so what ended up happening is that this publication just started roasting Kierkegaard brutally over multiple months. 14 00:01:11.909 --> 00:01:12.509 Yeah. 15 00:01:12.689 --> 00:01:18.331 And like getting into his personal life, making fun of what he looked like, how he walked. 16 00:01:18.831 --> 00:01:29.394 They dug up the stories about Regine and just tortured him about how stupid he was and how he was like too afraid to marry this girl and how he's all alone and everything. 17 00:01:29.434 --> 00:01:40.097 Like just absolutely roasted him to the point that people would actually stop on the street and point at Kierkegaard and laugh at him and be like, oh, are you the guy in the magazine? 18 00:01:40.177 --> 00:01:40.858 Oh, my God. 19 00:01:42.578 --> 00:01:46.664 So obviously Kierkegaard didn't enjoy this very much. 20 00:01:46.924 --> 00:01:51.430 I don't think anybody would enjoy it, but especially a guy like him didn't really take to it. 21 00:01:52.715 --> 00:01:57.097 What's interesting, though, is that Kierkegaard was astoundingly brilliant. 22 00:01:57.197 --> 00:02:06.522 And so what this inspired in him is some of the greatest philosophy and writing about media and journalism that has ever been put to page. 23 00:02:07.402 --> 00:02:14.626 He basically took all of his personal grievances and turned it into philosophical works that critiqued Marxism. 24 00:02:14.706 --> 00:02:26.071 Just the whole profession of journalism, the whole apparatus of media and what the effect of widespread media and the printing press was having on society at large. 25 00:02:26.371 --> 00:02:39.197 So Kierkegaard's argument, he made this argument in his essay called The Present Age, is he said that it created an environment where people are able to disseminate opinions without any accountability for those opinions. 26 00:02:39.517 --> 00:02:40.078 Sounds familiar. 27 00:02:40.118 --> 00:02:41.139 Sounds familiar, right? 28 00:02:41.819 --> 00:02:52.088 So he said basically any jackass can just go, you know, pay 10 cents, get a bunch of pamphlets printed, start putting them on street corners and say whatever the hell they want about anybody. 29 00:02:52.408 --> 00:02:56.171 In a lot of cases, these people were publishing anonymously. 30 00:02:56.532 --> 00:02:57.753 There were no repercussions. 31 00:02:57.773 --> 00:02:58.994 There was no fact checking. 32 00:02:59.054 --> 00:02:59.794 There was no like... 33 00:03:00.855 --> 00:03:03.596 I think back then there were probably no libel or slander lawsuits. 34 00:03:04.017 --> 00:03:08.899 So it's just like rampant disinformation going everywhere, all over the place, all at once. 35 00:03:09.199 --> 00:03:17.683 The second thing is that he noted that this media environment created this kind of nebulous sense of, quote unquote, the public opinion. 36 00:03:18.223 --> 00:03:24.868 Now, he brilliantly broke down the fact that public opinion is like not really a thing, right? 37 00:03:24.908 --> 00:03:34.556 Like it's the public, everybody, it's thousands or millions of individuals who all have their own opinions and all have like very nuanced perspectives on all sorts of different issues. 38 00:03:35.076 --> 00:03:35.377 But... 39 00:03:36.117 --> 00:03:42.020 When taken in aggregate, it just seems like this one massive blob of sentiment. 40 00:03:42.060 --> 00:03:43.521 It's like an abstraction almost. 41 00:03:43.641 --> 00:03:44.381 It is. 42 00:03:44.421 --> 00:03:45.361 There's nothing real to it. 43 00:03:45.381 --> 00:03:46.482 There's... A hundred percent. 44 00:03:46.502 --> 00:03:46.602 Okay. 45 00:03:46.682 --> 00:03:46.922 Okay. 46 00:03:47.082 --> 00:03:56.066 And what he noted is that this kind of our inability to conceptualize public opinion or recognize that it's a bit of a mirage, it doesn't really exist. 47 00:03:56.627 --> 00:04:00.408 He said that journalists will leverage this to their benefit, right? 48 00:04:00.428 --> 00:04:00.929 So they will... 49 00:04:01.609 --> 00:04:05.634 publish a bunch of stuff, talking a bunch of shit about Drew Bernie, right? 50 00:04:05.874 --> 00:04:10.980 They'll come back a month later and they'll say, well, public opinion is that Drew Bernie is like a really terrible person, right? 51 00:04:11.020 --> 00:04:13.863 And so they will seed public opinion by what they publish. 52 00:04:14.144 --> 00:04:17.428 And then they'll come back later and say, well, this is what the public thinks. 53 00:04:17.448 --> 00:04:18.609 So we're just reporting on it. 54 00:04:18.929 --> 00:04:21.072 And this is something, I mean, you still see this today, right? 55 00:04:21.272 --> 00:04:29.236 And he noticed how pernicious this is and how it breeds kind of a certain amount of distrust in others and within society. 56 00:04:29.516 --> 00:04:39.822 And obviously he was kind of on the butt end of the joke of that, but it really concerned him, the social direction that this would take culture and intellectual discourse. 57 00:04:40.882 --> 00:04:45.603 One of my favorite quotes by any philosopher ever is Kierkegaard. 58 00:04:46.243 --> 00:04:47.404 I love this quote so much. 59 00:04:47.864 --> 00:04:55.866 He said, if I had a daughter and she became a prostitute, I would spend every day of my life trying to save her, trying to correct her ways. 60 00:04:56.606 --> 00:05:02.188 If I had a son and he became a journalist, I would disown him on the spot and never speak to him again. 61 00:05:04.008 --> 00:05:04.368 Wow. 62 00:05:04.568 --> 00:05:04.929 Okay. 63 00:05:04.949 --> 00:05:05.049 Yeah. 64 00:05:05.069 --> 00:05:08.831 That gives you a sense of kind of where Kierkegaard put the mainstream media. 65 00:05:09.051 --> 00:05:24.880 The reason this matters, and this is extremely appropriate today, is that he said that it created this social, this kind of widespread media in this like phantom public opinion that everybody is trying to live up to, even though like it doesn't really exist. 66 00:05:25.800 --> 00:05:34.045 It creates this effect on each individual, which he called leveling, which is that it creates an incentive to not stand out in any distinctive way. 67 00:05:34.445 --> 00:05:43.070 To kind of bring all of your impulses and desires back to the baseline medium of the public opinion, right? 68 00:05:43.490 --> 00:05:49.774 Like he noticed that people generally outsource their decision making and they outsource how they see things. 69 00:05:50.294 --> 00:05:51.075 And so if... 70 00:05:52.055 --> 00:05:56.196 The handful of newspapers and magazines are telling them that everybody thinks this way. 71 00:05:57.076 --> 00:05:59.597 They will kind of default to thinking that way as well. 72 00:05:59.677 --> 00:06:11.760 And so what it does is it takes all the kind of spiky, unique individuality of each of each person and it levels them all out so that they have the same opinions about all the same things at the same time. 73 00:06:13.197 --> 00:06:13.818 about everybody. 74 00:06:14.299 --> 00:06:20.888 This prevents an ability to commit because by definition, to commit to something, you have to be willing to suffer for it. 75 00:06:21.029 --> 00:06:22.711 You have to be willing to stand out. 76 00:06:22.791 --> 00:06:26.136 You have to be willing to do something that most other people are not willing to do. 77 00:06:27.032 --> 00:06:39.196 And so if you are constantly being incentivized by this magical public opinion to temper the more extreme aspects of yourself, then you'll never feel at liberty to make any of those commitments. 78 00:06:39.276 --> 00:06:41.756 Because everything you want to do is what everybody else wants to do. 79 00:06:42.036 --> 00:06:46.678 He has a great quote from the present age where he says, A public... 80 00:06:47.578 --> 00:06:49.861 contrary to an individual, is an abstraction. 81 00:06:50.141 --> 00:06:54.485 It's a group of spectators who observe and gossip but never make a commitment. 82 00:06:54.665 --> 00:06:55.626 All talk, no walk. 83 00:06:55.907 --> 00:06:56.207 Right. 84 00:06:56.287 --> 00:06:56.647 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 85 00:06:56.667 --> 00:07:01.352 Because as soon as you commit to something, you are, by definition, standing out. 86 00:07:02.469 --> 00:07:08.092 You are telling everybody like, hey, I'm willing to lose your approval for this one thing. 87 00:07:08.492 --> 00:07:11.594 And I think social media has kind of just taken that. 88 00:07:12.135 --> 00:07:13.335 First of all, it's globalized it. 89 00:07:13.375 --> 00:07:17.278 And second of all, it's kind of put it on steroids because it's available 24-7. 90 00:07:17.318 --> 00:07:25.442 I mean, at least back in the 1840s, you could throw your newspaper away and like go sit in a corner or something for a couple days. 91 00:07:25.582 --> 00:07:27.143 Today, it's just it's everywhere. 92 00:07:27.183 --> 00:07:28.264 It's in front of you all the time. 93 00:07:28.824 --> 00:07:32.125 And his argument is, I mean, this does not exist without mass media, right? 94 00:07:32.165 --> 00:07:33.505 I mean, that's what you're saying. 95 00:07:33.565 --> 00:07:37.086 And so he called this 180 years ago, and it's only gotten worse. 96 00:07:37.466 --> 00:07:41.207 I guess with that interlude in the middle where you said about, you know, the centralization of all the information, whatever. 97 00:07:41.227 --> 00:07:46.128 But even then, I guess you could argue there was a homogenizing factor at that point. 98 00:07:46.368 --> 00:07:51.409 I think in the case of both of Kierkegaard's main arguments, A, things have gotten worse, and B, 99 00:07:52.922 --> 00:07:54.943 they're more true now than they ever were, right? 100 00:07:54.983 --> 00:08:00.866 Like it's on the one hand, it's like the optionality today is more abundant than it's ever been, right? 101 00:08:00.986 --> 00:08:05.809 And that Kierkegaard would say, obviously people are more anxious than they've ever been before. 102 00:08:06.349 --> 00:08:16.055 Like by his definition of anxiety, this is exactly what you would expect in a world full of abundance and opportunity and freedom and infinite information, right? 103 00:08:16.455 --> 00:08:17.516 And then on the other hand, 104 00:08:18.568 --> 00:08:27.394 he would say, obviously, you would expect culture to get more homogenous for people to become more susceptible to groupthink, not less. 105 00:08:27.895 --> 00:08:34.720 Like, when you and I were kids, right, and the internet was coming online and everything, like, the big kind of utopian promise of the internet was, like... 106 00:08:35.560 --> 00:08:37.400 everybody's going to have access to everything. 107 00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:39.781 So everybody's going to think for themselves, right? 108 00:08:39.841 --> 00:08:42.301 Like you're going to be able to see all sides of every issue. 109 00:08:42.341 --> 00:08:45.442 And so everybody's going to make their own decisions and it's going to be amazing. 110 00:08:46.062 --> 00:09:00.285 And I think Kierkegaard would actually make the point, no, no, no, the opposite's going to happen because the more interconnectivity people have with each other, the more this specter of an imaginary public opinion hangs over each individual. 111 00:09:00.745 --> 00:09:02.706 And we're just going to go to it looking for. 112 00:09:02.966 --> 00:09:03.266 Yes. 113 00:09:03.446 --> 00:09:07.748 And the more thinker, the more people feel like they must default to that opinion. 114 00:09:08.048 --> 00:09:12.290 It becomes more of a liability to think for yourself under those conditions than less. 115 00:09:12.610 --> 00:09:16.351 Our generation, you and I, we, we opine all the time. 116 00:09:16.371 --> 00:09:20.853 Like, oh man, remember before smartphones where you could just like be a fucking idiot and nobody cared? 117 00:09:20.953 --> 00:09:22.794 You know, like maybe you could go get hammered. 118 00:09:22.834 --> 00:09:24.915 Nobody take a picture or a video of you like. 119 00:09:25.595 --> 00:09:26.817 and make fun of you the next day. 120 00:09:27.017 --> 00:09:30.220 Like, there was a freedom to it of not having that connectivity. 121 00:09:30.401 --> 00:09:34.745 I just heard, like, young people don't really dance anymore because... 122 00:09:35.690 --> 00:09:36.331 This, I just heard. 123 00:09:36.351 --> 00:09:36.751 Camera phones? 124 00:09:36.771 --> 00:09:38.612 Yeah, because like you're going to get videoed. 125 00:09:39.092 --> 00:09:41.254 You're going to be on video if you're going to dance somewhere. 126 00:09:41.294 --> 00:09:41.834 That's leveling. 127 00:09:41.854 --> 00:09:42.335 That's leveling. 128 00:09:42.355 --> 00:09:43.676 It's a perfect example of leveling. 129 00:09:43.896 --> 00:09:45.057 They don't drink as much anymore. 130 00:09:45.077 --> 00:09:46.217 They don't date as much anymore. 131 00:09:46.257 --> 00:09:47.498 They don't have sex as much anymore. 132 00:09:47.538 --> 00:09:49.179 They don't even ask each other out anymore. 133 00:09:49.440 --> 00:10:01.288 Juerkegaard would look at this and he would say like, we're leveling the fuck out of everybody right now because it is the more interconnected everything becomes, the more of a liability it is to stick your neck out for anything. 134 00:10:01.448 --> 00:10:01.628 Yeah. 135 00:10:01.648 --> 00:10:06.531 I don't know if you notice this like towards the end of your travel years or whatever, but I'd everywhere I'd go. 136 00:10:06.791 --> 00:10:15.257 But if you, if you went to a big city somewhere that had been even somewhat capitalistic, I guess, you know, and it's influence, everything was kind of starting to turn into the same. 137 00:10:15.277 --> 00:10:21.601 I think that the, the whole travel boom you were talking about in the digital nomad thing that a lot of that was, Oh, we're going to build an infrastructure around this. 138 00:10:21.641 --> 00:10:23.102 And this is how you live this life. 139 00:10:23.602 --> 00:10:26.004 That, that was a leveling thing even for that, you know, where, 140 00:10:26.404 --> 00:10:33.846 where it once was a thing you did to assert your individuality, it became something that you actually became a part of the public. 141 00:10:34.207 --> 00:10:34.987 It's interesting. 142 00:10:35.127 --> 00:10:36.947 I hadn't thought about that, but I do think that's true. 143 00:10:36.967 --> 00:10:39.248 That's actually something that a couple of friends of mine have noted. 144 00:10:39.548 --> 00:10:45.510 I don't travel nearly as much as I used to, but I have some friends in the travel industry and they still travel all the time. 145 00:10:45.530 --> 00:10:48.051 And they've noted that they're like, every place is feeling the same. 146 00:10:48.791 --> 00:10:51.272 They all have the same restaurants, the same hotel chains. 147 00:10:51.292 --> 00:10:51.632 They 148 00:10:51.932 --> 00:10:53.054 They have the same amenities. 149 00:10:54.015 --> 00:10:57.620 You go to the same parties and it's the same people everywhere, right? 150 00:10:57.680 --> 00:11:05.252 It's everybody's like taking their Instagram selfie and drinking their bougie martini and eating their gluten-free diet and everything's becoming the same. 151 00:11:05.732 --> 00:11:06.914 Hey everybody, hope you enjoyed. 152 00:11:07.114 --> 00:11:11.019 This video, it was just one clip from a much larger, more thorough episode. 153 00:11:11.259 --> 00:11:14.504 If you want to watch or listen to the full episode, click on the link in the description. 154 00:11:14.644 --> 00:11:23.695 And if you want to work on the topic at your own pace, we have a free PDF guide with all the resources, citations, and exercises at solvepodcast.com slash commitment. 155 00:11:24.396 --> 00:11:25.217 See you in the next one.