There are those cursed minds for whom arrival always escapes. You may know them as artists. The liars among them gladly wear the title, and find solace in one of their artifacts. The real ones are consigned to a life of public service through continuous psychological death on display.
“Know thyself” delphicore regurgitated by classics obsessed chudcels was good advice 2500 years ago . The modern update is “know what you’re dying toward”. And no this is not “memento mori”.
You are so far behind if you think you’re in “the matrix bro” trying to break out. You’re holding the sheer weight of possibility manifesting in all directions with no clear line of sight and the dominant attentional mode that worked for your ancestors now kills you. Agency was always in service to intelligibility, and intelligibility now requires rightly oriented constraint. Goodluck out there dawg. Nothing is more terrifying than realizing there was never anything to wake up from.
A great failure of current higher education is that it teaches Plato’s Republic before Plato’s Phaedrus. It is understandable, but the formation of the soul is always prior to the justification of the city. Many cultural ills fall downstream of this.
Anyone else tried this cooking recipe?
1) Build a shared symbolic and ritual framework that encodes the key philosophical achievements of Christianity like individual sovereignty through myth, aesthetics, and civic ritual rather than theology, making it easy for people to adopt intuitively.
2) Ground this framework in stable, repeatable forms that provide cultural continuity. Design them to be modular and open to layered interpretation so that new ideas can be integrated without destabilizing the tradition and core principles can endure without becoming rigid dogma.
3) Translate metaphysical insights into living cultural forms that are emotionally resonant, widely accessible, structurally flexible, and philosophically durable.
Bake at 350° until civilization coheres. Let cool overnight before serving to future generations.
The political/ cultural vista is obsessed with victory. But culture doesn’t grow only in victories - it grows in defeats, compromises, and the quiet work of building. That’s why moderation feels radical now because it refuses the cheap thrill of total war