Etiquette and rules of engagement for the intellectual vagabond
Intellectual violence, picking sides, and whether you deserve a job for being competent
I started this post with the hope of outlining the virtues of being an intellectual vagrant (while also doing some gatekeeping) and it has expanded to address a few other points:
Should you be concerned if you think your moral compass is broken and you find more joy in contrarian delights than in picking a side?
Are the fiercely independent intellectuals weak and squirrelly for not picking a side, or is their independence a sign of their unquenchable thirst for intellectual violence and therefore inspiring and noble?
Why the true intellectual is perhaps even doing the devil’s work.
How do you debate the spray and pray approach? What if you can’t fact-check as fast as they can generate “facts” for you to check?
An argument for why your employer doesn’t owe you a job, even if you’re the most competent person in the office.
An attempt at defining what the equivalent of “kicking someone in the balls” is for intellectuals, and a defense for those who will take a sniper at you when you’re outside the ring.
Why you automatically lose if you get mad, how to lose with grace, and why moral indignation often emboldens and justifies your opponents.
Why you shouldn’t pick intellectual arguments with just anyone. People do not owe you their ears, and you should avoid civilian casualties anyways.
The vagabond as a fact of nature
If you’re a vagabond or homeless person, people really don’t like you. They want to house you (out of their overwhelming sense of compassion, of course). Maybe you don’t want to be housed because you prefer fresh air and to wake up with the sun. Simply playing with ideas and pitting them against each other for entertainment is not seen as a worthwhile pursuit. They want you to pick a side.
One way to think of this role in society is to simply see it as a reification of a the vague question: “will people put up with this?” You can debate the practicality or “goodness” of actual homelessness ad infinitum, but until you go out into the streets and beg for money, it’s impossible to know the difference between what society actually accepts and what it says it accepts. In theory, society rejects the homeless. In practice, we’re quite yielding to them. If you see a homeless man aggressively throwing things — and instead of confronting him you merely cross the street — you cannot say you have a problem with aggressive homeless people. In practice, you find it acceptable that someone has just thrown a can of soda at you. It’s acceptable to you in the same way that all waste is acceptable. As long as you can send your waste down a tube or have it picked up by a truck, you have no problem with it. You would prefer to not have to step over waste, but if it’s there you will merely step over it and move on. Waste is a fact of life. From dust we come and to dust we return. The homeless are merely inhabiting the same position you will one day inhabit.
Wolves hunt sheep and sheep run from wolves. The wolf is not bad for being born with sharp teeth and an appetite for lamb. The wolf is a fact of life. Even the parasite is a fact of life.
Where ideas come from
When it comes to intellectual work, it’s easy to think that good ideas will come to you if you take enough long showers or stare at a blank page long enough. These are not the true intellectual vagabonds. True originality comes from taking something everyone takes for granted and saying, “This isn’t convincing to me. I can’t explain why, but I need to find out”. Many people do the first part and stop there. To get somewhere, your desire for truth should be stronger than your fear of the consequences of finding out.
Are you sure you’re not doing the devil’s work?
One of the big differences between true intellectuals and everyone else is that a true one will look where people are too disgusted to look. He doesn’t prop himself up; he stoops to look at not just the inputs of a system, but its exhaust. He’ll take the opposing view, not because he believes it, but because he can’t help it. He wants you to fight for your truth. He doesn’t care what’s “true”, only what’s “interesting”. To him, it’s not so important that he’s “right”. He’d rather be wrong for interesting reasons. His goal is not to show you how to live, but to show you that you don’t know what you think you know about how to live. In other words, the true intellectual is a bit of selfish demon.
Like Satan, his true purpose is not to win, but to be a thorn in the side of all that is good and holy and true. You might think this is stupid. Why would anyone knowingly take the side of “evil”, but here’s the thing, how do you know what’s good and true unless you take a good look at both? How can a judge determine the outcome of a court case without hearing both sides? Truth is not like grapes on a platter. Truth must be discovered. You can’t have truth — unless you can have something to compare it to that is not true. This might seem counterintuitive. I seem to be saying that rational thinking isn’t enough. Surely, logically sound argumentation is both good and useful but, what good is logic unless you have something to use it on? Are you sure that your axioms are correct?
Can you trust your tools?
Truth isn’t a binary thing. Newton is only right up to a point. Mathematics can be absolutely correct, but what good is it on its own? If we limit our knowledge to our unaided senses, we limit what we can know. Suddenly, the world must be flat until you can yourself high enough to see the curvature. If your own senses can deceive you, then how much more likely is it that your tools might?
All that we know comes by intermediaries, and each layer that’s added creates another opportunity for distortion and even inversion. We can observe the redness of Mars with our naked eyes, but to have a better look, we introduce the telescope as our trusty intermediary. Such a tool should prove its worth. We should ensure that the lens is clear, that the curves are precise. Before we trust it, we must first attack it to find its most damning flaws. The true enemies of truth are quicker to smash the lens. They’ll have a kinetic response to your curious musings.
When to investigate, and how to avoid civilian casualties
If they fear investigation, maybe they don’t have the truth. If they get mad or defensive then you know you’re getting somewhere interesting. You’re getting a priest mad? Hmm, maybe you’re onto something. A scientist? Hmm, why are they so insecure? In polite company, if you happen to brush up agains the edges of someone’s knowledge, you let off the gas. You don’t want to offend. But, if you pursue truth, you push the dagger as far as it will go. Attacking mere citizens is a no-go. Of course you’ll win just like a Navy Seal who wants to toss someone into a closet. Instead, you want real intellectual interlocutors. You want people who you vehemently disagree with, and yet there’s still enough common ground that you can actually fight. If there’s no common ground, start a space program to land your intellectual argument onto their remote planet. Attack, or be attacked. Lure in lazy intellectuals who hope for a quick victory. Pick fights, as long as it’s not with civilians. There’s no honor to be found there.
There are some other rules. Intellectual terrorism is also a no-go, in my opinion. I would classify Heaven’s Gate as one example. If the followers of your religion kill themselves, then your belief system must be axiomatically wrong.
Now, what this all means is that no matter who you are or what you believe, you can pursue your ideas with full force. Once you can distinguish between combatant and civilian, you can launch your attacks without hesitation that civilians will get hurt. Instead, you can aim at those worthy of criticism. They’re worthy if they’re simultaneously powerful and wrong.
What if the intellectual vagabonds make their way into places you don’t want them going, and discover intellectual Fentanyl, and now you have a real problem on your hands. Should the wolf feel pity while his belly is fed? Intellectual curiosity doesn’t distinguish between political sides or religious denominations. It attacks what’s weak in the moment.
On picking a side and the embarrassment of arrogance
So, defend your perimeter against encroachment. Fight the vagabonds, but if you get mad, you signal to them that you’re losing, and in doing so you embolden them. The kicker is we often don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong. This is why the culture wars are so fraught. It’s hindsight that proved to us that Socrates was more than a mere vagrant. And, did Christ own property? Yet he caused so much trouble:
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
— Luke 12:49 (NIV)
Which truths are you born knowing?
People have the gall to assume they are somehow born knowing the truth, or that truth is obvious. To an extent, they’re right. You’re born knowing many truths. For example, you’re born knowing that food is good and that family is good.
Most people are sheep in the same way that most people are civilians even in war. They may not know how to launch an intellectual argument, but they can observe two people in an argument and (usually) tell which one is the grandmother and which one is the wolf. To those who can’t tell, well, maybe you’re the intellectual soldier, mercenary, or vagrant.
Is fighting for the love of the game justified?
Suppose you’re fuming with intellectual violence and you don’t know which side to fight for. Suppose you have a rich intellectual life, but you fear your inability to tell the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong. You appear to be in it for the love of the game, but internally, you aim for a higher justification. Are you acting in good faith, or are you still acting selfishly while building up a tolerance for longer-term rewards? Or hell, maybe you’re merely a lamb timidly exploring your fenced perimeter and you’re hardly a threat to anyone. You might be afraid to reach old age only to discover you’ve unleashed a toxic and addictive intellectual drug onto the world. Some famous philosophers weren’t that well known in their own lifetimes. If you know you can’t help it and your thirst for intellectual violence is unquenchable, what do you do? Do you resist looking for rodents under the floorboards? Or, do you end your own life because you can’t convince yourself of your own worth? Or maybe this very questioning is what will keep your moral compass aligned? If so, you’ll certainly lose if you waffle while your opponent is single-mindedly pursuing his ends.
Authorities and the mistaken divine right to rule
If history is any indicator, it’s that it’s the authorities who are often in the wrong when they attempt to wage a moral war on the vagrant. Didn’t the Pharisees persecute Christ? If the authorities are against you, maybe you’re onto something. If you’re being “cancelled”, it’s because you’ve noticed something you’re not supposed to see. Actually, I disagree with the last point. Maybe it’s not the “mob” that the intellectual vagabond should fear, but the authorities and their squirrelly minions.
The controversial scientists don’t even have to have the truth for their inquisitiveness to be justified. I’m not saying don’t fire them. Go ahead and fire them. But morally, I have a hard time believing that truth cannot defend itself. And even in places where it can’t, I believe it’s perfectly acceptable to respond with “you won this argument, but I don’t want the consequences that come with your point of view”. The thing that worries me, is not whether or not controversial intellectuals are right, but that the authorities are so insecure in their position as to find them to be a threat. It is far more honorable to admit intellectual defeat than to kick someone in the balls or attempt a sneaky sniper attack from outside the ring.
Maybe the authorities should sniper you
But, if you’re so vulnerable intellectually that you can be taken down by sniper, then perhaps this too is justified. Who the hell cares who won and how? If you’re afraid of snipers, hire protection. If your intellectual enemies cancel you from your job, then so be it. It’s not their job to fight your causes. If they want to join, great. To be morally good means nothing if it’s not a choice. This is what is so hypocritical to me about conservatives. They call the lefties entitled brats and yet expect to keep their own jobs simply for being competent. Your competence is appreciated comrade, but unfortunately you’re a fascist and we can’t afford the consequences of keeping someone like you on the payroll. I know I wouldn’t want to be fired over such an accusation, but if they are compelled to keep me, does this make for a more moral society?
In this post I’ve confused the definition of what a true intellectual is. Clearly, the true intellectual doesn’t sit in the bleachers. Maybe the intellectual is the referee, but for that to be the case, we’d have to give him a modicum of prestige. Maybe the intellectual is a player for one intellectual team or another. Again, I don’t think that works either. The players tend to have much more popular support and they’re on the payroll. I think the intellectual is the homeless guy picking up cans outside the stadium. You can’t even bring yourself to hurt him. He’s opted out to such a degree that he’s free to think whatever he pleases. You can’t take anything away from him, and to do so would only make you look bad. He’s free to come up with a new game.
MMA, but for “ways of knowing”
Instead of waffling back and forth about what’s true and good, we should instead aim to create systems that will allow truth to emerge. If we have to handicap one side or another, then what are we even doing?
Even Jesus was not so insistent on people acting in a “moral” way. He told Judas: “What you are about to do, do quickly.”
What I want is MMA, but for “ways of knowing”. Put them all in a cage and have them fight. Let the racists in and see if they stand a chance. Take the good and the evil and see who wins. It’s not like we aren’t already playing this out in physical world with physical bodies taking one side or another on the streets. Intellectual MMA promises to be less violent and less physical than what we have now.
Now that we’ve developed a taste for truth, it’s hard to image that we’d know when to stop. How can a judge rule justly if he only hears one side? When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they didn’t just learn the good. In the same way, we don’t have ecosystems with just herbivores. We have parasites and predators. Nature is beautiful because we can step outside it and not experience the daily struggle for survival in the ways that the wild animals do. In the same way, we often forget to appreciate the beauty in both the good and evil in our human world because this is our ecosystem and we struggle to escape it.