SOURCE of modern man's weakness, stupidity, and general lack of vitality?
His leisure activities
Aldous Huxley predicted the degeneracy of modern amusements in a 103 year old essay: Pleasures (1920)
Huxley on why and how to radically rewire the way you spend your free time👇🏻
1/ Aldous Huxley writes that pleasures must not be an escape from effort
In fact, they must be unavailable *without* effort
Why? Because when preceded by effort, pleasure reinvigorates
But when preceded by nothing, pleasure retards your brain's reward systems
2/ Regression of "entertainment"
At royal weddings, theological debates were arranged as entertainment
Logicians debated God at Prince Palatine’s engagement
Huxley: “There was a time when people indulged themselves with distractions requiring a certain intellectual effort”
3/ Huxley notes that in Elizabethan times, regular people “could be relied upon” to break into complex musical acts like madrigals or motets
People had to “exert their minds to an uncommon degree” to entertain themselves
This kept their minds SUPPLE
Normies today could never..
4/ Aldous Huxley hated mass manufactured distractions
On movies:
“Countless audiences passively soak in the tepid bath of nonsense. No mental effort is demanded of them, no participation; they need only sit and keep their eyes open.”
But mental effort is NECESSARY
5/ Huxley writes that in the past, entertainment was a consequence of ACTIVE collaboration between friends, family, and neighbors
Today, these very people sit in darkness in movie theatres
And silently watch something that STRANGERS made halfway across the world...
6/ In The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond writes about African kids who make model airplanes from sticks and stones by looking at a newspaper picture
Kids in rich societies buy airplane sets from the mall
Kids’ entertainment becomes passive in advanced societies...
7/ Huxley on how tech makes us LESS creative: "Before machinery men who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them with machinery"
"Artistic culture" dies in such an environment...
8/ In Huxley's Brave New World, the "savage" says the following to the technocrat who wants humanity happy and comfortable:
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin."
These are conditions for GROWTH
9/ Notice the "fort" in comfort
The Latin root of comfort means to *fortify* - to make stronger
The original sense of comfort was rest that READIES you for war. NOT lounging without aim. Aldous Huxley writes that we must return to the original meaning of the word...
C.S Lewis almost died in the trench warfare of WW-I
Became best friends with Tolkien. Sold 100 million books...
On the cusp of WW-II, he gave an iconic lecture at Oxford University (1939)
His question: Does beauty matter when bombs start falling?
THIS is his profound answer👇🏻
1/ The permanent human situation is endless strife, chaos and pain
C.S. Lewis:
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself”
Yet culture breaks out
2/ If we waited for peace to create art the first cave painting would still not be made
Always some “imminent danger” looking more important than culture
Lewis: “If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun”
Decades later, the lawyer's grandson wrote a book on the DARK SIDE of democracy, equality, & liberalism
His name: Tocqueville. Book became a classic. A thread:
1/ Human lust for equality overpowers our love for freedom:
“Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom. But for equality, their passion is insatiable: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery”
2/ Democracy is a force of atomization
It disconnects a man not just from “his ancestors” but also his descendants and peers
Tocqueville: “Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart”
A thread on what Nietzsche actually meant (and why it matters):
1/ In The Gay Science (1882), Nietzsche announces God's death as a tragedy...NOT a celebration
For Nietzsche, God wasn't a useless burden, a liability, or an irrational filter that distorted our view of reality. The metaphors Nietzsche uses for God are reverential
Let's see...
2/ Nietzsche compares God to Sun
Sun holds planets in their orbit; similarly God oriented us. Unchained from our sun, "are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?" Our center of gravity is gone - we're hurtling through "an infinite nothing"
One professor writes a best-selling parenting guide...
THEN 3 of his own kids commit suicide
Meet John Watson: the father of Behaviorism
A story of scientific arrogance, the meaning of love, and one "expert" with blood on his hands👇🏻
1/ Dr. John Watson was a man of bold claims
He believed he could turn a random infant into “any type of specialist” from doctor to artist to a thief - “regardless of his talents, tendencies, abilities”
How?
With psychological conditioning and other behaviorist tools
2/ John Watson shared these tools with the world in a book co-written with his wife: Psychological Care Of Infant and Child
"Society" comes up 8 times
"Environment” comes up 10 times
"Soul" comes up 0 times
Among other things, the book says a mother’s love is "dangerous"