It's one quote from the article, which is just a brief summary of a greater work. It's not intended as any simple end all solution.

Ah. Thanks.

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Thank you.

Alright.

The solution is to tell a better lie...

You should seek the truth but never settle on it. You can make assumptions to get you closer to the truth, but I find that asking the right questions can help to engage the person in a discussion, as people are generally self-interested and usually like telling others about their opinion on things. I try not to ask too many loaded questions, because I feel like that's just a question with built in assumptions, but asking questions you already assume they don't have an answer to can sometimes allow people to see things from a different perspective, and that's how change should happen. Less forced narratives, and more questioning the narratives. But nowadays, if you question the narrative, some people like to demonize you and argue that you are against the narrative, when in reality, it's more about trying to figure out if the narrative does more harm than good.

Who cares? you think someone is going to go to the Amazon/the middle of nowhere in Canada and tell you to stop living there? You're just making excuses. Fulfill your dreams.

I’m changing career paths. I was at the beginning of a PhD program that was leading to a career that I realize now is not what I truly want in life. This change is scary to me, but in the short term will lead to me having less on my plate and making more money since I will not work as a graduate teaching assistant any longer. My wife is also pregnant, and we have an 8 year old, so making this change now means that I can focus more on supporting them now instead of chasing a long term goal. Having worked as a teacher for the last 6 or so years has meant that I constantly take my work home with me. I’m looking forward to working in a job that is not like that.

The common will — Rousseau framed the house, Hegel finished it!

All I am trying to do is point you to and make you consider the earliest argument to the point you are engaging with. As the cliche goes, there is nothing new under the sun.

Likewise, I haven’t acknowledged that there is a valid observation buried in your essay — it is that there is whole branches of philosophy (nihilism and existentialism) that were created in literature. But I think the ancients (and my own leanings) would reject those branches at a fundamental level.

All this is to say, there is definitely something to your essay, I think it needs to be refined much more first. I would read the first few books and then book 10 of the republic to get a just of the quarrel between the poets and philosophers. Then if you dig around the Straussians work a bit you will find some very compelling arguments. For example, leon Craig has three books that argue Shakespeare was a philosopher. Likewise, Father Fortin writes a book called dissent and philosophy in the middle ages that makes a similar argument about Dante.

Underneath this the thing to consider about the topic is that these scholars all wrote volumes arguing only a piece of the thesis you are proposing in your essay. That is only to say, as I have already, you are only just stepping into the labyrinth.

One personal question I have regarding the topic is that almost all significant proper philosophers — such as Machiavelli, Rousseau, Nietzsche (and likely many more) — were all playwrights or fiction authors. And as I mentioned in my first comment this goes all the way back to Plato. The question I have is why, then, they wrote both plays and treatises that cover much of the same material? Curious.

But it might be an interesting lens to look through, to examine if many of the examples of alternate tactics employed successfully in the past, when analyzed from this perspective, might have indeed acquired much of their potency by "inventing new myths, telling better stories, and writing more convincing histories." How various tactics manage to succeed or fail is not always obvious on their surface.

Fair enough. That's not my experience, but, every company has their own requirements for the role. Some SEs are required to do a lot more than others. Like any role, vet the company and the role before accepting.

No I can't. The land is owned as much as land can be owned.

I would be careful with the hyperbolic language... things like "can only be countered by".

I don't think you or anyone is nieve naive enough to actually think this is the only way. But when we exaggerate the importance of one tactic, we ignore others.

Statements less extreme are boring, but more importantly they are true.

I don't know, but it's a better starting point than "God is our foundation and supports all our actions." I'd rather us all start together as animalness or humanness as a common denominator rather than divine tribal/cultural divide.

You're not forced to participate in the system. You can move to the wilderness and live exactly like a moose or squirrel would do.

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Especially since "ultra-successful" is generally seen through the lens of "making as much money as possible" when that certainly isn't what successful should be measured by. This drives so many people into unhappy and unfulfilling situations all because they think they have to make as much money as possible to be happy and successful.

I was just thinking that time on Reddit qualifies as doing nothing.

Gives a new meaning to “nothing REALLY matters”

Kind of makes getting to know someone impossible though. It doesn't mean you necessarily like them, just that you haven't had a chance to realize that you don't.

I'm perpetually painfully busy. Like ~70 hours a week in the office, 100 nights a year in hotels, consulting gig on the side, and a good many other responsibilities... Used to pretty much need to eat TUMS like candy because of the stress... Then, covid hit, dinner and drinks with clients wasn't a thing anymore, and suddenly those 100 nights a year in hotels started being filled with getting high and ordering room service on the company card while watching Family Guy and South Park, one of which is pretty much always on. I sweat that legitimately took the stress down from like a 9.5 to a 5, even on days where I'm not doing it... Sucks, it's still illegal in my home state. Legal in almost all my clients' states though, so I can only smoke when I'm not in the safety of my own home, doing something work related no less. Once/if it becomes legal here I can probably get that 5 down to like a 2.

I had no idea! Why do you say that?

Did you just have to decide you wanted less? Find a way to do the same amount in less time?... I'm definitely the overwork type, usually in the office 60-80 hours a week with a lot of side obligations. But my wife is pregnant with triplets and I don't want to be one of those dads who's never home. However, the kids on the way also means we're about to need more money, not less, so I genuinely have zero idea how to rein it in.