The Daily Eudemon

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau Rousseau’s passage from the beginning of The Social Contract contends for the most famous in philosophy. Rousseau’s point was simple: Humans are good, but there’s a lot of suffering, so social institutions must be corrupting everything. Significantly, Rousseau didn’t see any problems with himself. He was arguably the most self-centered philosopher of all time. He was so self-centered, biographers wonder if he was even capable of love. He said of his long-time mistress, a lowly laundress that he, Never felt the lease glimmering of love for her . . . the sensual needs I satisfied with her were purely sexual. When those sensual needs resulted in five children, he put them into orphanages, which, given the state of orphanages in the 18thcentury, was practically a sentence of torture and early death: only five percent of orphan children survived to adulthood, and most of the adult survivors became beggars and vagabonds. Full show notes here You can find my essay about the first gnostic trait here

Brains beat brawn. The Titan Prometheus knew that. He joined Zeus in his battle against the Titans. Prometheus later befriended the race of men. He saved them when Zeus thought about extinguishing them. He taught them arts and science. He gave them tools. Zeus increasingly found Prometheus’ promotion of the human race tiresome and troublesome. And then Prometheus gave humans the gift of fire, in direct violation of Zeus’ orders. Zeus was livid. He ordered Prometheus bound: Kratos (Power) and Bia (Force) held him while Hephaestus fettered him to a chain on a crag hanging over the Black Sea. An eagle came every day and ate his liver, which regenerated every night. Show notes here

If you want to understand how gnosticism flourishes in our modern world, you need to understand why it developed in the ancient world. Show notes here

Within 100 years, the Cartesians used impeccable logic derived from Descartes' I think there I am to reach two conclusions: there is no earthly agent of movement and there is no matter. There is only God and mind. Hume yanked God and mind out of these conclusions and the Cartesian Jenga tower came tumbling down. Show notes here

Voegelin was not charismatic. He was a “gentleman thinker.” He didn’t like small talk and valued his time. His personality didn’t attract a cult-like following. He didn’t establish a school or movement. But he’s important. Show notes here

A 50-year-old man had ritual sex with a 12-year-old girl while adult women assisted. And everyone was cool with it. That’s just part of the bizarre story told in Netflix’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and the exploits of its prophet, Warren Jeffs. Keep Sweet’s Fascination It’s the story of a renegade Mormon group that still practice polygamy. Vigorous polygamy, especially the type that lets old men bang young women and, occasionally, girls. It’s the kind of thing that disgusts, but it also arouses, at least at some level. Sex sells for a reason. Keep Sweet did, its IMDB rating currently sitting at 7.3 with 11,000 reviews (Netflix’s Murder Mountain, which enjoyed the endorsement of Joe Rogan, sits at 6.8 with 3,200 reviews). But I don’t think sex is the only reason Keep Sweetfascinates. I think it fascinates because, although everyone understands the sex part, they can’t understand how an entire culture could allow such a thing to occur. If It Doesn’t Fit, Put It on the Shelf The docuseries tries to explain it, but every interview or explanation came down to the same thing: it’s how these people were raised. It was the only thing these people knew. They were raised in a polygamous culture that celebrated their prophet. If the prophet told girls to do something—or someone—they did it/him. If something didn’t make sense, they were told to “put it on the shelf.” And just as the lechery of old men resonates with all men at some level, this kind of rationality resonates too. These girls who submitted to sex with old men, the parents who gave their consent the women who participated in the erotic ritual: they acted rationally. It’s All Rational That’s the real dirty secret in the docuseries and another reason why, besides the sex, it fascinates. We’re all capable of such a thing. Not because of our nethers. But because of our brains. Show notes here

Your reason isn’t reasonable. Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it. And smoke it and smoke it and smoke it, until you smoke rationality out of your head, until a love for the absurd fills your lungs, and until you breathe the fresh air of freedom. Let me explain. “I Don’t See Why” When I look back over my adult life and wince at the unfortunate things I did, there’s a common theme: the inner dialogue that began and concluded with, “I don’t see why” or its negative shade, “I don’t see why not.” I didn’t see why, or see why not, so I did X, Y, or Z. And X, Y, or Z turned out awful for me or others. Most of us carry the assumption that we can do whatever we want unless our reason tells us not to. Unfortunately, this tends to be almost identical to the assumption that we can do whatever we want. As Pascal said, as Freud argued, as current studies about cognitive biases show: our minds aren’t nearly as reasonable as we think. It’s one thing to spend long hours in study, contemplation, and dialogue with advisers and friends to form your conscience when it comes to a weighty matter. It’s another thing to do something merely because your reason doesn’t explain why you shouldn’t. The former is a sign of wisdom. The latter is a sign that your mind suffers from Modernitis. Definition “Modernitis”: A mental disease, rarely diagnosed, marked by intuitive confidence in one’s ideas and the findings of science. It’s rarely diagnosed for the same reason a rational fish wouldn’t know it’s wet. A mental disease that afflicts everyone becomes a sign of mental health. Descartes was the main philosopher that spread Modernitis. There were other causes and other philosophers contributed, sure, but he was the main culprit. He died in 1650, a celebrity and conqueror. His ideas had spread; his ideas had won. Modernitis became a sign of mental health. The effects were seen everywhere. Show notes here