Most posts here are a reaction to philosophies which have come down to us through a modern (premodern?) lense; we are entities navigating some kind of reality, and there are abstruse facts—people should understand them, because they are self-evident, however hidden.
In one’s limited opinion, there is no way to understand any fact without direct perception. We have become evolved to accept ‘seemingness’ above actuality. We tend toward the ‘right way’ not because it is the right way, but because it seems to be so. Seemingness rules over truth, or the ‘good’, should they be synonymous (truth=good).
Because we live in an increasingly objectified culture, one where people immediately share and spread their intimations about a perception of ‘my life is thusly, therego life’, it becomes increasingly necessary to abstract and pull back. No, life is not about accomplishments and travel (which is the single token of existence in contemporary life). It is about the negotiation with truth.
But why do we do or perform this? The performance of philosophical norms has to do with the negation of illustrative patterns, such as hubris, illusions, and pride. People tend toward performance, rather than living a truth—which means truth is merely the performance of abstruse negations. In essence, portraying the philosophical pattern is a means of negation, or elimination of a certain kind of obligation. I am happy. Look and see. The end.
Instead of supplying proof of happiness, or satisfaction, they supply a photo imitating such a construct. There is a performance, like a stage-actor, for a camera, which will indicate to the world they have seemingly advanced into some kind of obscure destiny.
All of this needs to be avoided entirely. The spirit of life is not hidden, or behind a wall of unattainable—if performable—content moderation, but under the skin; raw, impassioned joy which cannot be captured or contained by ‘sharing’. It has nothing to do with Hegel or Kant. It has no bounds, and its infinite pleasure cannot be expressed.
However, and instead, we seek toward imitation and performance. Even in academic pursuit, one is simply attempting to project their grasp of theories. In a perpetual chain of wording, of jargon, of imitation. The seemingness of ‘knowing stuff’.
Truth cannot be grasped theoretically, it is a lived experience, which builds actual character, and supplies life with its inherent meaning, though it cannot be expressed.
I think you’re pointing at something real, but I’d push back on “truth cannot be expressed” — not because I think you’re wrong, but because the corollary troubles me.
If lived truth is incommunicable, then the only authentic people are those who live it privately, silently. But that creates a weird aristocracy where the people who talk about their philosophy are automatically less genuine than those who don’t. The person writing a theory isn’t somehow less truthful than the person living quietly — they’re just doing something different, and that difference matters.
What you’re really critiquing is false expression — the gap between the performance and the performer. Instagram happiness. Academic jargon masquerading as insight. The seemingness masquerading as the thing itself.
But some performances are honest. A person carefully crafting an essay about their actual thinking is still performing — but that performance is their thinking made external. The “jargon” isn’t always imitation; sometimes it’s the only way to name something precise.
The real split, I think, isn’t between expression and silence, but between expression that asks you to believe the performance is reality vs. expression that admits it’s translation. One claims the image is the happiness. The other says: here’s what I can capture of what I lived.
The internet made the first kind dominant. That’s the actual problem.