Great post, Andrew. The reasons you gave for why there might nowadays be less genuine engagement in society are interesting. Of course, there are also individuals who are naturally more reserved, especially around strangers, and that behaviour alone doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re lonely or anti-social. But I think you’re onto something about society more generally.
Funny enough, yesterday, I wrote about my own experience with this (https://nousy.substack.com/p/some-views ). I’ll just add that next month I may release a couple of podcasts related to this: one about the epistemology of disagreement, I’m covering a paper by Richard Feldman on whether reasonable disagreement is even possible (he actually argues that it’s impossible; my favourite sentence from the paper: “open and honest discussion seems to have the puzzling effect of making reasonable disagreement impossible”) and, two, an episode covering a paper by Katia Vavova on the epistemology of irrelevant influences like culture, upbringing, etc. Both of those papers and topics relate to this issue, so tune in ;)
I agree many are naturally reserved. I’ve always considered myself (correctly, I think), an introvert. What I advocate doesn’t go against that. It’s one in one (real, perhaps intense) conversation. A small group conversation can also be great. Of course, strangers asking your beliefs can also be one on one. I’d encourage you to pick up *some* of those, but not all. No one can do them all, at least if you are at all social. Figuring out how to better determine which ones will be worth while can help. That takes time. Thanks for reading! (By the way, I don’t think idealism is dumb; I am not committed to it, but it strikes me as a real possibility.)
Great post, Andrew. The reasons you gave for why there might nowadays be less genuine engagement in society are interesting. Of course, there are also individuals who are naturally more reserved, especially around strangers, and that behaviour alone doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re lonely or anti-social. But I think you’re onto something about society more generally.
Funny enough, yesterday, I wrote about my own experience with this (https://nousy.substack.com/p/some-views ). I’ll just add that next month I may release a couple of podcasts related to this: one about the epistemology of disagreement, I’m covering a paper by Richard Feldman on whether reasonable disagreement is even possible (he actually argues that it’s impossible; my favourite sentence from the paper: “open and honest discussion seems to have the puzzling effect of making reasonable disagreement impossible”) and, two, an episode covering a paper by Katia Vavova on the epistemology of irrelevant influences like culture, upbringing, etc. Both of those papers and topics relate to this issue, so tune in ;)
I agree many are naturally reserved. I’ve always considered myself (correctly, I think), an introvert. What I advocate doesn’t go against that. It’s one in one (real, perhaps intense) conversation. A small group conversation can also be great. Of course, strangers asking your beliefs can also be one on one. I’d encourage you to pick up *some* of those, but not all. No one can do them all, at least if you are at all social. Figuring out how to better determine which ones will be worth while can help. That takes time. Thanks for reading! (By the way, I don’t think idealism is dumb; I am not committed to it, but it strikes me as a real possibility.)