Know Thyself, maybe
Or maybe don't...
If you could make your own money and then give it to everybody
Would you do it?
(No no no no, no no no no)
If you knew all the answers and could give it to the masses
Would you do it?
(No no no no, no no no no)
Are you crazy? (Are you crazy)
It's a very dangerous thing to do exactly what you wantBecause you cannot know yourself
Or what you'd really do
With all your power…
-The Flaming Lips, “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”
Substack Notes is a great feature. Kind of like the way Facebook’s newsfeed used to be, back in the (proverbial) day: “here are all the things your friends have been doing, posting, linking to, in the order it happened.” That is, before algorithmic optimization for ‘engagement’ and time on the site took precedence. But such is the inevitable fate of all venture cap-backed internet startups that make the user the product - aka the deal with the Devil.
The fact that most people posting on Substack are writers on Substack makes this even better - find a clever, interesting, or just elegantly phrased Note, check that person’s Substack, read a few pieces, subscribe (or don’t). It is an excellent way of finding thoughtful people to read.
And then those Notes can trigger ideas for essays. Hence this piece, inspired by Antoine Daniel’s Note reflecting on watching the BBC’s magisterial The World at War (watch it!). Daniel asks the question that everyone who watches the series does: “What would I have done?” (emphasis added)
I’ve been watching the 1970s documentary miniseries The World At War. In it, you see an entire generation of ordinary, flabby 17-year-olds ripped out of their familiar lives and made to, e.g.:
Run selflessly into machine-gun fire
Bayonet strangers in their throats
Drag themselves into field hospitals after their legs have been blown off
Aim at enemy soldiers from muddy ditches in Burma while recovering from malaria
Of course, some teenagers were working as resistance fighters, destroying tanks and bridges under the threat of torture and execution.
Some teenagers were being rounded into ethnic concentration camps. Some were eating their dogs and dead neighbors in Leningrad, or slowly freezing to death in Stalingrad.
Some teenagers got scared and ran from battle and were shot from behind by their own officers.
In the miniseries, we meet wealthy British “public schoolboys” who were drafted into the coal mines, where they worked 18-hour days for up to four straight years. We learn that conscripted teenage girls in Britain were given the choice of working in munitions factories or on Army bases.
Life has been hard much more often than it has been easy; this is just one moment in history.
But since it was a fairly recent moment, it’s easy for me to imagine my own adolescent world having been turned upside down in this way. I wonder whether I would have acquitted myself admirably or been totally overwhelmed by circumstances. I can reflect on the pampered and kind-of-meaningless life I’ve led.
Contemplating the lives of young people in 1941, I’m struck, inevitably, by the selfishness I’ve demonstrated throughout my life, and by the absurdity of my self-pity and self-importance, given how little I’ve had to accomplish or endure.
Also:
Kids these days, holy shit.
As narcissistic and weak as almost every kid is, and as ESPECIALLY narcissistic and weak as Gen-X and Millennial kids were: the soulless self-absorption and nauseating self-pity of some of the born-online kids is just awesome.
He goes on to draw attention to a laughable incident recounted in a Pitchfork profile of … some musician. I agree with his assessment of the artist being profiled, and the vacuity of the Pitchfork writer for not calling them on their bullshit. But I’m less willing to make broad generalizations about a whole generations of people, as I’m not comfortable making generalizations about broad groups of people in general.
I draw this from twenty years of reading things written about my generation by people not in it, almost none of which have ever applied to me, other than the range of years in which I happened to be born.
Walter Lippmann argues we must represent the external world through images in our heads, stereotypes that increase in generality the farther they are from our day-to-day concern. This is true, but maybe we can also consciously decide not to do that. Not to generalize. Not to stereotype. To stop and say “you know, all I know about that is the pictures I have seen in the media.” To just say “that is probably much more complicated than the coverage is making it seem.”
Because - and here’s a bigger idea than this essay - maybe we don’t need to have ideas and concepts and dense narratives and knowledge graphs about the things we don’t need to make consequential decisions about.
But that’s not my main point. My main point is about self-knowledge, and why you may not want it.
On What Self Knowledge Might Be, and Why One Might Want It
Self-knowledge, in the Classical Greek sense of “know thyself” is something other than the immediate phenomenal knowledge of being who we are - of knowledge of your own mental states. For example, that you cannot be mistaken about whether or not you found a joke funny. If you want to delve into that topic, there is an in-depth article about that on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
There are thinkers who have argued that one can only really know oneself in mortal danger, pitted in a life-or-death struggle against nature or one’s fellow man (or woman - overwhelmingly this type of thinking is promoted by men…). Some people are drawn to extreme sports, or endurance running, or cross-country survival trips, all out of this idea that in that state of extremes one ‘knows what one is made of.’ Here is my attempt to give the strongest argument I can to that position:
Extreme experiences, such as surviving life-threatening situations, engaging in combat, or confronting the raw forces of nature, serve as profound catalysts for self-discovery and personal growth. In the heart of peril, individuals often confront their own limitations, fears, and capabilities in a way that the comforts of daily life never allow. The adrenaline rush of combat or near-death experiences strips away the facade of social constructs and reveals the core of one's character. This process often unveils unseen strengths, resilience, and an understanding of what truly matters when life hangs in the balance. Individuals learn not just about their physical endurance but also about their emotional and psychological boundaries—areas that remain untouched without the challenge of survival.
The self-knowledge gained through these extreme challenges is invaluable because it fosters a clarity of purpose and authenticity. When one faces genuine danger, the trivialities and superficial concerns of everyday life recede, leaving only the essence of who they are. Questions like, “What am I willing to fight for?” and “What do I consider worth risking my life for?” become paramount. As a result, individuals often emerge with a reinvigorated perspective on their values and priorities, cultivating a deeper connection to their passions, goals, and even to others. The lessons learned in these high stakes situations often translate into an enhanced ability to handle adversity in everyday life, proving that hardship can lead to growth and a more profound understanding of oneself. Knowing that they have survived such trials, individuals develop an inherent confidence, believing in their capacity to overcome future challenges and navigate complex social dynamics or personal dilemmas with greater resolve.
What makes this self-knowledge fundamentally distinct from that acquired through conventional learning and personal reflection is the visceral nature of the experience. Traditional pathways—such as education, therapy, or introspection—offer insights that, while valuable, often lack the intense emotional and psychological pressure that extreme experiences impose. Without the raw and unyielding context of survival, individuals might approach self-discovery with a safety net, shielding themselves from the reality of their instincts and true desires. The immediacy of danger forces a confrontation with one's instinctual responses and emotional truths, illuminating aspects of the self that remain dormant in comfort. Ultimately, it is through these extraordinary challenges that individuals are compelled to forge a deeper, more authentic connection with themselves, shaping their identities in profound and lasting ways.
(The above, by the way, was written by Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet model. I’ve put it in the form of a quote to keep it distinct from the rest of this non-AI generated essay.)
That extreme experiences lead to self-knowledge isn’t just Bro Philosopher talk. An entire industry exists to deliver pseudo-versions of this to people.
If you’ve ever been on a corporate retreat with a rope course, or whitewater rafting, or bungee jumping, you’ve been subjected to this idea. Broadly, the concept of “extreme experience leads to self-knowledge” fuels a subsector of the self-help and actualization industry. Steve Salerno wrote a fine book about the industry at large in 2005, whose title gives his verdict on it: Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless. In one section he writes about adventure tourism companies that sell their retreats as ways to increase team spirit and employee motivation. Salerno reviews the research findings that these techniques have little to no effect: an extreme experience produces a boost in mood, but it doesn’t a lasting change in outlook, assertiveness, team functioning, or any variable that matters.
Some of the experiences do sound like fun, though.
The obvious retort to the adventure experiences profiled by Salerno is “of course those are shams.” There is something about the real thing that cannot be replicated by safety regulation-following experience.
Very well. Then let’s consider that many people do not gain by extreme experiences. If anything, they are worse off for suffering through them and would have been better off not discovering whatever they did (if anything) about themselves.
Consider veterans afflicted with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to their service in wartime. Some acquired this through direct combat experience, others through seeing other people maimed or killed, still others just through enduring weeks or months of continuous fear. Victims of sexual or domestic abuse, particularly children, many times also suffer from lifetime PTSD. Seeing your best friend trying to hold his own intestines in after an IED blast, or having your husband beat you to within an inch of your life, does not seem to produce lasting ethical improvement or deep self-knowledge. At least, it’s not as immediate as the connection between taking Tylenol and your headache going away. Rather, it seems to imprint overlearned behaviors to avoid danger, behaviors that ruin the sufferer’s ability to function in the world.
But let’s allow that there is some kind of extreme experience that IS genuinely valuable. Like the steelman argument above, let’s allow that Extreme Experience E grants some kind of improvement to Self-Knowledge SK, and that SK is intrinsically valuable - you would seek it out for itself, regardless of other benefits.
Why It May Be Better for Other People That You Not Get Self-Knowledge
Let’s say you and a friend are mugged by a psychotic homeless person. Unknown to yourself, you possess a depth of courage and resolve that comes through. You fight the man off and, in the struggle, beat him to death with a piece of rebar. You and your friend are cleared of any wrongdoing - the attacker had a sixty felony charges on his record, was a known violent psychotic, had run away from day parole, had attacked four people before he came at you and your friend. You come away from the experience with a renewed self-confidence: you ask for that raise and get it. You believe in your entrepreneurial idea and create that startup, and it is a success. You overcome your reticence and agree with your wife that you should have children, and they are born sound of mind and body, and you raise them well.
That’s a reasonably positive scenario: psychotic homeless guy dead - no wasted money on revolving door prisons! - and you on top of the world. Now let’s modify the scenarios. Keep the output, but change the inputs:
You live on the twelfth floor of an apartment building, and a runaway fire starts on the second floor. Due to poor construction, you cannot take the smoke-filled staircases to escape. You rally your neighbors and break out onto the rooftop, where you are able to remain safe until rescued. The fire killed the old man who lived in one of the basement suites, though; it was his space heater that started the fire.
Your city is hit by an earthquake. You are trapped underground on the subway with a carful of passengers, while river water starts to flood into the tunnel. You squeeze out through a tiny gap in the wrecked subway car and make your way to the surface, summoning help to rescue those trapped inside. Eight people die in the earthquake though, and thousands of people lose their homes.
Your country is in a war. Consider all the experiences that can come from that (see Antoine Daniel’s note above, and add “and some teenagers got to have the life-affirming experience of lining Jews up beside pits in Belorussia!”) But you come out alright.
I guess what I’m asking is: if you could somehow, by an act of will, set up the world to grant you the extreme experience that gets you self-knowledge, should you do it?
You can’t manifest a capacity without having had the potential to do so. You can’t see without eyes, and you can’t have eyes without the genetic potential for your eyes to develop.
Similarly, you can’t manifest some psychological trait or capacity without having had the capacity to have it already.
Was the psychological strength lying dormant in you before and unlock by the experience, like a key opening a door, or was it some new growth in your personality and mind, an interaction between your nervous system and the environment, like the way a particular plant is a growth of both its genetics and its soil, level of light, and atmospheric conditions.
If it’s the former, then the experience could be unlocked by any experience. If it’s the latter, then only that experience could have created that personality growth within you.
Which is it? I’m inclined to say it’s the former - you are so composed by genetics, upbringing, surroundings, and conscious free choices that you have some capacities, and don’t have others. And I think these capacities can be brought out by different experiences, analogous to how both ibuprofen and acetaminophen treat headaches. The idea that some people are better than others, have had a more ‘meaningful’ life by going through certain experiences, is availability bias writ large. Plenty of other people grow in virtue (or vice) by steady, regular life experiences.
Let’s return to the “kids today” that Antoine Daniel critiques. It’s a common refrain of old (and not so old) people that “kids today” are weak, lacking spine, have it too easy, etcetera. Let’s ignore the fact that :
one of the points of the generations of labor prior to us was precisely that we, the living, would not have it as hard as our ancestors did - if anything justifies human labor, that’s it,
And that those same old people complaining about their kids having no spine are the ones who raised those very kids,
And that this is an endless refrain down through history, that “our children are going to hell.”
Times change. People change with them. So we have another standard of valuation: how people respond to luxury and good times. The same man who could be brave on the battlefield, or stoic in the face of suffering and loss, may go completely to pieces when the times get easy.
The question is an ancient one: Plato gives a wonderful observation to his Athenian character in the first book of The Laws. In the dialogue, an Athenian, a Cretan (Cleinias), and a Megaran (Megillus) are discussing which cities have the best laws, and the Cretan and Megaran are arguing patriotically for their own, because those laws make their citizens brave and give them fortitude against pain, danger, and discomfort:
Athenian. Excellent, O Lacedaemonian Stranger. But how ought we to define courage? Is it to be regarded only as a combat against fears and pains, or also against desires and pleasures, and against flatteries; which exercise such a tremendous power, that they make the hearts even of respectable citizens to melt like wax?
Megillus. I should say the latter.
Athenian. In what preceded, as you will remember, our Cnosian friend was speaking of a man or a city being inferior to themselves:-Were you not, Cleinias?
Cleinias. I was.
Athenian. Now, which is in the truest sense inferior, the man who is overcome by pleasure or by pain?
Cleinias. I should say the man who is overcome by pleasure; for all men deem him to be inferior in a more disgraceful sense, than the other who is overcome by pain.
Athenian. But surely the lawgivers of Crete and Lacedaemon have not legislated for a courage which is lame of one leg, able only to meet attacks which come from the left, but impotent against the insidious flatteries which come from the right?
Cleinias. Able to meet both, I should say.
Athenian. Then let me once more ask, what institutions have you in either of your states which give a taste of pleasures, and do not avoid them any more than they avoid pains; but which set a person in the midst of them, and compel or induce him by the prospect of reward to get the better of them? Where is an ordinance about pleasure similar to that about pain to be found in your laws? Tell me what there is of this nature among you:-What is there which makes your citizen equally brave against pleasure and pain, conquering what they ought to conquer, and superior to the enemies who are most dangerous and nearest home?
The answer is none. The Athenian notes wryly that no one gives in to the pleasures of the flesh faster than the citizens of the most militaristic city states like the Spartans when out of their regular environment.
The challenge of growing up well and being a good person remains constant through time, but the focus changes. In times past, it would have been bearing up under hardship. Our “kids today” laments are a product of the fact that we mostly, as a society, have not developed the means to cope with luxury and ease. Whereas previous epochs may have needed more of the virtue of courage, theses days we need more temperance.
And I’m going to put myself out there say that is a positive change in human affairs. Perhaps, alongside our condemning of the spoiled and entitled, we should find ways to praise those who bear good fortune well, who are generous and considerate in their wealth and plenty, who are magnanimous and helpful.