We live in a world intentionally designed to reduce the quality of human thought in order to extract as much economic value from the human mind as possible.
Paul - I appreciate how you lay out and frame why the slow erosion of thinking happens inside ordinary life, not just as an abstract problem or philosophical idea. The picture you’re drawing is of a gradual shift in how people live with their own minds, and I find this extremely fascinating and a bit sad given what you highlight. Over time, the work of forming values, questioning assumptions, and creating a personal orientation toward life is replaced by ready-made frameworks, incentives, and distractions. That feels very close to what you’re pointing to with passive nihilism: not the loss of thought, but the loss of responsibility for it.
One layer that feels important here is how much the mind is already shaped to privilege what is wrong. The negativity bias keeps our attention oriented toward perceived threat, conflict, and deficiency. In an environment built to capture and monetize attention, that bias becomes a natural vulnerability in the mind. It steadily trains our nervous system toward being on high alert or being geared toward the negative rather than spending time for reflection and thinking about aspects of positive experience. Over time this could easily reshape the inner conditions under which thought happens at all. What I respect in what you’re building is the insistence that people can take our authorship back. That a micro-philosophy is not a set of answers, but a practice of examining what/why one is living by.
All to say, I love what you are doing! It gels well with my own thinking about how to better contend with the difficult human condition to begin with.
I read the main essay and then your older article on micro-philosophy as well. I really like the intention behind it: pushing people toward reflection instead of pure consumption.
I did struggle with the tone and some of the big claims though. Especially the line about living in a world “intentionally designed” to reduce the quality of human thinking to extract economic value. I’m not denying market incentives or attention engineering, but “intentionally designed” makes it sound like one coordinated project called “the world.” That feels a bit totalizing and, ironically, close to the kind of pessimism you’re warning against.
Also, I don’t really recognize the picture of widespread passive nihilism. People aren’t just sleepwalking. There’s a lot of conscience and agency out there: mass protests, community organizing, mutual aid, resisting systems, and big personal life changes happening every day.
So when you state “evangelists for mediocrity" i wonder why you assume mediocrity is the enemy? A lot of human life is ordinary by nature. Caring for other people, crafting things, deep conversations with loved ones, traveling and experiencing new realities. There’s meaning there too, and a lot of reflection happens inside that.
Stating that self-inquiry is “too inconvenient to be done,” or that billions never spend "even a few hours" thinking about their beliefs, feels unverifiable and also a bit unfair. It starts to pathologize normal life. Besides, let's not forget there's a group of people who are forced to spend all there hours surviving and dealing with life, rather than having the luxury to sit back and write deeply about who they would like to be.
Finally, the micro-philosophy pitch left me torn. I get the intent, but the whole system/framework/templates vibe can read like a self-help product aimed at the same anxiety the piece diagnoses. And “I don’t teach people what to believe” sounds nice and neutral, but some ethical guardrails aren’t optional if you’re encouraging people to create their own belief system. We still need shared rules, rights, and responsibilities. I’m curious where you draw that line.
Thanks for taking the time to read and write such a thoughtful reply. I will try to address each point in order below.
Yes, the main intention is to help teach people concepts, skills, and frameworks that can empower them to think for themselves and reflect on their own lives. I don't see very many people teaching this in the philosophy space as opposed to big ideas meant to be consumed primarily as entertainment or education about the history of philosophy for its own sake.
Regarding the intentional design of the attention economy, I do think that there is a coordinated effort to harvest human attention. It is hard for us to appreciate just how much money, thought, and engineering goes into the design of technology and apps that become normalized for us to use. There isn't some global or national conspiracy, but the current situation is close enough to that to be very concerned.
Regarding the passive nihilism, many of the things you list here are compatible with the truth of passive nihilism. Obviously there are plenty of people who take action to fight for the things that they believe in, but I would push back on the idea that this is widespread. But most of the post-college adults I know live pretty busy ordinary lives that are consumed by work, childcare, and pockets of entertainment throughout the day. This leaves very little time for leisure activities that enrich the human spirit and raise personal consciousness. Political awareness and concern can, in many ways, be a byproduct of passive nihilism/consumption culture. Finally, keep in mind that I was imagining what the end result would be if we continue down this path, not suggesting that everyone is sleepwalking already.
Regarding mediocrity, the activities you describe are not mediocre to me at all. Those sorts of activities are what I am advocating for. But I don't think internal reflection is enough. I think that much is lost when we internally reflect on meaningful experiences and never do anything with those insights or memories. If someone were to write something, craft something, tell a story, record themselves, etc., those meaningful experiences would be transforming into agency enhancing activities. The enemy is a life of no real agency, self-knowledge, or personal growth, but just going through the motions of life.
I think that ordinary American life should be pathologized because we live in an unjust system of exploitation which convinces us that it is normal for someone to work 40-50 hours for a large corporation and not see their kids for 75% of their lives.
I don't see how a self-help product that is designed to help people clarify their own values and beliefs can cause anxiety. My system gives people the tools to organize and understand their own beliefs. I am not writing online to change people's beliefs. If someone has hateful beliefs and wants to use my framework they are able to do that. They won't be a part of my online community, but I can't stop people from using ideas they find on the internet. If I were to build my own personal ethics into my system and moralize to my audience that would defeat the entire purpose of what I am doing, which is to promote agency, free thinking, and self-knowledge.
In the end, I am trying to help people in a way that I am able to. It's not going to be for everyone.
Hey Paul. Thank you for taking the time to reply point-by-point. That’s rare, and I really appreciate it.
Also, just to be clear.. I like your intention a lot. If my first comment read harsher than intended, that’s on me. I was challenging some framing, not dismissing the mission!
A few follow-ups:
I agree attention is engineered and monetized. My hesitation is the rhetorical scope. “The world is intentionally designed” reads bigger than the incentives inside big tech, advertising, and app ecosystems. I’d personally find it stronger if it stayed closer to “a major part of modern media and tech is optimized to harvest attention.” The broader wording risks sounding totalizing.
On passive nihilism: I think the reality is split. For some people, enriching leisure and reflection are a genuine privilege (time, money, bandwidth). At the same time, many of us in wealthy countries do have historically high levels of comfort and free time, which is exactly why frameworks like yours can matter. My only pushback is that when the baseline is stable, it’s easy to treat enrichment as urgent and non-negotiable, while in real crisis (war, collapse, insecurity) that layer disappears overnight. That doesn’t make it meaningless, but it does suggest the diagnosis should stay grounded in material conditions as well as psychology.
You convinced me on agency. The distinction between having meaningful experiences and converting insights into something that builds self-knowledge and agency is strong. That’s exactly where a framework can help.
On the “unjust exploitation system” point: I sympathize with the moral discomfort. I just react strongly to anything that sounds like a clean utopia claim when reality is messy and interdependent. What’s the workable solution at scale? If everyone cuts working hours sharply tomorrow, what happens to healthcare staffing, food supply, logistics, public services, and the infrastructure that makes leisure possible? I’m not defending the status quo, but there are trade-offs and coordination problems here. A critique feels incomplete if it pathologizes ordinary life without grappling with how a complex society keeps running.
On ethics and tone: I get what you mean by not moralizing. My point is that some of the wording can land as pressure. Lines like “make sure everything we believe isn’t being used to keep us under control,” “we must always continue to think,” and “freedom is the heaviest burden” can read as: you’re probably compromised and you’re not doing enough. Then the framework can feel like the one “right” way out, even if you explicitly say it isn’t for everyone. And very practically, “people can believe whatever they want” runs into limits fast in any real community.
Thanks again for the thoughtful reply. I’ve enjoyed the exchange, and your work gave me a lot to think about.
Hey Paul, great thoughts. Comes at a perfect time for me as I am about to take a sabbatical from work.
One thing I was already planning on doing: I've been underlining non-fiction books as I read them for a long time and always wanted to take the time to write down all those nuggets in a notebook but never got around to it. I just gathered up some of the most impactful ones and will be starting a notebook for those quotes. I imagine these will definitely help me in creating my own micro-philosophy.
I'll definitely be checking out your older article. Keep up the good work, thank you.
Paul, this is brilliant, cuts straight to the bone! Modern life really does feel engineered to keep us skimming rather than sinking into real thought, and your Nietzsche revival hits hard in 2026. Love how you shift from diagnosis to the micro-philosophy fix: it's empowering without being preachy, reminding us that building our own values is the ultimate rebellion against the dopamine grind. The call to just write for 30 minutes feels deceptively simple but revolutionary.
I just finished “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis for the third time. One would think a book of a mere 90 pages would require three readings but it has for me. He warns of the void that comes from not following the Tao. The Tao (his philophy) for Lewis is Christianity (as it for me) and his prescient warnings from 1943 hold even more today. Philosophy is the search for truth and wisdom - if you don’t have a framework, as Lewis illustrates, one will be provided for you.
1. Christianity was (is) the peak of positive, creative, independent human insight.
2. Nietzsche was a nihilist, a failed man, who failed to find a woman (he proposed 3 times and been rejected) and finished as a mentally ill cared by his sister.
3. His pseudo-philosophy is not philosophy cause it is anti-intelectual. He hated Socrates as much as Jesus. He just projected his own grievances on reality, like for example about his father.
4. A man is a relational being. The most popular relationship is to other people. So shaping environment of a man, like shaping people, will shape a person. Crowds will shape individuals, cause every individual looks for resonance with others.
5. Indeed we live in a time of mediocrity, passivity and pessimism. And this is justified, cause we lost ability to influence environment, less and less depends on us, we start to feel, that no matter what, it will be what it will be, not what we would like, so we are focused on direct pleasure.
The recipe is to change the point of reference, to stop taking others as it. To turn towards reality, yourself, God - you choose. Because we are literally molded by crowds, which replaced relationship man-man by relationship man-idea, man-party, man-guru, man-politician.
By changing the point of reference we change everything, but we still may be putted in the situation of lack positive feedback from any people, cause they have been shaped as political, religious or other "believers", or they don't have time (popular), or they don't care, whatever. What then? Then real journey begins.
I do agree man should focus their inner searches towards a higher purpose.
However, that should not include belittling the works of others even if it attacks the essence of a good thing, there should be no hostile response towards a positive attempt that tries to be in the benefit of man. It is hard enough to give people meaning in this climate and if the ways of Nietzsche benefit some they should not be disregarded due to the hardship in his life.
And is not holding onto a negative affection towards a person the same as projecting our own grievances towards someone or something?
Is it that we are able to influence less around us that we feel passive and pessimistic or is it because of the leisure of life that permits feeling passive and pessimistic that we choose to believe we can influence so little?
Are crowds not people? Molded still by other people? How could there be change if we resume our view to the change through other? I don't think that this was the point you were necessarily trying to make, however it must be pointed out to start a real discussion.
Paul - I appreciate how you lay out and frame why the slow erosion of thinking happens inside ordinary life, not just as an abstract problem or philosophical idea. The picture you’re drawing is of a gradual shift in how people live with their own minds, and I find this extremely fascinating and a bit sad given what you highlight. Over time, the work of forming values, questioning assumptions, and creating a personal orientation toward life is replaced by ready-made frameworks, incentives, and distractions. That feels very close to what you’re pointing to with passive nihilism: not the loss of thought, but the loss of responsibility for it.
One layer that feels important here is how much the mind is already shaped to privilege what is wrong. The negativity bias keeps our attention oriented toward perceived threat, conflict, and deficiency. In an environment built to capture and monetize attention, that bias becomes a natural vulnerability in the mind. It steadily trains our nervous system toward being on high alert or being geared toward the negative rather than spending time for reflection and thinking about aspects of positive experience. Over time this could easily reshape the inner conditions under which thought happens at all. What I respect in what you’re building is the insistence that people can take our authorship back. That a micro-philosophy is not a set of answers, but a practice of examining what/why one is living by.
All to say, I love what you are doing! It gels well with my own thinking about how to better contend with the difficult human condition to begin with.
Well said.
I read the main essay and then your older article on micro-philosophy as well. I really like the intention behind it: pushing people toward reflection instead of pure consumption.
I did struggle with the tone and some of the big claims though. Especially the line about living in a world “intentionally designed” to reduce the quality of human thinking to extract economic value. I’m not denying market incentives or attention engineering, but “intentionally designed” makes it sound like one coordinated project called “the world.” That feels a bit totalizing and, ironically, close to the kind of pessimism you’re warning against.
Also, I don’t really recognize the picture of widespread passive nihilism. People aren’t just sleepwalking. There’s a lot of conscience and agency out there: mass protests, community organizing, mutual aid, resisting systems, and big personal life changes happening every day.
So when you state “evangelists for mediocrity" i wonder why you assume mediocrity is the enemy? A lot of human life is ordinary by nature. Caring for other people, crafting things, deep conversations with loved ones, traveling and experiencing new realities. There’s meaning there too, and a lot of reflection happens inside that.
Stating that self-inquiry is “too inconvenient to be done,” or that billions never spend "even a few hours" thinking about their beliefs, feels unverifiable and also a bit unfair. It starts to pathologize normal life. Besides, let's not forget there's a group of people who are forced to spend all there hours surviving and dealing with life, rather than having the luxury to sit back and write deeply about who they would like to be.
Finally, the micro-philosophy pitch left me torn. I get the intent, but the whole system/framework/templates vibe can read like a self-help product aimed at the same anxiety the piece diagnoses. And “I don’t teach people what to believe” sounds nice and neutral, but some ethical guardrails aren’t optional if you’re encouraging people to create their own belief system. We still need shared rules, rights, and responsibilities. I’m curious where you draw that line.
Emma,
Thanks for taking the time to read and write such a thoughtful reply. I will try to address each point in order below.
Yes, the main intention is to help teach people concepts, skills, and frameworks that can empower them to think for themselves and reflect on their own lives. I don't see very many people teaching this in the philosophy space as opposed to big ideas meant to be consumed primarily as entertainment or education about the history of philosophy for its own sake.
Regarding the intentional design of the attention economy, I do think that there is a coordinated effort to harvest human attention. It is hard for us to appreciate just how much money, thought, and engineering goes into the design of technology and apps that become normalized for us to use. There isn't some global or national conspiracy, but the current situation is close enough to that to be very concerned.
Regarding the passive nihilism, many of the things you list here are compatible with the truth of passive nihilism. Obviously there are plenty of people who take action to fight for the things that they believe in, but I would push back on the idea that this is widespread. But most of the post-college adults I know live pretty busy ordinary lives that are consumed by work, childcare, and pockets of entertainment throughout the day. This leaves very little time for leisure activities that enrich the human spirit and raise personal consciousness. Political awareness and concern can, in many ways, be a byproduct of passive nihilism/consumption culture. Finally, keep in mind that I was imagining what the end result would be if we continue down this path, not suggesting that everyone is sleepwalking already.
Regarding mediocrity, the activities you describe are not mediocre to me at all. Those sorts of activities are what I am advocating for. But I don't think internal reflection is enough. I think that much is lost when we internally reflect on meaningful experiences and never do anything with those insights or memories. If someone were to write something, craft something, tell a story, record themselves, etc., those meaningful experiences would be transforming into agency enhancing activities. The enemy is a life of no real agency, self-knowledge, or personal growth, but just going through the motions of life.
I think that ordinary American life should be pathologized because we live in an unjust system of exploitation which convinces us that it is normal for someone to work 40-50 hours for a large corporation and not see their kids for 75% of their lives.
I don't see how a self-help product that is designed to help people clarify their own values and beliefs can cause anxiety. My system gives people the tools to organize and understand their own beliefs. I am not writing online to change people's beliefs. If someone has hateful beliefs and wants to use my framework they are able to do that. They won't be a part of my online community, but I can't stop people from using ideas they find on the internet. If I were to build my own personal ethics into my system and moralize to my audience that would defeat the entire purpose of what I am doing, which is to promote agency, free thinking, and self-knowledge.
In the end, I am trying to help people in a way that I am able to. It's not going to be for everyone.
Hey Paul. Thank you for taking the time to reply point-by-point. That’s rare, and I really appreciate it.
Also, just to be clear.. I like your intention a lot. If my first comment read harsher than intended, that’s on me. I was challenging some framing, not dismissing the mission!
A few follow-ups:
I agree attention is engineered and monetized. My hesitation is the rhetorical scope. “The world is intentionally designed” reads bigger than the incentives inside big tech, advertising, and app ecosystems. I’d personally find it stronger if it stayed closer to “a major part of modern media and tech is optimized to harvest attention.” The broader wording risks sounding totalizing.
On passive nihilism: I think the reality is split. For some people, enriching leisure and reflection are a genuine privilege (time, money, bandwidth). At the same time, many of us in wealthy countries do have historically high levels of comfort and free time, which is exactly why frameworks like yours can matter. My only pushback is that when the baseline is stable, it’s easy to treat enrichment as urgent and non-negotiable, while in real crisis (war, collapse, insecurity) that layer disappears overnight. That doesn’t make it meaningless, but it does suggest the diagnosis should stay grounded in material conditions as well as psychology.
You convinced me on agency. The distinction between having meaningful experiences and converting insights into something that builds self-knowledge and agency is strong. That’s exactly where a framework can help.
On the “unjust exploitation system” point: I sympathize with the moral discomfort. I just react strongly to anything that sounds like a clean utopia claim when reality is messy and interdependent. What’s the workable solution at scale? If everyone cuts working hours sharply tomorrow, what happens to healthcare staffing, food supply, logistics, public services, and the infrastructure that makes leisure possible? I’m not defending the status quo, but there are trade-offs and coordination problems here. A critique feels incomplete if it pathologizes ordinary life without grappling with how a complex society keeps running.
On ethics and tone: I get what you mean by not moralizing. My point is that some of the wording can land as pressure. Lines like “make sure everything we believe isn’t being used to keep us under control,” “we must always continue to think,” and “freedom is the heaviest burden” can read as: you’re probably compromised and you’re not doing enough. Then the framework can feel like the one “right” way out, even if you explicitly say it isn’t for everyone. And very practically, “people can believe whatever they want” runs into limits fast in any real community.
Thanks again for the thoughtful reply. I’ve enjoyed the exchange, and your work gave me a lot to think about.
Awesome stuff
Hey Paul, great thoughts. Comes at a perfect time for me as I am about to take a sabbatical from work.
One thing I was already planning on doing: I've been underlining non-fiction books as I read them for a long time and always wanted to take the time to write down all those nuggets in a notebook but never got around to it. I just gathered up some of the most impactful ones and will be starting a notebook for those quotes. I imagine these will definitely help me in creating my own micro-philosophy.
I'll definitely be checking out your older article. Keep up the good work, thank you.
Paul, this is brilliant, cuts straight to the bone! Modern life really does feel engineered to keep us skimming rather than sinking into real thought, and your Nietzsche revival hits hard in 2026. Love how you shift from diagnosis to the micro-philosophy fix: it's empowering without being preachy, reminding us that building our own values is the ultimate rebellion against the dopamine grind. The call to just write for 30 minutes feels deceptively simple but revolutionary.
Always great stuff! Your summary of The Last Man really got me thinking too.
Your work is what the world needs. Thank you.
I just finished “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis for the third time. One would think a book of a mere 90 pages would require three readings but it has for me. He warns of the void that comes from not following the Tao. The Tao (his philophy) for Lewis is Christianity (as it for me) and his prescient warnings from 1943 hold even more today. Philosophy is the search for truth and wisdom - if you don’t have a framework, as Lewis illustrates, one will be provided for you.
1. Christianity was (is) the peak of positive, creative, independent human insight.
2. Nietzsche was a nihilist, a failed man, who failed to find a woman (he proposed 3 times and been rejected) and finished as a mentally ill cared by his sister.
3. His pseudo-philosophy is not philosophy cause it is anti-intelectual. He hated Socrates as much as Jesus. He just projected his own grievances on reality, like for example about his father.
4. A man is a relational being. The most popular relationship is to other people. So shaping environment of a man, like shaping people, will shape a person. Crowds will shape individuals, cause every individual looks for resonance with others.
5. Indeed we live in a time of mediocrity, passivity and pessimism. And this is justified, cause we lost ability to influence environment, less and less depends on us, we start to feel, that no matter what, it will be what it will be, not what we would like, so we are focused on direct pleasure.
The recipe is to change the point of reference, to stop taking others as it. To turn towards reality, yourself, God - you choose. Because we are literally molded by crowds, which replaced relationship man-man by relationship man-idea, man-party, man-guru, man-politician.
By changing the point of reference we change everything, but we still may be putted in the situation of lack positive feedback from any people, cause they have been shaped as political, religious or other "believers", or they don't have time (popular), or they don't care, whatever. What then? Then real journey begins.
I do agree man should focus their inner searches towards a higher purpose.
However, that should not include belittling the works of others even if it attacks the essence of a good thing, there should be no hostile response towards a positive attempt that tries to be in the benefit of man. It is hard enough to give people meaning in this climate and if the ways of Nietzsche benefit some they should not be disregarded due to the hardship in his life.
And is not holding onto a negative affection towards a person the same as projecting our own grievances towards someone or something?
Is it that we are able to influence less around us that we feel passive and pessimistic or is it because of the leisure of life that permits feeling passive and pessimistic that we choose to believe we can influence so little?
Are crowds not people? Molded still by other people? How could there be change if we resume our view to the change through other? I don't think that this was the point you were necessarily trying to make, however it must be pointed out to start a real discussion.