As a philosopher myself, I am well aware of the fact that most philosophers are not good writers. Philosophers like Hegel, Derrida, and Heidegger are the pinnacle of esoteric obscurantism. Indeed, professors have told me on multiple occasions that the writing of philosophers will be the last place you will find good examples of how one ought to write. Which is to say, philosophers often struggle to convey their ideas in a clear and compelling way. There are very few philosophers that I would go to for advice on writing. …

I began setting high expectations for myself when I began lifting weights. Wanting to become the best weightlifter I possibly could be, I read up on the science of fitness and became successful in my efforts.

Such expectations began to spread out in my life. What I often tell others is this: “if I am to do something, I am going to put 100% of my effort into it.”

Those who know me can surely attest to this fact. I graduated at the top of my class in my undergraduate degree, spend most of my days studying and writing, and in my relationship with my girlfriend, I put in a serious effort to ensure that she is happy and that our relationship is healthy. All of this behavior is something I proudly regard as a virtue. My life has exponentially improved ever since I have set these sorts of expectations for myself. My finances are in order, I am in graduate school full-time, my relationship is beautiful and the work I engage in fulfills me and has a meaning which is independent of myself. …

I once heard the famous public intellectual Christopher Hitchens say that writers must write. A writer is something that someone is, rather than something that someone does. And in order to write and to write well, one needn't rely upon schooling. Rather, one must simply write.

All of this, of course, is true. And yet, there is clearly something missing from it. Namely, the factors which err away so many from the field of writing. So many wish to be writers, but entering into it as a profession is extraordinarily daunting, and quite frankly, for good reasons. …

In March when the shit hit the fan, I wrote an article entitled, “The Bioethical Politics of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” In it, I wrote that what was called for as a response to this pandemic was a Hobbsian-level lockdown — a ripping off of the bandaid of quarantining, so to speak. At the time, I truly believed that a total shutdown was warranted. And looking back, at that time, places like New York City which nearly went into a full lockdown did the right thing.

What about now, eight months later? What is abundantly clear is that things are clearly not the same as they were in March. Indeed, it is utterly astonishing just how much things have changed. If these eight months have proven one thing, they have proven that there is nothing which will stand in the way of how divided we are; there is nothing which will stand in the way of how politicized we are; there is nothing which will stand in the way of simply how little most of us care about evidence and how most of us will blindly follow non-sense. …

As adults, we understand quite vividly that evil exists.

When we are children, by contrast, we naively believe the world is a place of pure goodness. The knowledge which marks the passing from childhood to adulthood is when we truly realize the existence of evil in the world. For most of us, this is when we experience either evil-itself, through the unfairness and malevolence of others and/or society, or, when we see those we love experience it, and suffer from such experiences.

When we are exposed to evil, that is the universal rite of passage; it is when we pass from idealism to realism. It is when we realize that life is a constant challenge — one which will either eat us alive or one we shall conquer. Such knowledge might feel like it necessitates our psychic/spiritual death, but it does not: indeed, it might very well lead to a transformation in our being, into a profound becoming. …

Having been in the fitness space for a little over a half-decade now, I’ve seen trends in nutrition come and go. Keto, paleo, intermittent fasting, the carnivore diet — all have been all the rage at some point. After a while, however, they aren’t necessarily shunned or spoken about as being wrong. Rather, they simply disappear into a void. No one talks about them anymore and everyone stops following these protocols out of the blue.

Another candidate to enter into this void is collagen supplementation. In my article on testosterone boosters, I wrote that if a company is selling a testosterone boosting product, you probably should not trust them. …

I’ve been lifting weights for almost seven years now. From the very beginning of this journey I’ve been asked, “why do you do it.” It is a perfectly reasonable question. Indeed, given the way our culture is set up, it sounds patently absurd to put me through intense pain on a daily basis, to go to sleep early, and to eat mostly nutritious foods.

However, my precise answer to this question is usually that, “I do it because I don’t want to be like everyone else.” I do not like the way our culture is set up. We are disincentivized to take care of ourselves, and we are incentivized to indulge in egoism, self-deception, and decadence. …

The idea that science (i.e., the physical/hard sciences, like biology, chemistry, and physics) is either the highest or the only means by which we ought to acquire knowledge has had a profound influence on the topic of understanding consciousness. We can see this influence quite vividly in Paul & Patricia Churchland’s eliminative materialism. The idea of eliminative materialism is that our common sense understanding of the mind, which is fundamentally an understanding from the subjective point-of-view, is a gravely erroneous assumption. In light of this, it eliminative materialists propose that only a mature science of the mind (in particular, a mature neuroscience of the mind) can give us a sufficient and correct understanding of the mind. Some eliminative materialists protest folk states of consciousness (e.g., beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, etc.). Others object to the “folk” concept of consciousness itself — or, more precisely, phenomenal consciousness (i.e., the fact that we have experiences/what-it-is-likeness), as Ned Block[i] puts it — believing that understanding consciousness will wholly depend upon a science of the mind. However, such views thwart the hard problem of consciousness, as posed by David Chalmers and the fact that consciousness is a multifaceted concept. Likewise, such views ignore Thomas Nagel’s observations on the theoretical issues surrounding such explanations of consciousness, which is a corollary to the hard problem of consciousness. In light of the multifacetedness of consciousness and the hard problems which plague our understanding of it, I propose that a single-layered analysis — namely, an analysis that only entails science — of consciousness is misguided. This isn’t to throw science out in our attempts to understand consciousness, but instead, to propose that science is only one piece of the puzzle of understanding it. If we are to understand consciousness, narrow approaches to it will only lead to further confusion. Instead, a holistic approach that includes both scientific and non-scientific methods of analysis will ultimately be the route to understanding consciousness. …