Hi Cee,

Thank you for sharing your perspective. I agree with a good bit of what you’ve suggested. It seems uncontroversial to claim, as you do, that many people evidence a willingness to follow authority, stay clear of life’s ‘big questions’, and use less-than-ideal means to ‘solve’ their problems (e.g., substance use, gambling, etc.). The more interesting question to me, however, is why these sorts of people exist and why they can’t or refuse to step outside of themselves, so to speak, and try to examine how things operate ‘behind the curtain’. It seems to me that emotional and psychological trauma is one reason that some folks shy away from introspective analysis and investigation of power dynamics and structural constraints and the like. I think it’s plausible that some people preserve their own mental health, in a sense, by refusing to ‘go deep’ in their thinking. For others, it might be a combination of socialization, environment, genetics, early childhood experiences, and/or plain laziness that leads them to amuse themselves with gadgetry, drinking, etc.

I fully agree with you re: the importance and value of thinking hard about life’s tough question. To quote Socrates:

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

This quote is used and abused more often than I could count, but as somebody who studied Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy intensely for several years, I feel entitled to cite it here :p

Cheers!