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One thing I miss about some of the reading I used to do was that it was largely useless, in the sense that I was just reading for personal interest and edification. All the time I spent slogging through James Joyce or Kierkegaard never amounted to anything beyond time well spent.
One thing I wish the left did a better job of was advocating the importance of "useless" things. I get how the humanities are 'useful' in certain respects, but I think their value in helping people cultivate an 'inner life' and having that be valuable in itself get missed a lot.
I get how the line between inner- and public/political-life is blurry, and I'm glossing over a lot here, but my main point is I miss the days of biking to a park and reading Ulysses or Works of Love by the river, and I wish everyone had the time to do more of that sort of thing.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people's first encouragement to read and turn inward in a seriously reflective way comes from Pordan Jeterson, but I think this is a major reason for his popularity, and even gives me hope that there remains a hunger out there for that sort of thing
Funnily enough, the possibility of my own radical politics was cultivated by doing a lot of personal reflection. Reading Capital was just a material framework, but reading Kierkegaard and Heidegger might've done more to prepare me to become a Marxist than actually reading Marx.
Idk. Maybe this is wrong, but the nice thing about having so few followers is I can air half-developed thoughts like this and get 2 likes and maybe a comment saying 'Yeah, totally' rather than dogpiled. <3 all 201 of you
