Let's go! My @threadapalooza on Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), phenomenologist of perception and embodiment, whose work has influenced everyone from cognitive scientists to feminists to theologians to AI engineers. MMP was in the "Resistance" before it was cool.

MMP grew up Catholic, studied under Husserl and Kojeve, was influenced by Heidegger, was friends with Beauvoir and Sartre. He was a hard core Marxist, possibly even a Stalinist sympathizer. (He was formed by his experiences fighting against the Nazis.) 2

And no doubt, for him, his thought was all of one piece. But like any great thinker, his insights are not reducible to the conclusions he himself drew, political or otherwise. 3

If you care about the question "What is consciousness?" read MMP.

If you care about the question, "What is the self?" read MMP.

4

Phenomenology is about asking what makes experience possible from the point of view of the self, reflecting on itself, rather than from the point of view of reading a brain scan. 5

It's not that phenomenology and neuroscience disagree, it's that methodologically you have to pick a starting point.

Phenomenologists think the starting point should be the self as it reflects on its experience, rather than the self as it forgets itself in scientific method. 6

Phenomenology says the first thing we can say about the self is that it is. Here I am, asking what it means to be. It took 2000+ years from us to define ourselves as neurons lighting up.

What if we went with a method more Lindy, and gave credence to our naive, common sense? 7

Heidegger starts with Dasein, existence, a being-in-the-world, a being thrown into this life.

There are certain features of Dasein that are universal that he writes about.

The core one is temporality. 8

Dasein is fearful and or anxious about its future. Dasein arrives at the present, always with a context, a history, a heritage, a burden. Dasein is not empty, but emergent. Dasein cares. Its cares are handed to it from the moment it is born. 9

MMP adds an obvious point to this way of thinking. Being-in-the-world does not just "have" a body, but IS its body. The body is the way Dasein shows up in-the-world. Perception is bodily. The world is tactile. We touch things, aware of ourselves as touched and touching. 10

It's not that we are selves who incidentally interface with the world through contact. Our selfhood and our physical contact with the world co-exist, each shaping the other. 11

Physicists can describe the gravitational laws governing two inanimate bodies. But to describe an interaction between an animate body, the fleshy self, and another body, animate or not, is far more complex. 12

And even if we could do it (and we can't do it objectively), it would be derivative. With what would we describe it? Our mouths? Our fingers, clanking on keyboards. The body is always the intermediary.

Description is a way of being conducted by a bodily self. 13

The mouth isn't just an empty vessel for words, speaking from a mouth, this mouth, my mouth, is part of what I am saying. My hands are invisible when I write, but the writing is as much a child of the way I hold the pen or dictate to Siri as anything else. 14

Likewise, I am a different person when I wear a suit, or a dress, or a cloak, or an army uniform, or a fig leaf, and not just because of how people look at me or the social meaning I ascribe to it. There is also just the feel of myself in these clothes. That matters. 15

These points are obvious and yet in the history of thought largely marginal(ized).

God speaks in the Bible, but what matters, classically, is WHAT God says, not the "Experience" of God as speaker.

From MMP's point of view a whole new vista opens. 16

The rationalist tradition thinks the body is incidental. Since Plato, the body is a prison of the soul, a mere container. But in phenomenology, as elaborated by MMP, the soul and the body belong together. The body isn't just an avatar. Soul bodies. Bodies soul. 17

Tell me why I should believe X. Here are some reasons. OK, still not convinced.

This is how intellectual debate often goes. 18

But from MMP, we realize this is an impoverished form of discourse and a shallow view of the self.

Taste and smell, sight and hearing, environment, these aren't contingent to the thought content, they are part of it. 19

Don't tell me why God exists or doesn't. Go into a cathedral.

Don't tell me why life is or isn't meaningless. Sing and dance.

Don't tell me about human nature. Smell this incense. Visit this landfill.

20

Argument is after the fact. What matters is the BODY saying the argument, not the content itself.

We all know context matters.

MMP teaches us this context is always Bodily and environmental. 21

But bodily isn't the same as physical. It's psycho-somatic, because the body, my body, includes how I feel about being this body, how I feel about myself. The body is always in a mood, and that mood contains a commentary on one's existence. 22

You can change your mood by taking a Tylenol or going for a walk or getting dinner with a friend, etc. But at the deeper level, the level of self understanding, none of these penetrate.

Short-term and Practically speaking, bottom's up is a good approach. 23

But philosophically and long-term, you can't change your sense of self simply by doing more exercise or doing a lot of drugs or not doing a lot of drugs, except insofar as one's habits lead to a new narrative of who one is. 24

Our existence is interpretive, an interpretation of the body by the body on the body. The body is cultured, aware of other bodies and their judgments. But most of all the body is aware of itself. 25

To express this idea, MMP suggests meditating on our left hand and right hand touching one another, in equilibrium, thumbs touching each other, the meditator's "mudra." 26

We have a kind of "intersubjectivity" with ourselves as we are both perceiver and perceived, subject and object. I don't just see things, I feel myself seeing. I feel my eyes moving when I look. I am always both active and passive. 27

The most powerful and insightful idea in Merleau-Ponty is that my experience of the world is mediated by a sense of "I can"; "I can" is physiological and yet so much more. 28

But "I can" is not evenly distributed. It is at the same time also a sense of "I cannot."

A child experiences "I cannot" vis a vis adult bodies. 29

But we are always encountering other bodies that forbid us from exercising agency. From TSA agents and police officers to teachers demanding, implicitly, that we not stand on our desks (Robin Williams excepted), etc. 30

The world can be our oyster, the sky the limit, only because it is also closed to us. The body of a person who feels confidant and welcome is not the same as that of one who feels excluded. And this is even if the bodies are identical. 31

Sure, we objectify ourselves and are objectified by others. And these patters follow patterns that are cultural. But it's also idiosyncratic.

Think of Kafka's character, Gregor Sampsa, waking up as a bug. Alienation knows endless forms. 32

All happy bodies are the same. All unhappy bodies are unhappy in their own way. 33

The point is, if my self is embodied, it doesn't fundamentally matter whether the world really is or isn't inhospitable; what matters is whether I take it to be so. Reality is the limit; it shapes me. It has a say. But reality is also self-fulfilling. 34

The body can end up in a vicious or virtuous circle, depending on self perception. Self perception isn't the alpha and omega, but it's a lot!

This is why pop self help people recommend doing power poses before an interview! 35

MMP would have known this long before any science experiment could prove it. Don't wait for the "science" to catch up to what phenomenology understands intuitively! 36

Every year I read an article that goes something like this. Science shows that being around trees is good for your mental health. Ya think?? 37

But even the language of "mental health" is so backwards, compounding the alienation.

The moment we talk about mental health we are lost.

We should be talking about existential health. The mental isn't something other than bodily!

38

But science deals in what's repeatable, scalable, measurable. Phenomenology deals in what I know through self-examination. Phenomenology leans into interpretation. Science sees interpretation as noise. We need to be unbiased.

39

The white walls of the hospital are the same white walls of scientific thought, absent personality, lest it contaminate the results. 40

And yet we know that how people feel about their doctors--"the dynamic"--is an important part of their care, with divergent results. 41

Not all therapists are created equal, and not just because of talent difference. The dynamic between therapist and client is itself what's doing the work, not something in the mind of the specialist.

For more on this read Irvin Yalom, e.g Love's Executioner. 42

MMP gets these things, he gives a language for what we all know, but don't know how to say: that we aren't corpses to be analyzed by text book knowledge, but ALIVE, with all the weirdness and mystery that involves. 43

Now I don't think politics can possibly take away this fundamental problem, the problem of the body, any more than science can. Political science is too far removed from the micro moments of social interaction, best described in film and novels. 44

Neither communism nor capitalism is going to make us all comfortable in our bodies, and it won't ameliorate the conflicts with others that are always of a bodily nature, though it may adjust them. 45

But to imagine a capitalist and a communist debate, in light of MMP, is fun, so let's do it. 46

The communist says it's not enough for everyone to have formal and economic and political equality, everyone must also have bodily equality. I don't know how you could bring this about, but it can't stop with giving everyone the same paycheck. 47

It would be hard to do the calculus because the tall, good looking guy who is socially desirable, it turns out, suffers low self esteem, high anxiety, while the average person is quite happy and fulfilled. (pardon the cliche). So who is better off? Who needs redistribution? 48

But assuming we could do the calculus, we shouldn't be happy that one person is happy in their body and another not. It should make us as upset as wealth inequality, which is arguably a worse metric. 49

If there were a way to redistribute happiness in one's body we should. Maybe transhumanism or cyborgism fixes this, and so the revolution will require us to be able to choose new bodies. But not just new bodies, new mental states? 50

The capitalist, meanwhile, I imagine says something like this in return: Let's level up, not level down, let's create win wins, etc. How? By letting people who have solved the problem of bodily happiness share their solutions and enjoy the wealth of their discovery. 51

Who cares about inequality. What matters is bodily happiness. And we can get more bodily happiness if people who are innovators in that field make it cheap for others to consume their findings. Otherwise, we'll all just have bodies we don't feel happy in. 52

MMP was a communist so he must have thought something to the effect that politics effects society which effects my experience of myself, and so if you want to change that experience for the better you have to make the world more equal. 53

But by MMP's own lights it seems incorrect to think that the self is just a byproduct of the gaze of others, the status it enjoys. The problem of the body is too difficult to solved by social egalitarianism. 54

Or said differently, embodiment is the final frontier in the quest to equalize class. 55

And this isn't merely because of the typical high school stuff of nerds vs. jocks, and the uncomfortable truths of evolutionary biology, of some bodies being more attractive than others as a matter of instinct and socialization.

It's deeper. 56

Let's say that certain classes of people experience their bodies as burdensome, for reasons that combine sociological, physiological, and psychological. What could we do about it? No one lever alone will ease this burden. And different kinds of solutions themselves conflict. 57

For example, medicalization is one path. Stoicism and philosophy of self help another. Political advocacy another. Or you could get a personal trainer and dietician. But all the categories are too crude.
58

All the kings horses and all the kings men can't get humpty dumpty to FEEL whole and so putting him back together, whatever that means, does nothing. 59

I don't think we should stop caring or becoming quietist about it, I just think the most uncomfortable fact for everyone is the stubborn inequality of bodily subjects. Unequal bodily subjectivity is even harder to solve than unequal bodily objectivity. 60

So if you care about inequality, you should care about this, but perhaps because it's not easy to measure or solve people focus on other forms of inequality.

61

Plato, Hegel, Freud, Kojeve, and more recently @FukuyamaFrancis argue that we are fundamentally in search of "recognition." 62

We care about our identity because we care about our thymos.

The latest twitter spat between Andreesen and Jack is but one example (a domesticated duel). 63

But what the modern theorists of recognition overlook is that we feel dissed in our bodies, in our guts. We feel a fire in us. When the ego is wounded it's a bodily puncture, not a mental one. 64

Unfortunately, giving people rights to vote, rights to make themselves heard, and any number of rights in the growing list of human rights isn't going to protect people from this feeling of being dissed, this fundamental reality of social life. 65

Which isn't to say we shouldn't care about expanding rights or trying to help people who feel dissed feel less dissed (where possible and reasonable). But the thymotic urge is a bottomless pit, imo. The best we can do is find a compromise. 66

Merleau Ponty's realization that "I can" is primary led him to communism. For me, it leads to a kind of anti-politics, to a realization that policy is too crude an instrument (like modern science) if the goal is an embodied sense of fulfillment. 67

But there's another reason why I'm a kind of Burkean skeptic vis a vis political liberationist projects:

I don't think fulfillment comes to those with an unlimited sense of "I can." 68

There is often, paradoxically, a liberation that comes to a self that is limited, and accepts its limitation. Where should this line be? Between submission and desire for more? I don't know. It's not objective. It's not the same for each person. 69

But there should be a line. And so celebrating the conquests of the "I can" can bring its own melancholy if not accompanied by appreciation for "I cannot." 70

Not trying to score any points here in the culture wars, but it is striking that our age is the most technologically advanced, the most prosperous, and the most libertine, and yet not commensurately happy. 71

Whether Harvard requires SATs or not, it's sad that so many will graduate and go on to "leadership" positions all while living lives that they themselves consider filled with anxiety and depression. What are we solving for? 72

Maybe this is dumb nostalgia. Maybe it's decadent to want people to feel more fulfilled and not just externally successful and accomplished.

In the golden age of so-called innovation, we have so much new tech, but so little advance in the realm of the human heart, etc. 73

If we accept MMP that bodily perception is fundamental, than bodily perception is the site where we must figure out how to be just and loving. Fix the world, sure, but don't neglect the body. For it is as a body, as the body we are, that there can be a world. 74

Hit the gym, or the rave. Do the Soulcycle or whirl like a dervish. Chant Om or sing Ode to Joy. Do what it takes to remind yourself that you are a body, that the world is that which speaks to your "I can/I cannot."

But don't stop there.

75

Ask yourself if being embodied is enough, if releasing endorphins is enough. Who are YOU? What are you? Feel that mysterious question. 76

My sense is that it is not enough. The high fades. The body ages, the bones grow weary.
Beauty is vain, appearance is futile.
What matters is existence, YOU.

What you deeply need for retirement is not hobbies, not companions, not savings (though you do need these), but a self you can live with.

The self that Arendt said we find in solitude, in the ability to have a dialogue with ourselves.

78

What you need is not a fit body, nor is it a fit soul that renounces the body, but a fit self, a fit dialogue that is thoroughly somatic, but not reductively physiological.

You need a spirit that is animate, flesh that is awake. 79

And in my experience, and from reading others, there is one thing that gives and sustains this: purpose. 80

Purpose is a life lived for someone or something beyond yourself. It is the meeting of "I can" and "I cannot." 81

Some purposes are better than others, but any will do to start, since the purpose can change.

Purpose should be specific: Why am I here? What can I do that none else can? What is this body, my body, for? 82

My utopia is one in which everyone has an answer to this question and is able to pursue it. 83

It is an egalitarianism not of rights, per se, but of the right to serve. Not a right to fleeting happiness, but a right to thrive, a right that is realized paradoxically by asking not "what am I owed," but "how can I give." 84

Beyond the basics of survival and safety, what we need, as Viktor Frankl understood (and what can often motivate survival) is meaning. The body is alienated most when it lacks meaning.

85

Nihilism is an epidemic afflicting the body. 86

And there's no booster shot for Nihilism. 87

Theologians and religious leaders need MMP to realize that if you want to get people to care about God it starts with environment, a Shabbat meal, for example, a song circle, not with primers on why religion is rational or good. 88

AI engineers need MMP to realize that if you want to prevent dystopia you have to invest in beings who care, beings who feel, beings who have embodied knowledge, not just beings who compute and execute. 89

Social activists demanding more rights and more recognition need MMP to realize that a "Room of One's Own" in the corner office is not enough if the self occupying it remains tormented and alienated. 90

Fitness gurus need MMP to realize that self-improvement is much more radical a problem than just smashing one's metrics and breaking one's records. Weight loss or muscle mass or whatever it is is a goal but not a purpose. 91

Apparently, Simone de Beauvoir thought MMP was too bourgeoisie to date long term. She preferred Sartre. In reality, MMP was a moderate, not a "bad boy." 92

And I concur with her appraisal. MMP's problematic is both radically revolutionary and insufficiently revolutionary. It's at once environmental and individualistic. The self is social, intersubjective, etc. Mostly the self is this irreplaceable body, mine, and nobody else's. 93

In Heidegger, the thing that is my own, and that I am most alienated from is death, the possibility of having no more possibilities. 94

In MMP, the me that experiences fear of death is a me that is its body. If Heidegger is right, he needs to be corrected and expanded. The problem of death is a problem of the body. 95

And the problem of selfhood is a problem of my bodily relation to the fact that one day my body won't be mine any more, won't say or think mine. I will pass from flesh to corpse. What, then? 96

Neither atheism nor faith answers this question, because their answers are given to, for, and by this very body that is aware of its finitude. The sting of death is the sting of the body. 97

But the body knows itself to be more than just a thing, and this realization is spiritual, even if our language is inadequate. Even if our language is prone to abuse, cliche, zealotry, ideological rigidity. 98

The purpose of my life transcends my life and is part of it. I am the lintel between things as they are and things as they can only be with my help. The ancients called this sense of "I can" the soul. 99

Immortal or not, enduring or not, we sometimes feel, with our finite bodies, the presence of the infinite. This gives us purpose. And when we have purpose we sense it even more intimately.

We aren't somebody. We're us. This body, reaching out, as Being reaches for us.

100

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