“Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked.... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal, and that you are a paralytic.” — G. K. Chesterton
I like it when someone can make complex things simple or simple things simple. But that's hardly the case with most academics or leftist intellectuals these days. Even the spiritual seeking dillentants engage in some form of intellectual hedonism. I myself have been guilty of this; perhaps a by-product of being a thought addict much of my life. Thought becomes a sort of buffer from facing reality, and the better it sounds, the more I get to run away from myself.
But at some point, you realize much of it is trivial fodder. Darren Allen makes the great point that,
Modern writers and thinkers might tell us we need to decentralise, use green tech, build resilient communities, transcend the ego, merge with the eternal or design comprehensive solutions to omni-considerate, integrally developed psychosocial structures, but the hip theorist has no idea how to exit the simulated thought forms these ideas appear as; because his consciousness is a simulated thought form. This is why his speech and writing are boring and mystifying. They give the impression of having content, or of expressing something which is beyond the grasp of mind, but that content, that thing, turns out to be itself, like a birthday gift comprising a hundred layers of wrapping paper.
There a bunch of these guys in the meta-modern community and others movements similar to it that I find excruciating to listen to these days. I'd prefer not to name anyone, but some of these people can say so little by saying so much. That's probably why I prefer our aphorist-types these days. We of course have the quintessential Aphorist a.k.a. Mr. Colacho, who says so much in saying so little. I could unpack his quips over a lifetime and never exhaust the Truth he is expressing. Some of my favorites that fall in line with this post (thanks to Bob for curating):
A few lines are enough to demonstrate a truth. Not even a library is enough to refute an error.
The learned fool has a wider field to practice his folly.
Foolish ideas are immortal. Each generation invents them anew.
The great imbecilic explanations of human behavior adequately explain the one who adopts them.
The greater the importance of an intellectual activity, the more ridiculous is the claim of certifying the competence of those who exercise it. A diploma of dentistry is respectable, but one of philosophy is grotesque.
I also recently got exposed to Darren's little zingers, such as:
The most effective propaganda is not the master telling lies. It is the slave building his own counterfeit world from facts.
You can't 'think outside the box.' Thought is the box.
Beware of any idea that you don't need to be in love to understand.
A room full of Shakespeares on typewriters, will, in infinite time, end up beating their chests, swinging from trees and going 'ooh ooh ooh'.
Nietzsche was one of the first moderns or postmoderns to get the ball rolling. Roger Kimball notes in his book Experiments Against Reality:
For Nietzsche, the aphorism was the favored medium of insight: nimbler and more eloquent than discursive argumentation. “I approach deep problems like cold baths,” he confided: “quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift.”
A favorite Nietzsche quip: One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed. I know I've become very embarrassed by the MSM these days.
Most of these pithy wisdom quips, much like Zen koans, are used to shock and break us open without thinking too much about it. They are sharp and blunt, like a cold bath, but also can cultivate a second simplicity—where all the complexity of life and understanding can converge into a simple knowing that goes beyond thought.
The inability to see Reality or to overly complexify things is not a question of intelligence and definitely not of taste, class or education. The most college educated are often morally and spiritually blind, while the uneducated and working class are often the most intuitively perceptive when it comes to seeing the true nature of things. I watched the following video showcasing some of the people living and making their way in the deep Appalachia of West Virginia. While there is a lack of sophistication some would see in their use of language or customs, I tend to see a simplicity of knowing something Real that they may not be able (or need) to convey into a lot of fancy jargon. Rudolf Steiner would use the phrase folk wisdom to demonstrate the simple way of being that did not overly rationalize but implicitly knew what mattered—whether or not they were poor and uneducated.