A Philosophical Happy Hour on better habits of order.
Ours is a mentally broken society. This brokenness has been unveiled, in many ways, by the internet: operating under a premise of anonymity (at the very least of distance from personal judgment), there is less fear to inhibit many from sharing their brokenness. Such sharing may take the form of open, honest, reflective exhibition of psychological distress—or that of prideful, vain, and often defensive expostulation of beliefs and behaviors that contravene more traditional moral norms. These two forms are not mutually exclusive of one another, and the same individuals can frequently be found vacillating between the two.
Simultaneously, this brokenness seems itself exacerbated by the internet; perhaps even serving as the principal or original means by which such fragmentation of the psyche occurs. Discarnate digital existence—a kind of immersive modern experience in which we “lose” part of ourselves in the communication media that dominates our day-to-day lives—opens us to many psychological maladies. It is no coincidence, for instance, that nearly 1-in-5 of Generation Z, the first to have grown up with a networked digital device in their pockets at nearly all times, identify themselves as somehow not conforming to traditional heterosexual or dimorphic gender identities.
Why are We Broken?
But these more extreme cases, common as they have become, indicate a more prevailing if less obvious problem with mental disorder. We often use the expression “mental disorder” to signify a specific and identifiable condition that disrupts an individual’s ability to function ‘normally’ in society. In other words, most often, “mental disorder” is constrained to the specialized prognosis of psychopathology. However, this approach has typically held the ‘normal’ to be according to statistic rather than natural standards, and the consequence has been a degradation of our understanding of what constitutes right mental order.
Put otherwise, today we suffer a widespread and unrecognized habitual state of mental disorder throughout society.
Internal Disorder
To understand mental disorder, we must understand mental order, at least provisionally. Modern approaches to psychology, in my estimation, do a very poor job of this. The primary reason for modernity’s poverty in understanding order is outside the scope of this post (in short: profound mistakes about knowledge and truth in relation to opinion and “fact”). But even more profoundly, we in the modern world have altogether lost awareness of what constitutes order generally, and not just with respect to the mental. For by the term “order” we primarily signify two intimately related but nevertheless distinct objects.
First, and what remains in our awareness, the order of parts with respect to one another in constituting a whole. One might even say that there is an obsession with this kind of order, today. We see this in the careful crafting and curation of photos, websites, homes—of appearances of every kind. One can also see a strong desire for it in motivational videos, or in “life-hacking” tips, or in the way in which apps for organization proliferate in our digital environments. This kind of “internal ordering” (or organization) is very important; without it, we do tend to find ourselves readily overwhelmed by chaos, moved and disturbed by the slightest flutters that brush our minds.
External Disorder
But second, and what has an even greater importance I would argue, is the order to something other. I say this is more important because, while internal ordering gives us the capacity to act well, this “external ordering” gives us a reason why for anything we do at all. Without this sense of an external order, without it being not only present but even pervasive in our thinking, our internal ordering is for naught. (It is this sense of order that much psychology today forgoes.)
It is no wonder that external supplements to internal order proliferate in the absence of habitual external ordering. Often, these become sublimated for that very real need. But such outsourcing of our habituation results only in a deeper (if better-obscured or masked) psychological weakness.
Specifically when it comes to mental disorder, we can identify two distinct modes where the absence or misconstrual of external order affects an absence or fragmentation of internal order. First, the emotional (or more properly, the cathectic): here we observe external stimuli in both presence and absence being held disproportionately.
We can see this well in St. Augustine, who writes—speaking of his sorrow at the death of a dear friend—“grief so easily and so deeply had wounded me only because I had poured out my soul upon the sand by loving one who was to die, as if he would never die.” (Confessions 4.8, trans. Lelen.) For Augustine, the death of his friend recoiled to throw the rest of his life into disorder. So too many a heartbroken individual who, taking such loss even more grievously, take to suicide. Less sharply, but more smoldering, consider those consumed by outrage over perceived falsehoods or disagreements on the internet.
Second, the cognitive. Here the causes of disorder are easier seen only after we become better educated (educated, that is, in truth, and not mere appearance—which has the contrary effect). To myself, this is a cause of great concern. Being fundamentally unschooled in the arts of language (especially the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric), today we see a crisis of competence. This crisis shows itself not only in societal functionality (perhaps most notably among those entrusted with governing our countries) and in rational discourse but even in the rudiments of understanding what it means to be human.
Restoring Order
What can we do about this state of disorder? Like with all endemic psychological and moral ailments, there is no quick solution. These are not illnesses caused by foreign pathogens that may be removed with a drug. Rather, they are systemic degradations of our very faculties. “Life-hacking” your way to mental order is like getting liposuction to remove fat, without having learned how to eat well or exercise.
So join us this Wednesday (7/3/2024) as we discuss ways of developing habits of mental order: digging into topics such as: discipline, consistency, reflection, patience, environmental awareness (not of the Gruta Thunberg variety), docility, temperance, training, and last but not least, humility of character.
- How can we think more clearly?
- How can we study better?
- How should we regard our emotionally-attached objects?
- What can we do for emotional stability?
- Do we know towards what we are ordered—and how?
philosophical happy hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
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