It really is okay, you know. We don’t just write to be novel; we write to connect, and even just an audience of one is enough to achieve that. One day you will let those connections transform you, let them soak back through the membrane of the online world and into your life, to determine your ideas about what it means to be speakers, leaders, and listeners, community.
And one day you’ll stop writing disclaimers for your self-awareness because you’ve finally written enough of those and start letting people just observe you in the act of living and writing, where you can trust them to witness something true, to listen, or not. And that’s when you’ll know you’re ready for your thirties.
People equate being smart as being serious. A silly essay on nothing is seen as less intellectual than a niche specific piece of content. But in either case the end message is something like: “well wasn’t that neat”. It feels like people want to be groundbreaking by getting specific and or exploring a topic that “of course no one has ever in the world thought and most definitely I’m the authority in”. Writers try to connect in this way. To show others they’re apart of some special intellectual sphere. All the while ignoring how silly everything is and how everyone is connected already through that shared experience.
20 years old is a coming of age era, a true paradigm shift for a lot of us. My journal from when I was 19-20 is that of a young philosopher but 8 years later it’s cliché and not note worthy or ground breaking to share in my opinion. Some of it’s funny and deep and maybe I’m actually selling my former self short. I don’t think I’ll ever write as deep and earnestly as I did at age 20. Moving away from home, losing and making new friends, trying new drugs, learning history and theory, thinking about concepts abstractly all for the first time will make you a young philosopher. Eventually life just becomes life again and you go on with the motions and things are ground breaking like they are when you’re 20. Maybe it’ll happen again when I then 40 or something but it probably won’t feel as magical or cool as it was at 20…it was painful too. Do keep a journal with messy writing and doodles too for no one to read.
it’s interesting actually because i have been keeping a journal since i was 16/17 and now as a 20 year old its a real experience to read what i wrote in that messy period in my life, even though i still write with just as much passion in my journal as i did back then. i think even if you might not think that the revelations you made at 19/20 is not noteworthy now, back then it probably meant a lot more to you and was necessary to go through and that’s all that matters. we forget we weren’t always as wise are we are now, and we are only wiser now because we decided to be young philosophers back then. i want to enjoy the earnest writing that only cones from being young as long as i can hold on to it, because as you said, there’s nothing like it
The thing about the philosophers that are commonly seen as Top tier is, they were also chatting a lot of shit. That's like. Half of philosophy. Endlessly arguing in circles about stuff that makes no sense unless you literally don't exist in our world. But the other half that's actually helpful and insightful couldn't have come without the duds. It's fine if your early writing didn't move mountains, you build a philosophy through time and experience.
Also, it's fair to feel like your influence won't reach the world over like Socrates but I would question why it needs to. What if you could influence the people in your community and they could in turn influence you?
Love the ‘its not that serious’ theme, I’ve been exploring Substack this week, waiting to make my ‘breakthrough’ post where I show the world how ‘deep’ I can be, while that’s excited me a little, it’s mostly just held me back. It’s really not that serious and I’m not going to be some championed philosopher so I might as well just post. Wonderful essay!
just a note from someone majoring in philosophy, this is just simply what philosophy is and always has been. taking yourself toooo seriously, thinking you know everything about EVERYTHING, and trying to hard IS the philosophical way.
I’m more than twice your age, and this really took me back to being a very earnest young man who was entirely convinced of my own genius (based on pretty much nothing except thinking the books I read were pretty clever, and so I must be pretty clever to be reading them). Of course, we didn’t have the internet back then (cue sepia-toned footage of horses and carriages), so it took a lot longer for me to develop the sense of irony that your generation absorbed before you could even talk. It’s harder for you now.
Anyway, here’s some unsolicited advice from an old codger: Keep philosophising. Keep writing. Don’t worry about being original—you are you, nobody else is you, so you actually can’t help but be original. That sounds like a platitude, but it’s true. And you write very well. Subscribed.
While I agree with some points in this post, I'd like to add that being in your 20s is when you really begin to discover the world around you and your place in it. It's completely normal to search for deeper meaning about yourself and your environment during this time, and before Substack emerged I guarantee you most were still writing in the same format in their journals.
In fact, I think it's truly beautiful that this app exists and without a catch 22! It's inviting people to think and express themselves in a meaningful way, which most social media apps do the opposite of. I believe it's wonderful that we can all do it together!
When reading this I kept thinking about the communities that surrounded writing in the past, at least the ones I'm familiar with. I think it's great that we all share our half-baked musings, as opposed to ancient Greek poets who were so conservative about their audiences that so little of what was made survives today, and less so intact. Or the pulp fiction scene of the 60's, wherein amateur genre authors would submit and comment on each other's pieces in magazines like Weird Tales, and how so little of that also survives except in archives and personal libraries. While we really do need to take ourselves less seriously, I think that if LARPing as a philosopher is what gets people to share their writing more, then we as a culture of artists are better for it.
“It’s a mixture of vanity and vulnerability” is a beautiful way of putting it. I think most people fear to look vain or vulnerable and the job of an artist/writer is to accept that you have to BE both while also still feeling the fear, and probably pitching to an audience. My take is that we are just young creatives with a lack of space for expression. Social media used to be the answer for this lack of space but of course, as with third spaces in general, we’ve been robbed and it’s become less about the creatives and more about what’s profitable. We can’t afford to leave our homes anymore and Substacked is one of the only places right now where it doesn’t feel threatening to indulge and express as creatives - so just fckn do it. Yes it’s cliche, and yeah unfortunately it’s the internet so it’s public forever and yeah a post of yours may be brought up for comedic reasons in five years time - BUT! We need stop thinking about writing things ethically or correctly, or just stop thinking about creating in general - and just CREATE SHIT. Just make it exist! You can make it good later! Or just leave it and promise to yourself that you’ll make the next thing better!
I see your point but it’s okay to think you’re a philosopher and share your perspective on subjects. The commodification part is a good critique though
i agree lol, that’s kinda the whole point of the post i made, that’s it feels cringey in today’s time and has been commodified/watered down online but there’s good that comes out of it too, like self discovery. it’s just my experience with online discourse/ commentary as a genre :)
you want the real short answer? it’s because it’s way easier to present yourself or imagine the next man as deep vague beings full of insight and mysterious creativity than ask a motherfucker for their story or explain yours in plain terms
It feels like writing as a whole has us trapped in a swing of wanting to be taken seriously and wanting to protect ourselves from the vulnerability being taken seriously comes with.
It really is okay, you know. We don’t just write to be novel; we write to connect, and even just an audience of one is enough to achieve that. One day you will let those connections transform you, let them soak back through the membrane of the online world and into your life, to determine your ideas about what it means to be speakers, leaders, and listeners, community.
And one day you’ll stop writing disclaimers for your self-awareness because you’ve finally written enough of those and start letting people just observe you in the act of living and writing, where you can trust them to witness something true, to listen, or not. And that’s when you’ll know you’re ready for your thirties.
People equate being smart as being serious. A silly essay on nothing is seen as less intellectual than a niche specific piece of content. But in either case the end message is something like: “well wasn’t that neat”. It feels like people want to be groundbreaking by getting specific and or exploring a topic that “of course no one has ever in the world thought and most definitely I’m the authority in”. Writers try to connect in this way. To show others they’re apart of some special intellectual sphere. All the while ignoring how silly everything is and how everyone is connected already through that shared experience.
20 years old is a coming of age era, a true paradigm shift for a lot of us. My journal from when I was 19-20 is that of a young philosopher but 8 years later it’s cliché and not note worthy or ground breaking to share in my opinion. Some of it’s funny and deep and maybe I’m actually selling my former self short. I don’t think I’ll ever write as deep and earnestly as I did at age 20. Moving away from home, losing and making new friends, trying new drugs, learning history and theory, thinking about concepts abstractly all for the first time will make you a young philosopher. Eventually life just becomes life again and you go on with the motions and things are ground breaking like they are when you’re 20. Maybe it’ll happen again when I then 40 or something but it probably won’t feel as magical or cool as it was at 20…it was painful too. Do keep a journal with messy writing and doodles too for no one to read.
it’s interesting actually because i have been keeping a journal since i was 16/17 and now as a 20 year old its a real experience to read what i wrote in that messy period in my life, even though i still write with just as much passion in my journal as i did back then. i think even if you might not think that the revelations you made at 19/20 is not noteworthy now, back then it probably meant a lot more to you and was necessary to go through and that’s all that matters. we forget we weren’t always as wise are we are now, and we are only wiser now because we decided to be young philosophers back then. i want to enjoy the earnest writing that only cones from being young as long as i can hold on to it, because as you said, there’s nothing like it
Super apt!
The thing about the philosophers that are commonly seen as Top tier is, they were also chatting a lot of shit. That's like. Half of philosophy. Endlessly arguing in circles about stuff that makes no sense unless you literally don't exist in our world. But the other half that's actually helpful and insightful couldn't have come without the duds. It's fine if your early writing didn't move mountains, you build a philosophy through time and experience.
Also, it's fair to feel like your influence won't reach the world over like Socrates but I would question why it needs to. What if you could influence the people in your community and they could in turn influence you?
Consider looking into Gramsci's holistic notion of the intellectual. You might find it affirming :)
Oooo i shall look into it thanks for the suggestion :)
Love the ‘its not that serious’ theme, I’ve been exploring Substack this week, waiting to make my ‘breakthrough’ post where I show the world how ‘deep’ I can be, while that’s excited me a little, it’s mostly just held me back. It’s really not that serious and I’m not going to be some championed philosopher so I might as well just post. Wonderful essay!
This was so well explained and really made me reflect about my attitude towards all this info online
just a note from someone majoring in philosophy, this is just simply what philosophy is and always has been. taking yourself toooo seriously, thinking you know everything about EVERYTHING, and trying to hard IS the philosophical way.
I’m more than twice your age, and this really took me back to being a very earnest young man who was entirely convinced of my own genius (based on pretty much nothing except thinking the books I read were pretty clever, and so I must be pretty clever to be reading them). Of course, we didn’t have the internet back then (cue sepia-toned footage of horses and carriages), so it took a lot longer for me to develop the sense of irony that your generation absorbed before you could even talk. It’s harder for you now.
Anyway, here’s some unsolicited advice from an old codger: Keep philosophising. Keep writing. Don’t worry about being original—you are you, nobody else is you, so you actually can’t help but be original. That sounds like a platitude, but it’s true. And you write very well. Subscribed.
While I agree with some points in this post, I'd like to add that being in your 20s is when you really begin to discover the world around you and your place in it. It's completely normal to search for deeper meaning about yourself and your environment during this time, and before Substack emerged I guarantee you most were still writing in the same format in their journals.
In fact, I think it's truly beautiful that this app exists and without a catch 22! It's inviting people to think and express themselves in a meaningful way, which most social media apps do the opposite of. I believe it's wonderful that we can all do it together!
When reading this I kept thinking about the communities that surrounded writing in the past, at least the ones I'm familiar with. I think it's great that we all share our half-baked musings, as opposed to ancient Greek poets who were so conservative about their audiences that so little of what was made survives today, and less so intact. Or the pulp fiction scene of the 60's, wherein amateur genre authors would submit and comment on each other's pieces in magazines like Weird Tales, and how so little of that also survives except in archives and personal libraries. While we really do need to take ourselves less seriously, I think that if LARPing as a philosopher is what gets people to share their writing more, then we as a culture of artists are better for it.
“It’s a mixture of vanity and vulnerability” is a beautiful way of putting it. I think most people fear to look vain or vulnerable and the job of an artist/writer is to accept that you have to BE both while also still feeling the fear, and probably pitching to an audience. My take is that we are just young creatives with a lack of space for expression. Social media used to be the answer for this lack of space but of course, as with third spaces in general, we’ve been robbed and it’s become less about the creatives and more about what’s profitable. We can’t afford to leave our homes anymore and Substacked is one of the only places right now where it doesn’t feel threatening to indulge and express as creatives - so just fckn do it. Yes it’s cliche, and yeah unfortunately it’s the internet so it’s public forever and yeah a post of yours may be brought up for comedic reasons in five years time - BUT! We need stop thinking about writing things ethically or correctly, or just stop thinking about creating in general - and just CREATE SHIT. Just make it exist! You can make it good later! Or just leave it and promise to yourself that you’ll make the next thing better!
I see your point but it’s okay to think you’re a philosopher and share your perspective on subjects. The commodification part is a good critique though
i agree lol, that’s kinda the whole point of the post i made, that’s it feels cringey in today’s time and has been commodified/watered down online but there’s good that comes out of it too, like self discovery. it’s just my experience with online discourse/ commentary as a genre :)
you want the real short answer? it’s because it’s way easier to present yourself or imagine the next man as deep vague beings full of insight and mysterious creativity than ask a motherfucker for their story or explain yours in plain terms
Just turned twenty and this one hits home. Also all the self-deprecation is so unnecessary you write very well!
It feels like writing as a whole has us trapped in a swing of wanting to be taken seriously and wanting to protect ourselves from the vulnerability being taken seriously comes with.