Being interesting

Whether or not they are interesting is a not bad way to judge ideas and people.   It is of course ideosyncratic, and unique to a particular perspective, but what the label “interesting” implies is that there is something unknown, but potentially knowable about someone or something, and it bespeaks curiosity.

And as a general rule, interesting people are curious.  They are interested.

And interesting ideas are not the same old, hackneyed ones you have seen your whole life.  The fact is, the tried and true ideas may be the best ones.  I think they are, in general, and certainly as it relates to economics and Liberal political theory.

But obviously what we have been doing has not worked as well as it should have.  New ideas are needed, to be layered on to, and added to, what has been known.  These are what interest me.

There is always some new direction possible.  Looking for it is a habit.  So too is that of trying to foreclose the new by assuming “pretty much” everything that we need to know, we already know.  That is deadly dull, and in my view, antithetical to discovery and needed innovation.

We innovate readily in technology.  Philosophically, socially: not so much.  Very little at all, actually.  Very little that is interesting at all is going on in those domains.  We are told to sit down and shut up by the Democrats, and Republicans, to the extent they are coherent, want to return to a time which never existed, and in so doing, pursue the impossible.

No, a social revolution is needed.  A philosophical revolution is needed.  And we need to finally take seriously the insights of physics and modern consciousness research.  All of them.  Few are even trying to do this, and no one in a position of influence, as far as I can tell.