Introduction to Philosophy, Lecture 1: Porochista Khakpour's "Just (Don't) Do It" and Ursula K. Le Guin on Writing

I promise I'll have content that isn't just what I'm writing for class! But for now, I think you'll appreciate these lecture notes for my Introduction to Philosophy class which opens tomorrow.

I have asked you to read Porochista Khakpour’s “Just (Don’t) Do It” and some remarks by Ursula K. Le Guin about writing. I have claimed that this is relevant for two reasons: it helps with 1) writing about yourself and 2) understanding philosophy. So now it is my job to back up those claims, giving you questions you can work with and some vocabulary you should find useful. 

To be clear, we are not interested in debates of whether personal identity is even possible. A typical question in a philosophy class would be “How can we say you are the same person when you are literally not the same entity you were one second before?” Of interest at the moment is identification of the materials which you have used to build yourself and the variety of effects they yield. We’re interested in how self-reflection works, an idea Socrates had a very definite opinion about. As he said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” 

With that in mind, the first paragraph of Porochista Khakpour’s “Just (Don’t) Do It” is extremely striking. She is open about the scale of her ambitions at 12 years of age and how those ambitions defined her life: 

By the time I was 12, I had written two novels. I had read Shakespeare’s most famous plays. I had created a glossary of a thousand words and phrases; English was my second language, after all, and I—a new refugee from Iran—felt compelled to master it. In my elementary school diary, I wrote that I would move to New York after college, publish my first novel before 30, write for The New York Times, and be “the proud mom of a shaggy dog.” I had many goals—most of them seemingly unrealistic—and yet, I achieved them all. [from "Just (Don't) Do It"]

This is incredible. When I was 12, I could barely tie my shoelaces, let alone write two novels. I didn’t dare attempt to read Shakespeare’s plays; I can’t even recall knowing that “Romeo and Juliet” was one of his works. The sheer power of the vision she created for herself spilled over into her life for decades. 

Khakpour connects herself to the idea of the American Dream. As “a new refugee from Iran,” she wanted to “master” English. Nothing less. Not much later, she tells us about her Internet use: “I was a “high-achieving workaholic,” according to numerous online personality tests—an embodiment of the American ideal. That description felt like a bonus. After all, who is more American than an immigrant?” 

At this point, we have been trained to believe everything should fall into place. Khakpour is working hard, working in accordance with the principles of the nation. She’s not only learning English, but using it to write and be published. Success should be hers. Health care should solve itself, merit should be recognized and paycheck-to-paycheck living shouldn’t happen. She’s made it, right? 

Of course we read the rest of her story and learn that she becomes disabled. That being able is something she can’t rely on consistently. And that’s the first question I’d really like you to think about: To what degree is being an American a philosophy—something along the lines of “you have the right to work hard, the right to earn money”--and to what degree does that philosophy account for everyone? The thought of having a disability did not cross Khakpour’s mind at 12 years of age. This is not because she wasn’t paying attention to the messages all around her. 

What does it mean to have a productive life? What does it mean to have an accomplished life? In “Just (Don’t) Do It,” New Age rituals aren’t simply an alternative lifestyle. They’re absolutely necessary because of chronic illness. Breathing and eating being a struggle do not lend themselves to the idea of “lowered expectations.” Rather, they call for a radical reconception of the very notion of expectations. 

What does it mean that we construct our vision of our lives around what we can do? Isn’t it the case that if we are lucky enough to grow old, we too will have disabilities if we don’t already?  

You’ll notice that self-reflection, done right, probably isn’t going to lead to “everything is great and I have no complaints.” It should identify how society misreads us. How, even if everything is going great, that’s more a matter of chance than anything else. “I would be ungrateful if I ever complained” is a strange statement. I’ve heard it a lot and I do think it is important to count one’s blessings. However, before one even thinks about philosophy, it does seem prophets from various religious traditions have lots of complaints. They sharply distinguish how a society feels at a given moment from the actual matter of justice. 

The idea that maybe we should complain a bit more forms a natural bridge to Ursula K. Le Guin’s meditation on becoming a writer. This is, like Khakpour’s short article, not only one of those readings that can change your life, but also shape an entire academic career (e.g. with Khakpour’s article—how come the intensity of her desire to belong does not always register with others?). For me, complaining can be used to probe one’s experience. Why am I mad about the particular thing? What do I want to happen? What would life be like if things were different? Obviously, we don’t use complaining this way often, but in solutions-focused therapy there’s the “miracle” question: What do you envision yourself doing if the problem you’re experiencing disappeared? 

Le Guin aims at overthrowing the excuse that a writer must have certain sorts of experience in order to write. She dismisses an invalid complaint by pointing to the rich inner lives of the Brontë sisters. They didn’t have much that we would consider experience, but they made the most of what they had: 

Their life experience was an isolated vicarage in a small, dreary English village, a couple of bad years at a girls’ school, another year or two in Brussels, which is surely the dullest city in all Europe, and a lot of housework. Out of that seething mass of raw, vital, brutal, gutsy Experience they made two of the greatest novels ever written: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. [from "Ursula K. Le Guin on How to Become a Writer"]

Right away you can see that we’re only somewhat talking about writing in this passage. What is at stake is self-knowledge. You can know yourself and not produce great art, but it is unlikely that the strides you make in knowing yourself produce nothing.  

This you probably want to argue against. What if someone simple knows themselves? Like, they are happy being a farmer and they don’t need too much else. I’d caution against confusing the conditions that work for someone with their ability to work with who they are. Our culture, I submit, has completely confused this. We believe there are silent virtuous types who extensively know how their way works and can apply it to any situation. We believe they’ve done this and don’t need anything we usually consider marks of intelligence or wisdom. They don’t need books or need to write or even time to reflect. They’re just wise. I think it’s safe to say that we’re positing what we want in place of how things actually are. The scary thing is realizing that you know better but nothing can be done. That knowledge, in a lot of cases, isn’t useful for the fixes we need. 

As you’re going through Le Guin’s remarks on writing, I hope you’ll feel like you can do more. Learning to use one’s imagination is incredibly tough, and I do believe some get into philosophy in order to use their imagination less. They want to argue that they have the truth and can defend it against any and all who oppose it. But there’s another way of looking at philosophy, where the most pressing questions are illustrated in incredible ways. Think about Plato’s forms, for example, or Hegelian dialectic. In one case we’re wondering if every word must have a corresponding thought which has a share in the truth. We can only use the word “couch” if we know what a couch is, implying that there is an ideal form of couch. In the other case we’re thinking about what progress in history could look like. How does human history take steps? Both of these are exercises of the imagination. The more you’re willing to picture what’s happening, the more that is revealed.