das Man, and Breaking the Right Rules

A meandering little walk through practical thought, a bit of Heidegger, Sartre, and Descartes, then Sartre again, then some existential doubt, some Richard Rorty, some pretty crazy egotism, and then finally a pleasant piece of advice.

Pre-essay note: This appears, in retrospect, a relatively intuitive conclusion, but it's one that I want to make more explicit for myself. It's a principle I want to make a concerted effort to at least pay more attention to if not implement (as circumstances obviously matter); writing it out clearly will hopefully improve my sense of it.

I. Of norms, risk, and achieving perfect understanding Heidegger (not clickbait)

Breaking norms is often good, actually!

Sidestepping concerns from the rule utilitarians and deontologists, there's a trivial case supporting this argument ethically: refusing to conform to expectations that would hurt people if fulfilled (e.g. "you must report any dissenting associates to the authorities so they may be punished") is good, assuming your refusal doesn't lead to greater bad down the road. Some obvious examples might be breaking with your community's norms around interpersonal interactions if those norms support things like racism or xenophobia, or if you're in a society with laws that punish being gay, refusing to report on your gay neighbor.

I bring this up only to open up the idea that community norms aren't always good, that tradition can be flawed, that expectation does not translate into moral obligation. That said, I don't want to talk about the universal moral case here -- I want to discuss instead the personal one.

Few great things, few great people, few great deeds, come from (fully) within the 'rules', i.e., the expectations of the environment in which they are introduced. All precedents must be set. There are the obvious examples of, say, the American Revolution breaking the trend of European autarchy, but I think it's both broader and often more individual than this. Many great musicians never had formal training. Many great intellectuals struggled in high school, if they went at all. The greatest athletes defied societal expectations to pursue their dream. I was recently reading about the example of Conor McGregor, which was in fact what catalyzed the thoughts leading to this essay: McGregor struggled in the amateur fighting scene for years, but continued to prioritize training over all else. The one job he held briefly he quit because it was preventing him from training; his girlfriend supported him and his mother while he trained.

Then one night he had his breakout, making more money from that one fight than he had in his entire career to that point; he kept fighting, kept winning, and by 2021 he was the highest-paid athlete in the world.

There is an element of tolerance for awkwardness, refusal to accept "normalcy" or societal expectation, that is required for that kind of success. It's the same with startup companies, musicians, and plenty of other fields I'm sure you could list. It's not just taking risk: it's a willingness to defy 'normality', to do things outside of the paths that seem set out for you.

(As an aside worth noting, judgments of risk about these unconventional paths will no doubt be understated because of survivorship bias -- for every Conor McGregor there are a hundred more who will never make it -- but even those unconventional paths, like going into professional fighting, are paths themselves like any other. You can depart from them. You can take a different route -- you can try and get into UFC a different way from everyone else, for example. Innovating your own path might lead you to a process that has a much higher likelihood of actually making it.)

I'm tempted here to draw parallels with Heidegger's idea of Das man, albeit with a bit of an asterisk because my knowledge of him is not as strong as some other philosophy. Nonetheless, as I understand it he describes the idea that Dasein (~"Being", specifically the unique kind that only humans have) is subject to pressure from the world, pressure to conform, to do "what is done".

You know what they say about...

Das man is "the They": the subject in "what they do", "what they say". It is the collective spirit of society's impersonal expectation, one which every person contributes to but no person in particular creates. It is what keeps the average person average. It is the quotidian-ness, the kind of habitual, unthinking kind of living. Heidegger refers to it when discussing different "modes of being" -- ways of living and engaging with the world -- that are either "inauthentic" or "authentic". He believes that to follow Das man without thinking is to live "inauthentically": it is to fail. It is to let yourself be controlled by thoughtless culture, and because of that to lose your own individuality.

Conversely, to consider deliberately and thoughtfully, and then take responsibility for your life, choosing either to continue with or break from the more common path is to live authentically -- one might follow the life template set out for them, but for a different reason than anyone else, and therefore break from Das man. Authenticity means refusing to let the instinct to average-ness, the groupthink, take over, whatever choices you end up making.

An example is in order. A common one among some people that I know that of studentship: one might, say, go to college because that is simply "what one does" in their relatively affluent social circle -- high school, then college, then job. That is inauthenticity, an uncritical concession to Das man. On the other hand, a person in that same social circle who critically considers their values and options and takes control of their choices might still go down the same path, because they think that the path they take through college is the one that best enables them to pursue whatever they define as their purpose -- or they may also choose to, say, take time away from school to pursue volunteer work, or build a business they believe in, for that same pursuit of purpose. That is authenticity. Upon writing this article initially, that is what I realized I was pretty much advocating for. (It's not unlikely that Heidegger filtered in to my thoughts and I'm suffering from source amnesia.)

Now, the philosophy reference here isn't quite necessary, only illustrative and auxiliary. I believe the point still stands without Heidegger's authority (which in itself is perhaps questionable, considering his choices of political allegiance) . Willingness to defy das Man -- and that's the last time I'll use the term, I promise -- is an essential characteristic of those that do things that matter.

It's may be tempting to say that I'm making a correlation/causation error -- i.e. that just because great people broke rules doesn't mean you'll be great if you break rules -- but I think that is a distraction from the point; obviously you won't get very far if you're trying to be the next Vladimir Lenin by getting arrested for public intoxication 'in the spirit of the revolution'. What I mean is simply to say that seemingly any kind of greatness requires a willingness to depart from the usual, not that departure from the usual is sufficient for it.

Great deeds, great people, are defined as such because they cause great change. Great change tends not to come from within the structures of the status quo, though obviously absolute and total revolution is impossible, and hardly if ever desirable.

II. A choice that must be made

Now, I want to look at authenticity from another lens.

This idea that Heidegger presents tracks with those of the Existentialists that followed and were influenced by Heidegger, like Sartre. Existentialism confronts the task of finding meaning in a meaningless world, and responds by emphasizing deliberate choice; when in the phrase "existence precedes essence" it rejects an essentialist and teleological view of the universe (i.e. one that views things in terms of inherent essence and inherent purpose, seeing things as having a specific nature and end that is a fundamental part of their existence), it attempts to reframe human existence in terms of opportunity, as opposed to responsibility. We get to create ourselves, and define our lives. We are not simply forced to make our own meaning, we get to choose it.

Sartre's idea of 'authentic' or 'good faith' existence is one that exists in recognition of this fact. It is one that decides intentionally to live, to make meaning, and to reject nihilism. Those who live in 'bad faith' decieve themselves and avoid the situation, whether through religion, or through losing oneself in the world somehow -- Sartre in his book Being and Nothingness gives the example of a waiter, one so fully immersed in his role as to temporarily identify purely with that role. It is one in which he knows exactly what to do; no choices are needed in the moment, only practiced technique. Sartre calls this bad faith because it is a kind of escapism: by immersing himself in the certainty of his role, the waiter avoids the choice of who to become and why.

In thus behaving, the waiter is identifying himself with his role as waiter in the mode of being in-itself. In other words, the waiter is discarding his real nature as for-itself, i.e. as free facticity, to adopt that of the in-itself.
(IEP, 4.b.)

Both Sartre and Heidegger emphasize recognition of existential choice. You can choose, or you can let the world choose for you. You can let life pass by, or you can seize it. You can create yourself, or become no one. In admittedly what may be seen as a loquacious, prolix, garrulous, or even long-winded manner, in so many words, that is the message.

For years in middle and early high school I experienced what I considered at the time a 'crisis of faith'. I began to think about my beliefs' fundamentals: from what principles do I begin? I was suffering from (to co-opt a term from my old AP Psychology textbook) a "rage for order" -- I hoped to completely understand, and systematize, all my beliefs, to come to an utterly consistent, unshakable grounding upon which I could build my life. A comprehensive philosophy, with epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics all accounted for (though I wasn't using those terms, at least at the beginning). My 12-year-old self, and 13-year-old, and 14-year-old, and 15-year-old, and 16-year-old self all kind of thought this was a great idea and was very excited.

I was attempting what Descartes did in Meditations on First Philosophy:

I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last. [...] Anything which admits of the slightest doubt I will set aside just as if I had found it to be wholly false; and I will proceed in this way until I recognize something certain, or, if nothing else, until I at least recognize for certain that there is no certainty.
(trans. Cottingham, pp. 12 & 16)

But... I never got very far. The goal, in retrospect, was futile, for a number of reasons -- I was thinking about philosophy in the wrong way. There is no useful 'first principle' that one can say is true in the strictest sense; just as attempting to disentangle causality of the world will theoretically lead you down an infinite causal chain with no beginning, attempting to drill from beliefs to axioms led me down an infinite chain of doubt.

Note: I am aware that the entirety of epistemology exists; these concerns may perhaps be addressed by foundationalism or infinitism, or something else in epistemology that I haven't seen -- I am hardly in a place to discard all of the field, lmao -- but though haven't had time to explore that part of philosophy, I feel that my conclusions are logical. Please send any philosophical disputes in an email to me at logan graves dot com for further discussion.

This was but one of a number of problems I faced -- not to mention a fundamental and impassable distinction between facts and norms, i.e. between descriptions of the world and ethical prescriptions for it even if we were to settle on some functional epistemology (Aesthetics is similarly distinct), and some fundamental limitations of language that I have yet to fully flesh out.

I will put that path aside for now; I mean to avoid this discussion. This essay is not to argue for philosophical skepticism, nihilism, or postmodernism, nor is it to discuss a post-rational turn that I've been hyping up to my friends.

What I wish I had been attentive to in years past, when I was up at like 1:30am searching things like "what is existential depression," was that I must choose anyway. Or rather, that you can choose, or let the world choose without you, but you are making a choice either way.

You can believe, or let the world believe without you.

You can live, or let the world live without you.

In the darkness, past midnight one night, I stumbled upon a philosophical analysis of Dark Souls, what is now my favorite video on the internet and one of the most impactful pieces of media I've ever encountered; it interprets the video game Dark Souls, its story, aesthetics, and mechanics, through the lens of Sartre. It sounds laughable, to be honest, that one of the most important philosophical shifts in my life ever was initiated by a YouTube video analyzing a video game, but it seems the aesthetics of the game and its symbolism were just the right push for me; that video changed my fundamental orientation in the world. I realized that, to put it in the most useful terminology I know, the nihilism I'd argued myself into was basically just a skill issue. And it was ultimately narrative, story, that changed my mind -- not logic.

I don't have space to go onto a tangent about narrative -- this essay has gotten far out of hand already -- so instead I'll just quote Richard Rorty and leave it at that:

In my [...] utopia, this replacement would receive a kind of recognition which it still lacks. That recognition would be part of a general turn against theory and toward narrative. Such a turn would be emblematic of our having given up the attempt to hold all the sides of our life in a single vision, to describe them with a single vocabulary.
(Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, xvi)

To my younger self: let go of it -- let go of the need to "hold all the sides of our life in a single vision." Falling into nihilism is just another way to live in bad faith. It is just another way to try to avoid choosing, to avoid confronting life. Nihilism is but cope, and the worst kind of it at that.

III. Let's talk more about me!

Another brief note: I briefly experimented with a more sarcastic and mildly more egotistical voice in this second part. It was fun to write, so I'm keeping it -- I promise, though, that I'm not like this in real life.

The original point of this relatively brief essay (I wrote this in my first draft, back when it was ~1k words, but I kept it because it is now funny in an I want to die way) is to remind myself, and perhaps others, to ~~break more rules~~ do this calculus: to take stock of the situation and be willing to try the unexpected. Not that I think this is a particularly novel argument, but that I think it's important. And this is, after all, my personal website. So in order to better develop that point, I'm now going to spend this second section talking about myself.

I am very good with the rules I under which I exist. I get good grades, good test scores, I write good essays (as I'm sure you're aware, dear reader). I make friends, play sports, join and found clubs. I am good at the high school system -- one might say that, as far as das Man goes, I am the Man. (sorry) Society loves me; find out this one simple trick to be just like me!

Just kidding, there isn't one. In my view, it's pretty much just that the kind of person I'm genetically or environmentally predisposed to become is the kind of person that is effective in this environment -- lucky me! But as I've been hinting, that kind of 'success' is not particularly meaningful. No one remembers the rule-followers. They (I'd hope not we) die in wars and wither away in obscurity.

No, that's excessive. Fame isn't really a desirable situation; ask any celebrity! Following rules -- by that I mean the path set out for you, the expectations of your bosses, the ideals of your culture -- and doing so particularly effectively could get you a normal life, maybe a happy family, maybe a secure job, maybe a house in a zoned-single-family-only neighborhood half an hour (only by car) from your workplace. The American dream?

I'm 17 as of writing this. In my estimation, it's more likely than not that I discover big experience in coming years that leads me to laugh at what I'm writing now -- I have an inkling that personal fulfilment comes out of love, spirituality, and personal connection rather than world-changing achievements. Perhaps that idyllic vision is actually the key to happiness, my city planning anti-suburbanist preferences aside, rather than the quotidian nightmare it appears to me to be. Maybe following the rules is the secret to happiness. But for now I can't see it.

These past years I've often considered whether or not I'm wasting my time. Sometimes I imagine I'm about to die and reflect on my life as it's been -- I look back and think, essentially, that I haven't done much. Haven't done enough. And I know I could. It begs the question: am I really dedicating myself to good use? Is time spent getting As in school worth sacrificing actual impact on the world? I've worked hard to optimize my school life in order to open up space for discovery outside of it, and I'm proud of many of the projects I've built with that time, but doubtless the majority of my waking hours are dedicated to something school related, at least during the year. I wonder: what could I be doing with that time instead?

My own visions of grandeur, if you'll indulge me here and in below paragraphs, whisper to me that I could be solving great world problems or composing exalted symphonies. I look at geniuses, mathematical or or artistic and think, "Damn, that could be me. If only I had the right environment and passion." I look at people at the peak of their field, illustrious scientists, great leaders in history and think, "why am I not working towards that? Why am I not dedicated to something as noble as advancing human knowledge or reforming a deteriorating political system? I can't say I haven't fantasized about my successes if I were to have been homeschooled.

I tell myself, fairly convincingly (luckily for my parents, who'd love for me to finish school), that the 'normal' path I've chosen is the rational decision: without detailing the money aspect too much -- my education is heavily subsidized by the catholic church, and would not have been if I chose a secular private school which charges Ivy-League-priced tuition -- I made the conscious decision as I entered the specific high school I chose that I would be prioritizing my own social development over advancing myself academically as fast as possible or changing the world while still as young as possible; those two options would probably mean breaking from the expectation -- regular high school -- at significant cost. (I have worked extremely hard to maximize the opportunities I've had, but the fact remains that if I'd been able to direct my own course of studies I probably could have learned more, faster, than I have in high school.)

Teenage years are a critical period in human social development, and are a critical period in, say, learning highly advanced chess or mathematics, to a lesser extent (though probably a significant one?). I hope. I don't think research is particularly clear on this. In any case, I wasn't planning on becoming the next Kasparov or Fermi, as much good as 'planning' would have done me.

Plus, if I wanted to be able to be effective in the world, I'd need good social skills. I have them now, and I had them in middle school, but who knows what would have happened if I became a 'reclusive genius'? I doubt the model would have worked for me, even if I had made that decision; I feed off of social interaction. Plus, most great successes became so because they had passion; I didn't know what I wanted to do back then. My achievement motivation was speaking: trying to become, say, a Greta Thunberg, would probably not work unless I had the at least the same motivation that Thunberg did.

I can't justify this claim, but the path I'm on is also reasonably fun, and I think that's important. I really like learning. I like my friends. I like my girlfriend. I like playing sports, and being a teenager. Since my metaphysics are all out of sorts still, I can't make any arguments like "you may as well have fun in life because you have only one" or "your teleological existence is oriented towards fun-having", and I don't have any studies on hand that support the idea that having fun in your youth is good. I believe it though. I think.

But I can't say that these arguments for the path I took always feel sufficient. There's something very alluring about breaking the rules -- I'd like to say I'm special, and that I've been a rule-breaker and an imp since my elementary school years, but I think that would be self-deceptive. I think there's a mystique for everyone to the kind of risk-taking, das Man-defying activities that they themselves feel attracted to; it's just that few people actually do them.

But I'm increasingly interested in finding the ways, big and small, that I can defy the crowd in service of greater goals than conformity. To do so, however, I need to be able to know which rules are the right rules to break, and likewise, which norms are the wrong norms to accept. Breaking tradition needlessly would not only be unnecessary effort, but it would probably also erode the significance of other departures, and make people less willing to accept them when they do happen. 'Burning a chip' so to speak.

That begins with a process of questioning. I'm entering the college admissions phase of my life, according to the norms of my family -- it's worth asking, is it even worth going to college? I feel strongly that the answer is yes, but I won't close my eyes fully to other possibilities. Is the way that my school institutions are set up reasonable, desirable, correct? Is the way that my home city functions acceptable? Are my habitual decisions contributing to my success, or inhibiting it?

I think I can be proud of a few decisions I've made, in retrospect: I think the most notable one was cutting off social media early. It's protected my mental health -- I have seen this based on the strongly negative effects of brief stretches habitual use of Instagram had on my self-esteem -- and avoided wasting amounts of time measured in the weeks or even months of my life. I can't say I'm perfect on this -- I've had on-and-off flirtations with Twitter, and some obscure parts of Reddit (/r/DepthHub is a good community, if you're interested, though with over a third of a million members it's hardly small these days) but since I quit TikTok in 2019 and Instagram soon after I believe I've avoided the brunt of the algorithmic-driven insecurity. (Now it's just regular insecurity!)

(And, notably, I have avoided creating a complex and developed psychological profile for profit-driven advertisement/surveillance corporations like Facebook and ByteDance! My internet privacy paranoia was and continues to be well-founded, I'd say. Data will only become more useful and valuable with time.)

But there are plenty of other things I've done, things I won't mention here, that I regret doing. Generally doing the comfortable thing hasn't served me well, though I still do it relatively often.

So here is my public resolution to break the rules:

I'll keep looking for the right expectations to break, the right structures to step away from, the right traditions to abandon. But I will do so with respect and acknowledgement of their purpose, not callous disregard. Here's to new norms.

Postscript: AI transparency notice

The paragraphs about Heidegger were revised with the aid of a number of online sources, including but not limited to Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Florida Philosophical Review, and lastly, some usage of LLMs. All writing is original; AI was only asked to point out misinterpretations or ambiguities, which I checked and revised myself if necessary.

Example prompt used:

You are a philosophy professor, experienced with the nuances of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Please fact-check the following passage of original writing, and articulate any potential misinterpretations of Heidegger's philosophy, or incorrect vocabulary or terminology. Is the example faithful to Heidegger's philosophy, or is it a misreading? If it is inaccurate, please specify why and how it may be corrected.

I include this notice as general best practice in the age of AI. When I utilize LLMs or other experimental tech for communication, I will disclose the extent to which and the method by which I used it. This is so that (a) I can develop trust with those with whom I'm communicating, (b) the responses may be treated with sufficient suspicion (as LLM Responses, for example, may be subject to things like hallucinations), and (c) so that I may be held appropriately accountable for ensuring that I use technology responsibly, i.e. checking factual assertions and avoiding plagiarism.

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