Living Your Micro-Philosophy

The point of a micro-philosophy is to provide a framework for living

You will never become a better version of yourself unless you take action.

Actions are what make your ideas a reality.

There is no amount of knowledge that, by itself, can change who you are.

Knowledge, education, ideas, beliefs — all of these things are incredibly important for living a great life.

But without action, they are impotent.

In his magnum opus The Republic, Plato dedicates a significant amount of space and attention to discussing the nature of education. Plato writes:

"Education is not what some people boastfully profess it to be. They say that they can pretty much put knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes"

(Plato, Republic, 518c)

Plato was skeptical of anyone who claimed that they could change you by simply giving you something — even if it was knowledge.

Education is not acquisition, or accumulation.

During Plato's lifetime, Athens was overrun by a group of figures called the Sophists who claimed that they could make people by teaching them virtue for a fee.

The most famous Sophist was a man by the name of Protagoras, who gave the following sales pitch:

"My boy, if you associate with me, the result will be that the very day you begin you will return home a better person, and the same will happen the next day too. Each day you will make constant progress toward being better"

(Plato, Protagoras)

Protagoras thought that he could make people better day by day and charge them for it.

But it is important to point out that the way Protagoras believed he could do this was not by serving as a role model, demonstrating for young men how to live through his actions, and getting them to do the same.

Protagoras believed he could make people better by teaching them about virtue, rhetoric, and how to manage a household (economics).

In short, by giving them knowledge about the things they wanted to be good at.

Protagoras's students did not want to be like him.

They did not want to end up being the sort of person who spent all of their time teaching people how to become good.

They wanted to actually be good, or excellent, Athenians.

That is, they wanted learn what they needed to know in order to become great politicians, generals, and leaders of Athens.

This highlights an aspect of education that Plato was right to emphasize as incredibly important — education as changing or "turning around" one's soul towards truth and goodness.

In Plato's view, education is a craft that is aimed at helping people change their souls in such a way that they come to care about and see the most important and valuable things.

It is not merely the transferal of knowledge, or the acquisition of skills.

It is also a change in values, emotions, and character.

Education was not, for Plato, aimed at putting sight into eyes.

Plato assumed that everyone already has the ability to see and learn.

What they needed was to have their attention directed towards the right things and to grow to love and appreciate them.

In short, the aim of education is not just to teach people about what is true, or good, or valuable, but to get them to care about these things in the right way.

If the aim of true education is to become better, to become the sort of person who cares about what is truly good, it requires much more than just having the right ideas in your head.

It requires requires developing one's character over time.

Aristotle thought that human excellence is not something we are born with, or can easily acquire, but something that we earn for ourselves through consistent action.

For Aristotle, to become good is to become the sort of person who does what a good person would do.

To become a pianist requires playing the piano.

To become an excellent pianist requires playing the piano well.

How do you play the piano well?

You play the piano so much that you develop your skills, technique, musical intuition, and taste.

You do all of the things that an excellent pianist would do.

There is no other way.

This same principle applies to our moral lives as well.

In his famous work on ethics, Aristotle wrote that:

"The present work is not undertaken for the sake of theoretical knowledge, as our others are (for we are engaging in the investigation not in order to know what virtue is but in order to become good people, since otherwise there would be nothing of benefit in it)"

(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1104a).

Knowing what courages, discipline, and wisdom are is hard.

But being courageous, disciplined, and wise is a whole other ball game.

To become courageous, or disciplined, or wise, we must do what courageous, disciplined, and wise people do.

You cannot become wise by just living for a long time.

Sure, you will experience many things, and know a good amount about the world. But becoming wise requires that you perform intellectual actions, such as self-reflection, writing, deep thinking, and whatever else it is that a wise person would do.

The idea that human excellence is the product of beliefs coupled with action was one of the guiding ideas behind the micro-philosophy concept.

I created the concept in order to help regular people understand themselves more deeply but, more importantly, to create their own system for living.

The point of developing your own micro-philosophy is not to sit around admiring and appreciating your personal belief system.

It is to live it.

And, hopefully, to live well as a result.

Again, Aristotle underscores the relationship between philosophy, knowledge, and life, writing:

“For our wish is not to know what courage is but to be courageous, nor to know what justice is but to be just—just as our wish is to be healthy rather than to know what being healthy is, and to have our state in a good condition rather than to know what it is to have it good condition”

(Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, I 6 1216b)

The ultimate point is to live a life in alignment with your core beliefs, values, and principles.

To become your ideal self.

A micro-philosophy helps clarify the ideas in your head so that so that you can more easily do this.

So that you can more easily become the sort of person you often dream of being.

Action And Feedback Loops

The game of life doesn't end once you know what you believe.

That is just the beginning.

It is the beginning of a new game — one that you have created for yourself.

The game is, in the words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, to "become what one is". Nietzsche writes:

“To become what one is presupposes that one doesn’t suspect in the least what one is. . . . In the meantime there grows and grows in the depths the organizing ‘idea’ that is called to mastery”

(Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, ii.9).

One of the key ideas in existentialist philosophy is that a “self” is not something that every human being is given, but something that needs to be achieved or created (Richardson, 2020, 398).

Creating your self, for yourself, is one of the great challenges in the game of life.

The challenge is, literally, to become somebody.

Creating your own micro-philosophy is an excellent leap forward on the path of self-creation and self-mastery.

But it is more of a beginning than an ending.

The next step on this journey is to take the ideas, beliefs, values, and principles that you have systematically arranged and to live with them and by them.

This involves doing things, saying things, feeling things, and engaging with others.

The basic stuff of life.

The difference is that you now have a frame of reference to rely on.

You now have a point of view, a stance.

When you see a play, watch a film, or get into a serious debate with your closes friends, your micro-philosophy provides you with a basic perspective from which you can judge, question, and interpret your experiences.

You can ask yourself questions like: "Was what that character did right? Do their actions align with my values and beliefs? What can I learn from them?".

The idea is to take these new inputs in your life — new experiences, events, relationships, actions, mistakes— and feed them back into your micro-philosophy.

How do these inputs interact with your core beliefs, values, and principles?

Reflect on the decisions you or others have made and ask yourself whether they are in alignment with these beliefs or not.

Revise your beliefs in light of your answers to these questions.

Ask yourself: "If what I did is out of alignment with my micro-philosophy, do I need to change, or does it need to change?".

The goal is to create feedback loops between your lived experience and the system of concepts and beliefs that provide the framework for this lived experience.

The more your experiences get fed into the micro-philosophy you have created, the stronger it will become.

This is a long, but ultimately rewarding process.

Some people might say that this is what they have already been doing.

You live a little bit, things happen, you make mistakes, and then reflect on what went well, what did not, and change accordingly.

I won't speak for you, but this is how I have lived most of my life.

I have been improvising the whole time.

As I have gotten older, though, I have come to realize that, in many ways, this approach has not served me.

Even though it feels more "free", or seems like a shorter road in the moment, it is actually the longer road, and one that is more likely to decrease your overall agency.

It is the equivalent of not having a budget and making all sorts of daily financial choices with no plan or purpose in mind.

While it is true that each choice is "free" in the sense that you don't have any self-imposed rules restricting you from purchasing something, having no control over your finances is a recipe for ending up in a situation that is very constrained overall.

If that sounds financially stressful, imagine the equivalent for your life and character.

Your life and character are far too precious to adopt the “make it up as you go” approach.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates famously exhorts his fellow Athenians, the very same people who would vote for his execution, to prioritize the improvement of their souls above all else:

"O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?"

(Plato, Apology)

When Plato suggested that the ultimate aim of education is to turn our attention towards the things that are truly good, he was undoubtedly influenced by his own teacher, Socrates, who never turned his back on the philosophical life, even when facing death.

What made Socrates so remarkable was his complete dedication to the pursuit of wisdom above all else, because he believed it was the only thing that could be truly good for his soul.

Socrates, as much as any philosopher or person in history, lived his micro-philosophy.

I want to be clear, such a life is not easy.

Modern human beings face more challenges than ever when it comes to staying focused on what matters, and avoiding getting sidetracked by the things that don't.

Having a micro-philosophy provides two remedies for this (both of which are becoming increasingly important in modern life):

1) Clarity

2) Stability

Clarity allows you to find the signal in the noise. To cut through the nonsense and focus on what you need to become your best self. Clarity helps you not only choose what to consume, but how to act, and learn the most from your mistakes.

Stability allows you to stay on course when things get tough. To believe in who you are and what you are about. To have an intellectual home which you can return to and trust when life throws challenges your way.

If you choose to live the formless life, the undisciplined life, the unstructured life, it is very likely that you will end up being pulled apart by the external forces that want a piece of your time, attention, money, and emotional wellbeing.

Philosophy has the power to provide you with intellectual armor that prevents anyone, or any thing, from getting their hooks in you.

The philosophical life does not need to be an overbearing, hyper-detailed plan about how you should spend every minute of your day.

That is not the purpose of a micro-philosophy.

It is not supposed to tell you exactly what to do, think, eat, and say.

The point is to provide you will a minimum framework for living that is empowering rather than stifling.

This is very different than a macro-philosophy that dictates how every aspect of your life fits into some grand scheme.

There isn't anything wrong with living by a macro-philosophy. Many deeply religious people follow strict ethical practices that tell them how to eat, dress, and act. These can often be very meaningful and fulfilling lives.

But that kind of life is not the life of the micro-philosopher.

The micro-philosopher is an ordinary person who stands in need of a foundation for living that is completely their own.

The micro-philosopher is autonomous and free from tradition or external rules and requirements.

The micro-philosopher also owns their philosophy.

"What do you mean own it? I created it!"

By "own it", I mean that you make it a part of who you are, your moral self, or practical identity.

To make your micro-philosophy a part of who you are means to tell people about it, to live and think through it rather than just with it.

In short, it means to become your micro-philosophy.

This will look different for everyone.

What it looks like is up to you.

A micro-philosophy is not meant to be a set of abstract concepts that you use to judge yourself and others.

It is ultimately meant to be an expression of your deep self.

The Buddha was Buddhism. He lived and embodied a certain strain of Buddhist philosophy that was his.

Other people began to follow it and interpret it in different ways, but his micro-philosophy was entirely his own.

No one can truly copy your micro-philosophy once you begin to live it, because it becomes attached to your personal experiences in a way that makes the two inseparable.