I have been reading a lot of philosophy in the Harvard Classics series. I used to assume that if I didn’t understand some densely written incomprehensible work, it must be my own intellectual shortcomings. I still default to this. But I am becoming more and more aware that a lot of ink has been spilled by a lot of men on a lot of foolishness over the years. Sometimes it’s just dumb. Sometimes it’s a product of men in their time responding to whatever the current streams of thought were. But I’m at least aware that sometimes I am actually understanding what they’re saying, and it just isn’t convincing.

This makes me think of work. At the end of 2018, I started full time at a law firm. I had always assumed that lawyers were pretty smart people, and that even when they were wrong, or lying, they’d at least be more convincing than most… you know, really GOOD liars. I’ve come to find out, it’s not the case. Most of the time, these big firms with lots of money, just throw stupid stuff at the wall, and then use their deeper pockets to outlast the competition. Some of the defenses they put up and lies they tell are stuff any 3rd grader would see right through. You’d think they’d be much better liars than they are, but they aren’t.

Comparing classic works of philosophy to lying defense attorneys is probably unfair, after all, not all attorneys are bad! It’s just to say that I’m grasping that not everything written, even stuff that is often considered classic, is gold. But I’m also still acknowledging I’m not all that smart, so probably there IS more to it than I am grasping.