*This was the speech that I prepared to deliver on August 28th during our E=mc2 meeting. However, I realized about the minute I started talking that it was probably a waste of time and greatly amended it.*
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Good afternoon, Everyone. Those of you who have previously attended one of my lectures know that I like to start them with a story. Sometimes it’s a funny story; this one is not.
For those of you who don’t know, the Supreme Court of the United STates is not a very good court. I apologize for shattering any misconceptions you might have had, but, just like the President sucks, and Congress sucks, the Court sucks. It’s very political, and political decisions tend to be bad decisions. So, a while back, we had a very right-wing court come out with a decision wherein it stated that law enforcement did not need a warrant to be on your property. The police only need a warrant if they would be able to see into your home. The theory, of course, was that warrants were for violations of privacy, not private property, which is wrong, but this right-wing court wanted to support law enforcement, so...that’s the decision that we got.
Now, a couple years later, officers in Kingston nabbed a petty drug dealer. He offered information in exchange for leniency. He told the cops about this old lady growing marijuana on her farm up in the mountains. The cops go take a look and, sure enough, they find the marijuana. They arrest the woman. Her defense was that the police didn’t have a warrant when they searched her property. The police relied on the recent Supreme Court decision, and the woman was convicted. The case got appealed up to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, and, really, one of the finest courts in the country. The police, again, relied on the Supreme Court decision that said that they didn’t need a warrant of they weren’t gonna get close enough to the woman’s house to look through her windows. And, in some of the best shade ever thrown at the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals essentially said that the words of the Supreme Court relied upon by the prosecution had no effect here. In this civilized state, the government needed a warrant to trespass upon any portion of an individual’s private property. Fantastic decision.
Now, there was some apprehension from some of the research coordinators about my speech, because I submitted the name of the speech first. And, like some of you, they were probably wondering what the hell this question has to do with the EMC program. Well, I didn’t ask the question. I just get to answer it, and the answer, I think, is very relevant to this program.
If you think about it, the job of a CEO is to answer questions. What to do. How to do it. Who should do it. These questions come thick and fast, all day, every day. The CEO gets a lot of practice answering these kinds of questions. But, as any athlete can tell you, the real gains come when you switch up your routine. So, for the CEO to get better at answering questions, he has to grapple with different, more challenging questions. And that’s where philosophy comes in, because philosophy, too, is all about questions. Very very big questions. What is justice? What is good? What is man? Should you pull the lever to redirect the trolley? These are all very difficult, very abstract questions, questions that some of the greatest thinkers in history have been struggling with for thousands of years, questions that we still don’t have definitive answers to.
Imagine, for a moment, that every morning you spent an hour trying to answer a question like “What is justice?” Imagine how much easier all of the other questions you face throughout the day would seem by comparison. What challenge does a routine business question pose when your mind regularly faces down such heavyweights as “What is the nature of man?” So studying philosophy makes CEOs better at answering the questions that they’re paid to answer. That’s one reason why CEOs study philosophy.
But there’s another reason. You see, there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from trying to answer these big questions. Just like after a hard workout, when you’re dripping with sweat and breathing like a bellows, and a second ago you though that you weren’t gonna make it another second, there’s a certain quiet satisfaction that you get. You start to smile a little bit. You just did something amazing. Something that not everyone else can do. Something that you weren’t even sure that you could do. Asking, and attempting to answer, these philosophical questions is the same. It’s a difficult answer. People have been trying to do what you’re doing for millenia. Almost all, if not all, of them have failed. The attempt exhausts you. Your brain just isn’t used to working that hard, isn’t used to maintaining chains of reasoning that long or that complex. But you’re doing something that other people aren’t doing. And it’s satisfying. You start to enjoy it. You start to like the challenge. You start coming up with your own questions, you criticize other people's answers, you finally come up with coherent answers of your own. And it’s awesome.
John Stuart Mill, a philosopher, wrote a bit about what he called the higher and lower pleasures. He said that the lower pleasures, like video games, are good because they make the masses happy. But the higher pleasures, like philosophy, although they don’t make the philosophers as happy as the video games make the common men, are better, because philosophy provides a different kind of pleasure. Yes, it’s intensely frustrating trying to figure out “What is the good?” But it’s also exciting. Interesting. Stimulating. Mill said: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates satisfied than a fool satisfied.” Once you start asking these questions, once you start trying to answer them for yourself, rather than just accept someone else’s answer, it changes you. You become dissatisfied with anything less; you want more of this experience. So this satisfaction one gets from struggling with big questions, this is the other reason CEOs study philosophy.
Now, with the possible exception of Alex, I don’t expect any of you will be dealing with the traditional philosophical questions this year. But there will be questions. Exciting, interesting, stimulating questions. Questions that haven’t been asked before, that you’ll have to answer for yourself. And it’ll be trilling. And it will make you think. And it will make you think better. That’s my goal for all of you, for this program. To get you to ask good questions.
What does a good question look like? I know you’ve all been told that there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but some questions are better than others. “When is lunch?” is not on the same level as “What is the purpose of law?” So, a couple of illustrations:
Have any of you heard of Hans-Hermann Hoppe? Well, Professor Hoppe is one of the greatest thinkers alive today. Why do I say that? Because he questions assumptions. His most famous book is called Democracy: The God That Failed, if that gives you any ideas. But I want to talk about a presentation he gave at an American history conference soon after his arrival in the United States. He was giving a paper on the US Constitution. Everyone in the audience was a little skeptical of what this German economist could add to their knowledge of the topic. But Professor Hoppe got up there, and he argued that the US Constitution, and indeed all constitutions, represented a vast increase in government power, and that this was their true purpose. In the name of limiting government, these constitutions invariably appear in periods of history when the elites are regrouping to emerge from what they consider to be almost anarchy. Constitutions purport to restrict the elites’ rule, but they actually grant legitimacy to it. At the end of his presentation, you could hear a pin drop. Everything the audience thought it knew about the Constitution had been challenged. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you know that the Constitution is a check on government power, right? Right? But how many of us actually take the time to justify our assumption? Almost no one, because almost no one else even notices the bias, since almost everyone else shares that bias. Was Hoppe right? I don’t know. But I think it’s astounding that Hoppe was perhaps the first to ask the question “What to the actual effect of a written constitution?” instead of just accepting the answer everyone assumes.
How many of our other assumptions are wrong? Probably a lot of them. And yet, they’re so universally accepted that we never stop to consider them, we never expend that little bit of extra thought that we need to see the flaws in them.
The other example that I’ll throw out there, just briefly, is Jonah Goldstein’s project from last year. Last year, Jonah started out with, essentially, the question “How can we make school better?” Fine question. A purposeful question. But the most interesting part of his project, the part that compelled me to share his work with others, was his research and ruminations on the question “What is childhood?” Do you see how much deeper that question is? How much more potentially difficult it is to answer? How much more interesting the answer might be? I’m not saying that the second question is more important than the first; just that it requires a different kind of thinking. Because it’s probably not something you’ve ever bothered to ask before. It exercises your mind.
As time goes on, and you interact with these types of questions, you’ll get better at recognizing them. You’ll be questioning everything, all the time. “I’m studying economics.” “What is economics? Why is it important to study economics? What’s the most important lesson in economics?” “I made a new friend today.” “What is friendship? Have you considered the global consequences of your new relationship with this person?” “I want to start a compost pile.” “Why? Is composting the best thing you can do with food waste? Can we call it waste if we’re using it for something?” It’s annoying for the people around you. It’s exhausting for you. And it’s the best part of being a living human being. This higher please found through inquiry. This drive to understand, to think for yourself. It’s an amazing thing. And I’m excited to be here, with you all, as you develop this ability this year.
Now let’s see what progress you’ve already made.
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