Not engaging in philosophy (an extract from the writer’s diary)

I am on the verge of getting all philosophical in public. Which is not the way that this relationship should unfold. As a columnist I am supposed to highlight a problem and then provide a ripping good yarn. Something with a pithy beginning, a sultry middle stage, and a passionate and sustaining climax. Moreover, I can do it easily enough; there are a myriad of pertinent subjects whirling above my desk right now, all ripe for picking out of the air, plucking, and lambasting.

But no. Rather than take this well-worn path leading towards audience enjoyment and personal ego inflation I am toying with a topic that is really difficult to address. Plus, along the way, I am thinking about quoting one or two really really horrible people. Which all sounds pretty lousy, I admit. However, I propose that it will all be worth it in the end. Or at least it will not be a complete waste of time. Or perhaps, in a way, it inevitably will be. Oh fuck this is difficult.

My audience want me to reinforce their basic political and personal prejudices in an offhand and witty fashion. Just like last time. Consequently, by now, well into such an article, their blood pressure should be rising, even as their finer cognitive faculties are progressively shutting down. They should be nodding furiously at some rapid paced, vapid, yet entirely deserved denunciation of something well-worthy of ridicule. Instead, here I am stuck in a deep mire of uninspiring prose devoted to things that are only really of consequence when alone, in bed, unable to sleep, at four thirty-eight.

Why do I do this to myself? Writing witty prose and engaging in philosophy are like oil and water. They are different pursuits with different ambitions. Story-tellers want to amuse, amaze, and intrigue. Yet at four eighteen in the morning, deep in the heart of existential deliberations, certainty dissipates. It is all about primal fear. It is all about what questions are consequential. None of which is at all funny. Quite the opposite.

Thus, I am already confused and apprehensive. Which is all down to bloody philosophy. It’s a lousy subject area full of brutal realities, and I don’t normally do reality. I am already having second thoughts. Why not another column bashing Trump, or One Nation, or beating up some entirely inconsequential matter? Why not just follow the tried and tested formula?

But no, instead, I have to wake up at four in the morning and stare endlessly through the ceiling, while fretting about not considering the ‘big things’ in my writing. You know, all those deep philosophical things that are so significant, when awake with a cat, at twenty past four. Therefore, I have been thinking a lot about how I can weave a bit of deep and meaningful palaver into my work. To try and get my audience to sit up and marvel at how deep and thinky I can be. But I am stuck.

You see, the problem with philosophy – and life in general – is that it always more question than answer. Consequently, it is really really boring. Distressing even. It is all about deep and personal shit. So, there is lots of nuance and incoherence at the core of our nightly insecurities, which is simply stuff that don’t look real pretty when considered again in the broad daylight. As a result, apart from stipulating that a column has to be read, in bed, while everyone else is sleeping and you are in a state of perpetual existential exasperation, I can’t really see any viable solution. Either I am deep and meaningful and all philosophical about shit, or I have an audience.

I need to face facts and live in the daylight. Philosophy is not story telling. Nor does the practice of public deep thinking really purport to provide answers, just more questions. So maybe I have to rethink this whole approach? More drowning in weighty bullshit? More questions? It all sounds like a plain stupid idea. Especially for one who writes drive-by columns for shallow intellectual wannabes, who all demand virulent notions, flashy language, and ideological hand jobs. Philosophical ponderings might be well suited to four-thirty in the morning, while everyone else is fast asleep; but over coffee it is looking more and more like idiocy on steroids.

I gotta wake up to meself. The vaporous sorts of people who read my crap want to laugh, not think. Of course they will not tell you that. No. Instead, they all confess to wanting to think deeply about all the dangerous and dark verities. Which is palpable bullshit. The figures do not lie. Whenever I begin to define or explain anything more complicated than a fart joke then everyone is suddenly off playing with themselves on Pornhub, or making a cup of tea.

Which is perfectly understandable. What we have here is a failure to acknowledge reality. I have to stop crying into my cornflakes and buck up. If my readers really wanted to be well-informed about deep and meaningful shit then they would be reading something else, by someone else, somewhere else. They would already know their Kant from their Descartes, and they would all likely be pissed off that I have not already professed that god does not exist, chaos is inevitable, and everything is meaningless.

So, I best pull myself together and simply ditch this storyboard entirely. Fuck the deep and meaningful shit and go for the political jugular? Or religion? All with a really good lead-in line as a hook?

How about; ‘Buddha, Jesus, and Pauline Hanson, walk into a bar…’