PUNK PHILOSOPHY
EMPATHY AS REBELLION
I am writing about the moral philosophical framework I’ve developed through years of processing my grief and trauma. Something that codifies the way I’ve learned to think and interact with the world.
A process to see people. Act on what you see. Take responsibility for the person you are building. And in the process, maybe together we’ll change the world.
Not charity. An insurrection against a system that wants us isolated and processed as units of production.
Punk kindness. Empathy as rebellion.
My goal? Just increase the net good in the world. Make ripples in the water until they become a wave of change.
But if any like… real philosophy people read my moral framework here, I’m sure they are going to tear it to shreds.
“You talk about interpersonal good, but what about systemic problems?”
“Wait, you haven’t read all of Emmanuel Levinas and his Infinite Responsibility to the Other? Well then you haven’t done the required reading to be able to pronounce a moral framework!”
“Who are you? How’d you get in my office?! No, I won’t read your Substack! I’m calling campus security!”
Ethics for the Shadow of the Ivory Tower
But here’s the thing. I’m not trying to evaluate the western philosophy canon and add a brick to it that says “Anthony Curtis”.
What I am working on is something the guy in the utility truck can use to inspire him to be a bit more kind. Something the call center employee can use to counter the barrage of angry people she hears every day, shouting at her but really angry at capitalist enshitification1.
Sure, there is a plethora of modern philosophers today tackling modern problems with academic rigor. Scanlon asked the question I wrestle with daily, “What do we owe each other?” He only set the minimum that no reasonable person would disagree with.
I’ve dealt with my share of unreasonable people. So have you. They’re everywhere.
Peter Singer built a philosophy that lets the wealthy assuage their complicity in the exploitative effects of late-stage capitalism with spreadsheets and mosquito nets.
(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look up effective altruism. Also - fuck effective altruism. More on that in a later post)
But for all the papers, and the heuristics, and discussions that you need a PhD to begin to understand, is any of it making the world we live in better?
“These philosophers these days…”
- Plato, probably. I don’t know, he’s dead and doesn’t know what an iPad is.
Whatever comes from academic philosophy, it’s not making life better for us peons in the trenches. But I can use words like “contractualism” in a sentence, and I can write to an audience more concerned with just being decent in a world on fire than they are interested in Kant.
If I start talking like Socrates people are going to zone me out. It is super annoying to respond to everything with another question. Especially when you are holding up the line at the understaffed fast-food place.
“A hemlock Frosty to go!”
"Yes, that is my Frosty. But what is virtue?"
“Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”
Solidarity Not Charity
So let’s start small. Something we can wrap our hands around. Today I went for a run.
I went for a run. It was 93°. It wasn’t a long run. I finished a few blocks from my house to allow myself a cool down walk. Didn’t really take. I was hot.
Halfway home I saw a mailman. Not my mailman… the dividing line for the mail carriers is apparently a block from my house. I assume he was fairly acclimated, but the heat index read 107°.
I’ve been a delivery driver in the Florida August heat. It is an energy sapping slog. I had cold Gatorade at home. I was planning to have one. It was going to be refreshing. I bet he’d like one too.
I could see him. I could help him.
He wasn’t asking. He probably didn’t even notice me, checking the addresses on the mail in his hands. No one would say that I was obligated to help him. That’s Scanlon’s Contractualism.
I could, if I wanted to do good, find a way to do more by funding electrolyte fluids for premature babies at St Jude’s. Or investing in crypto and taking the returns to fund malaria treatments in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s Singer’s Effective Altruism.
But fuck both of those. I see a person in front of me. That person is sweating in the same oppressive heat I am. Difference is I’m about to go home to my air conditioning. And he has hours of walking ahead of him.
It would take me an extra five minutes to get home, grab him a cold drink, and get back before he finishes the street.
I hustled home, grabbed the Gatorade, and caught him at the end of the block.
“Hey, it’s hot out here. This might help.”
A quick thank you. A cold drink. And it was over.
Mutual Aid
Did I change the world? No.
Did I leave an impression? Probably. The sweaty stranger with a Gatorade, yeah, he’ll probably tell someone about it. And that’ll be it. Faded from memory.
It might not make a difference. But it was a tiny bit of good I chose to create. Because I saw a person, and chose a kindness.
That alone isn’t much. But I’m making myself accustomed to seeing people. To witnessing them.
And doing something.
If I walked on by, doing nothing, that would be the normal thing. No one would bat an eye. But I would know I could have done him a kindness.
I could choose that small kindness, or choose indifference.
Dark Things Grow in Shadows
Indifference is a shadow. A shadow where dust accumulates. And sometimes something fouler.
In the shadow of indifference we can accept people working two jobs with no health insurance because both only schedule enough hours to be just short of full time.
In the shadow of indifference we can scroll past the article about our neighbors being taken off the street because they look “illegal”.
In the shadow of indifference is where Gazan children starve.
And philosophers worry about “publish or perish” and offer us nothing.
Why I Write
Am I doing something revolutionary? No. Am I going to get an honorary PhD from an Ivy and make people call me Doctor Curtis? Also no.
No on the honorary degree. If I got a PhD, I’d make everyone call me Doctor.
What I am putting into a framework has existed as long as people have. It just wasn’t the formal idea that you can slap a name on and reorient one’s thinking.
It was what people did for me. They saw me when I suffered. They chose kindness over indifference. Without which I’d live a much more meager life. Or none at all.
Every thought, choice, and action carries weight. We can see the weight in the moral credits and moral debits we generate. That’s my ledger.
When I see something I can help and choose not to? That’s a debit. An evil of indifference.
When we see a person, but consider them as anything else, anything not like ourselves, that blinds us. We can’t witness them as they are, see their needs and hopes and fears.
What Do We Do?
So here is my philosophy.
See people. Witness them for what they are, not what you assign them to be.
Use that witness for empathy. Use that witness to guide reason. What can I do?
Act.
Accept moral responsibility. Everything you do or choose not to do makes the world a little better, or a little worse. Acknowledge your impact.
Witness yourself. Understand your impact on the world around you. See yourself as part of it, not separate.
Rinse and repeat
Be clear eyed on the truth of you. Don’t like what you see?
Be better tomorrow.
Fail someone you could have helped?
Be better tomorrow.
Anarcho-Kindness
How does that scale to the real problems? Like climate change? And income inequality?
Starting with the small, you are choosing to be intentional. No man steps in the same river twice.
Starting small, you are changing yourself. The way you see the world. The way you think and act.
You are the architect of yourself. You are building something better.
You start with giving a stranger a cold drink on a hot day. Eventually you’re researching your carbon footprint. One day you find yourself standing at a podium giving your coworkers an impassioned speech about forming a union.
Even the pyramids started with drawing the line in the sand to mark the first block.
Do I want the academic philosophers of our day and age to witness me? Yeah, sure, that’d be nice.
But I ain’t writing for them.
I want to inspire you. Big things start small.
If we all build more kindness into ourselves, more empathy, more moral responsibility for our impact on each other, what do we get?
A better world.
Start by being better tomorrow. Change yourself. Change the world.
Fight. Let’s go.
Cory Doctorow, "The Shitty Technology Adoption Curve (and you!)," Pluralistic, January 21, 2023, https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys