Philosophical Exercises

To say that someone you disagree with is “ wrong” is one thing, to say that they are being “irrational” is another, and it is unjustified. There is no need for political psychologism. (8 minutes read)      We are prone to accuse each other of being irrational, especially in highly polarized contexts. Let’s take, for instance, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and how various political commentators tried to make sense of people they strongly disagreed with. On the one hand, we had conservative commentators who argued “ that the pandemic is not as severe as generally thought, and that the liberal media are victims of “hysteria” in failing to recognize this.” On the other hand, we had progressive commentators who would throw the accusation of irrationality back at them, by “ citing a psychologist claiming that ‘in a crisis event, one thing people do is engage in sense-making—seeking out facts and coming up with explanations,’ as ‘a way of psychologically coping with the uncertaint

  (The plan? Each month, I try a new philosophical exercise! In the previous episode, we explored  Soji: Zen Housework without Hope )      By and large, mindfulness meditation instructions urge us to stop daydreaming in order to go back to the present moment. At most, we are encouraged to take stock of where the mind has wandered, while we gently go back to our actual sensations. But what would happen if instead we decided to stay there and to be mindful of those daydreams? It is the question that James Morley asks in his article “Meditation, Lucidity, and the Phenomenology of Daydreaming” 1 . And testing his hypothesis is what I did this month (May 2024).      James Morley provides a handy framework to think about the phenomenon of daydreaming. First of all, he describes what triggers the event. Typically, what happens is that we are undergoing a feeling that we cannot adequately express in the present situation. For instance, we experience anger about a political situation, but