Modernity Worldview Survey: Update 1

It’s nice to see responses still coming in from the Modernism Worldview Survey, so I thought I’d share some interim insights. Several people have shared their results with me privately. I’d be interested to know if any takers felt this was a fair and accurate assessment, given that this might be as relevant as the zodiac reading on a restaurant placemat. I’m an ox, if you’re wondering.

All aggregated responses resolve within the violet parallelogram that encompasses the population average (the blue dot). So, survey-takers have a slight propensity toward Modernist ideals with a tinge of Postmodernism. The force is weak, given how far the dot resides from the vertex. There were responses close to the green shading on the Modern side, but none indicated a strong Modernist worldview.

Firstly, no respondents are choosing “Pure Premodernity” (lower right). This doesn’t mean that no one abides by Premodern perspectives. It’s that they feel these ideas are filtered through Modern (mostly) and Postmodern (less so) lenses.

Secondly, respondents generally moderated their approach, avoiding any extremes. Although some responses were close to the Modern triangle (the green shading), none occupied the space, and points were even further removed from the other two corners. There were several scores in the white triangle. This space would be ripe for a Metamodernist to be positioned, but the survey would need to be restructured to determine whether this was mere happenstance.

Before the survey was published, I thought that the blue dot would be higher (toward Modernity) and further right (more Premodern), but this is likely due to the bias of people who visit this site and follow my content more generally. I need to share links in places without this bias. Of course, someone having even the slightest interest in the subject matter already represents a bias.

2024 Adminstrative Review

Happy New Year 2025 🥳🎉

In 2024, I produced 154 blog posts here – a total of 122K words. More importantly, in 2024 the blog had more than twice the number of visits than in 2023. It’s seen an increase in traffic every year since its inception in 2017 – despite my neglect from being distracted elsewhere.

As nickdruryfad63dc877 rightly noted, some content is less focused than others. In this case, I was busy. To borrow from Pascal, “I’d have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” As I responded to him, not only was the post meandering and an amalgamation of 4 or 5 – not necessarily mutually exclusive – topics, I didn’t even make the point I set out to make, so the topic remains a prime candidate for a future release.

I want to share more here but have other blogs and interests. It’s not a full-time profession, but it could be. Content creation is difficult. It’s even harder when one creates unevenly in several domains. We’ll see where this year goes.

Currently, I am putting the finishing touches on a Metamodernism Worldview Survey that is a culmination of earlier ideas. I am also finishing a couple of books and an essay, plus some short stories, some related to this blog, others not so much. I’ve also neglected my associated YouTube channel, so I’d like to render more content there, too.

Meantime, things to do, people to see. Cheers!

Slow News Day

This post is primarily throwaway content—a boast, really. November 2024 was the busiest month for this blog since I started it in January 2017. By the end of November, this blog had twice the visitors it had in the entire year of 2023. Hooray for me.

My most popular story has been the book review of Thomas Ligotti’s ‘The Conspiracy Against the Human Race‘. In fact, anti-natalist and pessimistic philosophy are the top performers. What’s a bloke to do?

This isn’t the only place I publish, though I give it the most attention. I’ve been publishing online since the mid-’90s. Unfortunately, some of the blog hosts went out of business, so the content it lost to history.

One of my favourite pieces is a publication I wrote in 2013: Cultural Impact on Digital Design. I wrote it while working at Critical Mass, a digital marketing agency. It’s been viewed just shy of 20,000 times. I revised it today because I couldn’t recall the name of Geert Hofstede, a reference I am including in my Language Insufficiency Hypothesis book.

Speak of my book, time to refocus. Ta!

Language Insufficiency, Rev 3

I’m edging ever closer to finishing my book on the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. It’s now in its third pass—a mostly subtractive process of streamlining, consolidating, and hacking away at redundancies. The front matter, of course, demands just as much attention, starting with the Preface.

The opening anecdote—a true yet apocryphal gem—dates back to 2018, which is evidence of just how long I’ve been chewing on this idea. It involves a divorce court judge, a dose of linguistic ambiguity, and my ongoing scepticism about the utility of language in complex, interpretative domains.

At the time, my ex-wife’s lawyer was petitioning the court to restrict me from spending any money outside our marriage. This included a demand for recompense for any funds already spent. I was asked, point-blank: Had I given another woman a gift?

Seeking clarity, I asked the judge to define gift. The response was less than amused—a glare, a sneer, but no definition. Left to my own devices, I answered no, relying on my personal definition: something given with no expectation of return or favour. My reasoning, then as now, stemmed from a deep mistrust of altruism.

The court, however, didn’t share my philosophical detours. The injunction came down: I was not to spend any money outside the marital arrangement. Straightforward? Hardly. At the time, I was also in a rock band and often brought meals for the group. Was buying Chipotle for the band now prohibited?

The judge’s response dripped with disdain. Of course, that wasn’t the intent, they said, but the language of the injunction was deliberately broad—ambiguous enough to cover whatever they deemed inappropriate. The phrase don’t spend money on romantic interests would have sufficed, but clarity seemed to be a liability. Instead, the court opted for what I call the Justice Stewart Doctrine of Legal Ambiguity: I know it when I see it.

Unsurprisingly, the marriage ended. My ex-wife and I, however, remain close; our separation in 2018 was final, but our friendship persists. Discussing my book recently, I mentioned this story, and she told me something new: her lawyer had confided that the judge disliked me, finding me smug.

This little revelation cemented something I’d already suspected: power relations, in the Foucauldian sense, pervade even our most banal disputes. It’s why Foucault makes a cameo in the book alongside Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Saussure, Derrida, Borges, and even Gödel.

This anecdote is just one straw on the poor camel’s back of my linguistic grievances, a life filled with moments where language’s insufficiency has revealed itself. And yet, I found few others voicing my position. Hence, a book.

I aim to self-publish in early 2025—get it off my chest and into the world. Maybe then I can stop wittering on about it. Or, more likely, I won’t.

18 Years on WordPress

I started this blog in January 2017, but I’ve been hosting blogs on WordPress since 2006 and others into the late ’90s. Some of these hosts died including Yahoo and Google sites, but I landed on WordPress and have been happy—even happier that they are still alive. I have a north site for my alter-ego pseudonym, Ridley Park if you’re so inclined to visit my author site.

I’ve nothing more to add, just sharing this trivia.

The Matter with Things

Index and table of contents

People outside of this space have been suggesting that I read Iain McGilchrist. I started by watching his YouTube content, but I was put off by two things. But first, let me say that I really enjoy listening to Iain speak. He’s an Oxford psychiatrist and just a font of information—full of knowledge to retrieve and synthesise on a whim.

So what’s the problem? First, McGilchrist is a Panpsychist. And although Galen Strawson, whom I adore, is also a Panpsychist, I just don’t relate to the notion that everything has consciousness. I might be able to get there through semantic acrobatics, but that’s just a cheap parlour trick. I don’t mind engaging in idealists, as I am partial to Analytic Idealism, and I don’t mind saying there is a consciousness that we are all part of—though admittedly, I feel that this is just another parlour trick I am somehow more apt to forgive. I believe there is material and this material is what we can measure and try to measure, but ostensibly it’s merely a poor reflection of the larger reality that may be described alternatively as consciousness or information depending on which theory you support.

I said there are two problems. The second is less fundamental and more practical. His latest book release, The Matter with Things, is a two-volume set that costs around £70 in Britain but is twice that in the US at around $150. Oh. And it’s almost 3,000 pages.

As it turns out, I’ve read the first two chapters. Some Preliminaries and Attention. So far, it’s been some setup and ground setting with some narratives about persons with split and damaged hemispheres in order to establish the relative function of each side of the human brain.

I am familiar with some of these case studies from other neuroscience literature I’ve read, but he has a nice way of expanding the narratives. Plus, he’s got some new ones.

I don’t expect that I’ll be documenting a play-by-play here, but I wanted to share what I am doing. I expect that the first volume will be more of the same. Perhaps the second volume will delve more into the metaphysical arena. Time will tell.