The Philosophy of Nerd Culture

Thanks to the work of Stephen West, I’ve been thinking about the philosopher, Slavoj Zizek (see this Philosophize This episode in particular). He gives three choices for dealing with a post-modern world:

  1. Burnout with drugs, alcohol, Instagram memes…
  2. Capitalistic achievements for self-improvement and productivity to further your career so you can buy more “stuff” so you can keep the economy going…
  3. Find meaning by resuscitating a past tradition or religion

Really? That’s it? Well, I believe that we could come up with other variations, on those three, but if I could summarize a fourth option:

To live fully and deeply is to develop a deep path of continuous failure towards your passions.

Uh… continuous failure?

I’ve two thoughts on this. First, we could use the phrase: success isn’t the goal. For instance, we don’t paint to sell our paintings for fame. We don’t run to win the Boston Marathon. We don’t write to land on the New York Time’s Best Seller list.

Perhaps failing has its own intrinsic value. Every good parent teaches their children that you learn from failure, not from success. I love this quote by Costică Brădățan’s when reviewing Emil Cioran’s books:

For failure is irreducibly unique: successful people always manage to look the same, but those who fail, fail so differently. Each case of failure has a physiognomy and a beauty all of its own…

Perhaps failure can be its own reward. As Stephen West said in his podcast:

People also get a sense of enjoyment sometimes… out of the process of not getting what they want…more accurately: they get a type of surplus enjoyment…out of something about the process of pursuing the thing that they want.

While stewing on this idea, it dawned on me that my Nerd Culture taught me this philosophical ideal fifty years ago.

Do I play Dungeons and Dragons only to entertain some friends for an evening around a table? Did I learn obscure facts about Victorian England just for a deeper understanding of Through the Looking Glass. Do I still know over a hundred dinosaurs even through my children are now in their twenties?

I mean … do my nerdy friends really expect to have conversations in Esperanto or Klingon?

As Wil Wheaton said:

Being a nerd is not about what you love; it’s about how you love it.

Kind of nice having philosophers validate your nerd guiding light.